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Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

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Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#361

Post by odbol_ »

nsm wrote: post #179

Immigration. Every time I change jobs as an H1-B employee, I've to fill in the same ridiculous data with every law firms weird interface. I wish the US Digital Services would focus on streamlining forms and having auto-import from all the data they already have about me (e.g. automatically translate I-94 records to how much time I actually spent in the US, infer my past I-797 records automatically, have a one time ed…

But they try to make it hard because they only want the most perseverant/rich immigrants to make it into the country.

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#362

Post by wintermute42 »

juskrey wrote: post #31
chollida1 wrote: post #27

Data management. 1) Cleaning the data as it comes in rather than in batches so we can use it sooner, invalid data is discarded, outlier detection, normalizing inputs etc.... 2) Warehousing of the data with proper indexes so you can perform some advanced queries on unstructured data 3) Some data is sent in bulk at the end of day, some of the data is streamed in fire hose style. How can we preprocess the fire hose data…

Will hedge funds take such a huge risk of using 3rd party centralized (or centrally developed) data management system?

Yes.

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#363

Post by mnrode »

starik36 wrote: post #269
tmsam wrote: post #235

A family member is a lawyer in the Worker's Comp, SS, and Family Law space. THE software for lawyers in this space is called A1 Law. It solves a lot of real problems lawyers in that space have (form letter generation, calendar integration, case management)... but it's so slow to use new technologies. They advertise PalmOS integration. My family member has to have their own server in a closet running the server versio…

Last time I had a consultation with my lawyer, she fired up WordPerfect. There is a blast from the past.

O.o Last time I had a consultation with my lawyer, he fired up One Note on his tablet.

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#364

Post by odbol_ »

scrollaway wrote: post #11

Content and patch distribution for video games: Data integrity, progressive downloads, file-level patching, compression, encryption, and platform/version branching. It's quite mind-boggling; nobody is really doing it on an industry-scale level. Every video game developer has their own way, all of which have their own problems. It is a very hard problem. Blizzard actually came up with a very good system, but it's not…

Please, someone tell Apple so I can stop downloading 4GB to update Xcode.

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#365

Post by nkoren »

ggcdn wrote: post #37

As a structural engineer, I see a good opportunity to make reinforced concrete design software available in a SaaS format. The competition is outdated, clunky, requires local installation and messing about with licenses. Design firms are paying $1000-$3000/year per user/seat for what amounts to a pretty basic app. Unfortunately, there are very few people that understand both computer science and structural engineerin…

Out of curiosity, what do you think of what flux.io is doing? If a SaaS structural engineering application could be integrated with that, would it address your needs?

(For what it's worth, I'm doing something similar in the transport planning space. And yes, bridging the gap between that and modern CS is a substantial piece of work.)

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#366

Post by cpach »

starik36 wrote: post #269
tmsam wrote: post #235

A family member is a lawyer in the Worker's Comp, SS, and Family Law space. THE software for lawyers in this space is called A1 Law. It solves a lot of real problems lawyers in that space have (form letter generation, calendar integration, case management)... but it's so slow to use new technologies. They advertise PalmOS integration. My family member has to have their own server in a closet running the server versio…

Last time I had a consultation with my lawyer, she fired up WordPerfect. There is a blast from the past.

”Initial release: 1979; 37 years ago”

Quite amazing that it’s still around.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPerfect#History

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#367

Post by digikata »

tlb wrote: post #231

(AI research industry) We'd like to run learning algorithms on robots, but there are no great options for hardware. (Happy to discuss in depth if someone wants to build it) We want to train large models much faster than any GPU box you can buy. (There are several new things announced, but there's room for more).

What kind of robots are you talking about?

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#368

Post by tomcam »

komali2 wrote: post #314
tomcam wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow! You've got range. What are EPC and PTO?

Apologies, I hate when people do that to me. EPC means "engineering, procurement, and construction" company. So like, lyondell-basell or jacobs engineering or foster wheeler (now AMEC) or Mustang (not the car) or KBR. PTO = Paid Time Off. Catchall for vacation time, sick time, holidays.

Ok, thanks. Work for myself so did not connect to PTO which should be obvious in retrospect

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#369

Post by andrewl »

protomyth wrote: post #150

Not my industry, but in my area. I'm still looking for a good modular house that can be setup reasonably quickly, low cost, and can survive North Dakota winter and summer. Something suitable for a single person or a couple.

I wonder if shipping containers could be the basis for a solution in this space.

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#370

Post by cheriot »

It's not my industry, but I've been thinking about my health habits and a WaPo article made me realize I don't even know what a healthy weight range to target is[1]. BMI ignores bone structure and muscle and the most popular/affordable body fat estimations are +-10%. Is there something else out there to help make an individualized weight goal? Or any other health goal?

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/12/01/nearl...

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