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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?

#401

Post by robmerki »

mysore wrote: post #396
robmerki wrote: post #389

I'm writing a book about ADHD: https://adhdpro.xyz/ Unfortunately there seems to be a lot of infantilizing in and around the ADHD sphere. Either we're treated like helpless children or we are encouraged to lower our expectations/goals. It's hard to explain unless you've been open about having ADHD, or have been part of the community. The zeitgeist revolves around accepting and maintaining a status quo. The problem I'…

Hey this is cool. Would totally use this. Just got diagnosed at 28 and trying to implement meditation, yoga and better work habits so I can get the most out of the medication and maintain the lowest possible dosage

It sounds like you're already on the right track. Meditation and mindfulness are the foundation of building the right strategy. I'm still so appalled how neither my therapist nor my ADHD specialist doctor ever told me to go beyond medication.

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

#402

Post by [deleted] »

Gabriel_Martin wrote: post #355
patwillson22 wrote: post #279

I'm working on an fully open source Physical Vapor Deposition System which is capable of producing thin flim solar cells, Ex(CIGS,CDTE) at efficiencies in the range of 15- 20%. The system is designed to produce one 10 watt cell for every 45 minutes. I could go into further depth here but for obvious reasons It would take me a while to explain everything.

Well if you're waiting for an invitation, it sounds very interesting!

[deleted]

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

#403

Post by gavinray »

derision wrote: post #295
erezsh wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a tiny teaser, you could write something like Person { country => name } And it will output the following SQL: -- target: postgres SELECT country, array_agg(name) AS name FROM Person GROUP BY country

Is this not the same as graphql?

Sort of, GraphQL is just an interface that describes your data models, but you need to implement "resolvers" for each operation that tells the server how to fetch/mutate the queried data.

So you might have a GQL type like:

    type User {
      name: String
      age: Int
    }
But you need to implement a query with business logic for fetching this data, and that can be anything (but generally, a DB call).

Projects like Hasura kind of blur this line, as it's essentially one big GQL -> SQL JIT compiler in Haskell though.

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

#404

Post by fredophile »

drusepth wrote: post #341
jawns wrote: post #170

I hope this counts as weird enough ... PROBLEM: If time travelers from the future were to visit you, it would be difficult for them to quickly prove their authenticity. SOLUTION: Temporal passwords. At the start of each year, you devise a new password. You commit the password to memory, but you never write it down or divulge it to anyone until Dec. 31, when you submit it to the Temporal Password Registry, which publi…

I guarantee you I'm going to forget a password in 12 months if I never have to type it in anywhere or use it on any regular basis. Can I please come up with my password and submit it to the Temporal Password Registry immediately -- and just have it "go public" on December 31 of that year? It'd also be a nice way for me to check back in throughout the year, logged in as me (the only person who should be able to see my…

That makes hacking the registry an obvious step to convince someone you're a time traveler. I wouldn't trust a scheme with that weakness.

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

#406

Post by robmerki »

adzm wrote: post #397
robmerki wrote: post #389

I'm writing a book about ADHD: https://adhdpro.xyz/ Unfortunately there seems to be a lot of infantilizing in and around the ADHD sphere. Either we're treated like helpless children or we are encouraged to lower our expectations/goals. It's hard to explain unless you've been open about having ADHD, or have been part of the community. The zeitgeist revolves around accepting and maintaining a status quo. The problem I'…

This sounds really interesting. I'm curious who you interviewed and their diversity of experience and careers.

I was very fortunate to meet some of the people I spoke to. Here's a few off the top of my head:

- Circus clown/performer

- Microsoft senior engineer (or whatever they call them these days)

- ADHD coach

- A few CEOs

- Product designer

- Habits coach

There are a few more who wanted to stay anonymous, but you get the idea. The most interesting part was how similar all of the success stories were. I think ADHDers have a lot more in common than we think.

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

#407

Post by uptown »

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…

I feel like this was the premise of “Branch”. It had a really interesting start. Then Facebook acquired it and killed it.

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

#408

Post by sdinsn »

etherio wrote: post #38

Knowledge. Working on building a self-hosted app that would alow you to save, organise and search your knowledge in one center. It would contain information like notes, bookmarks (it would download the links contents) and in general provide a programmable, opensource interface to preserve the info you'll find useful and even sync with external apis to save your online presence locally (think reddit posts, hn links, e…

Have you heard of Notion? It's not self hosted, but I use it to organize all my things

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

#409

Post by lambdatronics »

Lazlo182 wrote: post #393

I'm trying to find other forms of the Dirac Equation, but that also satisfy the original definition of the equation.

Are you familiar with Hestene's work?

http://geocalc.clas.asu.edu/html/GAinQM.html

I can't make heads or tails of it myself, but it's definitely off the wall. In particular, his geometric interpretation of the unit imaginary is interesting.

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

#410

Post by _-___________-_ »

dang wrote: post #315
a1369209993 wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you plan to insure that your digital identity system can be used for illegal/criminal purposes, such as aiding Jews and other undesirables in evading lawfully authorized detention and relocation (or by said undesirables for said evasion)? (I don't mean to single you out specifically; this is something that any digital identity system needs to deal with. And most of them enthusiastically don't.)

Why have you chosen to express this point in such a trollish way? We've already received complaints about it. It sounds like you're trying to say something about the danger of such systems being abused by the state in holocaust-like situations, but the wording is so odd that it's unclear what your real intent is.

FWIW, I didn't read that comment as trollish at all. It's quite awkwardly written, and it could do with scare quotes around "undesirables" to make it clear that it refers to the view of authorities in their scenario rather than the view of the comment author, but which part of it is trollish?

My understanding of the comment was expressing a concern that some kind of universal identity system would undoubtedly become an agent of the state, which is fine most of the time but in various situations (including holocaust-like ones) means that it could be used as an instrument of oppression, since it would likely be unable to be used by those who wanted to hide some aspect of their identity for safety reasons.

This seems like a legitimate concern for something that has a goal of becoming a global universal identity system. I would hope that something like that would look more like cash - usable by anyone, whether the state likes it or not, with fundamental privacy aspects - rather than like VISA with some privacy bolted on.

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