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Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?

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Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?

#151

Post by thoralfskolem »

spoiledtechie wrote: post #116

Traffic patterns. Ahh, just kidding. No really, traffic software. The world is tied up in traffic. Mainly stop lights are are archaic and need such a large improvement with how it detects traffic and stand stills. Have you ever sat at a light and wondered why it was still red when no cars were coming in any direction? This software is lousy, it should have object recognition, sensor tech, but the basic idea of traffi…

One thought, the only simulation that prevented all other traffic lights or subsequent streets from bogging down in traffic, was to ensure at that particular time, no cars advanced at a certain speed.

Your wait may be a locally suboptimal outcome to ensure everyone else has a globally less miserable existence.

So as another participant in the system, thank you for sacrificing a little so that we can be better overall.

A little food for thought, while driving in another country with less adherence to the laws, the operating custom seemed to be stop if it is red OR if safe, go. Ironically, this prevailing attitude resulted in fewer accidents as people drove more cautiously.

Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?

#152

Post by dineshp2 »

Education.

Everyone knows it's broken,not effective anymore and literally a waste of time and money. More so if you had the oppurtunity to experience what education means in third world countries.Spoiler alert : it's a joke that will make you cry.

It needs to be fixed as quickly as possible and research needs to be done for alternatives to help people in the process of learning.Online education is a good start, but we need something more effective.

By not fixing education, we are creating generations of people with just pieces of paper(called degrees), having no real knowledge or even the thirst for knowledge. Maybe I am not vocalizing my thoughts well enough, but you just need to look at the state of education in third world countries to understand my depression about education.

Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?

#155

Post by nradov »

Crime investigation and forensic tools. Move "CSI" from science fiction closer to reality. Apply solid scientific principles and automation to cut costs and prevent human errors.

For example currently police don't have the resources to really investigate many crimes. So let's build small robots that automatically gather physical evidence from crime scenes such as DNA, blood, hair, fingerprints, fibers, etc. Make them cheap and reliable enough for every small town to afford. Then build automated analysis machines to look for evidence matches in databases and output statically valid match confidence scores.

Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?

#156

Post by rorykoehler »

shrikrishna wrote: post #144
robbrown451 wrote: post #126

Explore game theoretically sound ways to start new companies as "worker co-ops" and to reward participants. The idea being to aim toward a future where there is a large gray area between "employee" and "entrepreneur." The companies formed don't have to be start-ups per se: they could be as simple (and low risk) as a group of people who build web sites and apps for clients, but would like to have a stake in it rather…

There have been some attempts at this - assembly.com and one other company that I don't remember the name of. Has not worked out yet, as the contributors usually lose focus after a while

I was sad to see assembly.com close down. Seemed like a pretty solid structure for this kind of endeavour.

Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?

#157

Post by wsetchell »

YC research brings (a little) money and hackers. You should focus on stuff not being worked on by hackers, or that is un-fundable by others.

Politics and incentives: The FDA was invented to keep people safe from bad food and drugs. How do you incentivize the FDA to be conservative, but not too conservative? Is there some way that we can allow people to opt-out of the FDA that would be better for everyone?

Mental health: Psychology research seems to be in the dark ages. It is expensive, ineffective, and often totally invalid (published results are often not reproducible). Can you figure out a new way to do psychology research?

Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?

#158

Post by cperciva »

Software engineering. There has been very little experimental work done here, simply because it's incredibly expensive to perform interventional research. But if we had solid research which said "software development method X produces software faster and with fewer bugs than software development method Y" it would be a great boost to startups, and YC is ideally positioned to perform such research given that it is surrounded by (and funds) lots of software development projects.

Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?

#159

Post by jqm »

A better candy bar. Most of the commonly available ones are far too sweet and filled with cheap filler like peanuts or sugar spun air (I guess they call that nougat or something).

It's like they keep reducing the quality somehow... I can't put my finger on it. I swear candy bars were better quality when I was a kid. I know it seems small... but a really good candy bar would go a long way to improving my world! Disrupt Mars!

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