

Ask HN: Is anybody solving really cool problems anymore? - dnsworks

For the record, Nothing "web 2.0" is cool to me. I'm too old and jaded. Now here's what is cool:<p>- Domestic Robots (I just spent 3 hours doing 2 weeks worth of laundry. Automation please)<p>- Flying cars<p>- Efficient weight loss technology (if we can put a man on the moon and split up twins, why can't we just put a hose in my stomach and make it so that I can buy clothes off the shelf?)<p>- Accelerated learning<p>- Augmented reality .. for dating. Wouldn't it be great to walk into a club with a pair of glasses that double as a HUD and tell you a girl's OKCupid profile name, what her favorite band is, and what personality flags are set? Or even better, glasses that double as a HUD and can use AdBlockPro HUD Version in order to block out billboards and<p>- TV Killer for car stereos. I'd happily buy a keyfob that turns off the stereo of some kid parked below my window with 3x JL Audio 10" speakers wired up to 0 ohms playing the latest souljaboy hit at 160 bass-thumping decibles .. at 3am when I'm trying to sleep.<p>- Embedded GPS tracking chips so I never have to worry about becoming a stealth commando to get my daughter back after she's been kidnapped by russian slave traders.<p>- Self-driving cars .. I really, really hate driving, but even in San Francisco, public transportation sucks.<p>- Video conference that doesn't suck but doesn't require paying $200k to Cisco for the tech?<p>- 3D, immersive VR (whatever happened to the VR buzzword? I know it's sooo 1998) video games that hide reality for a while and make gaming fun again!<p>Seriously, someone must be doing something fun? The last two truly exciting technologies I've heard of were Dean Kamen's robotic arms, and FusionIO's storage devices .. And that's about it since Web 2.0 became a buzzword.
======
dangrossman
1) Maid.

2) They exist, you can go out and buy one now. Might need a pilot license.

3) Gastric bypass surgery.

4) Not quite there yet, but once you get her name you can look her up on
Facebook and Twitter.

5) Dunno about that one. Out here on the east coast, our stereos don't have
any kind of remote control receivers to zap from your window.

6) Ask Applied Digital Solutions, they made implantable GPS's in 2003.

7) Look at the Darpa Urban Challenge. We have self driving cars, the only
reason you can't buy it at your local car lot is that consumers don't trust
computers to drive them yet. Toyota's said as much.

8) Look at the front page right now, we've got remote control robots that ride
around the office with video of your head as their head.

~~~
dnsworks
1) A maid is not rosy the robot.. I have a maid, she comes every other week.
It's not feasible to have her do things like the laundry at any affordable
frequency.

2) I've got the license, I still don't see a street-legal flying plane ..
preferably one that is 100% auto-pilot that can let me surf the web while I
commute .. if I commuted further than a walk to bart.

3) Gastic Bypass surgery == starving yourself and throwing up if you eat more
than 3oz of food in a sitting. No thank you. There should be a pill, or a
suction hose. This would be a trillion dollar market.

4) I have hopes for augmented reality dating. It would just be awesome to have
that much extra knowledge .. Imagine you're about to hit on some beautiful
redhead in a "Science, it works bitches" shirt when you do a facial
recognition and find out through OKCupid that she's a strong christian and a
member of the jonesboro baptist church, whereas you're looking for a kinky
atheist .. Crisis avoided!

5) I spoke with the TV-B-Gone guys about this a while back. They gave it some
thought and found that the car-stereo options were just too varied to be
feasible .. I guess every souped up car stereo with remotes uses a different
tech, often proprietary. Still, it would be nice.. I'd also accept a
directional EMP gun.

6) oooh!

7) Definitely neat .. That being said, as a pedestrian, I don't trust my local
consumers to drive a car, maybe a computer could do a better job.

8) That's kind of neat.. I have a rather specific application for video chat.
My daughter lives in Seattle, and we use Google Video to chat right now ..
It's pretty sub-par. 900 miles as the bird flies should be enough for us to
have at least 1024x768 chat with minimal latency .. This is actually a startup
I'm thinking about pursuing, but one specifically towards making it so
divorced dads can chat with their toddlers without their toddlers having the
ability to accidentally close the window .. But I digress.

~~~
ewald
Apparently your perfect lifestyle would be about the same as people have in
Wall.E.

------
taitems
No offence intended, but this whole post reads like you are really
dissatisfied with the world.

~~~
dnsworks
Well not entirely dissatisfied with the world.

I really, really like cheese, seitan, and my Canon 5d MK2. The rest, however,
is leaving a lot to be desired.

I spend far too much time online hoping that something is really going to WOW
me and make me go "omgomgomg I'm going to go into debt to buy this/do this/see
this/experience this" .. But that moment still hasn't happened .. So maybe I'm
just looking in the wrong places?

~~~
taitems
That again sounds like you have trouble defining achievement or satisfaction.
Looking at the current state of technology compared to 5, 10, 50 or 500 years
ago it is apparent that we are advancing at what could only be labelled as an
exponential rate. Moore's law et al.

~~~
seunosewa
If he's unhappy with the world in general, is that any reason for us to be
offended? The world can be quite sucky, we may as well admit it. No need to go
into personal attack mode.

------
coffeemug
Sorry for the shameless plug, but we like to think we're solving really cool
problems: <http://www.rethinkdb.com>

EDIT: I don't have the time right now to make a list of really cool startups,
but I could probably come up with a list of at least ten. Here's one that
immediately comes to mind: <http://www.directededge.com/>

~~~
roundsquare
So, I only took a quick look at the two links. No offense, but do you really
think those are what the OP is talking about? He's asking for flying cars and
full VR immersion... its unlikely that very efficient database is going to
match up.

This is not to say that what you folks are doing isn't completely awesome. But
the OP's requests seem very different.

------
iamwil
The way to satiate your dissatisfaction is to work on it yourself.

------
olalonde
You might want to add <http://singularityhub.com/> to your feed reader ;)

~~~
dnsworks
Thank you. I am now very, very addicted.

------
dagw
I know academia is considered a dirty word among some people here, but
seriously if you want to see cutting edge cool stuff that is the place to go.
Pick something off your list, find out which university as at the cutting edge
of that field and apply for a PhD position.

------
jacquesm
Regarding the hose in your stomach, how about some self control? It shouldn't
be up to science to come up with solutions for over indulgence in what is
essentially a scarce resource.

Limit your intake, exercise and it will take care of itself.

~~~
dnsworks
Because the 2 hours per day of exercise and 1800 calorie diet I'm on clearly
states that I'm a glutton? How about this, the next time I'm in the
Netherlands to ride with my friends in the Grandfathers, I'll teach you some
self control. Jerk.

~~~
jacquesm
If you have some kind of medical condition that causes this them I'm really
sorry but you did not exactly go out of your way to put that in to your post,
so you are taking a chance at being misunderstood.

It looked like you were looking for a mechanical solution to something that in
the majority of overweight people is simply caused by consuming too much. If
you are not part of that majority then my apologies.

Feel free to threaten me at your convenience while you're anonymous, but be
aware that I immediately add the slashdot 'C' to that 'A'.

If you want to talk tough and have it mean something add your username to your
profile, at least then it looks like you're not just another bully.

~~~
dnsworks
I suggest a need for rapid, engineered weight loss systems that don't involve
scam artists or guilt, and what do you do, you try to make me feel guilty?

As for anonymous coward, if you're ever in San Francisco, or I'm ever in the
netherlands, I will gladly put your dutch ass in a hospital, douchebag.

~~~
jacquesm
I'm impressed with the amount of venom that you can muster for something that
I simply did not understand properly, and that you apparently do not seem to
want to elaborate on.

Also the fact that you are not prepared to accept an apology and simply clear
up the misunderstanding but instead prefer a fight is quite unlike what is
usual on HN.

I'm posting here under my own name, my email address is in my profile and all
my domains are linked to my business addresses, I couldn't possibly be less
anonymous than that.

You on the other hand are 'someone in San Francisco', last I checked there
were quite a few people living there so I hope you don't mind my still calling
you an AC.

This is not the 'ok corral' and we're not going to shoot it out at noon. Try
to be a little bit more reasonable and put your question in to perspective if
you want to be understood.

~~~
dnsworks
And I'm impressed with the amount of insensitivity and ignorance with which
you can make judgements about other people's lifestyles and body images.

A good friend of mine killed himself after losing 250lbs when he realized he
couldn't escape a lifetime of emotional damage from people ridiculing him
about his weight. Hating people because of their appearance is just another
type of bigotry, no different from racism, homophobia, or religious
intolerance.

As a fat man I have NEVER hated anybody for any of these reasons, but as a
thin man you somehow get a pass to do so against me because it's currently
politically correct to blame fat people for the world's ills?

~~~
jacquesm
I never said I hated you, in fact looking over your posting history I'd say
that we agree on most things most of the time.

As for the rest of this rant, I think you are simply using this to pick a
fight, and you are spoiling for one because of a lot of stuff in your life
that bothers you.

If you want stuff to be invented or changed then _go_ and invent stuff or
change stuff.

But don't blame others for not inventing stuff that would be convenient for
you to have and don't blame others for not liking your body, as far as that is
the case.

It seems to be a very sensitive point with you, but you have to keep in mind
that some part of your body comes under your control and some part of it you
are simply born in to and you'll have to make do with that.

For the record, I've had an extremely disfiguring skin condition, it used to
make me feel so uncomfortable that I wouldn't leave the house. I literally
used to scratch myself to little bits. It took me a good 15 years to get it
under control, careful experimenting with diet and trying to avoid situations
that were stressful is what finally did it.

Just because I'm 'thin' doesn't mean I didn't get my own taste of that sort of
thing. And even now I have to be careful. But I'm more than ever convinced
that we _really_ can make a difference in our own lives and in the ones of
people around us by working hard at it.

If your problems are glandular, hormonal or some weird combination of things
then there might be something you can do, there might not be. But I've seen
one guy kick the issue with an iron fist and go from well over 280 pounds to a
regular weight, and his problem _was_ definitely medical.

If he could do it, you may be able to do it too.

As for your friend, that's a really really sad thing that that happened.

If I made a post that asks the questions that you ask and left as much unclear
as you did then I would be the last to start using that and a bunch of
strawmen to pick fights, HN is not a place to vent your frustration in
general, much less one where you get to threaten people with bodily harm.

Doing so makes you look juvenile and unbalanced.

------
mschaecher
<http://www.betterplace.com/>

<https://squareup.com/>

<http://www.onlive.com/>

<http://www.hyperionpowergeneration.com/>

<http://www.firstsolar.com/en/index.php>

That is a quick list off the top of my head of companies that are doing new
and innovative things that have the potential to seriously disrupt some
existing industries.

------
tallanvor
Of course people are working on a lot of these (and other) interesting
technologies. In Tokyo, you can see some models of self driving cars and
robots that Toyota has come up with. You'd better believe there are a lot of
companies working on furthering 3D technology and immersion - everyone from
Sony and Nintendo to Microsoft and Google.

Why don't you hear more about this? Simple, the companies that can afford to
spend money on this sort of thing like to keep a lot of the work quiet until
they determine whether or not they can commercialize it.

------
st-keller
We're designing a new "evaluation-system". It uses a new pure functional,
time-unaware, inherently parallel core which works without using monads. The
core can be considered as a read-eval-print loop without the "read" and the
"print". If it works, we will solve some problems which mostly are not
considered to be problems. If it doesn't work, we learned more about
programming that i ever could have imagined. In short: Yes, some people do
some things they themself consider as really cool :-)

------
roundsquare
For laundry, why not automate at least a part of it? I'm sure you can build a
device above your laundry machine where you can toss your clothes. Once it
gets above a certain weight, it can dump your clothes into the machine and
trigger something else to add detergent and maybe something to push some
buttons to start the thing.

About getting it in the dryer and folding it... I'm not sure, but surely you
can come up with something to do part of the work for you.

I think the immersive VR bit is being worked on, but its slow going. I see
Avatar as a step in the right direction. One necessary condition for this will
be to get proper 3D. Once we can speed up that process, we'll be almost there.

Other stuff... I dunno.

~~~
dnsworks
One of the problems with any useful laundry automation schemes I've seen thus
far is that they tend to have some real-estate specific requirements (laundry
chute, for example) and also tend to require that you own your own home, or at
least rent an apartment with a washer/dryer inside, which is not feasible in
San Francisco by any means.

An awesome "laundry bot" would:

\- Retrieve items from a laundry bin \- Scan the fabric to determine color and
type for sorting (knowing to have a dry-clean bin, a woolens bin, a whites
bin, a color cottons bin, etc) \- Transport the dirty garments to the cleaning
facility \- Perform proper cleaning operations (washing, folding drying) \-
Return the laundered garment

The act itself might be triggered by scales or pressure sensors in laundry
bins.

It just doesn't seem like it _should_ be that hard. I'm surprised that
industrious tinkerers haven't already automated the repetitive, thankless
tasks in our lives that we tend to hate like laundry, vacuuming, window
washing, (lawn maintenance for you suburbanites, etc.

------
ible
I'd love to have most of the things you mention, and some are on their way
such self driving cars but there is lots of interesting work out there How
about \- pranav mistry's sixth sense project \- bio printers creating organs
with ink jets \- combinatorial genomics \- google street view (still blows me
away to check out a friend's new place in NZ from my couch in Canada) \-
photosynth \- Self replicating 3d printers \- open source UAVs/autonomous
helicopters

and that's just off the top of my head. I remember being prett impressed by
the last 'what are you working on' thread as well. \- combinatorial genomics -

------
drinian
That list makes me think that you just finished reading Cory Doctorow's
_Makers_. If you haven't, you should. It's available online under a CC
license.

------
haseman
I'm working (slowly) on the iPhone and Android Augmented Reality kits (open
source). We could always use help, check it here

<http://github.com/haseman/Android-AR-Kit/>

and here

<http://github.com/zac/iphonearkit/>

------
sli
6) EMP. Seriously. They make them, you can build them, they work. And they can
cause some serious damage, so be ready to get slapped with vandalism charges.
Here's another solution: call the police on that guy (for a terrible taste in
music, oh God, introduce him to some real hip-hop!).

~~~
dnsworks
Heh. I've thought it would be awesome to just bust out some Biggie .. if only
I had a directional speaker that would just drown him out .. hrm .. maybe
those sound weapons would do it?

As for calling the police? If they wouldn't do anything when I gave them tapes
of my neighbor selling heroin out her window at my old apartment, they're
probably going to say "shut the fuck up and stop calling us, you entitled
upper middle class white nerd" .. in fact .. I think they said that the last
time I called.

Fail.

------
amih
Accelerated learning?

Search for Vera Birkenbihl. She has an audio course which is really amazing. I
improved my memory and creativity and helped my kid memorizing foreign
language words in school. He really enjoys the playful way we do it and aces
at school.

~~~
realitygrill
Is that the Learning Strategies one? I'm wary of that company..

~~~
amih
Yes it is. I highly recommend their products.

------
philjr
<http://www.lifesize.com/> for teleconferencing. Wicked kit, we've got four of
them, connecting offices and they're a nice alternative to shelling out 6
figures for HD Skype.

------
Tichy
I think the technology for augmented reality dating is almost ready, or might
be ready now. Face recognition seems to have become really good lately.

The only real problem is getting all the profile pics out of facebook.

------
marknutter
I'm trying to think of a way a website can solve all of these problems for
you..

~~~
arethuza
I don't think even Yahoo tries to cram that many unrelated features into a
single website :-)

------
mx2323
well,

all of the things you are talking about requires hardware + software. which is
more expensive, slower and more dangerous than building web 2.0 sites that are
easily patchable.

that's actually a very prohibitive point, as most startups we hear about
nowadays use software because of its low bootstrap cost and economies of scale

------
aaronblohowiak
Do you work out?

------
ErrantX
One mans definition of cool isn't always another's :)

------
Mz
_Efficient weight loss technology_

Not a technology, but I have lost several dress sizes as a side effect of
working on my health issues, which are supposed to be unresolvable. And, yes,
I feel I am solving Cool Problems`(or, more accurately, I think I am coming up
with Cool Solutions). I have slimmed down without starving myself or even
counting calories. Initially, exercise per se wasn't really a part of it
either (though I was more active with having a job than I was when I was
bedridden -- I used to joke about my 'get out of bed more often fitness plan'
-- still, I didn't "work out"). These days, I do a lot of walking because I
live without a car but I do not have a gym membership or otherwise workout.
Yes, I did slim down more with getting rid of my car, but the primary mover is
still diet chemistry, supplements and generally working on getting well.

Some things I have worked on: 1) Body chemistry. The typical American diet is
too acid. Excess acidity has a number of negative consequences, including
promoting infection. There is (supposedly) research that indicates that the
type of microbes you harbor impacts whether or not you end up obese. Which
brings me to point 2:

2) I have actively worked on fostering more good flora in the body and
extinguishing bad bugs. We are all crawling with millions of microbes and
cannot even digest our food without them. But I was, at one time, overrun with
multiple antibiotic-resistant infections which were killing me.

3) Lifestyle changes that fit with my attempts to control what types of flora
inhabit my body and my attempts to keep my body chemistry in a healthy
balance.

Some nifty things I have found out about using chemistry to heal the body
better than modern medicine can:

A)I can stop a nosebleed by taking calcium supplements. Calcium is necessary
to start the cascade of chemical processes which leads to clotting. I used to
suffer routine nosebleeds/blood seepage from my sinuses. I rarely do anymore.
If I find I am having an issue with this, I just take some calcium and it goes
away.

B) Copper is has antimicrobial properties. Buying a few copper pieces for my
home and finding an affordable source for plain old sheet copper in sizes that
work for an individual household (as opposed to the quantities that get
ordered for industrial purposes) has revolutionized my life in ways I don't
know how to begin to explain.

C) Infections that most people think you have to live with for life can be
cleared from the system using a few herbs and vitamins.

D) Gray hair can be reversed (at least to some degree) with the right
supplements, which depends in part on why your hair went gray. I have less
gray hair now than I did in my mid-thirties.

------
marshallp
-google goggles - image recognition is what's required for many of the things you mention including robot maid, driving car (the darpa challenge used lidar, which is expensive - purely vision based would be much cheaper).

-the limiting factor to flying cars is actually air traffic control - which is still manually done, but could easily be automated (it's basically a giant constraint satisfaction/optimization problem)

-kiva robots (constraint satisfaction/optimization applied to mobile robots)

-heartland robotics - rodney brooks's startup, uses machine learning to control light robot arms so that heavy expensive limbs used in industrial robots aren't needed (robot arms for a few dollars in parts).

