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

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41–50 of 148 posts

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

#41

Short-haul and medium-haul and long-haul conventional take-off electric aircraft. There's a lot of work on VTOL electric aircraft and hybrid aircraft. There's a lot of capturing low-hanging fruit by trying to electrify existing airframes. On the higher end, there's a lot of work on enabling lithium-air or lithium-sulfur or solid state lithium or metal electrode lithium ion batteries. However, there's not a lot of wor…

Related to methane reduction from ruminants: https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/gamechanging-pink-seaweed-re...

Indeed. There's a wealth of technology and science generated in academia. It's clear there are technical solutions to basically all our climate challenges. But they need to be deployed in business (and, of course, policy is required as well) so people can actually use this.

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

#42
post #21

I was just thinking the other day that we're in (or are at least entering) a slightly sad era as far as tech is concerned. Not too long ago (it feels, anyway) there was this explosion of possibilities when smartphones arrived on the scene. People were doing genuinely impressive and innovative things at a fair clip. That's kind of dried up now. The latest iterations of smartphones are just minor progressions on previo…

For smartphones, I think there's a huge amount of work still needed to make them accessible/understandable/safe for the uninitiated, including but not limited to the elderly and isolated. If, as seems horribly likely, we're moving toward a future where smartphones are not optional, something has to give.

The obvious problem is that it's not a glamorous or technically impressive thing to be working on, and isn't going to be remotely interesting to the people who'd be working on it because, well, they already know how to use their smartphones.

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

#43

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,…

For housing the big problem is it not the cost of construction but real estate prices and those are due to laws

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

#44
post #13

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 s…

You can do this by using linked in + Glassdoor + levels.fyi smartly.

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

#45
post #21

I was just thinking the other day that we're in (or are at least entering) a slightly sad era as far as tech is concerned. Not too long ago (it feels, anyway) there was this explosion of possibilities when smartphones arrived on the scene. People were doing genuinely impressive and innovative things at a fair clip. That's kind of dried up now. The latest iterations of smartphones are just minor progressions on previo…

I'd agree we're in a fallow period and have been since 2015 or so.

I was thinking recently about the nature of fallow periods in tech and wondering if they're actually tied up with emotional cycling in the general public. It's impossible for millions of people to remain excited forever. Instead, we get bubble years where new innovations are coming out fast and furious, sentiment is rising, people are happy and excited, prosperity will go on forever; hype years, where the public unconsciously knows the innovations being hyped aren't useful but companies still have money to burn; and then we get bust years where everyone gets disillusioned, there are predictions that everything useful has already been invented, much teeth-gnashing about the decline of innovation, and an increased focus on politics, social ills, and gaming or other distractions (none of which ever get solved or go away, we just forget about them during bubble years).

Thinking about tech cycles in my own lifetime, we had bubble (1981-1987, driven by the PC & GUI), hype (1987-1991, driven by AI, 3D graphics, CD-ROMs, speech recognition), bust (1991-1995), bubble (1995-1998, Internet), hype (1998-2001, dot-coms), bust (2001-2004), bubble (2004-2007, Web 2.0), hype (2007-2008, when everybody and their mother had a social network), bust (2009-2010), bubble (2011-2014, mobile), hype (2014-2015: AR/VR, AI, smartwatches, self-driving cars, Theranos, Juicero), bust (2016-present). Bust cycles seem to last 3-4 years, so we're probably nearing the end of this one, but it's still unclear what round of innovations will kick off the next bubble.

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

#47
One of the problems that just surfaced in the news ... is the realization that almost all prescription meds are manufactured in China. The risk that poses to the US population and DoD is incalculable. How do we get off China meds?

Fake chips have been a problem too, polluting the supply space. All the more reason to protect and verify IP. There's new tech for that. Maybe the next big thing. Hardware verified. Authenticity.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20594065

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

#49

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,…

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