Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on?

news.ycombinator.com

191–200 of 633 posts

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

#191
post #171
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…

> 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.

I guess what you call "organic", I call the very end of the tail of a "pump". I believe that Reddit sentiment is largely manipulated. When GME was going crazy, there was definitely a coordinated effort to pump AMC, BB and some other garbage that I forget.

I don't believe that suddenly a group of people will all randomly pick the same tickers to start hyping up. I'm not saying everyone involved is trying to pump/dump those stocks, I think it's a small group of people posting bullshit analysis in random places trying to get other people to buy + hype up the stock to create that "organic" interest that you are capturing.

I reckon BBBY was definitely an organized pump and dump for example, but only a small amount of threads/comments were organized. A lot of people buy into the hype and continue to hype it up themselves.

The most interesting part is identifying which stocks will end up "going" viral, by analyzing who/when/how the first mention of these tickers starts up. Maybe a certain writing style works really well, maybe if some ticker gets mentioned at the same time in 3 specific discord channels then that stock goes on to do well. Maybe if a certain reddit account posts it first it goes well, etc.

Using PRAW to get counts of ticker mentions in some subreddits isn't super interesting, at least in my eyes.

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

#193

The most prevalent type of security vulnerability in all of software is XSS. (If you count CVEs, which is admittedly a bit problematic). I’m collaborating on an attempt to shift the responsibility for XSS from the developers and towards the browser. The current stage focuses on getting the use case "insert HTML but without any scripts" right. There’s a public specification and prototype implementations in Firefox and…

Am I right that this makes the tradeoff of removing the possibility for vulnerabilities in specific web applications, but creates the (admittedly slimmer) chance for Universal-ish XSS in browsers?

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

#194
Working on a prototype for a thermoelectric generator. While the core generation module is a seebeck effect based solid-state off-the-shelf components, my focus is on optimizing the thermal gradient for voltage and current control and continuous operation (night and day).

A few experiments planned around

- design of heat absorbers and heat sinks

- night and day operation using radiative cooling/paints & coatings

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

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am aware of MuZero, but I'm not convinced it's able to beat the latest Stockfish. Stockfish continues to dominate TCEC even after the advent of more advanced MCTS searchers. But MCTS is on my map as something to look into more deeply.

For others, in cases it’s unclear: - MuZero uses MCTS (Monte Carlo Tree Search) - TCEC (Top Chess Engine Championship) is a computer chess tournament organized and maintained by Chessdom. ___ My understanding is MuZero doesn't compete in TCEC, but might be wrong. Given Stockfish is open source and open source versions of MuZero exist, it would be easy enough to test the current version of Stockfish again; honestly su…

MuZero doesn't, but from what I know MuZero was only on par with AlphaZero, and while AlphaZero beat Stockfish initially, Stockfish has since caught up and continues to beat LeelaZero, an OSS implementation of AlphaZero in TCEC.

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

#197
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…

Vets have crazy high margins, and thus salaries, so from an outsider perspective perhaps the market is ready for some more competition.

those savings don't go to you, at least not the majority. It goes to the starbucks ceo that turns the industry into a sweat shop.

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

#198
Working on a better solution to sedentary health and sitting caused back pain at work. No one posture is the answer, so there is probably an optimal amount of regular postural variation during deskwork that wouldn't interrupt focus. That is what a chair should do for you to protect your health, so making a smart dynamic chair for standing desks.

Had a cycling accident years ago, became much more sitting intolerant afterward, probably made me quit coding as a career.

Have been testing prototypes for a year, people have done hours long stretches on a 2-3 min interval feeling no pain or stiffness at the end. A study showed the same strong results.

Website: https://www.movably.com/ Early user review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUjkbMc_xBw&t=1s

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

#199
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…

Great write up. Color overall is a rabbit hole of a topic. I have been looking into color matching, delta E etc. and it is been surprise to realize that the variances of human vision mean that the field of colorimetry is as much of an art as it is science.

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

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The cost of labor is ridiculously cheap (people become Vet Tech's for love, not money), and buildings need not be in commercial centers, so capital costs are minimal. This is absolutely not true and it's a big issue in the field currently (my wife is a Veterinarian). This kind of thinking is also what is causing a lot of mental health issues in the field.

I'll echo that. Also being married to a vet it's insane how little very qualified and experienced techs are being paid.

how is that in disagreement? Cost of labor is indeed cheap
Post reply on HN