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Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

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Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#171

Post by cryptoz »

chiefmcloud wrote: post #153

I’m working on a new way to talk online, with the goal of killing cancel culture, increasing understanding, and basically calming down current radicalization. Picture Reddit, but with the ability to anonymously share ideas with other people in your social circles. My theory is that most reasonable people stay off social media, so places like Twitter end up filled with unreasonable narcissists. At the same time, discu…

You're not going to "calm down radicalization" with phrases like "killing cancel culture" and suggesting that viewpoints you don't agree with on twitter/the platform as a whole as "unreasonable narcissists".

Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#172

Post by sova »

ShamelessC wrote: post #162
dr_dshiv wrote: post #124

Let's solve Harmony! The first scientific experiment was conducted by 5th century BC Pythagoreans. They wanted to show that the basis for musical consonance was math. From that, they inferred that harmony in math accounted for the harmony of the cosmos. This integration of math+physics was very forward thinking. But, if we fast forward to the present, we still don't have a complete scientific explanation for the basi…

I got a little lost when you tried to compare musical harmony to societal harmony. With regards to musical harmony, is it possible that it's more or less random? I know multiple cultures have different definitions of musical harmony. I suspect the evolution of hearing also contains random elements. Similar to language, it's not so much about an inherent universality, just a universality we can all learn and agree on.…

The human ear has an intimate relationship with the octave 2:1 and its ratios, so its very hard to believe the convergence of appreciation globally to be random. More dramatically, visualizing the harmonious ratios on objects such as Chladni plates (a field called Cymatics) reveals that there is something deeper to consonance and harmony than meets the number line.

Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#173

Post by Animats »

hazeii wrote: post #94

How to measure pedal (and/or crank) angle on a moving bicycle to 0.05 degree. Anyone?

Why do you need 0.05 degree precision?

You can use Hall effect sensors to sense chainwheel teeth. Two sensors and you can get quadrature and direction. I've done that on a mobile robot. With analog-output Hall effect sensors and some processing, you can get sub-degree precision, although 0.05 degree is asking a lot.

Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#174

Post by sneeuwpopsneeuw »

My short term thing is this mathematical programming puzzel https://projecteuler.net/problem=160 from Project Euler where you need to calculate a very large factorial.

My live goal is to bring back more programming and design techniques that we as a society used to make the best ps1 and gameboy games and old school animations to the way we are currently developing games. (Any tips and advice how i could help improve the game development industry is welcome. Next year I will be doing my masters so i'm also still looking for a subject for that. The last couple of months I have been experimenting with water color effects in openGL, so I'm looking for something like that)

Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#175

Post by jugg1es »

erezsh wrote: post #95

I'm trying to replace SQL by building a language that compiles to SQL. It has first-class functions, nicer syntax, better type-system, introspection, and other things you would expect from a modern language. But in the end, you still get SQL's performance, and the ability to use it with dozens of database engines.

How is this different than a heavy-weight ORM like entity framework?

Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#176

Post by Erazal »

I'm working on a an easy way to store and retrieve any ephemeral information stream that goes through your computer's ram (videos, a website you're browsing, etc).

For now, my team and I are focusing on video-conferences, but the end goal is much larger :)

Now that I think of it, this problem is a lot easier than what others post here.

Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#178

Post by isbvhodnvemrwvn »

amelius wrote: post #49
VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

isn't that a po box

No because for example if you order from the same shop multiple times using the same PO Box, then they can link the information from each order.

Isn't this essentially a URL shortener for post? The post operator generates an ID for your address, sender uses it to post stuff, the post office maps it back to the address. One additional challenge I see is that if the fees vary by distance, the sender would still get some sort of an idea as to how far away you are, but that is probably acceptable.

Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#179

Post by eivarv »

Human-computer context switching.

Which is why I started making Cleave: An application that lets users persist OS state as a "context" - saving and loading open applications, their windows, tabs, open files/documents and so on.

Started because of frequent multitasking heavy work with limited resources.

Made it because I wanted to switch between studying, working, reading, looking for an apartment, etc. without manually managing all states or consuming all resources.

Open Beta (macOS) as soon as I finish license verification and delta updates, but I keep getting sidetracked...

https://cleave.app

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