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Startup Ideas

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Startup Ideas

#241

Post by taurath »

opportune wrote: post #70
stevenj wrote: post #4

I'd like to see the social stigma around mental health eliminated. It's commonly viewed as a positive thing to care about, and work toward, better physical health. I wish that were true for mental health. I wish improving your mental health was as normal as going to the gym.

Somewhat controversial opinion ahead: I wish the focus were on treatment and compassion rather than awareness. What I fear happening, and think we have already started taking steps towards, is normalizing mental illness to the point of carte blanche acceptance. I had depression for many years and still have my bad days, but I don't want to live/work in a society where you can use mental illness for excuses . The focu…

> but I don't want to live/work in a society where you can use mental illness for excuses

Accommodation is often quite possible and is a net gain for everyone involved. Yes you don't want the guy piloting the airplane to have hallucinations, but forcing someone with social anxiety into a cramped loud office when there's no need should be doable.

Re: Startup Ideas

#242

Post by 0xCMP »

davemel37 wrote: post #234
was_boring wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “More data” is not inherently good. Without a framework of information for interpretation of that data, it will do far more harm than good. I'm glad people are saying this. I'm in a constant fight at work with people who want "more data." What ends up happening most of the time is it's ignored or people do not interpret it correctly because they don't have the ability or context to do it (doing stats wrong for inst…

Have them read Chapter 5 of this book. https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intellig... "Using experts in a variety of fields as test subjects, experimental psychologists have examined the relationship between the amount of information available to the experts, the accuracy of judgments they make based on this information, and the experts’ confidence in the accuracy of these judgments." "Key findings f…

But, the main issue is "once an experienced analyst has the minimum information necessary to make an informed judgement" is followed by "they are unaware of the extent to which their judgements are determined by a few dominant factors."

Which implies they do not know which part of the data is most important. No?

disclaimer: didn't click link/read chapter

Re: Startup Ideas

#243

Post by iamcasen »

giarc wrote: post #23

>Low-Friction Lending Library I think public libraries should start to serve this role. My local library (Calgary) has started to build up a collection of musical instruments that can be borrowed [0]. I'm sure there are other examples out there. I can see libraries expanding into tool libraries (drill, saw, hammer etc). 0 - https://calgarylibrary.ca/borrow-a-musical-instrument/

A lot of cities have tool libraries as well. I think the author hits the nail on the head though with "high-friction" being the problem.

When I rent a tool from the tool library, it puts me under a lot of stress to finish the job before I have to take the tool back. Furthermore, some tools are hard to pick up from the library without a truck.

If you don't have a car, forget it.

The other thing about tools as well is that in order to use them, you have to know how. If you don't own the tool, chances are pretty good you won't know what the heck you're doing.

After saying all that out loud your idea starts to sound pretty good. There needs to be a community center where you can learn how to use these tools, and borrow them when you need them. The library sounds like the perfect place. If only we could easily add low-friction on-demand services to that equation.

Re: Startup Ideas

#244

Post by thisrod »

> Make Technology Relatable and Accessible

I've considered drawing up a directed acyclic graph of fault propagation in Linux. E.g., an incorrect WPA key causes WiFi to be misconfigured causes the physical network layer to be unavailable causes ... big tangled DAG ... causes the web to be inaccessible causes Facebook to fail. This might be stored as a bunch of files in /usr/consequences. Software packages would come with extra files to model their usual failure modes.

The error message in the web browser would refer you to the "web inacessible" node in the DAG. You would input that into a program that automatically tested for faults and walked back though the causal links to find the mistyped WPA key. The leaf node for a simple fault like that would suggest ways to fix it (keys are printed on modems, take care with O and 0, etc.) and would link to the relevant man pages.

I think that a tool like this would encourage people to start learning about software. At least it would show them which small part of the big system they needed to learn right now.

Re: Startup Ideas

#245

Post by karmajunkie »

kordlessagain wrote: post #63
opportune wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't agree more. Social networks are deliberately designed to be addictive and can definitely cause problems with self esteem - doesn't seem like something kids should be engaged in at all. Additionally, if anything we should be exposing children to less advertisement, not more. This almost sounds like some sick "hook em while they're young" scheme

> Social networks are deliberately designed to be addictive Social networks are addictive because if they aren't, they fail and cease to be adopted at scale. Somehow we seem to be OK with this happening to ourselves. It is only when it happens to our innocent children that we start to revolt.

> Social networks are addictive because if they aren't, they fail and cease to be adopted at scale

This makes it ok somehow?

> Somehow we seem to be OK with this happening to ourselves. It is only when it happens to our innocent children that we start to revolt.

I think you're begging the question on the first point. As for the second, not only is there mounting evidence that giving kids smartphones and constant social network tools is having deleterious effects on their mental health, there are a whole slew of things that I'm ok with adults having a choice about that nobody should be ok with kids having access to.

Re: Startup Ideas

#246

Post by mynegation »

davemel37 wrote: post #234
was_boring wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “More data” is not inherently good. Without a framework of information for interpretation of that data, it will do far more harm than good. I'm glad people are saying this. I'm in a constant fight at work with people who want "more data." What ends up happening most of the time is it's ignored or people do not interpret it correctly because they don't have the ability or context to do it (doing stats wrong for inst…

Have them read Chapter 5 of this book. https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intellig... "Using experts in a variety of fields as test subjects, experimental psychologists have examined the relationship between the amount of information available to the experts, the accuracy of judgments they make based on this information, and the experts’ confidence in the accuracy of these judgments." "Key findings f…

Depends on the way of consuming that data. I agree it may be counter-productive to feed more data to humans, who are able to hold on only to 7-9 object in immediate memory at a time, and driven by subconscious reflexes hardwired into us by billions of evolution.

AI is not going to "think" like humans. It is not going to be better or worse, just "different". And all experience so far show that the more data the better are the decisions made by AI.

Re: Startup Ideas

#247

Post by arkades »

mynegation wrote: post #237
arkades wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a much bigger problem with overdiagnosis than underdiagnosis, and the latter is not likely to be solved with this sort of scattershot data collection. The former is very likely to be inflamed. The difference is that you actually hear about the Diagnosis X That Was Missed, but you never hear about That Simple Blood Test That Should Never Have Been Drawn but that Showed Positive for a Marker Common In Disease B…

Not sure how this proves me wrong. What it does prove is that analysis of data should not be left (entirely) to humans, who are inherently flaky. Dark irony of this situation is that _more_ data from additional test had a chance of saving the patient. The way it should have worked: based on previous labeled examples, computer system should have noticed the uptrend in potassium and flag this client for blood gas, and…

It’s not the blood gas that would have saved him; just seeing the potassium trending up would have done it. Thing is, there was a context where that mattered. In others, it wouldn’t have. That’s why you need someone capable of interpretation to -look- at it. EMRs have done more to harm patients than help them, now that everyone constantly copy-pastes old patient hx before adding their notes (so nothing can be said to have been missed), people are constantly shifting through piles of be and missing the pertinent information.

To rephrase: algos intelligent enough to be useful in the manner you imagine are a long way off from existing, but data deluge that harms patient care is -already here-. Don’t worsen the deluge until you improve the ability to digest and present it.

That EMR “decision aids” aren’t anywhere near sophisticated enough to tell the difference in the myriad of situations we have is why docs fight so hard against those automated “flags.” We get piles of them, all the time. QI people call it alarm fatigue, they know it’s a thing, and yet... they do it anyway, because it sounds (like in your post) like the obvious thing to flag.

It’s not that AI is inherently incapable of getting there. It’s that when it does is a long way off. Medicine looks a lot simpler from the outside.

Re: Startup Ideas

#248

Post by Kalium »

Waterluvian wrote: post #239
ahussain wrote: post #233

I honestly cannot tell if some of these ideas are real or just parodies of silicon valley, "avocado toast" tech culture: - AI for Communicating with Dogs - Baby Bidet - AR Debt Collector - Buyer’s Remorse Insurance Are these really the most pressing problems start-ups could be solving right now? What about issues like cost of housing in cities, urban transport, infrastructure in the developing world, fixing 'fake new…

Those problems aren't sexy and can't get anyone rich quick.

You're right, a lot of those problems aren't sexy. Yet, they're all critical problems that must be solved.

That said, some of them are sexy. Voice-to-voice translation, for example, is already being worked on substantially.

Most of those problems, though, seem to me to be more political problems than technological ones. The cost of housing in cities, the failure to help refugees and displaced persons, tools for collective decision-making, and infrastructure in the developing world are not problems that can be solved by throwing technology at them. These are political problems. In technological senses, every single one of these items is known, understood, and holds few mysteries for execution. In every single one of these cases, there are real obstacles that generally cannot be removed by technology.

Maybe someone wants to launch a startup to convince cities to permit housing to be built? Of course, I'm pretty sure that would be a lobbying group or advocacy non-profit... things that already exist and work very differently.

People do very often just grab for the sexiest problem at hand. There are always other problems that could be solved. Yet, it's perhaps possible that the startup model isn't the right tool for every problem

Re: Startup Ideas

#249

Post by yesbabyyes »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #13
raymondgh wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Kyle. I agree that startup ideas are not scarce. With this abundance, it would seem like the value of this post is more in the yc-founder endorsements than the actual ideas themselves. I, and I'm sure many others, have dozens of our own ideas which at this level of detail don't seem much worse or better than what you've posted. Maybe a vehicle for rapid, qualified endorsements on ideas would be more useful for wou…

This will fall prey to the fallacy of thinking that because someone is an expert in one area they will be an expert in other areas. Wish there was a formal name for it.

I don't know about a formal name, but there definitely is an XKCD :-) https://xkcd.com/793/

Re: Startup Ideas

#250

Post by HumanDrivenDev »

My startup ideas are all much, much duller than these. Usually they're inspired by existing products made by small teams that I feel fall short in a few areas. They're more novel than a clone, but they certainly don't reach the lofty heights of a canine AI.

I'm not sure if it's a good or bad thing. Am I realistic or just boring?

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