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

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

#801

Post by tobr »

LordDragonfang wrote: post #767
tobr wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I read you right, you’re saying that I’m the one misunderstanding OP? It’s honestly not clear to me what the difference between “user” and “creator” would be in the context of this discussion. Could you elaborate? Since a “creator” is also a user of the web, I guess you mean “user” as in someone who only consumes content? I’m confused by that since nothing in the discussion seems to be about user stylesheets.

>you’re saying that I’m the one misunderstanding OP Yes, you are.

Just to be clear, you’re not the OP here.

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

#802

Post by tobr »

LordDragonfang wrote: post #766
tobr wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The facts of the history of the web tell us that people want custom styling, though, and businesses want it even more, because marketing says so. Wait, what? Are we on different webs? The facts of the history of the web tell us that some of the most popular services for publishing are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Medium, etc - places that allow for very limited custom styling. I think you misunderstand what OP is t…

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Medium all have custom styling specific to that platform. The person you're arguing with has interpreted me exactly correctly, you're the one misinterpreting. Please don't engage in pointless flame wars based on poor reading comprehension.

The adjacent thread was not about how to interpret your comment.

It’s completely besides the point that these platforms have custom styling with regards to the web in general. The point is that people are publishing enormous amounts of content on these platforms despite not having the ability to control what that content styled like. Ergo, lack of styling is not a deal breaker for people to publish stuff on a platform.

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

#803

Post by adamsea »

icebraining wrote: post #218
adamsea wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I certainly agree that so much about school is problematic and could be improved, but ... > Schools are functionally no different from part-time prisons. A prison by definition cannot be part-time ; ). Plus, it's a totally unfair comparison. Schools are intended for everyone. Prisons are intended for a specific subset of people deemed to have broken a law. Schools are for children. Prisons are for adults. And so on.

> A prison by definition cannot be part-time Sure it can. Check out "weekenders" and "work release" programs, for example.

Good point. To me the whole schools / prisons thing just seems dramatic and not well thought out.

“X is like prison”.

Work is like prison. Childhood is like prison. Society is like prison.

Is everything like prison?

If we live in The Matrix yes but we don’t?

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

#804

Post by tmaly »

wiseleo wrote: post #771
tmaly wrote: post #744

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife and I have taught our daughter materials sometimes 2 grade levels above where she is. I think every child has the potential for genius. It is really how you present the material. I taught a few classes last year on how to program in Scratch to grades 1-5. The 4th and 5th graders really loved it and they went off on their own to learn more. It was not a large sample, but I think presenting the right material i…

Right. As much as I love Khan, there’s lots of room for improvement. It needs to be interesting. Watch Shadiversity and you’ll love history. :)

Thanks for sharing, I have not heard of Shadiversity. I would recommend MrBettsClass channel for high school history. I wish there were more channels like this for a younger audience.

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

#805

Post by diroussel »

httpsterio wrote: post #11

I've been mulling over an idea that is essentially a combination of personal ID, secure digital authentication and online communications all baked into one. There's a EU directive instructing on how citizens should be able to identify online with eIDAS. In my country, you can use eIDAS to authenticate in basically any governmental agency portal, but you can't get any eIDAS enabled auth method as a citizen. The curren…

Not the same, but this reminds me of https://keybase.io/

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

#806

Post by chiefmcloud »

jiggunjer wrote: post #787
chiefmcloud wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the thoughtful and interesting responses, looking forward to listening to the podcast. I loved the Cixin trilogy, but hadn’t heard of the dark forest theory applied to online conversations before. I’m not sure I agree with such a strong suggestion, maybe more that the people that are most verbal in a group are rarely the people with the most interesting thoughts. It is sadly becoming increasingly true thou…

Did you read the English version? I'm trying to read the trilogy but the prose is just dull and the characters are flat.

I did. The beginning was a slog, but then it got really interesting. For me it was more about the plot than the characters.

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

#807

Post by _theory_ »

spiritplumber wrote: post #782
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #747

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If He returns, then He is who He said He is - the Son of God. And you're going to try to fight Him with audio engineering? That's, um, not the wisest possible response...

Earth is where all my friend live and where I keep most of my stuff. Nobody gets to blow it up without my explicit permission. That includes false Gods, wannabe Gods, and true Gods. I'd prefer coherent light, of course, but if audio engineering does the job, I'll take it.

godspeed

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

#808

Post by cuzHeC4nn »

raffraffraff wrote: post #569
chiefmcloud wrote: post #153

I’m working on a new way to talk online, with the goal of killing cancel culture, increasing understanding, and basically calming down current radicalization. Picture Reddit, but with the ability to anonymously share ideas with other people in your social circles. My theory is that most reasonable people stay off social media, so places like Twitter end up filled with unreasonable narcissists. At the same time, discu…

I have a theory that, individually, people fundamentally disagree less than they think they do. And in real face to face meetings, they are willing to disagree about a topic without killing each other. They talk around points of disagreement. Eg: me, when I'm talking to my grandmother. The problem is that online people tend to polarize into factions during complex discussions. The more heated the discussion, the more…

Pretty sure we don’t disagree on truth in a vacuum type information, but what axiom is most relevant to start from in a given moment in time.

I blame old social habits for work forcing us to continue to huddle into “flocks”, aka companies, to collectively funnel our output upward for validation.

Our biology as a literal thing has to then constantly contend with validation seeking. We minimize allowable results to narrow what is valid output. It’s economical they say, back in the day they would say this narrow lane of validity is most pious band likely to get you the reward of Heaven.

“They” of course are elected officials who we can watch flaunt they social rules they tell us to teach each other.

Given the literal mess we’re making it certainly does not appear to have “economy” in mind.

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

#809

Post by spiritplumber »

_theory_ wrote: post #807
spiritplumber wrote: post #782

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Earth is where all my friend live and where I keep most of my stuff. Nobody gets to blow it up without my explicit permission. That includes false Gods, wannabe Gods, and true Gods. I'd prefer coherent light, of course, but if audio engineering does the job, I'll take it.

godspeed

Deus Nolens Exitus ;)

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

#810

Post by aerovistae »

dredmorbius wrote: post #797
aerovistae wrote: post #794

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on this? Are you saying these tools could be used to wrap a running process in such a way that you could tell apart individual print statements during runtime? (I haven't used the tools you suggest.)

Yes, basically. The strace option should be doable. Terminal & timer a bit more work. So long as the print statements come between other blocks of code, though, I'd look at strace (or dtrace, gdb, etc.). Assuming Linux/Unix OS.

I'll research it, thank you. If I can't figure it out (I'm not great at systems-level programming), are you available for a small amount of contract work?
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