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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?

#431

Post by chiefmcloud »

AJRF wrote: post #364
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…

This sounds like Yikyak. I have a fully working Webapp, mobile app, dB and REST API from a project I worked on when lockdown started that I lost interest in scaling but I’ll make the repos public and edit this comment later with the links if they can help you out with this.

That would be awesome, thank you! I’m particularly interested in any front end work that I might be able to get ideas from (still a React noob).

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

#432

Post by amrx101 »

vmurthy wrote: post #296

(It's a germ of an idea but I hope to work on this!) Problem: Public schools in India don't do justice to students. Private schools in India charge a bomb but most of the money ends up in the hands of the "owners" and not enough to teachers (For reference, an average primary school teacher earns lesser than what an Uber driver earns) . The solution : A network of "not-for-profit" schools where the fee structure is re…

Any such initiative in India will have hard time because of factors like

- Many a times, kids school has nothing to do with quality of education in that school but the stature of the school. Parents in India use this to flex among their peers.

- Non-involvement of parents.In India, the parents who actively take part in their kids schooling are a minority. For most, its more like "paid school fees" and just make sure that the kid is doing homework, that's all.

- Regulation. Once you try to open a school, you will come to know that there is no way you can get your school registered without paying hefty bribes to the education department if you dont have bureaucrats(IAS or IPS) or politicians in the family.

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

#433

Post by jmpman »

I’m working on a way to design free standing domes using mortar-less bricks. The idea is to build a cut-list for each brick, such that when stacked, there are no gaps, and the entire thing is held in place with just gravity (maybe the first layer is permanently attached to the ground)

I’m looking for a good framework to simulate the physics and visualizations.

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

#434

Post by dhosek »

jmpman wrote: post #433

I’m working on a way to design free standing domes using mortar-less bricks. The idea is to build a cut-list for each brick, such that when stacked, there are no gaps, and the entire thing is held in place with just gravity (maybe the first layer is permanently attached to the ground) I’m looking for a good framework to simulate the physics and visualizations.

My father-in-law lived in Mexico and had his home custom-built. He was fond of brick domes (with mortar). I can remember being in my wife's room with her staring at the ceiling when we went to bed wondering how the hell they managed to make that roof without the whole thing collapsing.

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

#435

Post by morty_s »

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…

Hmm. Couldn’t they use isotopic analysis to determine where and when someone grew up? Would this also be robust across different planets (if that becomes a thing)?

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

#436

Post by gwbrooks »

PROBLEM(S): I (well, the nonprofit I lead) am trying to solve for the general problem of municipal public policy but, as you might expect, it's a series of discrete, linked problems. Some of these problems have thousands of people focused on a solution; in other areas, it's virtually greenfield.

SOLUTION: The space doesn't lack for good research and policy recommendations, but it has historically lacked (on the right and left), non-screedy, nonpartisan voices that can be trusted when policymakers look for solutions. We're attempting to fill that space.

WHAT WE WANT: Ultimately? We want every major American city to work better for the people who live and work there. It'll look different from community to community and our job isn't about applying a cookie-cutter approach. Instead, we want to get a wider range of ready-to-implement tools in front of the decision makers, and educate engaged citizens that solutions exist.

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

#437

Post by dooglius »

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…

Could just bring along a future copy of the bitcoin blockchain, though as a downside that would potentially give away other information about the future (what people become rich, etc) they may not wish to divulge.

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

#438

Post by jugg1es »

httpsterio wrote: post #11

I've been mulling over an idea that is essentially a combination of personal ID, secure digital authentication and online communications all baked into one. There's a EU directive instructing on how citizens should be able to identify online with eIDAS. In my country, you can use eIDAS to authenticate in basically any governmental agency portal, but you can't get any eIDAS enabled auth method as a citizen. The curren…

I work in healthcare in the US, and using banks to perform auth is a fascinating concept. I also don't see the US ever adopting it due to nuances in American concepts of privacy. We don't mind sharing literally everything with a single entity, but once you get more than 1 entity involved, everyone freaks out. Using banks for auth would also eliminate the wide array of third party auth services, like Auth0. Eliminating the middle-man is very un-American.

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

#439

Post by Jommi »

wiseleo wrote: post #425
Jommi wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to understand where you are from and what education systems you have seen. Where does your assumption of students relying on being taught by parents ceme from?

Personal experience with multiple countries. Studied in both USSR and USA. Witnessed many students struggling in USA. You are right though, many parents can’t teach. That’s the problem I am trying to solve - parents shouldn’t have to go to school with their children.

I didn't mention parents not being able to teach. I just asked where your assumption for that is coming from.

Just wondering as I haven't heard of this at all in my home country. Homework is usually quite clear, and the basics to get through it are made clear in the classroom. We had separate times for learning maths, and doing exercises.

Have you thought maybe your assumption is based on very very old anecdotal data?

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

#440

Post by rohmanhakim »

cameronbrown wrote: post #89

Information overload. My current side project is https://feedsub.com . Right now, - it's not great - I started by building an simple tool for getting regular updates from RSS feeds, but longer-term I want to turn this into a system which can absorb all the data streams you're interested in (news, stocks, weather, social, communities) and give you dials (filters, curation, signals, etc..) to surface a healthy amount w…

Hmm, not sure how I feel about that YouTube "Skip the sub box!" feature. As subscribing to channels means you are supporting their effort for making contents you like
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