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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?

#511

Post by cpeterso »

Daegalus wrote: post #426
cpeterso wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s an interesting problem! Since you have the client source code, have you been able to fully reverse engineer and document the client/server protocol? Do you have a black box server whose responses you can record and analyze? Have you been writing your server top-down (building an idealized set of game objects and then wiring them up to the protocol) or bottom-up (layering the minimum game code on top of the pro…

That is our project. We also have a FB Page we put up. The clean room implementation is not us but someone else that we linked to, in order to funnel those that prefer that style of work. We can't work in the open yet. I have been able to fully reverse engineer the protocol, including what data is expected by the client and what data the client sends for various packet types. No blackbox server, game has been dead fo…

That’s very cool! I was a developer on the MMO “Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising”. Two years after the company cratered in 2008, another company bought the game code and pushed it across the finish line and launched it themselves. So it can be done!

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

#512

Post by gumby »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #485
gumby wrote: post #394

I am working on climate repair, specifically the removal of methane from the atmosphere. Although the excess methane is only about 1.3 ppm, it's responsible for about a third of the temperature rise. We're not building a huge machine to try to suck the atmosphere through a straw; we're doing chemistry in the open atmosphere. Plan to have a pilot running within the next year and within five years be removing up to 100…

I have heard that terpenes are a major source for the production of HO (hydroxides), which only last for a microsecond, but are responsible for transforming most methane molecules to CO2. Did I get that right? (Also, is my vape pen making a difference?)

Yes, hydroxyls are a primary source of methane oxidation over land. They are very corrosive and so reactive that they almost immediately participate in some reaction as soon as they are created.

The reactions over the ocean are largely Cl, which shouldn’t surprise anyone who has ever visited the seaside. It’s also quite reactive, but the CH4 oxidation is a little more complex.

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

#513

Post by gumby »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #431
gumby wrote: post #394

I am working on climate repair, specifically the removal of methane from the atmosphere. Although the excess methane is only about 1.3 ppm, it's responsible for about a third of the temperature rise. We're not building a huge machine to try to suck the atmosphere through a straw; we're doing chemistry in the open atmosphere. Plan to have a pilot running within the next year and within five years be removing up to 100…

Wow. I really want your group to succeed! Also that was a clear succinct writeup of what you do.

Thanks!

I couldn’t imagine writing that “I am passionate about transforming the atmospheric methane sector through an exciting and innovating GaaS (GHG-elimination as a Service.”

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

#514

Post by cpeterso »

meesterdude wrote: post #492
cpeterso wrote: post #389

A project idea that I've been daydreaming about for a while (but haven't moved past research) is a cleanroom implementation of the online game Space Station 13. SS13 is built on the BYOND game engine, an ancient, closed-source client/server platform with a clunky, proprietary programming language. There have been a few attempts to rewrite SS13 in Unity or custom 3D game engines, but they've all suffered from second-s…

I think this is a cool idea! But I disagree with your direction. Lets say you do rework everything to be web assembly and not bound to BYOND. I'm sure the 300 people that play SS13 would love it. But I don't think that goes far enough, for the effort required. I think rebuilding SS13 in unity would overall be a great idea, but there is the problem of how complex SS13 is that would need to be worked. But I think with…

Yeah. The game is far too niche for a rewrite to be worth the effort. This idea is more of a thought experiment in software migration (and an excuse to play with writing a parser in Rust and WebAssembly for an unusual programming language :)

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

#515

Post by thomastjeffery »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #141
Ilasky wrote: post #113

I’m working on making body doubling a more main stream approach to accomplishing everyday tasks. Body doubling is known within the ADHD community and entails performing a task in the presence of another. More details here: https://www.healthline.com/health/adhd/body-double-adhd It helps to engage motivation by using another person as the proxy. I wrote a bit about how I think it works here: https://doubleapp.xyz/blog…

I don't know if I have ADHD or not, and I don't think so because I'm sometimes able to focus for hours if it's really an end-of-the-world type of situation, but just having someone passively working next to me is 100% useless. My girlfriend is always working next to me, and that doesn't prevent me from getting distracted every few minutes. The only thing it helps is for stuff like cleaning the house where the problem…

TL;DR: ADHD isn't what people think it is. It's worth learning about, even if you don't have it. This YouTube channel is very clear and informative: https://youtube.com/c/HowtoADHD

ADHD is a disastrously wrong name for the disorder. There is no deficit in attention, and hyperactivity is only as common as inattentiveness, and neither of the two is a primary symptom.

Executive dysfunction is the primary aspect of ADHD. Poor working (short term) memory is the second.

We get distracted because we can't choose where to put our focus. We miss important details in conversations because we tried to listen while also thinking about something else, and lost both details to a mental stack overflow. We get hyperactive because we are understimulated and can't be intentionally calm. We don't do homework or wash dishes or finish projects because we can't intentionally get started on anything.

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

#516

Post by bo1024 »

dbingham wrote: post #343
bo1024 wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quick suggestion from a researcher: people will only want to submit if there’s an editorial team with high trust and reputation for their specific area. Automated reviewer matching won’t be good enough to find decent reviewers. I would suggest partnering with people in very specific disciplines who want to break away and establish open access journals, but want to focus on the editor and review process rather than th…

This is on the roadmap. The plan is to create a "Journal" entity on the site. Editors can create a Journal on the site and then create teams of reviewers which they tag with fields. Authors submitting papers can then submit those papers to community review, or one or more journals, or both. Reviews coming from journal's teams will be highlighted. At any point during the review process, once the journal's team is sati…

Sounds great and good luck!

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

#517

Post by didgetmaster »

pphysch wrote: post #439
didgetmaster wrote: post #66

A new kind of Key/Value store. In this architecture, keys and values are stored within two separate 'data objects' which are linked together. One holds all the unique values along with their reference counts, the other contains all the keys and links to their mapped values. The architecture allows any value to be mapped to one or more keys and any key to be mapped to one or more values (unless an attribute on the dat…

What's the practical value of (quickly) knowing which keys share the same value? "pet":"cat" and "program":"cat" have different semantics.

The 'key' in this case is what the tag or value is attached to, not the context of the value. So in your example, all the "pet" values would be stored together within the KV store just like values in a relational table column. Likewise all the "program" values would be stored together within a different KV store.

So some typical queries might be: Find all the photos where "Event" = "Wedding" Find all rows where "State" = "California"

The keys in this case would be the IDs of the photos or the row keys in the relational table.

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

#518

Post by mailjenil »

smcn wrote: post #171
doix wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, I thought the whole point was to find pump and dumps early. I'm not sure what you're trying to do now. The most interesting (for me anyway) would be to figure out what is going to be on Reddit before it appears by analyzing spam/pump and dump groups etc. If you're analyzing Reddit after the fact, isn't that kinda late?

No, not pump and dumps. Just stocks that a large amount of people are about to buy into. A pump and dump is a coordinated effort, whereas I'm looking for something more organic. It might be late in that you might make less money than you would if you were in those groups but I can't say that I'm unhappy with what the algorithm is currently finding. It's primarily built for day trading, so you're in and out of trades…

What do you mean when you say 3.5648% profit over 340 stocks?

Is it weekly/monthly/yearly? Are you tracking buy-sell for each stock daily? Are you taking into consideration loss potential? One loss could wipe multiple days gain.

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

#519

Post by spython »

philip1209 wrote: post #168

I'm working to reinvent personal websites. My goal is to replace social media with personal sites + newsletters, which are more distributed, privacy-friendly, and calm. https://postcard.page The product seems simple, but there are so many opportunities for optimization. There's caching, CDNs, custom domain support, dynamically-generated open graph images, image optimizations, email sending, email reputations, analyti…

One product in that space that I particularly like is https://mmm.page/ It's just so much fun and adds all the tools to have fun when building a website. I wish that aspect of old internet would be more present in website builders and by extension in personal websites.

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

#520

Post by zxexz »

FerociousTimes wrote: post #423
zxexz wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure procreation just refers to the process of reproduction, sexual and asexual inclusive.

My understanding of the pertinent terms in this specific context is as follows: 1) Multiplying: Asexual reproduction only. 2) Reproduction: Sexual and asexual reproduction. 3) Procreation: Sexual reproduction only.

I appreciate the way you understand the terminology. However, I'm not sure everyone else understands it the same way. Although, I do admit the terms can be confusing.

BTW: I don't see how 'multiplying' could refer to just asexual reproduction. People often use it in sentences like 'the deer population near here multiplied the last couple years'.

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