Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on?

Post by tmamic » Wed, Jan 29, 2020, 2:54 PM UTC

bw2016 wrote: post #343

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.

Hey this is cool. One of my good friends worked (is working?) on this problem for over a year. he’s a long-time dentist practitioner/owner and really keen on this topic. Maybe you two should talk? If interested, email me at bw2016 @ protonmail.com .

Post by spditner » Wed, Jan 29, 2020, 2:55 PM UTC

raxxorrax wrote: post #403

syllable_studio wrote: post #203

Solving the world's trillion-dollar energy storage crisis. (multi-trillion, actually.) https://www.terramenthq.com/ About a year ago, I started spending more time researching about climate change. I learned how important energy storage will be to enable renewable energy to displace fossil fuels. The more I read, the more fascinated I became with the idea of building underground pumped hydro energy storage. I found a…

One of my friends is a physicist that had the plan to install a closed cistern under his house and heat it up in summer with mostly solar energy. Looked really promising and he had all the numbers figured out to supply a family home with heating and warm water through a normal winter. Didn't do it in the end because there were some problems with building a cistern on his property and the large up front investment nec…

Post by i_haz_rabies » Wed, Jan 29, 2020, 2:56 PM UTC

nscalf wrote: post #282

i_haz_rabies wrote: post #95

Alerting people when proposals are put before municipal councils to develop natural land. I found out too late that a huge, beautiful forest where I live is going to be ripped up and turned into investment condos. So in the interest of giving natural land a fighting chance, I'm setting up a system that will notify users when an address they've submitted is being rezoned. The challenge is obviously scaling, since ever…

What's the format of this going to look like? If it's closer to open sourced, I'm sure some people would spend a weekend getting it up and running in their area if the infrastructure is built.

Post by tmamic » Wed, Jan 29, 2020, 3:01 PM UTC

unexaminedlife wrote: post #72

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've been wanting to disrupt orthodontistry for quite a long time. With the state of 3d scanners, 3d printers, 3d software modeling, why hasn't the market price of orthodontist treatments dropped to cost-of-materials yet? As soon as at least one satisfactory / integrated open-source stack exists I think it's only a matter of time before it does...

Post by abhgh » Wed, Jan 29, 2020, 3:06 PM UTC

SJSque wrote: post #385

abhgh wrote: post #176

I am working on something I am calling "compact models" (as part of a PhD): techniques to pack more information into Machine Learning models when their size is constrained in some way. I have put up some of our work here [1] - it has been interesting so far, and the results are promising. I would like to release a Python library soon, well, ...in a few months - my PhD is part-time, I have a full time day job and time…

Interesting name. :) I worked on developing compact models for the first few years of my employment at NXP Semiconductors, which is (for me, at least) the top result of a Google search for "compact models", defining them as "mathematical descriptions of semiconductor devices used in analog circuit simulators".