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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?

#741

Post by cameronbrown »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #322
cameronbrown wrote: post #89

Information overload. My current side project is https://feedsub.com . Right now, - it's not great - I started by building an simple tool for getting regular updates from RSS feeds, but longer-term I want to turn this into a system which can absorb all the data streams you're interested in (news, stocks, weather, social, communities) and give you dials (filters, curation, signals, etc..) to surface a healthy amount w…

Something like https://handlr.sapico.me ? ( Dogfooding)

Yeah kind of like that. Looks interesting.

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

#742

Post by jezze »

6510 wrote: post #155
jezze wrote: post #21

I am trying to reinvent the web. Replacing HTML/JS/CSS with a language called ALFI. It is stupidly simple in its design but still very powerful. Similarly to HTML you use it to create widgets, place them, and define their behavior. It is humanly readable like HTML but line-based instead of markup-based. Instead of nesting it uses references. This allows it to be streamed. A big difference is that the language itself…

get rid of the white background

By pressing CTRL+m in NAVI all pages will render in dark theme if you want. Custom themes might be included later.

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

#743

Post by jezze »

warpech wrote: post #226
jezze wrote: post #21

I am trying to reinvent the web. Replacing HTML/JS/CSS with a language called ALFI. It is stupidly simple in its design but still very powerful. Similarly to HTML you use it to create widgets, place them, and define their behavior. It is humanly readable like HTML but line-based instead of markup-based. Instead of nesting it uses references. This allows it to be streamed. A big difference is that the language itself…

Fingers crossed for this! I've worked on a similar problem in the past and I dreamed about a solution like this. I guess that alternative or even non-graphical interfaces (like CLI or voice) are possible? If someone else is interested in a less radical version of this topic, maybe you can share some insights here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23737903

You could make a browser that renders ALFI in a text-only mode using say ncurses. When I designed ALFI I always had this in mind.

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

#744

Post by tmaly »

wiseleo wrote: post #29

Education. Schools are functionally no different from part-time prisons. You must attend daily under penalty of law. Many teachers are plain awful. They rely on students being additionally taught by their parents. That forces parents to go to school with their children, which perpetuates the vicious cycle. The teacher recalibrates the class to the students who either understood everything the first time or had supple…

My wife and I have taught our daughter materials sometimes 2 grade levels above where she is. I think every child has the potential for genius. It is really how you present the material.

I taught a few classes last year on how to program in Scratch to grades 1-5. The 4th and 5th graders really loved it and they went off on their own to learn more. It was not a large sample, but I think presenting the right material in the right way to the right age makes a huge difference.

I have been thinking of ways to improve education. I think there is a huge potential in online video. If it is produced right in the sense of say "Hollywood" verse say Khan Academy, kids will enjoy it a lot more.

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

#745

Post by elcomet »

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 thin it would be better to generate every day a new random password, and publish it automatically (no wait). So no one can "hack" your memory or the system you use to generate it.

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

#746

Post by mcphage »

jamesmaniscalco wrote: post #739
mcphage wrote: post #729

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would guess that you still get to 2—because the more times you add 2, the greater the impact of dividing by 2, and the more times you divide by 2, the greater the impact of adding 2. Is that the case?

If you run the random process many times and then look at a histogram of the vector of outputs, the distribution peaks somewhat higher than 2 [0], but the output of the random process does not tend towards any particular number or sequence of numbers. Indeed, the distribution looks highly discontinuous and fractal. It's a very intriguing question. I suspect thinking in terms of rings (abstract algebra) would be helpf…

Huh—that is interesting!

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

#747

Post by AnimalMuppet »

spiritplumber wrote: post #156

I need to come up with a way to remotely shut up Jesus in case the "Left Behind" books are right and He plans to slaughter millions of people with His voice. I'm learning a lot about audio engineering and wave mechanics. ( I also co-wrote a story about what happens if I fail, which you can read at https://emlia.org/pmwiki/pub/web/LeftBeyond.TalesFromTheBeyo... )

If He returns, then He is who He said He is - the Son of God. And you're going to try to fight Him with audio engineering? That's, um, not the wisest possible response...

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

#748

Post by 1tCKV3QfIo »

adamsea wrote: post #164
wiseleo wrote: post #29

Education. Schools are functionally no different from part-time prisons. You must attend daily under penalty of law. Many teachers are plain awful. They rely on students being additionally taught by their parents. That forces parents to go to school with their children, which perpetuates the vicious cycle. The teacher recalibrates the class to the students who either understood everything the first time or had supple…

I certainly agree that so much about school is problematic and could be improved, but ... > Schools are functionally no different from part-time prisons. A prison by definition cannot be part-time ; ). Plus, it's a totally unfair comparison. Schools are intended for everyone. Prisons are intended for a specific subset of people deemed to have broken a law. Schools are for children. Prisons are for adults. And so on.

Spoken like someone who has either forgotten (or never experienced) the authoritarian, creativity killing nature of the public education system.

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

#749

Post by dredmorbius »

ransom1538 wrote: post #733
dredmorbius wrote: post #707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was your problem? (OP has deleted their comment.)

Sorry for deleting. I was working on detecting suicidal posts in social media. It is really depressing work.

Oof, yeah.

And even if you do manage to see them, sorting out how to intervene effectively --- where and when and in a manner that actually helps --- is still a Hard Problem.

I've lost a few friends this way. One I managed to intercede with. The first time....

Thank you for trying.

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

#750

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

cardamomo wrote: post #451
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #158

Representing musical and audio (sample) time in ways that maximises reversible conversion between the two of them. Musical time is typically spoken of (in western culture) in terms of "bars" (or "measures") and "beats". The relationship to audio (sample) time is defined by a "tempo map" which defines the number of beats per minute and the number of beats per bar. The mapping between the two is monotonic, non-linear,…

How do you think this tool would be used?

http://ardour.org/ :)
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