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

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

#171

Post by skinkestek »

RHSman2 wrote: post #11

How to get my kids to bed to bed.

Best trick I've learned (and I have more than twice as many kids as the average citizen here :-) is to:

1. make sure they don't fall asleep with something they cannot keep all night (i.e. while you are singing to them, rocking them, sitting next to them or when they are drinking a bottle of milk etc)

2. make sure they understand that even if you leave the room it is just temporarily. Small kids are - for good reasons - very afraid of being forgotten or left alone.

2.1 Using a timer to remember to visit the room regularly and often as they learn to sleep alone can help a lot

2.2. Increase the interval each day. I increased it by two minutes each day.

2.3 If the kids are happy in their bed, continue to visit their room at the scheduled time: you don't want them to think that you forget them if they don't cry.

Using this method I've got my last few kids to enjoy going to bed and sleep better in less than a week fo each of them.

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

#172

Post by xyzzy_plugh »

bambax wrote: post #159
dbancajas wrote: post #129

How to find motivation/energy to do a long-term creative project when having a full time jobs + other responsibilities?

The brain hates to start things and loves to finish things. This can be hacked in that a working session should always leave something unfinished. Say you're writing a novel. Every writing session (but the first, obviously) should cover the end of the last scene and the beginning of a new one, AND THEN STOP, i.e. not finish the new scene. Your brain will want to come back to the work to finish it, which overcomes the…

The brain you describe is not the brain I possess.

Starting is easy.

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

#173

Post by betwixthewires »

adammunich wrote: post #43

I am working on two problems: 1. I want to create way to generate electrical power without pollution. Basically, a closed cycle process that releases no pollutants, or electronic waste. 2. I want to do everything I can to eliminate gender bias in the world.

You sound like a wonderful person!

What progress have you made in your work on either front? What sort of work do you do to solve these problems?

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

#174

Post by jtolmar »

chubot wrote: post #119

These are statistics/math problems that 2 medical professionals I'm seeing are working on, not my own work. But they got me curious. FWIW I worked in "data science" as a software engineer for many years, and did some machine learning, so I have some adjacent experience, but I could use help conceptualizing the problems. Does anyone know of any books or surveys about statistics and medicine, or specifically mechanics…

> One therapist is taking measurements of say your arm motion and making inferences about the motion of other muscles.

This seems like a sequential Bayesian filtering problem. Probably high enough dimension that you should just use a particle filter. The big seminal background text in this area is Bishop: Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning.

If the "motion of other muscles" is inferring pose, you could also look into what computer graphics calls inverse kinematics (a typical IK model has a number of dimensions that could fit into a particle filter). There's some more in-depth stuff in motion planning that actually takes into account muscle capability. But I wouldn't know where to find info on that, short of watching the last several years of Siggraph Technical Papers Trailers, grabbing all the motion planning ones, then reading everything they cite.

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

#175

Post by betwixthewires »

myWindoonn wrote: post #127

I'm working on destroying proof-of-work blockchains. I have a plan for BTC, but I'm not sure how to approach ETH. Advice would be appreciated.

Interesting, what approach are you taking with BTC and what's the reason that approach won't work for ETH?

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

#177

Post by andrewnc »

chubot wrote: post #119

These are statistics/math problems that 2 medical professionals I'm seeing are working on, not my own work. But they got me curious. FWIW I worked in "data science" as a software engineer for many years, and did some machine learning, so I have some adjacent experience, but I could use help conceptualizing the problems. Does anyone know of any books or surveys about statistics and medicine, or specifically mechanics…

It sounds vaguely related to "system identification"?

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

#178

Post by bambax »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #172
bambax wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The brain hates to start things and loves to finish things. This can be hacked in that a working session should always leave something unfinished. Say you're writing a novel. Every writing session (but the first, obviously) should cover the end of the last scene and the beginning of a new one, AND THEN STOP, i.e. not finish the new scene. Your brain will want to come back to the work to finish it, which overcomes the…

The brain you describe is not the brain I possess. Starting is easy.

"starting" is ambiguous. I really meant "getting to work".

Thinking about new things and maybe throwing down a few ideas is indeed easy and pleasant.

But deciding to spend a few hours to move a project (instead of not) is what the brain hates. It hates commitment, and is very afraid of the opportunity cost.

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