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Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

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Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#211

Post by dr_dshiv »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #196
dr_dshiv wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that the central scientific question is whether harmony is a metaphor or mechanism, e.g., for psychological constructs like Cognitive Dissonance. My guess is that harmony is so pervasive that it ceases to have original meaning -- like in the manner that every atom is a harmonic oscillator or how brainwaves are based on an "octave" structure (e.g., Beta is double Alpha, Gamma is double Beta, etc). However, thi…

I was talking specifically about harmony in a musical context as being very western.

Well, the point still applies. The small integer ratios of harmony apply even to the rhythms of gamelan. And, of course, octaves are more-or-less universal across cultures.

Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#212

Post by chiefmcloud »

navd wrote: post #165
chiefmcloud wrote: post #153

I’m working on a new way to talk online, with the goal of killing cancel culture, increasing understanding, and basically calming down current radicalization. Picture Reddit, but with the ability to anonymously share ideas with other people in your social circles. My theory is that most reasonable people stay off social media, so places like Twitter end up filled with unreasonable narcissists. At the same time, discu…

I will say that I’m not really interested in talking with people I necessarily know. I want to talk to people who have well thought out arguments that are non obvious. Take what you will from that and good luck.

Thanks. Thinking about that problem too, and trying to find a way to give people both. “The personal is political” and one hypothesis is that at least a starting point for content you’d find more interesting is content that people you know find more interesting.

Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#213

Post by guygurari »

chiefmcloud wrote: post #153

I’m working on a new way to talk online, with the goal of killing cancel culture, increasing understanding, and basically calming down current radicalization. Picture Reddit, but with the ability to anonymously share ideas with other people in your social circles. My theory is that most reasonable people stay off social media, so places like Twitter end up filled with unreasonable narcissists. At the same time, discu…

I’m rooting for you. Here’s a thought about a possible trade off between radicalization and engagement. When social media platforms optimize for growth, it makes sense for them to make it as easy as possible for users to share/retweet. It lowers “amplification friction” and allows messages to go viral. The most successful platforms have very low amplification friction, which suggests that low friction is an important ingredient.

What we are learning is that making it trivially easy to amplify anyone’s message enables cancel culture and (I believe) leads to radicalization.

If this is correct, then increasing amplification friction on your platform will lead to less radicalization, at the cost of lowering engagement. My guess is that for this to be successful requires a careful balance of where you land on the higher/lower friction spectrum. Too much friction leads to low engagement which leads to failure. Too little friction leads to uncontrolled amplification which leads to radicalization. So a balance is needed.

Either that, or a totally new idea is needed that turns existing platforms on their head.

Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#214

Post by adamnemecek »

The_rationalist wrote: post #188
adamnemecek wrote: post #73

ECS based ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity_component_system ) GPU-first GUI framework.

Name? Does it use skia? Why and when would ECS help for building 2D GUIs?

Unnamed yet and not public yet. No, it does not use skia. ECS helps because it stores data in homogenous arrays which is really good for GPUs.

Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#215

Post by majidmir »

jawns wrote: post #170

I hope this counts as weird enough ... PROBLEM: If time travelers from the future were to visit you, it would be difficult for them to quickly prove their authenticity. SOLUTION: Temporal passwords. At the start of each year, you devise a new password. You commit the password to memory, but you never write it down or divulge it to anyone until Dec. 31, when you submit it to the Temporal Password Registry, which publi…

How do you know they are not just good mind readers instead of time travelers?

Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#216

Post by FailMore »

vekker wrote: post #31

Dreams. I've been journaling my dreams for years and I'm working on an app that makes it easier to (visually) map them out & find patterns: https://oneironotes.com/ I like the idea of accessing other (inner) dimensions during sleep, like an explorer (an "oneironaut"). The problems to overcome are related to capturing and recollecting experiences that only take place in the mind. You asked about the weird stuff...

Hey, I also did a lot of work on dreams - I have also journaled my dreams for years and had therapy at the same time. I got super into them, read a bunch about them, even did a psychology masters to spend time researching them. I couldn't find theory that matched with my experience so I wrote this paper on them:

"A Suggestion for a New Interpretation of Dreams: Dreaming Is the Inverse of Anxious Mind-Wandering."

https://psyarxiv.com/k6trz

Also your project is awesome!

Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#217

Post by winstonewert »

jawns wrote: post #206
mrfusion wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn’t they just tell you tomorrow’s stock prices? Or a future sports score.

As the PROBLEM statement says: > it would be difficult for them to quickly prove their authenticity Yes, you could tell them something that happens tomorrow or the next day. But if time is of the essence and you can't wait until tomorrow, then the Temporal Password helps you _immediately_ demonstrate your authenticity.

They have a time machine. How can time be of the essence?

Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#218

Post by icebraining »

adamsea wrote: post #164
wiseleo wrote: post #29

Education. Schools are functionally no different from part-time prisons. You must attend daily under penalty of law. Many teachers are plain awful. They rely on students being additionally taught by their parents. That forces parents to go to school with their children, which perpetuates the vicious cycle. The teacher recalibrates the class to the students who either understood everything the first time or had supple…

I certainly agree that so much about school is problematic and could be improved, but ... > Schools are functionally no different from part-time prisons. A prison by definition cannot be part-time ; ). Plus, it's a totally unfair comparison. Schools are intended for everyone. Prisons are intended for a specific subset of people deemed to have broken a law. Schools are for children. Prisons are for adults. And so on.

> A prison by definition cannot be part-time

Sure it can. Check out "weekenders" and "work release" programs, for example.

Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#219

Post by LordDragonfang »

jezze wrote: post #21

I am trying to reinvent the web. Replacing HTML/JS/CSS with a language called ALFI. It is stupidly simple in its design but still very powerful. Similarly to HTML you use it to create widgets, place them, and define their behavior. It is humanly readable like HTML but line-based instead of markup-based. Instead of nesting it uses references. This allows it to be streamed. A big difference is that the language itself…

>A big difference is that the language itself doesn't allow styling (like CSS), the downside being you get less flexibility but the upside being it will render correctly on any display with any resolution.

HTML without styling will render correctly on any display with any resolution. The facts of the history of the web tell us that people want custom styling, though, and businesses want it even more, because marketing says so. Your widgets need styling for each device they're rendered on, in which case you're back to the exact original problem as HTML and CSS. All you've done is move the problem to someplace else.

Frankly, I don't see why this isn't a markdown extension, since that seems much better suited to solving your base problem and is WAY more readable than the mess you have currently (which only seems readable to someone versed in high-level programming, either functional or OO)

Re: Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?

#220

Post by dnautics »

jezze wrote: post #21

I am trying to reinvent the web. Replacing HTML/JS/CSS with a language called ALFI. It is stupidly simple in its design but still very powerful. Similarly to HTML you use it to create widgets, place them, and define their behavior. It is humanly readable like HTML but line-based instead of markup-based. Instead of nesting it uses references. This allows it to be streamed. A big difference is that the language itself…

just fyi, something similar called the gemini project as released recently. https://gemini.circumlunar.space/, not saying either one is better or worse, but it might either be an avenue for collaboration or at the very least to get validation that your idea is one that people want!!
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