Ask HN: What problem are you close to solving and how can we help?

I want to add IoT tools in several apartments and allow my guests to control them through an app. Currently I already have an app, but no IoT integrations (basically just reservation).

How to do it safely? Also, which automations would be nice to have but not so obvious?

Thinking from things like light control, but also checking the apartment energy consumption in order to detect appliances that need maintenance before they break.

My problem is how to bill people for consuming object storage properly. Do you do it retrospectively and take the fraud risk? Are there any pre-existing platforms that do Ceph billing?

First, in my mind the difference between reddit, FB, twitter, HN, forums, etc is really just configuration. Abstracting just a tad bit higher, you can include Slack and other realtime options. I just want a curated gRPC API that implements it with pluggable auth and let others figure out discoverability and network (not activity api and not with an already built network, just persistence and auth). End to end encryption is important IMO too (even for large groups) so the host can have plausible deniability.

Second, you have to solve for hosting/network in distributed fashion without over-complicating server democratization and discoverability/naming like p2p often does. I see 2 options: 1) self hosted on at-home workstation using Tor onion service (get NAT busting for free) knowing you need an offline friendly implementation or 2) one-click easy reselling of cloud instances and domains from inside the app (this also provides a funding model).

I know of many p2p options for solving these problems, but I think we dont need to complicate at that level. As for the quality of the communities themselves, a self-hosted megaphone instead of perverse share/like broadcast incentives of companies today will automatically improve discourse (at a potential cost of creating echo chambers).

I disagree on this take.

GenZ can do long-form discussion and they use forums frequently, but for specific discussion(s).

Content consumption is done via forever-scroll apps because it's good to kill time; Tiktok, Instagram, etc match this well because it's just a stream of things to have fun with.

But GenZ is making great "longford" content on many traditional platforms, even blogging. The difference, as I understand it, is their approach to engagement. GenZ has seen Facebook arguments and said "no thank you". Twitter discourse also isn't really a thing -- people disagree and Tweet at people, but Twitter isn't like a forum thread and there's no way to ensure your content is associated with the content you want to respond to, so it's not effective to communicate in responses. Reddit is kind of a mystery for me as I just don't frequent it at all, but I don't get the impression that GenZ is posting frequently.

GenZ has platforms that work best when you make a statement, not where you open a discourse; Twitter is too fast/broad to respond to all comments and find real content to respond to, video content just isn't great for back and forth and becomes time consuming for lighter topics. Viewers will make whatever statement they want, but the validity of the video is based on how far a concept is spread; I'd actually position GenZ is very good at concisely expressing its idea in a simple and condensed format, and responses are not at an individual, but an idea. But, they will go to Tumblr/Medium/other long-form post when the medium is appropriate. This is one thing I like about a lot of GenZ content because they tend to be VERY good about choosing the right format for their argument; that many don't have much more to express besides tweets/tiktoks isn't an indictment of GenZ, it's praise. Think of the forums you maybe still lurk around and how many comments are just complete garbage/non-sequiturs; for forums such a post are enough to derail a topic/distract because we feel obligated to a degree to respond, but filtering noise is part of the skill of using more modern platforms.

Forums are kind of contrary to this, and also are bogged down by the before-mentioned Facebook-argument issue and the preferred platforms not really being strongest for direct rebuttals. Again, there are times when you'll see GenZ use forums or other long-form posts, but it tends to be more controlled or on 'forums-but-not-really' forums like Tumblr.

Forums have their purpose and use; but we have __many__ alternatives that make forums defunct, as some topics/ideas are far better expressed on Tiktok or Twitter, and whatever followup we end up with.