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Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

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731–740 of 831 posts

Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#731

PROBLEM(S): I (well, the nonprofit I lead) am trying to solve for the general problem of municipal public policy but, as you might expect, it's a series of discrete, linked problems. Some of these problems have thousands of people focused on a solution; in other areas, it's virtually greenfield. SOLUTION: The space doesn't lack for good research and policy recommendations, but it has historically lacked (on the right…

I'd love to see an example. What kind of public policy? What problems?

A good example would be Getting Back To Work, our economic-recovery playbook for cities. https://gettingbacktowork.org

Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#732

PROBLEM(S): I (well, the nonprofit I lead) am trying to solve for the general problem of municipal public policy but, as you might expect, it's a series of discrete, linked problems. Some of these problems have thousands of people focused on a solution; in other areas, it's virtually greenfield. SOLUTION: The space doesn't lack for good research and policy recommendations, but it has historically lacked (on the right…

What is the nonprofit?

Better Cities Project, https://better-cities.org

Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#733

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked on this problem for about a month straight a couple years ago (but didn't have any significant success). It's extremely draining on you; don't forget to take breaks. <3

What was your problem? (OP has deleted their comment.)

Sorry for deleting. I was working on detecting suicidal posts in social media. It is really depressing work.

Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#734
post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey your profile doesn’t have a contact link but I have a few ideas that can solve this today. Reach out when you get a chance!

TIL that the email in the profile isn't public access. Probably should have realized that before. My email is Shared404 (at) protonmail.com, I'd love to hear your ideas.

Dang TIL too because I updated my email before I commented :)

Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#735
I'm trying to build a program to optimally schedule time to work on your tasks based on your schedule.

I have a bunch of tasks I have to complete by a certain deadline — these include things like engineering sprint tasks, drafting a design document, completing an assignment, etc. I have to get these tasks done in between my regular schedule of meetings, lunch breaks, and rests. I want to get a program to tell me when I should work on what depending on a task's due date and priority. If something comes up, I want my schedule readjust to accommodate the interruption.

Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#736

I am building a database for human movement. Right now each exercise or pose or movement is indexed by its name - Downward dog, squat, handstand, etc. But this gets confusing when multiple names apply to the same movement. The true identifier is the motion of your limbs in space. I want to encode that motion/position so that if you try and upload L-sit handstand and also L-sit, it tells you that you are try to upload…

What is your motivation here? I like the idea, but I'm curious what sort of things you are hoping to accomplish. For instance is human deformity important? Do you want to take into account mild to severe birth defects or dismemberment? How about things like severe burn scars or other medical conditions which can limit maneuverability?

Limitation of movement is a huge aspect of what I want to do with it. Everyones body is different. Thus our hips can rotate different amounts in different orientations. Thus if you submit footage of yourself doing a yoga flow for instance, the database could understand the end ranges of motion - seeing that through all motion, the angle never exceeded 38 degrees for instance.

Then a year later you could submit new footage of a flow. The software would upload all movements into the database and recognize that that angle had increased. You now have increased movement.

Now lets say someone is missing an arm for instance. When their body is in a pike position, the database should still recognize the pike and index it against other pikes (both that user and the global range of pikes). So the database is going for similarity, not exactness. Relating similar movements though making them distinct is what I believe will be one of the hardest parts of this challenge.

I believe a large part of health and fitness is understanding our own bodies and the movements we can perform. Whether its a total of 25 possible movements or 500 possible movements, exploring and training those movements is always cathartic.

I am building this for a yoga/bodyweight training workout tracking app that I have made, but was having trouble indexing all of the motions for. Though I think if it works properly, the applications could be greater than the app.

Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#737
post #557

I am building a database for human movement. Right now each exercise or pose or movement is indexed by its name - Downward dog, squat, handstand, etc. But this gets confusing when multiple names apply to the same movement. The true identifier is the motion of your limbs in space. I want to encode that motion/position so that if you try and upload L-sit handstand and also L-sit, it tells you that you are try to upload…

In case you weren't aware, exrx.net has a huge database of exercises and which muscles/joints they affect.

Yes, I am considering using exrx for the base training set actually. They have an api where you can get movement labeled (which muscles are contracting), license video footage of many exercises. Maybe I can somehow integrate what Im building with their site.

Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#738
post #490

I am building a database for human movement. Right now each exercise or pose or movement is indexed by its name - Downward dog, squat, handstand, etc. But this gets confusing when multiple names apply to the same movement. The true identifier is the motion of your limbs in space. I want to encode that motion/position so that if you try and upload L-sit handstand and also L-sit, it tells you that you are try to upload…

Are you aware of HASC? http://hasc.jp/

I was not. thanks for the link. Often I've found these datasets (this reminds me of CMU's motion capture dataset for instance) are more for everyday movement - things like the sitting down in a chair or calling for a taxi. Though their charter seems to imply looking for all possible human movement.

Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#739

If you repeatedly add 2 and then divide by 2, you approach the number 2. If you repeatedly flip a coin to either add 2 or divide by 2, what distribution do you approach? If you have a distribution, what random processes are identities for that distribution? Which are stable? Which will reproduce the distribution from any starting distribution? It’s related to matrix kernels, but it’s hard to generalize to continuous…

I would guess that you still get to 2—because the more times you add 2, the greater the impact of dividing by 2, and the more times you divide by 2, the greater the impact of adding 2. Is that the case?

If you run the random process many times and then look at a histogram of the vector of outputs, the distribution peaks somewhat higher than 2 [0], but the output of the random process does not tend towards any particular number or sequence of numbers.

Indeed, the distribution looks highly discontinuous and fractal. It's a very intriguing question. I suspect thinking in terms of rings (abstract algebra) would be helpful.

[0] "somewhat higher" - I think this is because the sequence "add two then divide by two" gives you back your input when you start with 2, while "divide by two then add two" does when you start with 4; the distribution should peak between these two "stable" points. Exactly where the distribution peaks probably depends on your histogram bin width.

Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#740
post #21

I am trying to reinvent the web. Replacing HTML/JS/CSS with a language called ALFI. It is stupidly simple in its design but still very powerful. Similarly to HTML you use it to create widgets, place them, and define their behavior. It is humanly readable like HTML but line-based instead of markup-based. Instead of nesting it uses references. This allows it to be streamed. A big difference is that the language itself…

Have you considered developing a WebExtension?

Yes but I haven't looked into how much work it would be. I think this might be essential in order to reach a wider audience because I think people want to be able to use the same browser to surf both ALFI and regular websites. Would be awesome for this to work in Firefox and Chrome.
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