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New Requests for Startups

ycombinator.com

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331–340 of 407 posts

Re: New Requests for Startups

#331

Post by GuiA »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #222
GuiA wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VR can be so much more than what Oculus and its associated acts are about. In fact, they cast a shadow over it that will probably be harmful to it in the long run. The Oculus acquisition by Facebook is possibly the worst thing that could have happened to VR. With the Rift, Oculus had the opportunity to chart a brand new low cost platform accessible to millions, and be the next IBM/Microsoft/Apple/etc of their day. Th…

>As far as gaming goes, we'll probably see half-assed VR from Microsoft and Sony. Look at all the amazing things the Kinect did. I played a few Kinect games. The effect is amazing. Imagine if Facebook bought it instead of MS. I don't see why MS or Sony would make things half-assed. If anything, VR gaming might be a natural monopoly from a commercial entity instead of some open standards things Oculus kinda-sorta is p…

> Look at all the amazing things the Kinect did

Mmh, what amazing things did he do? Last time I checked, there is no killer app for the Kinect. Microsoft tried to force it on everyone by bundling it with the Xbox One (because no one wanted it otherwise), and now they're removing it because even when their console is bundled with it, no one does anything with it.

Re: New Requests for Startups

#332

Post by ivv »

There used to be an advertising category in the previous version of this document. Wonder why it has been dropped. Did the field get too crowded? Are the existing solutions adequate?

Re: New Requests for Startups

#333

Post by zysh »

DennisP wrote: post #293
ForrestN wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From someone who is not a farmer and doesn't know so much about this, for example could we grow vegetables and feed them to humans directly, rather than feeding grains to cattle?

That's probably a good idea, but it's worth noting that about 30% of the Earth's land surface is too dry for crops, but works fine for pasturing cattle.

I don't really think the issue with with grazing cattle on land that's suitable for it. I think the issue is that we're raising cattle in places that _arent_ suitable for it.

Take for instance the factory farms which have to constantly ship food in to feed the cattle. Another example is deforestation to create fields for cattle to graze.

I think the OP is right, we need to convince more people that beef is not a sustainable food with the rate at which we consume it today.

Re: New Requests for Startups

#334

Post by cgag »

rcarrigan87 wrote: post #146
impendia wrote: post #114

Would somebody please disrupt the textbook publishing industry? http://www.amazon.com/Discrete-Mathematics-Applications-Susa... $264.39, for students that work part time jobs at $7.00 an hour (before taxes). Not only students are angry about this. Professors are angry, and authors are angry too. Bitter fights between professors and publishers are common. Everybody wants to see the big players in this industry fail .…

The bigger question may be why do we even still have "textbooks," at least in their traditional form? Are textbooks the optimal way to learn given all the technology we have today? I'm sure there are quite a few start-ups working on this problem.

I think it's pretty hard to find something more efficient than sitting down and reading a textbook and doing the exercises to learn something you actually want to learn.

Re: New Requests for Startups

#335

Post by cgag »

rcarrigan87 wrote: post #146
impendia wrote: post #114

Would somebody please disrupt the textbook publishing industry? http://www.amazon.com/Discrete-Mathematics-Applications-Susa... $264.39, for students that work part time jobs at $7.00 an hour (before taxes). Not only students are angry about this. Professors are angry, and authors are angry too. Bitter fights between professors and publishers are common. Everybody wants to see the big players in this industry fail .…

The bigger question may be why do we even still have "textbooks," at least in their traditional form? Are textbooks the optimal way to learn given all the technology we have today? I'm sure there are quite a few start-ups working on this problem.

I think it's pretty hard to find something more efficient than sitting down and reading a textbook.

Re: New Requests for Startups

#336

Post by ealloc »

sedachv wrote: post #327
ealloc wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting link, but I still feel AI hasn't had much success: Do we really have much more today that A* search, neural nets with backpropagation, and HMMs/SVM/etc, which were all developed in the 1960s? The successes of AI that I see (eg OCR/speech recognition and Chess/Jeopardy) use these same old algorithms with only marginal improvements and more CPU. There have been no new major techniques or insights. I'm not a…

> The successes of AI that I see (eg OCR/speech recognition and Chess/Jeopardy) use these same old algorithms with only marginal improvements and more CPU. Backpropagation training wasn't introduced until 1986 ( http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v323/n6088/pdf/323533a0... ). SVMs weren't useful until the kernel trick was applied to them in 1992 ( http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=130385.130401 ). Feature learnin…

Huh, thank you for the informative reply. I will reconsider my view, which I had perhaps overstated before to make a point.

Wikipedia gives a citation for backpropagation going back to 1963 by the way, but looking more carefully you are right that the 1986 paper is important.

Re: New Requests for Startups

#337

Post by jacques_chester »

kibaekr wrote: post #319

It would be awesome if programming could actually be as easy as you imagine it to be in your head. Any non-tech person could program in their head: When this happens, do that, except for when this happens. It's more of the hidden bugs and shit just not working for no reason that makes programming so difficult and frustrating, but if there was a way that things would "just work," that would be game changer.

I am not so optimistic:

http://worrydream.com/refs/Brooks-NoSilverBullet.pdf

Re: New Requests for Startups

#338

Post by jqm »

georgemcbay wrote: post #165
nobodysfool wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at the top causes of bankruptcy... #1 on that list is medical costs. To quote the article: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/pf_article_109143.html "A study done at Harvard University indicates that this is the biggest cause of bankruptcy, representing 62% of all personal bankruptcies. One of the interesting caveats of this study shows that 78% of filers had some form of health insurance, thus bucking the myth that…

"That would wipe out most people's debts." Yeah, but people being is debt is great for the part of the financial services industry that they owe money to, often with ridiculous and crippling interest rates (compare to the interest rates these players get from the government when they borrow, which is essentially 0% -- which is nice, for them). This is especially true when it comes to student debt, which can't ever be…

I came here to say exactly that. The new projects YC wants to see are great and are defiantly problems worthy of effort, but the more pressing problems seem structural at the moment.

I also agree with your final conclusion ("skynet") and think it is inevitable given time. Remove human corruptibility from governance. Efficiency... it is selected for.

Re: New Requests for Startups

#339

Post by Houshalter »

ealloc wrote: post #79

I'm surprised no one has commented yet on the first couple of these - Energy, AI, Biotech, and Drug design. These have traditionally been domains requiring a huge research apparatus with tremendous manpower, for only very long term gains. Not good for startups. In AI, how can a startup hope to succeed when academia has had almost no success in 50 years (and I am doubtful throwing more CPU/neuron layers will 'solve' t…

AI doesn't mean AGI/strong AI/human-level AI. In the last few years deep learning methods have advanced the state of the art in different areas a great deal. Natural language processing, machine vision, and even some results in reinforcement learning. And these are all things a small startup could reasonably do.

Re: New Requests for Startups

#340

Post by jqm »

zysh wrote: post #333
DennisP wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's probably a good idea, but it's worth noting that about 30% of the Earth's land surface is too dry for crops, but works fine for pasturing cattle.

I don't really think the issue with with grazing cattle on land that's suitable for it. I think the issue is that we're raising cattle in places that _arent_ suitable for it. Take for instance the factory farms which have to constantly ship food in to feed the cattle. Another example is deforestation to create fields for cattle to graze. I think the OP is right, we need to convince more people that beef is not a sust…

The problem is our taste for grain (and alfalfa) fed meats.

People probably wouldn't eat as much meat as they do now if it were from free range, non-grain fed animals.

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