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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?

#41

Post by marcc »

oDot wrote: post #33
Jemaclus wrote: post #5

One 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, b…

DroneDeploy does that: https://www.dronedeploy.com/ One of the best hiring prcoesses I've experienced (didn't end up working there, though)

Can you describe why that hiring process was so good? What did they do that set it apart from most?

Re: Ask HN: What's an important problem that more people should work on?

#43

Post by Myrmornis »

jbg_ wrote: post #27
david927 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really not. First, I said industrialized . I know that homelessness is high in some poorer countries. I'm talking about the wealthy countries such as most EU countries. Switzerland, for example, doesn't remotely have this problem.

I can only assume you haven't spent a lot of time in the EU... Switzerland (which is not in the EU) is the only European country I've been to that does not have a very visible population of homeless people.

I can only assume you haven't spent a lot of time in at least one of the following:

- The EU

- San Francisco or Oakland

Re: Ask HN: What's an important problem that more people should work on?

#44

Post by stumpf »

TYPE_FASTER wrote: post #40

The biggest problem we are currently facing, as a species, is self-destruction. The two problems are: 1. How do we stop destroying our climate and planet as quickly as possible? 2. How do we look for new planets to colonize?

It seems like Elon is trying to make impacts in both of these with Tesla and SpaceX.

Re: Ask HN: What's an important problem that more people should work on?

#45

Post by PaulHoule »

Jemaclus wrote: post #5

One 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, b…

Agtech is big all over the place, for instance this Dutch company:

https://www.lely.com/the-barn/milking/astronaut-a4/

Also in the ag field "technology transfer" is a real thing (not just a euphemism for patent trolling.) Schools like Cornell and UNH are always looking for varieties of crops that can be grown a little further north and for ways to put money in the pockets of farmers large and small.

Re: Ask HN: What's an important problem that more people should work on?

#46

Post by stcredzero »

david927 wrote: post #22
mojomark wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>That's solved in every industrialized country besides America. Whoa. That's an interesting unsubstantiated statistic. A quick (albeit unnecessary) Google search begs to differ: https://homelessworldcup.org/homelessness-statistics/

It's really not. First, I said industrialized . I know that homelessness is high in some poorer countries. I'm talking about the wealthy countries such as most EU countries. Switzerland, for example, doesn't remotely have this problem.

I know from being involved with a Washington state based NGO That there are entire unincorporated Spanish speaking villages in Washington. Even in places like Germany and Japan, you have itinerants. I highly doubt any country has a zero homeless population. That said, there is a big difference between such people who are largely self sufficient and stay out of the public eye, and those that don't. The latter are identified by society as a problem.

Re: Ask HN: What's an important problem that more people should work on?

#47

Post by PaulHoule »

mojomark wrote: post #4

Homelessness 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.

Plus suicide, disability, etc.

Re: Ask HN: What's an important problem that more people should work on?

#48

Post by tunesmith »

Verifiably true facts on the ground. Like, verifiably true video footage. If we see reporting that something has happened, how do we know it actually happened? This is going to become a much bigger problem - today's "fake news" is just the tip of the iceberg.

Re: Ask HN: What's an important problem that more people should work on?

#49

Post by nachiketkumar »

oblib wrote: post #34

"I'm not interested in building an other B2B Invoicing SaaS app" I think I made the very 1st one of those and I'm working on an upgrade now. lol. A few areas come to mind that are obvious, like food, shelter, income, energy. There's a lot of work being done on growing food for personal and community use with controlled systems but there looks (to me) like there's plenty of room for improvement and innovation there st…

I couldn't agree more re. growing food for personal and community use. I'm currently in the very early stages of designing an app for small farmers and CSAs. Hard to get many farmers to respond to giving me input and share their knowledge. I see a tremendous scope for improvement in the entire user and customer experience of finding and signing up for a CSA (from the end customer side) and then effectively managing and nurturing your customers and reducing churn (from the small farmer's side).

Re: Ask HN: What's an important problem that more people should work on?

#50

Post by peterwwillis »

A big difference how? You could work for the NSA and make it easier for the government to know people's thoughts, that would sure make a big difference in the world.

Or you could build an information sharing and vetting platform which could use proofs from multiple independent sources to certify data as true by tying it to factual evidence, a kind of scientific reddit to combat disinformation. You could use it as a backend to Wikipedia to vet and prove information, or disprove. Extend it using multiple dependent proofs to support another and you might be able to provide a platform on which to fight for political issues based on reams of certified data.

Also, jobs. It's hard to give some people jobs. People need jobs, and they need to make money, in order to fuel an economy and sustain a society. As an example, in a country with some 6 million felons, it's hard for them to get jobs, so they become a strain on the economy (among other things). Make a thing that helps people who have a hard time getting a job to get a job.

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