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Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on?

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

#471

Post by zmmmmm »

evanlivingston wrote: post #420
junofan wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cart is way before the horse. Also grad students doing this type of work are absolutely not taking great care in thinking about these problems.

I fail to see how considering the impacts of a tool before building a tool is putting the cart before the horse. How is that not a necessary step in building a thing?

I saw someone posted a reactive database just now on HN. I can't believe they didn't think about what child pornographers might do with that. There is literally no discussion of it on their web site. How could it not be a necessary step in building such a thing.

Perhaps part of the disconnect here is not realising how vast the applications are for synthesizing DNA oligos are. It's a very basic thing, and anybody can already basically order them online for a very affordable amount. It's like being worried about someone open sourcing a way to make printer ink.

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

#473

Post by v8xi »

mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #269
v8xi wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm actually in a similar boat learning these things to apply to chess but rather than making a stronger AI, trying to learn and catalog strategies to make learning chess more intuitive. Would be interested in talking more if you are! Can message me on lichess.org/@/v8xi if you play there

That's a really interesting and sorely needed niche! I originally started out thinking about this, but the only ideas I could come up with were strength related, so I switched directions. Today's engines are hard if not impossible for amateur players to use correctly. I sent you a message on lichess!

Agreed! Hm, I don't see a message (and my account settings shouldn't be blocking it) - whats your username?

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

#474

Post by pgayed »

evanlivingston wrote: post #420
junofan wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cart is way before the horse. Also grad students doing this type of work are absolutely not taking great care in thinking about these problems.

I fail to see how considering the impacts of a tool before building a tool is putting the cart before the horse. How is that not a necessary step in building a thing?

> I fail to see how considering [all] the impacts of a tool before building a tool is putting the cart before the horse.

It’s interesting how people revise their arguments, or omit words from it, to make their interlocutor’s response appear more absurd.

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

#475

Post by O__________O »

provability wrote: post #429
O__________O wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People generally speaking are too lazy to manage an independent system and governments have to much incentives to abuse systems like this if given the chance. If anything, if I was spending time on the topic it would be to drive public interest in systems that happen to also make sourcing province of media harder, not easier. Fakes are not the issue, they’re an excuse for people to do something they would have done a…

I feel like your statement reduces to "people are not affected by evidence." There is a category of people for whom that is true, but is there not also a category of people whose beliefs and actions are affected by evidence? That may be the case now, or maybe it only was in the past? What will we do when ALL true evidence is indistinguishable from fake evidence? (By the way, I think you mean "provenance," and as I've…

Understand and disagree, nothing I say will likely change your mind. If it matters, had multiple similar exchanges in past with people who happened to get lucky, have their systems used by 10s of millions people and my objections still hold true.

Being recorded 24/7 is not healthy and in my opinion a net negative for any meaningful future; yes, it has the potential for good, but way more potential for abuse. Please stop spending time on the idea.

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

#476

Post by jmcgough »

eezurr wrote: post #374
koeng wrote: post #6

A little while ago, a patent for high throughput DNA synthesis using silicon chips went off-patent, so I have been learning analog IC chip design to build an open source high-throughput DNA synthesis chip. If it works, and I sold them at cost, it would reduce the cost of oligo pool synthesis by ~100x and possibly gene synthesis by 10x. For about 8-9 years now my goal has been to build a cell from scratch for less tha…

I'd just like to echo (verbally "vote") my concern. Every great step forward comes with the potential for an order of magnitude steps backward, i.e. destruction. The amount of man hours to e.g. blow up a building is far fewer than the amount needed to build it. Will the output of your product add a suicide timer to a cell? Will the output of your product prevent the cells from procreating/multiplying? Will the output…

This is like asking people if they've properly guarded against a malicious AI before making hobbyist computers.

> Will the output of your product prevent the cells from procreating/multiplying?

Why would this matter? We have immortal cell lines like hela cells that have been alive for decades.

> Will the output of your product prevent pathogen creation?

No, but no one is going to "accidentally" create a new pathogen (you'd need this as well as some expensive labware and a lot of expertise), and the people with the incentive can already do so in labs.

> Will the output of your product require a specific, unnatural energy source that can only be man made?

What lol

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

#477

Post by khitchdee »

notananthem wrote: post #458
khitchdee wrote: post #454

A keyboard based IDE for a keyboard based GUI for PCs. Common PC GUIs are WIMP based (Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointers). They require the usage of a mouse and are pretty complicated. I find the usage of the mouse in a PC GUI "unnatural". So I set out designing a keyboard-input only based GUI. It turned out, that wasn't as difficult as I initially thought. Then I started writing an IDE for designing apps using this new…

I feel like if you advertise this to the various "Mechanical Keyboard" communities they'd lose their shit in a positive way. r/mechanicalkeyboard is a main public one

Thanks. I'll try that.

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

#478

Post by mingyeow »

I’m working on interoperability between blockchains. The number and variety of blockchains are exploding and approaches so far have been sharply lacking - failing to tackle key problems in decentralizing, generalizing, data translation and the economics of providing a robust, secure interchain operability.

Moving from largely centralized and specific message passing and token bridging into general interoperability that is decentralized and modular for any new blockchain or multi-chain protocol to extend and build on top of is a huge challenge.

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

#479

Post by askvictor »

aussiegreenie wrote: post #433

I am building a "sausage machine" to commercialise Australian univerity technology and create American companies. It is a one-stop-shop for Aussie companies to enter the USA market. I have a Tech Center in Maryland ( http://www.autechcenter.com ) which offers lots of free services to Australian startups and we ticket clip any capital to make money. Current projects are: * NASA award winning Wound Healding tech https:…

When you say to commercialise AU university tech, what do you mean? In particular the university part, as opposed to the startups?

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

#480

Post by gumby »

jbay808 wrote: post #419
gumby wrote: post #394

I am working on climate repair, specifically the removal of methane from the atmosphere. Although the excess methane is only about 1.3 ppm, it's responsible for about a third of the temperature rise. We're not building a huge machine to try to suck the atmosphere through a straw; we're doing chemistry in the open atmosphere. Plan to have a pilot running within the next year and within five years be removing up to 100…

Is the plan to remove it by converting methane to CO2?

Exactly: methane breaks down naturally into two H2O and one CO2. Unfortunately nature can't keep up with the increased emissions (which are mostly impossible to prevent -- the heating earth is increasing the rate of natural methane emissions as well) so we are giving nature a hand.
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