
Ask HN: What problems do you see worth solving in 2019-2020? - Beefin
I&#x27;m familiar with the rfs page, but I&#x27;m curious what HN thinks about trends&#x2F;opportunities for solving problems. Could be massive problems or just low hanging fruit.<p>Maybe this thread could be a lifting off point for a startup - in which case I&#x27;d consider it a success :)
======
vessenes
So many — here are a few large scale problems I think about lately.

* Trustworthiness of content (text and soon photo and video) is and will be a fundamental problem. This is the basic attack vector for national and global politics in the last few years. Anyone with a good solution would help the world immeasurably and have their pick of customers.

* fall out from monetary policy in the us and Europe: take your pick, but for example - home prices in urban areas; figuring out how to house families for 1/2 or 1/3 current prices in the United States would have a lasting impact on stability and wealth creation.

* the continued effectiveness of state propaganda; related to my first suggestion above.

* obesity in the us and soon Western Europe.

* data security - fixing large scale data breaches.

* what I call long range to short range : problems too big for people to think about or accept abound, like climate change. Finding one and figuring out how to tie to short term incentives creating a positive feedback loop would be a real game changer. Oil does this all the time but usually not with good long term consequences - cf fracking turns North Dakota into a boom zone — creativity around good not pernicious cycles would be a boon for the world.

~~~
folkhack
> Anyone with a good solution would help the world immeasurably and have their
> pick of customers.

I don't buy this. Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc. are all beholden to a
constant growth model - just like every other traded company that's
responsible to their own board.

Even in ecommerce (which is primarily my background) the players that
"complain" about bots actually love the hell out of them because they eat up
risk... I'm thinking about companies like Ticketmaster, Supreme, Nike, etc.
They implement anti-bot measures "up to a point", which typically is a
breakable CAPTCHA and validating purchase quantities to shipping
addresses/payment methods (ex: only allow 4 of this hot item to be purchased
with this CC number/shipping addr).

These big players are where the bulk of the misinformation campaigns are
happening and they've been effectively sitting on their hands because if they
started booting off bad actors (bots, propagandaists, people sharing factually
false information) it would hurt their new account sign-up/content
creation/interaction numbers, which will eventually hurt the stock price.

Here's why I say all of this... As someone who has done large-scale bot work I
feel like there's a huge disconnect with things like Facebook account sign-up
where it's effectively always open for someone with the basic capability to
bypass a CAPTCHA. Given their resources, I absolutely believe they could
easily have a higher barrier of entry when it comes to keeping people with my
skillset out - they're just not interested in blocking automated sign-ups and
the like.

I'm convinced that the big "FAANG", or "GAFA", or whatever players can't
really solve this problem because it'd probably hurt their business to
cannibalize their own numbers... even if it's the right thing to do.
Leadership would get kicked from boards and stuff. Ergo, the problem keeps on
truckin' =(

~~~
ridaj
I don't think the boards of Facebook, Twitter, or Reddit have somehow missed
the message that content trustworthiness is as existential a threat to their
business as their growth numbers. Just in case they hadn't gotten the point
from the market, I'm sure dragging some of their CEOs to one congressional
hearing after another sends a very clear signal.

In terms of investment, it's also clear that they are putting a lot more
resources in both engineering and content reviewer heads towards these
problems every year.

------
untog
I was just thinking the other day that we're in (or are at least entering) a
slightly sad era as far as tech is concerned. Not too long ago (it feels,
anyway) there was this explosion of possibilities when smartphones arrived on
the scene. People were doing genuinely impressive and innovative things at a
fair clip.

That's kind of dried up now. The latest iterations of smartphones are just
minor progressions on previous models. Supposed new frontiers (AR/VR, self
driving cars) have largely disappointed. The problems (the _real_ problems) we
face today like climate change, growing income inequality, stagnating public
transit, aren't really solvable by most of us in tech. In fact, in retrospect
I wonder how many problems we were really solving anyway (is Uber just a giant
VC investment bubble? Will we look back on it as a distraction from improving
public transit?)

...so yeah, I dunno. Feels like we're in a fallow year or few. It's not that
problems aren't solvable, it's that they will take wide scale activism and a
great deal of human work. A new API or tool isn't going to cut it.

~~~
wait-a-minute
5G will probably bring in another wave of smartphone and IoT innovation.
Imagine what can be done when sensors/cameras can transmit 10x the amount of
data per second that they can now. I'm especially interested in how this might
enable low-cost high-quality telemedicine.

~~~
untog
> Imagine what can be done when sensors/cameras can transmit 10x the amount of
> data per second that they can now.

I've thought about this before and honestly I can't come up with many things.
Telemedicine in terms of speaking to a doctor over video is already very
possible over the connections we have today. Bringing that to a wider audience
(say, third world countries) is an interesting possibility, but it also
requires bringing 5G to third world countries, so I don't think that's going
to happen too quickly.

Aside from that, what does 5G really bring us? The same stuff, only faster. I
mean, good, sure. But it's not that inspiring.

~~~
wait-a-minute
[https://www.geek.com/tech/worlds-first-5g-powered-remote-
bra...](https://www.geek.com/tech/worlds-first-5g-powered-remote-brain-
surgery-performed-in-china-1778982/)

[https://www.cnet.com/news/5g-could-make-self-driving-cars-
sm...](https://www.cnet.com/news/5g-could-make-self-driving-cars-smarter-
commutes-safer/)

There's also the possibility of much faster speeds even in areas without 5g,
since the competition will make 3g speeds a really bad look.

------
saalweachter
Garbage.

How do you take a bag of mixed garbage and perform a fractional distillation
of it, pulling out components and recycling and reusing them efficiently,
until you are left with a tiny residue, ideally nothing, of true waste? How do
you do this in a cost effective manner without relying on absurdly cheap labor
and lax health, safety and environmental protection regulations?

~~~
MandieD
Sadly I have but one upvote to give, because making that kind of optimal use
of garbage would solve a bunch of other problems.

~~~
saalweachter
It's also such a rich technical problem, that spans every sort of engineering,
from machine learning to robotics to chemistry and materials engineering.

And it's like, purely a technical business. If you have a company that can
"buy" garbage for $X and sell your outputs for $Y > $X (+costs), you don't
need to deal with politics and lobbying and building buzz.

~~~
louisguitton
200% agreed. But sadly, PhD positions in the field are so hard to find. A
friend of mine is an engineer set out to do just that and even the biggest
private sector players struggle to fund. Have you experienced the same?

------
quaquaqua1
There are a lot of things I want to do in life that someone tells me I can't
do. For example, I can't buy a house for an affordable price because the
supply is artificially constrained for less-than-ideal reasons.

Similarly, I want to work remotely but can't because of company culture. I am
willing to negotiate but they are not. Even if I could work remotely, other
countries won't let me stay for more than a month or without me arbitrarily
flying out and then flying back in.

These are all problems that I'm having in my life _right now_ , and they
aren't really tech problems compared to people ones. Influential people need
to be the ones to solve these problems, but none of them have taken action.

I hope this can be fixed somehow. In the 2010s, I went from not being able to
text my international friends on my phone to it being trivial and near-zero in
price (thanks Whatsapp!).

I hope something big changes in 2020.

~~~
s_y_n_t_a_x
Bought a 3 bedroom house for $75k because I work remotely. There are cheap
places to live in America, you don't have to fly out of country.

~~~
untog
That's a valid choice, but it isn't for everyone for a variety of reasons
(perhaps they like the amenities a city offers, perhaps they have family
nearby and don't want to move away).

Point is, cities could be building a lot more housing, but typically can't
because of zoning regulations and NIMBY activism. It's a shame.

~~~
non-entity
Yeah, I've been offered jobs in some of the cheapo areas (actually live in
one), but among many issues, it would be tolling on my mental health. I
already lack any friends or nearby family, and moving to an area like that
would kill me

~~~
quaquaqua1
I agree with you. Furthermore, you are describing a negative aspect of the
work around to the housing problem.

The true solution to the housing problem is to remove the laws that are
allowing supply constraint in "liveable" areas like NY, CA, MA, etc.

The local government there in charge of housing policy prevents people from
adding more liveable legal units to their land. So for example if you wanted
to remodel your land to have 2 houses on it instead of one, or to be 4 floors
tall with apartments, or to have only a very small energy efficent house on
it, the local government will tell you "haha sorry no."

This is a really big problem because land is in finite supply and as a result
if you have a very dense area of office buildings with 20,000 workers and only
1,000 houses are in a commutable distance, then you have 19,000+ workers who
are either going to be renting illegally, sleeping in their car, commuting 50
miles, or paying through the nose for a house.

------
tyleo
Having seen many employees grow their careers quickly by ping-ponging jobs at
Microsoft and Amazon (and vice-versa), I’m thinking about a platform for
enabling this. Essentially you would put in your level, current company, and
genre of jobs you are interested in and the platform would find jobs for you
which are the next level up and help you apply. The employer would have no
idea you were using the platform. I’ve seen a handful of people boost their
salary very quickly this way right out of college.

~~~
thewarrior
You can do this by using linked in + Glassdoor + levels.fyi smartly.

------
rfc
Modular housing that grows with your life. Biggest problem there is effective
expansion joints that would hold the houses together.

Affordable container ship that is electric.

A personal finance software that solves upper-middle class issues (eg. primary
income, side business, rentals, etc.).

A product/service that makes CROs obsolete in drug development (CROs = 25% of
cost of drugs; admin overhead)

Idk, those are some that immediately come to my mind.

~~~
dazc
'Modular housing that grows with your life.'

Like a giant kit of Lego, maybe?

------
overshard
It still seems insanely difficult to track calories and macros with all the
apps out there to do it. Most of the content for searching for your food is
"community generated" so if I try to add a "Big Mac" (example, not eating big
macs...) then I get like 30 results all with different amounts of calories and
nutrition amounts also with slightly different naming.

Maybe this exists somewhere??? But if someone can make an app to help me keep
track of my food intake in an organized, managed (only one big mac when I
search big mac and maybe options to add/remove toppings), fashion I would be
slightly less insane counting my protein intake.

Yes, this is a difficult task with how much food is out there and thus it has
great value if someone does it extremely well.

~~~
m_ke
We're working on something like that with Bitesnap. We added "builders" that
let you customize the ingredients for common foods and for now we don't mix
user submitted items across users. We plan on adding a way to cross verify
user submitted data to keep the DB clean.

If you have any other ideas/requests I'd love to hear them. I can be reached
at "michal at bite.ai"

~~~
Beefin
This looks awesome, I'm going to give it a try. Do you offer API's for partner
integrations? I have a platform ([https://meports.com](https://meports.com))
that I'd see some super valuable synergies with.

------
atlasunshrugged
There are a ton of great ideas backed up by a considerable amount of research
done by 80,000 hours ([https://80000hours.org/](https://80000hours.org/))
about problems worth solving (although most I think would take longer than a
year). They also have a nifty job board in case you want to work for an
existing high impact org rather than start your own

~~~
rognjen
I've heard of 80000 hours before but if I'm not mistaken it's more for people
who don't _have_ to work to earn money.

A while ago one of their career advice blog posts gained traction and it read
absolutely as advice for someone who doesn't have to worry about money at all.
One of the pieces of advice was something like "don't make long term plans"
and there was no advice at all about compensation.

E:

Found the blog post: [https://80000hours.org/2019/04/career-advice-i-wish-id-
been-...](https://80000hours.org/2019/04/career-advice-i-wish-id-been-given-
when-i-was-young/)

It includes advice such as "Don’t focus too much on long-term plans" and
"Crowdsource your career decisions".

~~~
atlasunshrugged
Maybe for that one person who wrote that article that's true, at least for
myself who has followed some of their advice (and many people in my network)
we definitely all have to work to earn money and survive. I also think there
is lots of other advice and frameworks for how to think about your career on
the site so I would take one anonymous contribution with a grain of salt, even
if they did have a high impact career.

------
buboard
Remote worker stuff. I think with a little more tech, we can make a lot of
people happier, having free time, living where they want, spend more time near
family and commute less which would reduce emissions. This is short term and
the impact could be enormous

Also, we need to standardize GDPR and cookie consent forms, so i can use a
blocker for them , they are seriously messing my productivity

~~~
Down_n_Out
Definitely the remote work stuff, it's ridiculous how many people sit at the
desk in a stuffy or crowded office while they could do the same work at home
or wherever. Less cars (and less company cars needed, so potentially better
pay), less commuters, less pollution. This is something that could benefit the
environment, overall health and happiness of people and so much more. Just
wish companies would get on board already, it's improving but a lot of
countries and companies are still far behind.

------
AnimalMuppet
People with different viewpoints can't talk to each other. Or rather, on
several important topics, too many people can't or won't talk to people with
different views.

~~~
antisthenes
The assumption here is that viewpoints have an equivalent value.

That assumption is probably the most toxic element contributing to the demise
of intelligent public discourse and disagreement in the last decade.

I see no problem in refusing to argue with someone who is ranting against
established science and refuses to look at the evidence or to reproduce the
scientific results themselves.

~~~
mo1ok
I think opinions can have equal value - in a roundabout way.

I.e. climate denialism is usually an expression of anti-establishmentarianism
married with a fear of downward mobility.

------
neuroticfish
Climate change should be anyone's first answer.

~~~
Finnucane
We can't make real progress on a lot of other problems unless that is
addressed. There's always calls for more housing in the cities, but it's going
to be real hard for the cities to support growing populations if
transportation infrastructure becomes harder to maintain, if coastal land is
encroached by the sea, if water supplies can't be secured. If large-scale
agriculture isn't sustainable, cities won't be sustainable.

~~~
quickthrower2
Maybe we can reduce our reliance on cities. The main thing we need is ways for
average joe to make a living outside of the city. Remote working would help.
Maybe those dying shopping malls become shared office spaces, and you pick
your office and your company separately. You get the social side with people
working for other people in the same room!

~~~
Finnucane
Sure that is part of the solution. But when everyone is shouting for more
housing in already densely-built cities, it's hard to tell everyone, move to
somewhere where there's still more space (though that is happening to some
degree, just by basic economic force).

------
srijanshetty
My top picks would be:

Fake news and media credibility. In the 21st centurty it's become hard to
trust content, especially viral content shared on social media like WhatsApp.
Hopefully we make progress on this front.

Sustainable funding models for the fourth estate in developing nations. The
lack of sustainable funding leads to slashing of investigative journalism in
developing countries which makes corruption more rampant. Solving this issue
will help unearth fraud and keep the government in check.

Climate Change discourse and discourse for the masses. It's difficult to
convey facts to the masses today in a reliable manner.

------
Robotbeat
Short-haul and medium-haul and long-haul conventional take-off electric
aircraft.

There's a lot of work on VTOL electric aircraft and hybrid aircraft. There's a
lot of capturing low-hanging fruit by trying to electrify existing airframes.
On the higher end, there's a lot of work on enabling lithium-air or lithium-
sulfur or solid state lithium or metal electrode lithium ion batteries.
However, there's not a lot of work on combining extremely high efficiency
airframes (i.e. glider-like) with extremely high performance batteries (and
high battery mass fraction, i.e. 60%, not 25%). Often one or the other is the
focus, but a combination is essential to enable decent range (1000km) with
existing batteries and long-haul range (at 4000-10,000km) with advanced
chemistries (lithium air).

Another issue is low capital cost hydrogen production. There has been a lot of
work on reducing the cost-per-watt of solar and wind power and fuel cells, but
progress on cost-per-watt on hydrogen production (i.e. electrolysis) has been
lacking. That means it's not financially viable to produce hydrogen from
excess intermittent renewable energy, in spite of the clear potential (if the
cost-per-watt of your electrolysis equipment is much higher than the cost-per-
watt of wind or solar, you need to run near constantly to make your capital
investment make sense... hydrogen doesn't work as a flexible demand source if
the capital cost is so high the plant has to run all the time).

Microbiome modification to reduce methane emissions from ruminants (cows and
sheep and goats).

Liquid hydrogen powered container ships or long-haul aircraft (and a method of
dealing with the water emissions so as not to release water vapor at high
altitudes).

High efficiency deep cryogenic liquefaction of hydrogen.

Battery-electric long haul locomotives (perhaps with intermittent charging via
catenary).

Extremely cheap Level 1 or 2 electric charging outlets. Literally an outdoor
outlet with a relay controlled by an app that can be deployed at just ~$30
extra beyond a regular outdoor outlet. Could enable mass deployment of
electric car infrastructure at very little cost (possibly even self-funding
due to a small fee).

Carbonfree (or carbon negative) steel, aluminum, and cement production.

~~~
rwmurrayVT
What is holding up the price of level 2 outlets? I would imagine there are
several options for level 2 outlets and chargers. Of course, it looks like
they're pretty expensive, but the question is why?

~~~
Robotbeat
I don't know. That'd be a good thing to find out.

------
espeed
One of the problems that just surfaced in the news ... is the realization that
almost all prescription meds are manufactured in China. The risk that poses to
the US population and DoD is incalculable. How do we get off China meds?

Fake chips have been a problem too, polluting the supply space. All the more
reason to protect and verify IP. There's new tech for that. Maybe the next big
thing. Hardware verified. Authenticity.

See
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20594065](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20594065)

------
n-exploit
Global wealth inequality and social insecurity.

I'm a firm believer in real-time payment systems and its ability to quickly
address issues vital issues like the above, and related issues like climate
change. Markets operate in real-time, and the current banking infrastructure -
which creates an artificial bottleneck via ACH delays - is an old and dying
dinosaur. I imagine a world of daily paychecks is just a few years in the
future.

~~~
daneyh
Why would real time payment actually improve either climate change or wealth
inequality and social insecurity?

------
godelski
How do you create a global and free internet? Speeds aren't as important as
just the ability to communicate, i.e. at least a text chat system.

You could do something like meshing with HAM or other radios (or combine a lot
of messing networks together depending on the hop distance). We can already
communicate globally with HAM.

The question to me is how do we advance this more for higher reliability,
better speeds, and create tools that everyone can use (essentially a zero, or
low, knowledge system, like a cellphone). The major factor I see is
reliability, so that it is difficult for an oppressive regime to shut it down
(would also serve as an extremely reliable method when other systems fail
during things like natural disasters. You can probably see more advantages to
this backbone network). So we could have an open alternative to the segmenting
internet that is currently happening. I honestly believe global communication
is one of the fundamental necessities to achieving a more peaceful world.

~~~
ohiovr
High Speed Multimedia or HSMM is a mesh network for ham operators. I would be
interested in getting into it but the off the shelf equipment is microwave
band and does not propagate like 20 meter. So it has a kind of chicken vrs egg
problem for now.

~~~
godelski
That's why I'm thinking just a communication platform. Start small. Rebuild
from the ground up. Robustness is more important than any other factors imo. I
want something that is near impossible to take down and can reach globally. I
would think this would have to be some large mesh network. There's definitely
a lot of challenges in just getting text to transmit across something like
this. But it has a ton of uses.

~~~
ohiovr
Sounds like a cool project. Would it be possible to vastly undertune a wifi
router to work on 20 meter? Would be cool to keep it on the cheap too.

------
hprotagonist
\- voting rights, disenfranchisement, and election security.

\- climate change.

\- vigorous enforcement of international law guaranteeing human rights for
refugees.

\- closure of industrial-grade CO2 emission sites like coal power plants.

~~~
gremlinsinc
I think paramount to all of those is the revolving door / political corruption
that is Washington.

Remove money from politics and many of those issues will resolve themselves.

Make it so politicians may never become lobbyists, and in fact make it so
lobbyists can't give money to campaigns, politicians, or PACS and Super PACS.
Make it super hard to raise money except via grass roots and small donors.

This may cause some career politicians to throw in the towel and retire and
make way for fresh ideas.

Replacing these career politicians opens the way for fresh ideas on Climate
change, voters rights, etc... I see nothing so wrong as our corrupt political
apparatus. It's not just us though, it's all politics everywhere, but it's
definitely blatant in America.

------
Mizza
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bio-
energy_with_carbon_capture...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bio-
energy_with_carbon_capture_and_storage)

This is basically the only problem in the world that matters.

------
quickthrower2
I wonder naively why a country like Australia (lots of sun and land and raw
material) doesn’t go all in for solar and batteries. Print a bunch of QE money
and invest it in building infrastructure to create store and export energy
from solar (ship charged batteries? Under sea electric cables?). It would boom
the local economy while creating a long term asset and help the planet.
Assuming the panels can be made, constructed and installed without too much
environmental impact.

~~~
tomtomau
Politics and lobbying mostly I'd guess. Resources sector are the major donors
to the two major parties. Resources supported boom growth through the 2000s
but we didn't do a great job transitioning to "new technology industries".

There is a national debate on the outcome of the Adani coal mine which in
oversimplified terms is willing to risk X0,000 tourism industry jobs to save
X00 resources jobs.

"Australians are good at two things, digging things up out of the ground and
selling property to each other"

------
adamnemecek
Global warming. I think a good approach would be growing sea weed. Sea weed is
much better at consuming CO2 than land based plants.
[https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/seaweed-climate-
change/](https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/seaweed-climate-change/)

------
espeed
Election security is ripe to be solved. Trust is key.

"16M Americans will vote on hackable paperless machines"
[https://www.technologyreview.com/s/614148/16-million-
america...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/614148/16-million-americans-
will-vote-on-hackable-paperless-voting-machine/)

See
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20759306](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20759306)

NB: Ben Adida is one person who has been thinking about and working on this
problem for years [https://ben.adida.net/](https://ben.adida.net/)

------
flooo
Integrating control in adaptive systems. We see a big trend where (parts of)
systems can adapt their behaviour to particularities of the environment they
are deployed in with the biggest technical driver being machine learning.

Controlling this adaptivity is usually done in an ad hoc fashion by writing
code surrounding the adaptive component, usually a ml model

This yields many problems ranging from "artificial stupidity" to problems with
safety and degraded power of users.

By integrating control into adaptive systems, we might get the best of both
worlds: tell the program what (not) to do where you know this upfront and let
it figure out how to act by itself elsewhere

------
human20190310
I'd like to see a pushback on privacy intrusions and the dark user-interface
patterns that trick people into allowing them.

I just installed Windows 10 for the first time, and the number of things I had
to turn off just to get to a sub-totalitarian level of monitoring my
activities was ridiculous. The kicker was that Windows Home edition doesn't
have disk encryption, so anyone who steals my laptop can help themselves to my
private information too.

This probably isn't solvable by technology in and of itself, but consumer
education and consumer action against tech companies might make a dent.

------
sitkack
Global Warming and the complex graph of externalities that incentivize
organizations to continue on status quo or ignore huge signals.

Economies need to switch to steady state instead of growth. We need to reduce
the total output.

------
tmaly
Education - I think if we can drastically improve it, that is our best chance
at solving other problems. Glenn Doman in his book How to Teach Your Baby to
Read, said every child has the potential for genius. That has kinda stuck in
my mind this thought.

Plastics - the oceans are filling up with them. Stuff is not getting recycled
despite people putting things in blue bins. Some research in material science
to make something that breaks down faster would be huge

------
ericb
Allergies. Something has changed to make us allergenic to a degree that was
never previously the case. We need to understand and fix it.

~~~
krel
Is this true? Or did we just not care about allergies before when we had much
bigger issues (like dying at age 30)?

Some reference/data to back up your claim would be nice.

~~~
ericb
[https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db121.pdf](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db121.pdf)

[https://www.bbc.com/news/health-46302780](https://www.bbc.com/news/health-46302780)

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4254585/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4254585/)

------
known
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rate)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_unsolved_problems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_unsolved_problems)

------
jacobwilliamroy
In no particular order:

Overpopulation

Climate change

War

U.S. congress transferring its powers to the executive branch.

Global dependence on cheap oil

Global food unsecurity

Dwindling access to drinkable water and breathable air, or more broadly:
pollution

------
gHosts
Graph Theory in the presence of modules and dependencies between modules.

Every thing in computing is modular and multiple levels of modules and has
coupling and dependencies between modules.

It's the hottest and hardest problem in real world computing... it's nicely
representable in a graph theoretic framework.... but graph theorists aren't
looking at it.

~~~
princesse
Can you provide more details? Are you talking about algorithms like modular
decomposition[1]? Any specific challenge you'd like to see addressed in the
following years?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modular_decomposition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modular_decomposition)

~~~
gHosts
Especially automatic refactorings...

If you look at real code, often the main reason why this routine was added to
this file... was that the programmer worked in this file last.

Is that a Good Reason? No it's a bloody awful reason.

An automated tool should be able to look at the network of declarations,
definitions and references and work out which module each thing should be in.

~~~
thecupisblue
I'm using a datastructure like that in my sideproject (a new "software" editor
aka a list editor) - you got a data point that exists in multiple dimensions -
it has representations in backend, frontend, graphql schema, UI, db, mobile
client) and different relationships in each of those dimensions. And it can
have subdimensions and they can have their subdimensions etc. So when you
update the core representation, all get the update in the dimension they care
about.

It's a pretty great datastructure for writing code, you get automatic refactor
everywhere.

If you're interested to take a look ping me, would love fresh eyes

------
a1exyz
Good startups are about making something that people will love. Not something
that solves a global crisis.

Thinking of the latter instead of the former often results in "playing house"
ideas that sound like startup ideas but aren't actually. At least this is what
happens to me when I follow the thought process you are laying out.

------
JSeymourATL
According to Google Trends, the Josephus Problem recently spiked. I had to
look it up > [https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/josephus-problem-set-1-a-on-
so...](https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/josephus-problem-set-1-a-on-solution/)

------
bobosha
Reduce plastic bag usage. Everyday shoppers across the world, carry groceries
and other items in billions of mostly one-time-use bags that are very
destructive to the environment. Perhaps come up with a simple shop-to-home
cart that reduces (eliminates) plastic bags.

~~~
buboard
where i am we used those plastic bags as garbage bags. While usage has gone
down extremely after a tax was introduced, i now use the large bags. I dont
know if the impact was that important.

------
leet_thow
Rising male virginity and the 'incel' epidemic:
[https://twitter.com/_cingraham/status/1111607604348805120](https://twitter.com/_cingraham/status/1111607604348805120)

~~~
buboard
so, prostitution?

~~~
leet_thow
Not sure, just have a hunch it will be a problem in the coming years. Look at
Japan.

~~~
buboard
There is an enormous drop in T levels and sperm motility in the past decades.
Don't know if related

~~~
gremlinsinc
I wonder if maybe it has to do with more screen time and less real-world
socializing. Can't meet a girl when you never leave mom's basement. Also
staying in breeds phobia's of crowds and people and social interactions which
causes probably a lot of the incel behaviors in the first place.

~~~
buboard
> with more screen time and less real-world socializing

That would imply that girls overwhelmingly don't do the same, which is not the
case.

Maybe it's online dating

[https://www.icoderzsolutions.com/blog/facebook-online-
dating...](https://www.icoderzsolutions.com/blog/facebook-online-dating-app-
development/)

~~~
gremlinsinc
Maybe girls do -- do the same. Say 20% of girls do the same, that takes those
girls 'off the market', so there's more competition and less supply of
potential 'mates'.

I mean it sounds like a black mirror episode but, there could come a day where
nobody leaves the house and everything is done in a VR world, including
relationships and sex. Of course that might be healthier than what's going on
now, at least there's some actual socializing, not sure if it's a healthy
alternative to the real thing.

My point though is it seems a lot of 'incel' behavior is driven by
reddit/4chan (the seedier side of reddit, there are some good parts), so I
think maybe 4chan/reddit culture plays some role. Probably also group think as
there are groups devoted to incels and giving voice to their anger that no
women want them.

~~~
buboard
ok but the studies show that the phenomenon is more prevalent in men. it's the
nature of the sexual marketplace that is skewed towards males --
liberalization and competition on steroids as in online dating leads to
pauperization.

~~~
gremlinsinc
but is it more prevalent now than pre-facebook? If not then that would support
my hypothesis that online culture is adding to it, and possible causing some
of it.

~~~
buboard
> but is it more prevalent now than pre-facebook?

The graph of OP suggests so

------
moetsi
Compressing and streaming sensor data to prep for 5G definitely deserves a
mention here.

~~~
p1esk
You’re shadow banned

------
bch132
Figuring out how to keep the ignorant masses from blaming everything on
climate change.

------
davidw
IDK, mostly thinking about really difficult things that affect a lot of people
and are mostly political in nature:

* The housing crisis.

* Our cities and how they relate to the environment.

* The education system in the US (I'm quite stumped by this one).

------
batsy71
Hassle-free international retail trade of equities. A middle class Joe sitting
in Maldives being able to buy Beyond Meat stocks on the day of it's IPO.

Also stock markets getting fully automated to remain open 24x7.

------
michael_j_ward
I'm not familiar with the "rfs page"\- what is it?

~~~
tlb
YC's list of startup ideas it wants to fund at
[https://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/](https://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/)

------
konschubert
\- energy storage as the solution to climate change \- self driving cars \- a
cure for a cancer or a heart disease \- improving the effectiveness of remote-
only companies

~~~
mixandgo
What, in your opinion, could be improved for remote-only companies?

~~~
konschubert
Anything that improves communication.

Being able to drop into a call with somebody without them having to pick up.

Having an indicator that shows if people are afk or not.

------
arvinsim
Increasing social and economic inequality.

------
app4soft
The biggest problem: recycling of refuse.

------
omosubi
\- climate change

\- loss of topsoil in agricultural areas

\- loss of biodiversity

\- reducing dependence on cars in the US/Canada

\- bringing down cost of infrastructure

\- anxiety epidemic

\- loneliness epidemic

------
aledalgrande
Security in IoT devices - how to stop millions of new computers from getting
hacked?

------
Can_Not
Not enough Phoenix svelte starter templates. Not enough SSE instead of web
sockets.

------
zmix
* Environmental protection

* more poetry overall!

------
RocketSyntax
Small scale nuclear power

------
Finnucane
Peace in the Middle East.

------
jdc
Ergonomic molecular design & simulation

------
antisemiotic
Whether P=NP.

------
jammygit
Superbugs.

Sam Harris’s has a scary podcast recently with the author of the book by that
name. Preventing the superbug future would be world changing

