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Ask HN: An idea that you could not implement?

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61–70 of 125 posts

Re: Ask HN: An idea that you could not implement?

#62

I can't implement an asteroid mining program now because the cost of space launch for the preliminary/prototype mining equipment would be prohibitively high. If I had access to a space launch capability for less than $100/kg, however, I could bootstrap the whole business from my basement with an investment of ~$100-200k from some friends. [0] From SpaceX's perspective, they can put ~5 tons in lunar orbit for a cost o…

Why not burn some vc money yourself?

Re: Ask HN: An idea that you could not implement?

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One complaint I've heard is people looking for restaurants and finding 4-5 star rated McDonalds. Seems ripe for PCA or something. There are a ton of examples of this sort of analysis too, especially since Netflix made their datasets available. Here's the first paper I found: http://www.lkozma.net/mlsp09binary.pdf

I think absolute ratings for restaurants in general tend to be garbage, since a rating is skewed to the average expectations of the guests. The 5-star McDonalds may be a really good McDonalds that's very clean and consistent, but the $50/meal ocean-side bar only has 3-stars because the steak is sometimes rare instead of medium-rare. People are rating relative to their expectations of the restaurant, so someone who do…

Yeah, that's why I recommend PCA. It works by finding groups of agreement. You can then classify people by how much they resemble each group and predict how they will react to a new thing by how their groups have reacted to it. One criticism is that using it can easily lead to constructing echo chambers, but that's exactly what you want for reviews. If you care about how a steak is cooked, here is how other people who care about how a steak is cooked review this restaurant.

Re: Ask HN: An idea that you could not implement?

#64

I can't implement an asteroid mining program now because the cost of space launch for the preliminary/prototype mining equipment would be prohibitively high. If I had access to a space launch capability for less than $100/kg, however, I could bootstrap the whole business from my basement with an investment of ~$100-200k from some friends. [0] From SpaceX's perspective, they can put ~5 tons in lunar orbit for a cost o…

Why not burn some vc money yourself?

moral/ethical reasons, having better things to do.

Re: Ask HN: An idea that you could not implement?

#65

The recent election should have made it clear to everyone that many communities, centered around industries like manufacturing or fossil fuel energy, have been decimated in the last few decades or so. These are obviously large trends, but in our technological and economic progress we should figure out how to make sure these communities are not left behind. I would like to see a larger effort for the SV community to e…

a) Doesn't actually answer the OP's question whatsoever. b) Drones on uselessly and in a negative tone about the election; get over it.

Right. Downvote me because I react against someone who thinks that commenting about the election on a completely unrelated topic is appropriate. Good job, HN.

Re: Ask HN: An idea that you could not implement?

#66

I always wanted to build an indoor navigation system for a phone. Large office buildings, hotels and especially department stores can be hard to find stuff in and you have to rely on navigation signs of inconsistent quality. I couldn't build it because I a) lack hardware expertise to figure out tricks to navigate without GPS or/and map buildings and b) never figured out a realistic GTM for this.

Bluetooth LE and you're good

Re: Ask HN: An idea that you could not implement?

#67
A mouse droid.

In more detail, an innocuous autonomous droid that reminds me of meetings and takes me to the right location. Intelligent enough to correct for diversions to the wc or coffee machine, and stay out from under foot.

Re: Ask HN: An idea that you could not implement?

#68
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps Banished is more in line with what he's describing. http://store.steampowered.com/app/242920/

Thanks, that's very interesting to me but not quite what I had in mind. I'm thinking modern era, where the sims have links to an outside world - so some sims would commute out of the village for work each day, some would go to the nearby city for nightlife at weekends.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: An idea that you could not implement?

#69
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps Banished is more in line with what he's describing. http://store.steampowered.com/app/242920/

Thanks, that's very interesting to me but not quite what I had in mind. I'm thinking modern era, where the sims have links to an outside world - so some sims would commute out of the village for work each day, some would go to the nearby city for nightlife at weekends.

Look at Clockwork Empires, too.

Re: Ask HN: An idea that you could not implement?

#70
post #5

I don't think these ideas would take over communities neither the world, but they are awesome: 1) Some kind of crawler that goes through YouTube videos indexing them and its subtitles and then when a user searches a word or idiom the web app would show some part of a video that speaks exactly that search term. I know there are other services that does that, but I want something more natural since these services use s…

As for number 1, there is a service than find words on YouTube, and plays for you their pronunciation. I can't for the life of me remember what it is called.
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