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Ask HN: Any well funded tech companies tackling big, meaningful problems?

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Re: Ask HN: Any well funded tech companies tackling big, meaningful problems?

#91

Post by harha »

aaron695 wrote: post #69

Lol, most suggested here are garbage. Childish 'solutions' designed to just suck money from people pretending to help. Elons stuff is all amazing. Starlink looks world changing. Grab I also think is an amazing one. But it bought out a lot of smaller companies. So you can argue who made the biggest change, I haven't tracked down the evolution. But I think it'll be acknowledged for what it did at some point as world ch…

> Lol, most suggested here are garbage. Childish 'solutions' designed to just suck money from people pretending to help.

> Grab I also think is an amazing one

Could you elaborate?

Re: Ask HN: Any well funded tech companies tackling big, meaningful problems?

#92

Post by harha »

Mayzie wrote: post #88
bjacobt wrote: post #33

Loon from Google/Alphabet [1]. They are attempting to connect remote and rural areas of the world. They are currently providing commercial service in a difficult to reach/low ARPU area in Kenya [2]. Loon uses standard 3GPP (LTE) protocols, so devices are available at low cost and even lower in used markets. I don't work for Loon or Google, just interested in HAPS (High Altitude Pseudo Satellites) to provide low cost…

Wow, Project Loon. It’s been a while since I’ve thought about it. It seems kind of pointless now, doesn’t it? StarLink will displace it in a couple of years.

Would be nice to see a benchmark on large scale deployment overall and individual cost, reliability, etc.

I also think that fast(er) internet without relying on governments could be interesting for many people in presumably developed countries like France and Germany and make living outside of large cities much more attractive to many.

Re: Ask HN: Any well funded tech companies tackling big, meaningful problems?

#93

Post by giantg2 »

digitalmaster wrote: post #87
giantg2 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, they are better than some places. I should probably go back to the main thread an see what others suggested. I wasn't able to think of any for-profit organizations whose mission it is to fix a world problem and goes beyond just being a tagline.

Yea, neither could I. Hence the thread. It really does feel like the worlds greatest minds are all just busy trying to find creative ways to sell ads and it's kinda sad.

Seems like half the posts on the thread have devolved into Tesla debate (partially my fault, sorry). I looked through the suggestions and don't really like or agree with many. That 80000hours.org site looks like it has some good info though.

Re: Ask HN: Any well funded tech companies tackling big, meaningful problems?

#94

Post by aaron695 »

harha wrote: post #91
aaron695 wrote: post #69

Lol, most suggested here are garbage. Childish 'solutions' designed to just suck money from people pretending to help. Elons stuff is all amazing. Starlink looks world changing. Grab I also think is an amazing one. But it bought out a lot of smaller companies. So you can argue who made the biggest change, I haven't tracked down the evolution. But I think it'll be acknowledged for what it did at some point as world ch…

> Lol, most suggested here are garbage. Childish 'solutions' designed to just suck money from people pretending to help. > Grab I also think is an amazing one Could you elaborate?

This is an amazing quote -

William Gibson - "The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed."

Expect it's a lie. It's not cyberpunk. It's boringpunk.

It's teaching midwives how to wash their hands before delivering a birth.

And that is the future. Knowing about incredibly small things you can never see but still exist and how to kill them, which just washing your hands. And a thousands other boring things that are not yet evenly distributed.

This is how you tackle big issues, like Grab which is just a copy of Uber, but for the poor. I think there is a Generic Uber framework that came first that laid the way. But I could never find who created it.

Re: Ask HN: Any well funded tech companies tackling big, meaningful problems?

#95

Post by digitalmaster »

giantg2 wrote: post #93
digitalmaster wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, neither could I. Hence the thread. It really does feel like the worlds greatest minds are all just busy trying to find creative ways to sell ads and it's kinda sad.

Seems like half the posts on the thread have devolved into Tesla debate (partially my fault, sorry). I looked through the suggestions and don't really like or agree with many. That 80000hours.org site looks like it has some good info though.

Yea, it's my fault for providing that example.. wish I could edit the main thread to change the examples. Really just care about surfacing the big investments.

Re: Ask HN: Any well funded tech companies tackling big, meaningful problems?

#96

Post by bjacobt »

Mayzie wrote: post #88
bjacobt wrote: post #33

Loon from Google/Alphabet [1]. They are attempting to connect remote and rural areas of the world. They are currently providing commercial service in a difficult to reach/low ARPU area in Kenya [2]. Loon uses standard 3GPP (LTE) protocols, so devices are available at low cost and even lower in used markets. I don't work for Loon or Google, just interested in HAPS (High Altitude Pseudo Satellites) to provide low cost…

Wow, Project Loon. It’s been a while since I’ve thought about it. It seems kind of pointless now, doesn’t it? StarLink will displace it in a couple of years.

One disadvantage with Starlink is the need for external antenna. With HAPS, project Loon and HAPS Mobile [1], you can use regular mobile phones and modems making it cost effective for most people. The idea would be for an operator to have terrestrial network in urban/sub urban areas and high altitude cell towers in less dense areas. This way you can use the same subscription and device.

Starlink could also be used to provide backhaul to cell towers which work with standard 3GPP protocol and provide the same service as terrestrial networks.

HAPS Mobile has got a good video ([1] https://www.hapsmobile.com/en/

[2] https://youtu.be/zxWODb6Uqgs

Edit: I've no affiliation with HAPS Mobile, Softbank, Google :)

Re: Ask HN: Any well funded tech companies tackling big, meaningful problems?

#98

Post by anandpdoshi »

digitalmaster wrote: post #84
anandpdoshi wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wanted to do more creative work, whereas the work at Plenty was more about problem solving.

Oh interesting, I guess I've always thought about problem solving and creativity as being one and the same. Mind expanding on this a bit?

Ah I should have been more specific. For some context, I learned software development on the job and later studied Human-Computer Interaction. I want to be at the intersection of software and design.

Software Engineering at Plenty involved a lot of creative problem solving. But I wanted to work on visually creative projects. Some of my initial projects at Plenty did involve interactive UIs, but as I gained better understanding of our stack, I was required to do a lot more back-end work which wasn’t very exciting to me.

Re: Ask HN: Any well funded tech companies tackling big, meaningful problems?

#99

Post by digitalmaster »

anandpdoshi wrote: post #98
digitalmaster wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh interesting, I guess I've always thought about problem solving and creativity as being one and the same. Mind expanding on this a bit?

Ah I should have been more specific. For some context, I learned software development on the job and later studied Human-Computer Interaction. I want to be at the intersection of software and design. Software Engineering at Plenty involved a lot of creative problem solving. But I wanted to work on visually creative projects. Some of my initial projects at Plenty did involve interactive UIs, but as I gained better und…

Ah! Got it! That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for sharing!

Re: Ask HN: Any well funded tech companies tackling big, meaningful problems?

#100

Post by mstatner »

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