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Ask HN: What problems do you see worth solving in 2019-2020?

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Re: Ask HN: What problems do you see worth solving in 2019-2020?

#11

Post by srijanshetty »

My top picks would be:

Fake news and media credibility. In the 21st centurty it's become hard to trust content, especially viral content shared on social media like WhatsApp. Hopefully we make progress on this front.

Sustainable funding models for the fourth estate in developing nations. The lack of sustainable funding leads to slashing of investigative journalism in developing countries which makes corruption more rampant. Solving this issue will help unearth fraud and keep the government in check.

Climate Change discourse and discourse for the masses. It's difficult to convey facts to the masses today in a reliable manner.

Re: Ask HN: What problems do you see worth solving in 2019-2020?

#12

Post by saalweachter »

Garbage.

How do you take a bag of mixed garbage and perform a fractional distillation of it, pulling out components and recycling and reusing them efficiently, until you are left with a tiny residue, ideally nothing, of true waste? How do you do this in a cost effective manner without relying on absurdly cheap labor and lax health, safety and environmental protection regulations?

Re: Ask HN: What problems do you see worth solving in 2019-2020?

#13

Post by tyleo »

Having seen many employees grow their careers quickly by ping-ponging jobs at Microsoft and Amazon (and vice-versa), I’m thinking about a platform for enabling this. Essentially you would put in your level, current company, and genre of jobs you are interested in and the platform would find jobs for you which are the next level up and help you apply. The employer would have no idea you were using the platform. I’ve seen a handful of people boost their salary very quickly this way right out of college.

Re: Ask HN: What problems do you see worth solving in 2019-2020?

#15

Post by untog »

s_y_n_t_a_x wrote: post #5
quaquaqua1 wrote: post #2

There are a lot of things I want to do in life that someone tells me I can't do. For example, I can't buy a house for an affordable price because the supply is artificially constrained for less-than-ideal reasons. Similarly, I want to work remotely but can't because of company culture. I am willing to negotiate but they are not. Even if I could work remotely, other countries won't let me stay for more than a month or…

Bought a 3 bedroom house for $75k because I work remotely. There are cheap places to live in America, you don't have to fly out of country.

That's a valid choice, but it isn't for everyone for a variety of reasons (perhaps they like the amenities a city offers, perhaps they have family nearby and don't want to move away).

Point is, cities could be building a lot more housing, but typically can't because of zoning regulations and NIMBY activism. It's a shame.

Re: Ask HN: What problems do you see worth solving in 2019-2020?

#16

Post by vessenes »

So many — here are a few large scale problems I think about lately.

* Trustworthiness of content (text and soon photo and video) is and will be a fundamental problem. This is the basic attack vector for national and global politics in the last few years. Anyone with a good solution would help the world immeasurably and have their pick of customers.

* fall out from monetary policy in the us and Europe: take your pick, but for example - home prices in urban areas; figuring out how to house families for 1/2 or 1/3 current prices in the United States would have a lasting impact on stability and wealth creation.

* the continued effectiveness of state propaganda; related to my first suggestion above.

* obesity in the us and soon Western Europe.

* data security - fixing large scale data breaches.

* what I call long range to short range : problems too big for people to think about or accept abound, like climate change. Finding one and figuring out how to tie to short term incentives creating a positive feedback loop would be a real game changer. Oil does this all the time but usually not with good long term consequences - cf fracking turns North Dakota into a boom zone — creativity around good not pernicious cycles would be a boon for the world.

Re: Ask HN: What problems do you see worth solving in 2019-2020?

#17

Post by jdc »

hprotagonist wrote: post #14

- voting rights, disenfranchisement, and election security. - climate change. - vigorous enforcement of international law guaranteeing human rights for refugees. - closure of industrial-grade CO2 emission sites like coal power plants.

even turn-key products/services to measure (by proxy or otherwise) GHG emissions would probably be a tremendous boon to enforcement

Re: Ask HN: What problems do you see worth solving in 2019-2020?

#18

Post by non-entity »

untog wrote: post #15
s_y_n_t_a_x wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bought a 3 bedroom house for $75k because I work remotely. There are cheap places to live in America, you don't have to fly out of country.

That's a valid choice, but it isn't for everyone for a variety of reasons (perhaps they like the amenities a city offers, perhaps they have family nearby and don't want to move away). Point is, cities could be building a lot more housing, but typically can't because of zoning regulations and NIMBY activism. It's a shame.

Yeah, I've been offered jobs in some of the cheapo areas (actually live in one), but among many issues, it would be tolling on my mental health. I already lack any friends or nearby family, and moving to an area like that would kill me

Re: Ask HN: What problems do you see worth solving in 2019-2020?

#19

Post by non-entity »

overshard wrote: post #7

It still seems insanely difficult to track calories and macros with all the apps out there to do it. Most of the content for searching for your food is "community generated" so if I try to add a "Big Mac" (example, not eating big macs...) then I get like 30 results all with different amounts of calories and nutrition amounts also with slightly different naming. Maybe this exists somewhere??? But if someone can make a…

Oh this is a pain. Even worse is trying to enter calories when you eat at local businesses and non chains

Re: Ask HN: What problems do you see worth solving in 2019-2020?

#20

Post by atlasunshrugged »

There are a ton of great ideas backed up by a considerable amount of research done by 80,000 hours (https://80000hours.org/) about problems worth solving (although most I think would take longer than a year). They also have a nifty job board in case you want to work for an existing high impact org rather than start your own
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