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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?

#571

Post by cryo »

caymanjim wrote: post #443
cryo wrote: post #123

Private file access between computers. Even in 2020 it appears that building a connection between machines (macOS, Linux and Windows) requires a miracle if you don't like to share everything with cloud providers. cryo file mangager is an attempt to get rid of the hassle: https://cryonet.io

In addition to the other suggestions, you can run Nextcloud on any machine you control and sync to computers, mobile devices, etc. This is a well-solved problem.

It is, but only for technical skilled people. It's not that simple to setup and understand for regular 'Dropbox' users.

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

#572

Post by vishnumohandas »

OJFord wrote: post #567
vishnumohandas wrote: post #563

I’m building an on-premise alternative to Google Photos[1]. Started working on this because it’s not okay for Google to have unencrypted access to and own all my memories. [1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=b5XN5GMmc6I

Nice! Are you aware of https://github.com/hooram/ownphotos ? No affiliation, I'm just interested in using something like this, I'm not sure how actively it's being worked on (it was sort of a 'functional demo' last I saw, but not quite usable).

Yes, but it seems like the project was abandoned[1] and the community fork has not had any activity either[2].

More importantly, the lack of a mobile-first experience was a deal breaker for me and my family.

[1] https://github.com/hooram/ownphotos/issues/137

[2] https://github.com/Ownphotos/ownphotos

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

#573

Post by cryo »

genuinebyte wrote: post #243
isaacimagine wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also syncthing: https://syncthing.net/ .

I've recently setup Syncthing and it worked great. I'd appreciate if it allowed me to cut out all relays and just connect directly to my servers, but maybe I just haven't found out how to do that yet.

You can run your own relay servers.

https://docs.syncthing.net/users/strelaysrv.html

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

#574

Post by benwills »

1: How to download the internet. 2: How to parse html in a way that gives it consistent structure and meaningful interpretations. 3: Comvine 1 and 2 and make it searchable.

I’m about 12 years into it and expect I have a couple/few more to go. Hopefully people still use HTML by then.

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

#575

Post by DanielBMarkham »

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…

Good luck!

I love writing. I used to freelance and string. I wrote a lot of speculative sci-fi that didn't go anywhere. I was an early blogger. I was an early HN'er as well. So I'm creating content constantly no matter what the current tech.

I've been watching what works. Random thoughts: every conversation should have a moderator who is responsible for the subject and tone of the conversation. The start of every conversation should include what the goal is: analysis, venting, compassion, meme, etc. Conversation participants should be rated over time based on their ability to adjust their tone based on what the moderator requests. Each person votes up and down various moderators depending on the type of material they present and how well they manage their conversations. Over time the ranking system should match up moderators and participants, but not subject areas (important). There should be some escalating trust level based on this, the ability for people to make mistakes, be forgiven, delete/apologize for bad-day remarks, etc. I think with the right system this would happen organically, though. Not sure.

Note that a popular/well-used system will by necessity not be a hugely-successful commercial one. You might make it work for a bit, but these are separate and conflicting goals.

Personally, I'm dialing back FB and moving all of my content over to locals. I want to own whatever I write and I want the option of putting things I create behind a paywall easily. I also don't want to ever worry about having a bad day and getting my life destroyed by the mob.

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

#576

Post by vishnumohandas »

Addono wrote: post #565
vishnumohandas wrote: post #563

I’m building an on-premise alternative to Google Photos[1]. Started working on this because it’s not okay for Google to have unencrypted access to and own all my memories. [1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=b5XN5GMmc6I

Server side there's already NextCloud, which is pretty mature. https://github.com/nextcloud/photos

I found the generic approach NextCloud takes towards file-storage to yield underwhelming results when it comes to photos. Features like searching for photos by faces, locations, intelligent sorting are all lacking and making their mobile merely a file browser.

Building on top of NextCloud was an option I had considered, but understanding their abstractions was painful, and I did not want to tie myself down to their ecosystem.

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

#577

Post by DanielBMarkham »

raffraffraff wrote: post #569
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 have a theory that, individually, people fundamentally disagree less than they think they do. And in real face to face meetings, they are willing to disagree about a topic without killing each other. They talk around points of disagreement. Eg: me, when I'm talking to my grandmother. The problem is that online people tend to polarize into factions during complex discussions. The more heated the discussion, the more…

Mostly agree.

> I don't get involved because these platforms simply encourage the worst in us.

In-person, I've found I can meet and talk with folks who believe and say most anything. In fact, I enjoy it. As long as we're trying to get along, we can have powerful and dynamic conversations. I can learn things and we can challenge one another.

Online, there's none of this "trying to get along". Some person types something wrong. Other people pile on. Pointless argument ensues.

People agree on most things! That's the crazy thing about it. But if we only interact online through text, we're raising an entire generation that doesn't grok that fact.

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

#578

Post by Addono »

Verified location using GPS.

Problem: Currently, users (or attackers) can easily manipulate the location provided to an app on a phone.

Solution: Use raw measurements from positioning sattellites to check if the location reported by a user actually lines up with the measurements of their phone.

Why is it hard? - Lack of documentation, standardization and support on collecting raw measurements on phones. - Processing raw measurements is tricky - Finding anomalies in this raw data is even harder

Some of it is working - yay! - and there's also a public API, such that others can use it too: https://claimr.tools

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

#579

Post by tobr »

filleduchaos wrote: post #520
tobr wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The facts of the history of the web tell us that people want custom styling, though, and businesses want it even more, because marketing says so. Wait, what? Are we on different webs? The facts of the history of the web tell us that some of the most popular services for publishing are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Medium, etc - places that allow for very limited custom styling. I think you misunderstand what OP is t…

I think it's very, very obvious that "custom styling" here is referring creator styling, not user styling, so I'm not sure that you're in a position to be criticising the person you're responding to for "misunderstanding".

If I read you right, you’re saying that I’m the one misunderstanding OP? It’s honestly not clear to me what the difference between “user” and “creator” would be in the context of this discussion. Could you elaborate?

Since a “creator” is also a user of the web, I guess you mean “user” as in someone who only consumes content? I’m confused by that since nothing in the discussion seems to be about user stylesheets.

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