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Ask HN: What startups are working on hard, technically challenging problems?

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Re: Ask HN: What startups are working on hard, technically challenging problems?

#81

Post by avital »

At Meteor, we're building a complete open-source platform for easily building best-of-class, fast, web and mobile apps. If you've never heard about Meteor, check out the original screencast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsi0aJ9yr2o (needless to say, lots have changed since then -- most notably a security model :)

Meteor touches all parts of an application stack (client-side templating[1], live database updates[2], a websocket-based sync protocol[3], an "all you need" build tool[4] that can build mobile and web apps, an in-house "transparent reactive programming" library[5], a cloud hosting environment[6] built on Docker and Kubernetes, and the list goes on -- all with a very very strong emphasis on great developer experience).

Learn more about Meteor's subprojects here: http://meteor.com/projects. Most of these projects are current edge new technology -- we develop new systems when the existing open source ones aren't good enough (either because of how they're implemented or because we can supply a better developer experience)

Moreover, almost all of our work is open source which means working here builds your GitHub profile -- always a good thing. Remote is OK. Learn more at http://https://www.meteor.com/jobs/, or happy to answer questions at avital@meteor.com.

[1] https://www.meteor.com/blaze

[2] https://www.meteor.com/livequery

[3] https://www.meteor.com/ddp

[4] https://www.meteor.com/isobuild

[5] https://www.meteor.com/tracker

[6] https://trello.com/c/FMdB7GAu/78-galaxy-managed-production-q...

Re: Ask HN: What startups are working on hard, technically challenging problems?

#82

Post by huhtenberg »

lmeyerov wrote: post #70

At Graphistry, we are powering nextgen visual analysis through real-time GPU clusters that stream right into your browser. For example, we cracked a botnet a couple days ago using it. Visually exploring millions of data points in real-time is a hard problem for both infoviz design (hairballs!) and high performance programming (1000 node GPU clusters), but unblocks some of the biggest industries (finding criminals, av…

> we cracked a botnet a couple days ago using it

Do elaborate...

Re: Ask HN: What startups are working on hard, technically challenging problems?

#83

Post by semi-extrinsic »

lmeyerov wrote: post #80
damnusername wrote: post #6

I submitted this to slashdot a few weeks ago, but it got declined: "For some time now, I have been following the "startup scene" and frankly, I am left with a sense of dismay. How many of the startups actually do anything of any real value to mankind? It seems to me that the startup ideas just keep getting more ridiculous and stupid by the day and I think I would go as far as to call the whole thing deeply broken. I…

See my post above about what we're trying yo achieve with Graphistry. Unlocking 20 years of infoviz research by letting anyone run on 1000 real-time GPUs helps move some of the most important sectors forward, eg, biology, security, and finance.

What do you mean, real-time GPUs? And: what interconnect are you running on? How does your scaling look? Is this just for embarrasingly parallel stuff? Just curious; I'm running multi-GPUs myself for molecular dynamics.

Re: Ask HN: What startups are working on hard, technically challenging problems?

#86

Post by chetanahuja »

At Packetzoom we're building up a networking protocol specifically designed for mobile networks. We've discarded the TCP/HTTP stack completely and started from scratch. The idea was to go back to the drawing board (to the lowest level possible) and ask this question:

How would network protocols on mobile work if they were being designed from scratch today?

And that's what we've done. Results so far are pretty amazing (yes, we're out in production with private beta customers).

And oh... sorry but we're not hiring right now. We have a small, tight-knit team and we plan to hire very slowly with only the exact right fit of people.

Re: Ask HN: What startups are working on hard, technically challenging problems?

#87

Post by bostik »

higherpurpose wrote: post #28

Kryptnostic seems to be working on bringing usable fully homomorphic encryption to market. If they actually have something real there, that could be game-changing for cloud privacy: http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/19/kryptnostic/ It's a shame Google isn't focused more on this, too. They should be having a Google X lab just for that, and invest at least as much as they currently invest in quantum computing. They have a…

The first company that can crack the full operational cycle of homomorphic crypto will get a license to print money. As long as they don't squander the first-mover advantage, it will take quite a long time for the eventual second-mover to take over.

It's not just doing the computations in an untrusted cloud environment, although that's a big promise. I would say that an even bigger part will be the eventual ability to run computations on multi-party data sets. If you can provide a provably secure zero-knowledge service that still manages to compute results from multiple sources of opaque data, you will have every single financial institution and insurance giant banging on your door.

Re: Ask HN: What startups are working on hard, technically challenging problems?

#88

Post by lmeyerov »

huhtenberg wrote: post #82
lmeyerov wrote: post #70

At Graphistry, we are powering nextgen visual analysis through real-time GPU clusters that stream right into your browser. For example, we cracked a botnet a couple days ago using it. Visually exploring millions of data points in real-time is a hard problem for both infoviz design (hairballs!) and high performance programming (1000 node GPU clusters), but unblocks some of the biggest industries (finding criminals, av…

> we cracked a botnet a couple days ago using it Do elaborate...

We missed at least 60,000 bots in our first analysis so will write up after we get the rest of the relevant input data & rerun. If you do infoviz, please contact and I can explain more :)

Re: Ask HN: What startups are working on hard, technically challenging problems?

#89

Post by joelrunyon »

MichaelGG wrote: post #77
joelrunyon wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of startups are solving important problems that might not be obvious. Any Musk startup - Tesla (electric vs. oil consumption), SpaceX (building space "colonies"), SolarCity (alternate energy), Paypal (payments). You also have Uber (limiting cars on the street & oil consumption), AirBnb (better utilization of current buildings rather than building additional hotels). Even stuff like meerkat, etc could po…

AirBnB is more about exploiting cost differentials by avoiding regulation, isn't it? When i use it, and the people I know making money on it, are exactly taking advantage of this versus "better utilization". In fact, it's actually the opposite, at least in places like SF, because units that would otherwise house residents are now being used to house hotel guests.

> AirBnB is more about exploiting cost differentials by avoiding regulation, isn't it?

That's a story one-side uses and in SF that can certainly be the case.

But, in some cases, I think people would rather stay in places that are less "developed" or taken over by hotels and stay at local BnBs.

Re: Ask HN: What startups are working on hard, technically challenging problems?

#90

Post by gojomo »

adamnemecek wrote: post #11
inzim wrote: post #2

Palantir and yes we are hiring.

How do you justify to yourself working under a CEO who proposed making a smear campaign against Julian Assange?

A third party (HB Gary) — not Palantir and certainly not its CEO — suggested the 'offensive' campaign against Wikileaks.

Palantir — and specifically its CEO — immediately disclaimed involvement or interest in both that plan, or anything of its general type.

How do you justify to yourself slandering a company by claiming nearly the exact opposite of what happened?

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