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Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on?

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Re: Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on?

#461

Post by vanjajaja1 »

samsquire wrote: post #185

I'm working on parallel multithreaded systems. I wrote a M:N kernel-thread to lightweight thread userspace scheduler which multiplexes multiple lightweight threads onto kernel threads. I also wrote part of my own libuv. I also wrote a multithreaded actor implementation in Java. I am currently working on solving the expression problem and thinking of how entity component systems (ECS) can be used for parallelism and s…

> I am also thinking of how to patch running systems without downtime.

This is cool, I spent a few nights thinking about how this might play out. Unison-lang has a novel take on this.

Re: Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on?

#462

Post by haxiomic »

tdekken wrote: post #357
germinalphrase wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for the comment, and I commend your mission. Do you have a website or more detailed information about your intended approach? My email is in profile if you would prefer to share privately.

I have built a proof of concept that demonstrates the core mechanics of the approach. The challenge is that my background is in backend development, and so the UX doesn't make a good first impression. I am building a more polished demo, but it is slow going given my lack of frontend expertise.

Hey, I'm in similar shoes, left Microsoft to focus broadly on EdTech, my skillset is in realtime graphics (WebGL and friends) and frontend

Could be fun to connect sometime, even just to make a community of devs in this space!

Re: Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on?

#463

Post by vanjajaja1 »

gisborne wrote: post #355

Programmable APIs. A HTTP request is a function call with named arguments. What if the server had some endpoints that provide basic fp (map, fold, curry, …), and you let your users create their own endpoints by currying together other endpoints?

This sounds very connected to GraphQL

Re: Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on?

#464

Post by esperent »

zciwor wrote: post #54

My sister works as a veterinarian and is experiencing some serious burnout from her current practice (a subsidiary of a larger corporation). I guess it's pretty common practice for corporations or private equity to snatch up smaller independent practices and then run them like a sweat shop. Her current CEO's resume is a list of Starbucks, Walmart, and a few other corporate roles that are totally unrelated to the medi…

> Anyone have any thoughts on how to take out these massive PE firms that are plaguing the Vet Med industry?

Have you considered forming / joining a union?

Re: Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on?

#465

Post by ximm »

feoren wrote: post #256
ximm wrote: post #144

I got deep into color contrast algorithms. Human vision is a rabbit hole indeed. You would think that this is a well established field. But then I found claims in online discussions (including at the W3C) that were obviously wrong on a mathematical level. The more I looked, the more the arguments fell apart. So instead of reading online discussions I concentrated on reading the actual formulas as well as research on…

Your blog post makes lots of sense if all you care about is one threshold: contrast must be above X for readability. Then the equivalence-under-monotonic-function makes total sense: you literally don't care what the function does above or below your threshold. This extends to if you pick N threshold points (text must be above Contrast1, contextual borders between Contrast2 and Contrast3, etc.) by first looking at the…

Sure, perceptually uniform contrast in the sense that you can talk about things like "twice the contrast" is useful. If I had to design a modern contrast algorithm, I would try to make it perceptually uniform.

But all that is irrelevant in the context of WCAG (and most other contexts). It literally only cares about thresholds.

Re: Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on?

#466

Post by ss2f »

dbingham wrote: post #14

Academic and Scientific publishing. It's the primary source material of human knowledge. It should be completely open and accessible to everyone with no barriers to access the literature or to add to the literature. The structure it currently takes - academic journals - made perfect sense in the 1600s when that structure was developed, and it continued to work reasonably well for distributing academic results up into…

This is a brilliant idea! If you think the problem is bad in the US, you haven't stepped into spaces like Asia. This is a path that can help the world, not just EU/US scenarios.

May I also suggest you consider the network layer centralization. When you mentioned Github+Stackoverflow, I got the point even before I visited your site.

However, even as you think about an alternative on how we publish, consider that technical questions can have significant political consequences. I am of the view that centralized networks are a major contribution to the situation we find ourselves in today. Distributed/Decentralized/Federated options like ActivityPub may help in your journey in what surely is a great idea. Check Lemmy, for example, on a real stackoverflow option - https://join-lemmy.org/ and Gitea already working on a federated "Github".

Re: Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on?

#467

Post by chaps »

zachkatz wrote: post #365
chaps wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm, have you talked with the bike lane uprising folk? I think you'll find that these problems are way, way more political than they seem. Good luck, though.

I've run large bike lane/car-free streets campaigns before [1] and have talked with a bunch of activists from groups all over the country, so I have a good deal of experience here. You're right that these problems are political—in fact, they're entirely political!—but the reason they're so political is because there's no existing platform for capturing latent + kinetic demand, so electeds (even the ones who want bett…

FWIW, I consider bikelane uprising an org/platform that's capturing that sort of latent/kinetic demand you're talking about, which they've been able to take their work to electeds, who in-turn take action on creating new bike lanes, fixing road damage, raising accountability for companies that park in bike lanes, etc. The emotion they work from is discrete anger and frustration, which tends to ignite action from a bunch of folk to make calls to electeds and such. If you can find a way to bring out that raw feeling on top of what I personally feel as nostalgia for the future in what you're building, it can almost definitely lead into some great stuff. Just don't forget about the politics :)

Re: Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on?

#468

Post by candiddevmike »

awavering wrote: post #377
germinalphrase wrote: post #276

I ended my career in June, and I am attempting to entirely reinvent my professional life at 36. It's interesting going through this sort of open ocean search having a little bit of savings and stability, but the stakes feel higher (emotionally) even though, rationally, I am in a better position to take on risk than when I was young and completely broke. The hardest part of it is actually deciding what do I want from…

Hey germinalphrase, I'm doing something similar after leaving my job earlier this year. I took a bit of time off, then started exploring how people use their time on sabbatical to learn new skills, work on personal projects, raise kids, travel, etc. After talking with a bunch of people about their experiences, the high-stakes feeling you observed is pretty common - I think people tend to underestimate the emotional a…

I'm looking for some help with marketing if you're looking for something to do. Email in my profile.

Re: Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on?

#469

Post by germinalphrase »

tdekken wrote: post #357
germinalphrase wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for the comment, and I commend your mission. Do you have a website or more detailed information about your intended approach? My email is in profile if you would prefer to share privately.

I have built a proof of concept that demonstrates the core mechanics of the approach. The challenge is that my background is in backend development, and so the UX doesn't make a good first impression. I am building a more polished demo, but it is slow going given my lack of frontend expertise.

I would be happy to share notes if you want to connect.
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