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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?

#61

Post by saalweachter »

MandieD wrote: post #51
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.

It's also such a rich technical problem, that spans every sort of engineering, from machine learning to robotics to chemistry and materials engineering.

And it's like, purely a technical business. If you have a company that can "buy" garbage for $X and sell your outputs for $Y > $X (+costs), you don't need to deal with politics and lobbying and building buzz.

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

#62

Post by bobosha »

Reduce plastic bag usage. Everyday shoppers across the world, carry groceries and other items in billions of mostly one-time-use bags that are very destructive to the environment. Perhaps come up with a simple shop-to-home cart that reduces (eliminates) plastic bags.

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

#64

Post by volkk »

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…

depends on how you look at bust years. i would argue that 2009 and 2010 still fall into the social network bubble. i would probably combine 2007-2015 into one long excitement period transitioning from social networks to iphone apps to blockchain/ar/vr/self driving cars etc.

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

#65

Post by buboard »

bobosha wrote: post #62

Reduce plastic bag usage. Everyday shoppers across the world, carry groceries and other items in billions of mostly one-time-use bags that are very destructive to the environment. Perhaps come up with a simple shop-to-home cart that reduces (eliminates) plastic bags.

where i am we used those plastic bags as garbage bags. While usage has gone down extremely after a tax was introduced, i now use the large bags. I dont know if the impact was that important.

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

#68

Post by buboard »

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?

The question is even if it material separation worked, are they really being recycled?

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

#70

Post by quaquaqua1 »

non-entity wrote: post #18
untog wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I agree with you. Furthermore, you are describing a negative aspect of the work around to the housing problem.

The true solution to the housing problem is to remove the laws that are allowing supply constraint in "liveable" areas like NY, CA, MA, etc.

The local government there in charge of housing policy prevents people from adding more liveable legal units to their land. So for example if you wanted to remodel your land to have 2 houses on it instead of one, or to be 4 floors tall with apartments, or to have only a very small energy efficent house on it, the local government will tell you "haha sorry no."

This is a really big problem because land is in finite supply and as a result if you have a very dense area of office buildings with 20,000 workers and only 1,000 houses are in a commutable distance, then you have 19,000+ workers who are either going to be renting illegally, sleeping in their car, commuting 50 miles, or paying through the nose for a house.

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