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

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581–590 of 831 posts

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

#581
post #578

Verified location using GPS. Problem: Currently, users (or attackers) can easily manipulate the location provided to an app on a phone. Solution: Use raw measurements from positioning sattellites to check if the location reported by a user actually lines up with the measurements of their phone. Why is it hard? - Lack of documentation, standardization and support on collecting raw measurements on phones. - Processing…

This looks very useful. Good luck with your pursuit!

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

#582
post #508

Everyone seems to ignore the only critically significant hard problem: how do we mitigate the negative impacts that humans have had on the planet? Right now it looks like we are careening towards a quick extinction of the human race and most other species and we are not doing anything about it. True, the magnitude of the problem is daunting. True, it may be too late as we are past the tipping point. True, it is easie…

Solutions to the stated problems are, from a technical and policy stand point very simple. Yes, we know how to solve all of this - it's called market regulation and we know it works reeeely well. But it's politically hard. What we need is an economically pragmatic green political movement, who will not keep shooting itself in the foot with left-wing ideological purity competitions. Profit seeking motive is only a pro…

I agree, In fact you'd think conservatives forces would recognize that the greatest threat to the status quo is CC, and that they'd act in favor of saving the world if only because it will ensure their dominance.

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

#583
post #513

Existing mediums for note-taking (Evernote, Notion, Roam Research) are not sufficient for doing knowledge work over long periods of time. The functions these incumbents serve are primarily as “stores of knowledge” that we save because it’s interesting in the moment but never read through or “scratchpads” that we use once and never get rid of, which end up cluttering our information space like a junk drawer full of sh…

Have you already done anything towards this goal? This is something I’ve been thinking about for several years and I’m about to tackle as a side project so would love to chat with you if you want.

My contact info is on my profile

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

#584
post #27
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mind posting some screenshots?

Sure! Just ignore my dwm desktop row on the top. http://www.blunder.se/screenshots/s1.png http://www.blunder.se/screenshots/s2.png http://www.blunder.se/screenshots/s3.png

I checked out the repo, but didn't have high hopes when there weren't any screenshots in the README.

But these look great! You should definitely show them off. Adding them to the repo for others to see might generate the tinest bit more excitement for people stumbling on the project. :)

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

#585
post #561

Would Fremen Stillsuits like in the Dune novels actually be possible? These suits allow to survive for weeks out in the deep desert, by catching and recycling all of the body's lost water. Making sure no perspiration can escape is doable. Filtering the sweat to produce clean, salt-free water should be possible as well - membranes for water desalination do already exist today. To have all the required pumping action p…

Remember the desert is very cold at night. So you don't need to spend that much energy, as long as you can store heat.

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

#586
post #534

I'm going to be gone (read: no meaningful internet access) for about two years. I'm working on setting up a webserver such that it will: A) Stay up B) Stay up to date C) Stay uncompromised For the entire time I am gone with no interaction. Or rather, that's what I want to be working on. Instead, I'm working on making myself not be a lazy [blank].

Hey your profile doesn’t have a contact link but I have a few ideas that can solve this today. Reach out when you get a chance!

TIL that the email in the profile isn't public access. Probably should have realized that before.

My email is Shared404 (at) protonmail.com, I'd love to hear your ideas.

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

#587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Essentially the Maxwell's equations of information theory?

I don't think so, in the sense that it's not concerned with the same kinds of details as information theory (which it is not to say it is incompatible with it), and it provides a set of foundations that are common to information, semantics, mathematics and computation. As is well known, information theory doesn't deal with the meaning of the messages. As far as information goes, I am primarily concerned with informat…

Ok, so less about the flow and nature of information and more about the semantics.

> Seeing the computation as a physical process, processing information "about" details in its environment, highlights this.

Are you familiar with Karl Friston's work on the Free Energy Principle? [0] He touches on how the nature of a living being (computational agent) is to model its external environment and act upon that model. That making decisions based on internal logic requires external stimulus and semantics being analyzed and augmented in sort of a feedback loop.

> The key to all this is appreciating that, once you see semantics and information processing as a matter of physical processes, you can see that the correct semantics can be necessary for producing a physical outcome.

I think I understand what you're saying and it touches on some of my own inquiries. A more concrete example, if you have one, might better help align me with where your thoughts are at regarding this.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIu_dJGyIQI

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

#588
Making people aware they should test their drugs. MDMA testing is illegal in lots of places, we ship test kits where available.

And I created a reverse image search to look up pill data: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=be.harmreducti...

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

#590
post #513

Existing mediums for note-taking (Evernote, Notion, Roam Research) are not sufficient for doing knowledge work over long periods of time. The functions these incumbents serve are primarily as “stores of knowledge” that we save because it’s interesting in the moment but never read through or “scratchpads” that we use once and never get rid of, which end up cluttering our information space like a junk drawer full of sh…

I think Apple Notes, OneNote and especially XMind solves this pretty well? For me at least.

All of these work more like scratchpads and, well, note books. That's fine if I want to put information down for later retrieval and even for low key exploration of past thought. But that's just the digitization of pre-21st century information management. What is now sought after is the next, previously impossible step.

What I envision is more of a knowledge space navigator that lives from connections and links (Wikipedia!) but allows a personal state of information and annotation/augmentation on top of it.

I want something that digitally represents my state of thought while augmenting it with a clean version of the world's knowledge and related information, if that makes sense.

Imagine writing a crypto algorithm - a browser with 30 tabs open and a note app plus my IDE feel like a clumsy and ineffective way to truly put my mind and thoughts into the context of work. It simply feels like doing digitally what people did in the 1960s with pen and paper, encyclopedias and books on their desk.

However, the internet and our hardware today feel like they allow to add at least one another dimension. For many, it's a hunch and a revolutionary product waiting to happen.

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