Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on? • Hacker News Board

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

#551

Post by Chirono » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 8:58 AM UTC

curious16 wrote: post #532

Mine is not an interesting "problem" generally speaking. But, to me, it is a problem because I haven't solved it yet. I am on the journey of learning computer science and programming on my own from awesome books and resources available out there. I came across this article by Peter Norvig: https://norvig.com/21-days.html after I read his code of a spell checker: https://norvig.com/spell-correct.html . I was mesmerize…

That code is written in a very declarative, functional style. Haskell is a language that forces you to write code like that, so might be a worth a look if your goal is to write ‘pretty’ code.

However, I’d also add that becoming an “elegant” and “useful” programmer are often at odds with each other. It’s very easy to spend so much time trying to make your code pretty with the perfect abstractions that you never actually finish anything.

If your goal is to be useful and productive then learning by writing a lot of code in a lot of different languages, styles and code based might serve you better than focussing on beautiful source code. Though if you can do both, then please do!

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

#552

Post by samsquire » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 10:09 AM UTC

vanjajaja1 wrote: post #461

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.

I think if the system behaviour is a data structure then data structures can be loaded during runtime and again later on, this is a bit similar to Entity Component System, entities can come and go at runtime and be efficiently handled.

If you combine this with dynamic embedded scripting, you can have runtime systems that are completely reloadable while running. You can also decide when to serve requests with the new design and old design.

I'm trying to bring the patch to the application itself rather than at the network layer.

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

#553

Post by zh3 » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 10:36 AM UTC

cjwebb wrote: post #319

zh3 wrote: post #132

Volumetric displays. The perfect mix of personal challenges - insane data rates, complex realtime software, weird mechanical setups and warped graphics.

Like, this kind of thing? https://voxon.co/ I had to Google it, but since I've recently been diving into volumetric video, the words made me curious. How's it going? Any particular area you're working on?

Yes, like Voxon and Lumi - swept volume (rather than static, hence 'weird mechanical setups'). It's basically the problem of taking any 2D display of reasonable resolution and moving or spinning it through the 3rd dimension at least 50 times a second. For example, you could spin one or more 32x64 LED panels (like these [9]) around a vertical axis at 3000RPM.

Currently working on both spinning and reciprocating ('flapping') approaches; spinning is nicer in many ways but reciprocating gives a better result.

Have a look at articles tagged 'volumetric-display' on Hackaday [1] for examples.

  [0] https://www.adafruit.com/product/5036

  [1] https://hackaday.com/tag/volumetric-display/

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

#554

Post by samhuk » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 11:15 AM UTC

slekker wrote: post #542

samhuk wrote: post #445

Javascript and ORMs have a (fairly well-known) interesting set of problems: * There aren't many * Those that you can find, don't support Typescript, so it's all guesswork. * Don't have much (if any) support for related data queries So I've been working on a ORM for PostgreSQL and Typescript for a few months now in my spare time [0]. It's been probably one of the biggest, challenging, and interesting problems I have e…

Prisma and TypeORM both are made for TypeScript. The first works wonderfully well

I quite liked Prisma when I used it, I'm glad someone brought it up.

The issues with Prisma are that it had moderately weak support for Typescript, and doesn't robustly support related data querying (inc. recursively), or exotic inter-object relations (e.g. many-to-many with join tables, etc.).

As I said, a lot of the ORMs you find out there tend to be quite simple, missing some QoL features.

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

#555

Post by O__________O » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 11:26 AM UTC

largeluke wrote: post #530

O__________O wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough. As you likely know, ELO has no maximum upper limit and chess has 10^120 possible matches — so in theory maximum ELO for chess has a long way to go, assuming there is even one engine that keeps improving over time to beat its prior version. Huge aspect of performance is tied to availability of compute; as such, my understanding is that if quantum computers ever became mainstream, even a “dumb” algorithm u…

Actually Elo does hit a maximum, because a perfect player doesn't beat an imperfect player 100% of the time: sometimes an imperfect player gets lucky and plays a perfect game. A number of people have made conjectures on the Elo of perfect chess play, using extrapolations from data how chess programs scale. I'm not sure what the latest analysis is (things may have changed with the strength of neural network chess), bu…

ELO does not have a maximum limit, chess does; already said this in my comment prior to your response. Also clearly stated “over significant number of matches” - not just a single match.

Perfect chess play would not set the maximum ELO, that’s not how ELO works. ELO simply ranks players that play. If a prefect chess engine existed and continued to play and there was at least one other chess engine that improved by beating its prior best version, its ELO and the prefect players ELO would continue to rise. Long, long way to go to fill the ELO ratings between current state of the art and the prefect all knowing player that’s aware of all 10^120 possible matches.

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

#556

Post by waylandsmithers » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 12:04 PM UTC

provability wrote: post #401

O__________O wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might be worth providing way for people to know what the project is and how to use it.

I know, right?

Well, welcome to my neuroses- because you asked now it's not as "thirsty" to do that. There was a fantasy sports game in the late 90s and early 2000s called wall street sports, where you'd buy "shares" of professional athletes and the prices would go up or down. My project is my start on bringing some form of it back. [https://sportfolio.money/]

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

#557

Post by altilunium » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 1:08 PM UTC

Knowledge management.

To put it on scifi-like phrases : "The universal knowledge repository of humankind". Or "imagine if we can extract the entirety of knowledge that stored inside a certain person brain, then store it in the machine. So everyone else could access that knowledge."

Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, social media platform, search engine and the Internet come close, but still there are rooms for improvement. Especially in "discovery" part and "overall structure" within a body of knowledge. Sure, there are quality knowledge content, but they are mostly spread out and undiscoverable and very unstructured.

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

#558

Post by mdnahas » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 1:14 PM UTC

I’m working on combining economics and information theory. Econ talks a lot about “informed markets”, but doesn’t measure that in Shannon’s bits.

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

#559

Post by nathanasmith » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 1:50 PM UTC

russellbeattie wrote: post #260

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…

This is great! I have ADHD and find this helps a lot. A YouTuber I follow has a two hour video called "Work with me" of just him working at his desk with music playing. When I first saw it, I laughed. But then one day I was having trouble staying focused, remembered the video and put it on my TV and I found it to be surprisingly effective! Unreasonably so! So good luck with your project! You're on to something. https…

Fellow ADHD here. A while back I downloaded a bunch of "Day in the Life" videos off YouTube of people accomplishing the type of productive stuff I need to do everyday then I used iMovie to splice together the best relevant parts starting with getting out of bed, going through the day and ending at night with getting back into bed. Now when I hit a rough patch where I can't accomplish anything I just start the video as soon as I wake up and follow along, going through the motions. This has had the greatest impact on me actually getting things done than anything else I've ever tried.

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

#560

Post by neodypsis » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 1:50 PM UTC

bawolff wrote: post #398

neodypsis wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your point? The technology already exists and is being used.

This is silly. Unix already existed, what's the point of linux?

I think you didn't understand what I was referring too. Read again.