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Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on?

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Re: Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on?

#291

Post by jlevers »

nikij wrote: post #37

This problem will only apply to very few people. But over the past 2.5 years I've been tracking everything and deriving insights on my activities. This produced some astounding results. e.g. Chewing gum makes me more comfortable in a conversation. Recently I've found a community of robot-like people on reddit who also do this. So I decided to build a platform. It's still in its early stages but feel free to check it…

I just started trying to track data about myself for the same reason, but I've run into the issue that there are basically infinite variables, and I don't know which ones to choose. How have you approached that problem? You must have been collecting pretty granular data if you were able to associate chewing gum with comfort in social situations.

Re: Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on?

#293

Post by jlevers »

stewfortier wrote: post #23

As somebody with broad interests, I've long been fascinated by what it means to be a "generalist" and understanding when a wide, varied skillset is an advantage over a hyper-narrow one. I've been reading about this for years and recently started sending out short summaries of what I've learned (typically geared at how the lessons can by applied practically). Last week I shared how Nobel laureates are 22 times more li…

Whoa, I just signed up for your newsletter a couple weeks ago. Small world. I'm enjoying it so far, keep it up!

I too have really broad interests...I find basically everything interesting, which is both a blessing and a curse, as I'm sure you've experienced. I'd love to talk about this more...do you feel you've come to any kind of answer on how to focus your wide interests?

Re: Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on?

#294

Post by monkeydust »

stewfortier wrote: post #23

As somebody with broad interests, I've long been fascinated by what it means to be a "generalist" and understanding when a wide, varied skillset is an advantage over a hyper-narrow one. I've been reading about this for years and recently started sending out short summaries of what I've learned (typically geared at how the lessons can by applied practically). Last week I shared how Nobel laureates are 22 times more li…

Assume you have The Range by David Epstein? Basically book advocates diversity in skills over specialisation, personally I am a big buyer of that thesis, one reason I read HN everyday.

Re: Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on?

#295

Post by celticmusic »

tmamic wrote: post #43

Dental treatments, besides being very expensive, are often (up to 28%) unnecessary. This happens because no-one keeps dentists in check. I am trying to make dental treatment and diagnosis reviews easy, cheap, reliable and fast.

I seriously hope you're able to succeed.

Re: Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on?

#296

Post by Aperocky »

dabreegster wrote: post #218

Creating a [traffic simulation]( https://github.com/dabreegster/abstreet/#ab-street ) that's both realistic enough to generate results meaningful in the real world, but easy enough to use that anybody living in a city could use it to experiment with some change to cycling or transit infrastructure. Some of the problems hiding in there: - Getting a representation of a city that cleanly divides paved areas into distinc…

Whoa that is super interesting. I think if you can somehow make a more simplified frontend for internet, it will greatly improve visibility. I'm not a frontend developer it might be able to have a simpler version completely rendered in webGL.

Re: Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on?

#297

Post by franze »

Company alignment. I am working on a systematic framework ("way to think about," "a way of doing things") to establish company value alignment.

Most companies at one point are internally not aligned, marketing fighting product fighting development fighting design fighting sales.

All are wanting to contribute value, all hindering each other in the process of doing so.

The goal is one framework where a) an initiative can start from any group/team/individual within the company b) every other part of the company can rally behind - with their own expertise and point of view.

I always start with a talk (gave the first about it last Thursday https://jtbd.ws/), then I take it from there.

Re: Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on?

#298

Post by bwb »

We are working on how to match engineers with engineering teams based on the work environment and team values/culture.

I've had too many friends and family members end up at companies that were not a match and watched the massive stress pile up. I want to help people find the right team/culture for them.

Re: Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on?

#299

Post by plahteenlahti »

noitsnot wrote: post #286
plahteenlahti wrote: post #272

I'm trying to get people to sleep better by providing them relevant sleep coaching by combing their sleep tracker’s data with CBT-I derived sleep coaching program. Been working on this project for a year now, and it’s finally starting to take the shape I wanted it to have. Been a really tough journey. I’m was the only coder and designer in the project for the longest time, and my development skills weren’t really tha…

*tough Nice start! Is there any fitness trackers you believe outperform in terms of sleep tracking? It's an interesting idea for an app. because I have personally found specialists are booked 3+ months in advance.

Oura seems to be the most accurate at the moment, but only by a small margin, and that is mostly because it's the only one that uses also temperature to measure sleep (in addition to heartbeat and movement).

Detecting when person is asleep has become quite good, but there's still a lot of work to do in also detecting sleep stages. I would not trust any wearables deep sleep readings too much.

Re: Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on?

#300

Post by dabockster »

ricattierger wrote: post #283
dabockster wrote: post #277

I'm currently working on ways to disconnect better at the end of the day. So far, I've figured out how to create an "inverse Screen Time" on iOS so it locks me out of most of my phone except for a 3 hour window in the evening that ends one hour before bedtime. I've also began using timers to keep track of how much time each of my daily tasks are eating up. Also the usual stuff. Hitting the gym (30 min a day, 5x a wee…

Same. Focusing on wellness this year and it is great. Have read so much more after forcing less screen time

My challenge to you is to try to disconnect from HN as much as possible. I logged off for six months last January to detox from the neurotic comments that this place gets and it totally reset my mind. I plan on logging off for another long period of time after I check tomorrow on some Ask HNs I posted.

Come outside, it's wonderful.

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