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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?

#92

Somewhat of a departure from the rest of the current comments. I'm a dataminer/rom hacker mainly working on Nintendo handheld systems from the DS onward and I've recently resigned myself to learning the sort of ASM code needed to reverse engineer compiled assets (since obviously I have no way of getting a pre-compiled version of those assets). I've been looking into the legality of reverse engineering and I've always…

That sounds awesome! Are these things you're doing for work, or on your own (or both)? I'm not much of a gamer, and I don't know what the market looks like for Nintendo systems...what are the applications for custom ROMs on DSs and other handheld systems?

Some excellent free reverse engineering courses for Windows[0] and Linux[1] were posted in another HN thread recently, and a couple other HNers and I started a study group for the Linux course. We have a Discord group, and we're meeting for the first time on Thursday, in case you're interested. (It sounds from what you're doing as if you might already be past those resources, knowledge-wise.)

[0] https://github.com/0xZ0F/Z0FCourse_ReverseEngineering [1] https://beginners.re/

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

#94
I'm trying to build a programming language that might best be characterized as rust - ownership + GC + goroutines (coroutines with an automatic yield semantic).

My rationale for starting this project was that I like specific features or facilities of many individual languages, but I dislike those languages for a host of other reasons. Furthermore, I dislike those languages enough that I don't want to use them to build the projects I want to build.

I'm still at a relatively early point in the project, but it has been challenging so far. I'm implementing the compiler in Crystal, and I needed a PEG parser combinator library or a parser generator that targeted Crystal, but there wasn't a PEG parser in Crystal that supported left recursive grammar rules in a satisfactory way, so that was sub-project number 1. It took two years, I'm ashamed to say, but now I have a functioning PEG parser (with seemingly good support for left recursive grammar rules) in Crystal that I can use to implement the grammar for my language.

There is still a ton more to be done - see http://www.semanticdesigns.com/Products/DMS/LifeAfterParsing... for a list of remaining ToDos - but I'm optimistic I can make it work.

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

#95
Alerting people when proposals are put before municipal councils to develop natural land. I found out too late that a huge, beautiful forest where I live is going to be ripped up and turned into investment condos. So in the interest of giving natural land a fighting chance, I'm setting up a system that will notify users when an address they've submitted is being rezoned.

The challenge is obviously scaling, since every municipality is different. For now it's going to cover my region and we'll see from there.

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

#97
post #43

Dental treatments, besides being very expensive, are often (up to 28%) unnecessary. This happens because no-one keeps dentists in check. I am trying to make dental treatment and diagnosis reviews easy, cheap, reliable and fast.

Are you in the United States? If so, how do you get past the regulatory hurdles that is each state’s dental board comprised entirely of dentists?

EDIT: Sorry, I missed the reviews part. Do you mean easily getting a second opinion based on diagnostic imaging?

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

#99
post #57

sustainability in fashion. there's a lot of "greenwashing" in the industry driven by opaqueness and lack of measurable data. step #1 is to get more brands on board. step #2 make it easier to monitor supply-chain and have actionable and measurable KPIs built around data.

this is very interesting! anyway for us to connect directly to learn more? i have deep expertise in the fashion manufacturing industry.

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

#100
post #37

This problem will only apply to very few people. But over the past 2.5 years I've been tracking everything and deriving insights on my activities. This produced some astounding results. e.g. Chewing gum makes me more comfortable in a conversation. Recently I've found a community of robot-like people on reddit who also do this. So I decided to build a platform. It's still in its early stages but feel free to check it…

Can you point us to the community? Any other insights you’ve discovered? I tracked my data for a year and discovered strawberries were a potent mood enhancer.

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