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

news.ycombinator.com

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

#51

Post by MandieD »

saalweachter wrote: post #12

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?

Sadly I have but one upvote to give, because making that kind of optimal use of garbage would solve a bunch of other problems.

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

#52

Post by untog »

wait-a-minute wrote: post #40
untog wrote: 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…

5G will probably bring in another wave of smartphone and IoT innovation. Imagine what can be done when sensors/cameras can transmit 10x the amount of data per second that they can now. I'm especially interested in how this might enable low-cost high-quality telemedicine.

> Imagine what can be done when sensors/cameras can transmit 10x the amount of data per second that they can now.

I've thought about this before and honestly I can't come up with many things. Telemedicine in terms of speaking to a doctor over video is already very possible over the connections we have today. Bringing that to a wider audience (say, third world countries) is an interesting possibility, but it also requires bringing 5G to third world countries, so I don't think that's going to happen too quickly.

Aside from that, what does 5G really bring us? The same stuff, only faster. I mean, good, sure. But it's not that inspiring.

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

#53

Post by samirm »

wait-a-minute wrote: post #40
untog wrote: 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…

5G will probably bring in another wave of smartphone and IoT innovation. Imagine what can be done when sensors/cameras can transmit 10x the amount of data per second that they can now. I'm especially interested in how this might enable low-cost high-quality telemedicine.

For most IoT applications an increase in bandwidth wouldn't be as beneficial as, for example, a decrease in power usage or an increase in range (without also increasing power usage/complexity/etc).

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

#54

Post by espeed »

Election security is ripe to be solved. Trust is key.

"16M Americans will vote on hackable paperless machines" https://www.technologyreview.com/s/614148/16-million-america...

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20759306

NB: Ben Adida is one person who has been thinking about and working on this problem for years https://ben.adida.net/

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

#56

Post by samirm »

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.

> you don't have to fly out of country

is not an answer to "I want to travel" or "I happen to be born in the 'wrong' country and now I'm not allowed to travel"

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

#60

Post by leet_thow »

nostrademons wrote: post #45
untog wrote: 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 excite…

Interesting analysis. I don't see "Quantum Computing" in there (maybe next?) and would throw "Blockchain" into the 2014-15 hype set.
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