Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on?

Trying to get companies to give me a chance without a 4-year degree. Even my own employer won't promote without a 4-year degree.

While this sounds like a complainy pants problem, this isa very real problem for a very large percentage of the United States. Without a 4-year degree as a de facto dues card, you are severely limited on your options.

At 34 years old, I could maybe have a degree by 40 while working full time and have to take on 30-60k dollars of debt to be competing for entry level jobs against 20-22 year old applicants (many schools now have programs so students can graduate simultaneously with a high school diploma and an associates degree). At my current income, if a degree could get me an extra 15% within a year of graduation, I would be in my 50s before I paid the loans off at current rates. That means I sacrifice the last half of my 30's to break even in my 50's and maybe make some extra money in my 50's and 60's losing out on 20-30 years of compounding interest because I don't have that arbitrary degree in anything as a dues card to say I'm worth hiring/promoting.

Blah.

Last year I made about 10% less than the year before because of zero overtime, our annual merit-based increases often are break even (sometimes not even break even) once you factor in inflation and insurance cost increases, throw in the constant nagging pressure of cancer risks (father died of it, mother had it, father's mother died of it), climate change, international trade issues which could see me laid off, automation possibly replacing jobs in the near future, it can often be quite crushing. Especially when you're trying to maintain sobriety and just want to run off into the woods with a cask of high proof alcohol and try and befriend a bigfoot to help provide food and shelter for you so you can die from Lyme disease or exposure living as a refugee in Bigfootville.

Meanwhile you see people with YouTube channels buying what equate to mansions (What's Inside, Jenna Marbles) and taking international trips monthly (What's Inside, Casey Neistat used to, on aircraft with seats in the tens of thousands of dollars a flight) and even crazy domestic trips frequently (What's Inside) and you're like, "Dude, I just want to make more than 34k a year".

I truly can't imagine what it is like for people that are consigned to working fast food/retail/service jobs as their sole source of income. It has to be all but crippling.

This is an almost* solved problem, depending on how low-friction solution you consider solved. Just use X509 PKI.

Have your real world identity issuing agency (whatever that is in a specific country) become a CA, issue personal cert and store it in crypto-hardware. Smart-card interface is rarely present (generally requires specific hardware), USB requires drivers.

Heck, the key can even live inside your SIM card if you prove your identity to mobile provider, which you have to if it is a contract anyway. Works well and is easy to use. Can be an attack vector for scams, though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_signature

Working on building a system that can be used in urban areas to help fight climate change and water treatment issues using Algae. There has been so much research on the uses of Algae and how effective it is at using CO2 to grow and now I'm just trying to think of the most effective way to launch a venture.

The hardest part has been deciding what to fight first and meeting other people who have experience working with algae. I would love to connect with anyone that wants to talk Algae!

Yeah, called direct fulfillment. Roughly 400 vendors a couple of years ago for Amazon.de alone. Should be more by now. Quite interesting, so. Not sure why Amazon never really pushed that instead of own fulfillment centers, would have reduced fixed costs by quite a bit IMHO.

Hey sorry for the confusion! There is a link "read a sample" that you can click on. Ill make that more prominent.