I'm not interested in building an other B2B Invoicing SaaS app. Instead I'm trying to look for pressing problems, where I as an engineer could potentially contribute to. What do you feel is an important problem that, when solved (or at least worked on) could make a big difference in the world.
Ask HN: What's an important problem that more people should work on?
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Re: Ask HN: What's an important problem that more people should work on?
#2The easiest you can do is probably to look locally.
I'm sure there are a lot of non-profit with horrible websites, architectures, communications, etc. which you can throw a few hours at and help a lot of people.
Re: Ask HN: What's an important problem that more people should work on?
#3Improving existing software stability/security. Dive into the OpenBSD project and stay a while.
Yep. The totally unsexy answer.
Re: Ask HN: What's an important problem that more people should work on?
#4Homelessness induced by mental health challenges. I know this isn't exactly what you were asking, but this is an area in which creating engineering solutions can go a long way. As suggested - think geographically local. Improvements in the way our society handles these issues, proven to work on a local scale, can be adapted and replicated globally.
Re: Ask HN: What's an important problem that more people should work on?
#5One strategy that I adopt is to think of industries that are highly manual labor and dream of ways to fix that. I forget the name of the company, but there's a startup in the Bay Area that builds drones for farmers. Right now, farmers wake up early in the morning and drive through small sections of their fields and spot check things to decide what needs water or fertilizer or what-have-you. They have to spot check, because some of these farms are so large that it would take a prohibitively long time to check everything. As a result, a small patch of plants that might need more water might get some water, but the nearby plants that are already well-watered might get too much water. With these drones, the farmer can wake up, hit a button on their computer, go make coffee, and by the time their coffee is ready, the drones have uploaded photos of every square foot of the farm onto their computer. Software can analyze it to see what needs watering and fertilizing, what's ready for picking or for planting, etc.
That's the kind of thing that gets me excited about the future of technology. How could we automate or ease the jobs of farmers? How can we automate going to the DMV? How can we streamline flu shots? Can we write software that can organize resistance to Ebola outbreaks or malaria? Is there some software that can get the people of Flint access to clean water -- or can we write software that will prevent a Flint-like crisis from happening again? Can we identify bots that might be trying to affect our political processes? What about making sure kids in schools are well fed, since we know that hungry kids perform worse in schools? Can we solve that somehow?
I don't have answers to any of those questions. They are what I call "Epic Problems," and I think about them all the time. Unfortunately, the solutions are several orders of magnitude more involved than a standard CRUD app.
One thing to do is pick an Epic Problem, then work in an Agile mindset to tackle it. That's what Planet Labs did when it came to satellites. They have hundreds of shoebox-sized satellites in space, putting them up there at a tiny, tiny fraction of the cost of what it takes to put a traditional satellite in orbit.
What else could you do that with?
Re: Ask HN: What's an important problem that more people should work on?
#6When a scientist wants to make progress in some field, the scientist first educates herself on the state of the art, and then does novel research that pushes the frontier.
When you have a discussion on facebook/reddit/HN about your favorite political issue, you just post your gut feeling and what you heard on TV instead of educating yourself on the issue, learning what the foremost experts are currently debating and what arguments are already refuted.
Super shitty example fix: Facebook Clippy "It sounds like you're having a discussion about abortion - are you aware that the smartest people on this topic are not actually discussing X, but rather have moved on to Y?"
Side problem:
When we DO make some bump of progress, only a few people benefit (the people reading the thread, at best), and everyone else does not. A million parallel discussions rehash the issue until after a decade, "culture" incrementally improves. How can my facebook discussion, in which I made a good point, prevent that same discussion from ever happening again?
Re: Ask HN: What's an important problem that more people should work on?
#7Make a website that brings transparency to your local political candidates and votes. In many places it's very difficult to find any real information on what we're voting on and the props themselves are ambiguous or confusing. And the candidates themselves also often have no online presence and no real scrutiny as to whether they're full of shit.
Re: Ask HN: What's an important problem that more people should work on?
#8Homelessness induced by mental health challenges. I know this isn't exactly what you were asking, but this is an area in which creating engineering solutions can go a long way. As suggested - think geographically local. Improvements in the way our society handles these issues, proven to work on a local scale, can be adapted and replicated globally.
That's solved in every industrialized country besides America. It's an issue of political will. I think it's a great thing to work on, and desperately needed in the US, but it's not a question of how to implement it but rather the political change to implement it.
Edit: it's not even, strictly speaking, nation-wide. Idaho for example, does a great job on this. California had most of its mental health facilities shut down during the 1960's when Reagan was Governor to save costs.
Re: Ask HN: What's an important problem that more people should work on?
#9Make formal methods cheaper and easier to use.
Re: Ask HN: What's an important problem that more people should work on?
#10Homelessness induced by mental health challenges. I know this isn't exactly what you were asking, but this is an area in which creating engineering solutions can go a long way. As suggested - think geographically local. Improvements in the way our society handles these issues, proven to work on a local scale, can be adapted and replicated globally.
That's solved in every industrialized country besides America. It's an issue of political will. I think it's a great thing to work on, and desperately needed in the US, but it's not a question of how to implement it but rather the political change to implement it. Edit: it's not even, strictly speaking, nation-wide. Idaho for example, does a great job on this. California had most of its mental health facilities shut…
How? Is there a simple solution that would work in the U.S. as well? Most people I've heard that are reasonably informed about it here invariably end up with, "It's complicated, because it's a combination of issues spanning mental health, law enforcement, drug policy, etc..."