top | item 23890009

Request for Technically Risky Projects

20 points| astro-codes | 5 years ago

What technical projects do you think should exist in the world? What hard problems exist in your field? Where do you think the frontiers of science/technology lie?

I'm interested in learning about hard technical problems you think are worth solving.

30 comments

manx|5 years ago

Creating a "Wikipedia of Arguments", one can refer to in public discussions.

It turns out that this is a way harder problem than I thought. I'm in this space for some time now and am happy to talk about it.

Relevant links: https://github.com/canonical-debate-lab/paper/blob/master/RE...

https://www.societylibrary.org/

jka|5 years ago

Let's hope that a well-constructed, well-behaved and well-participated argument forum maintained over long enough timescales can lead towards better outcomes for everyone. Best of luck with the project.

You might be aware of it already, but just in case, the most progress I've seen in the area of web-based argument mapping has been Arguman ( https://github.com/arguman/arguman.org ). They're also following an open source model and there could be opportunities to co-operate and/or share ideas.

gitgud|5 years ago

That is a brilliant paper, I expected it to be centralised around logical fallacies (which is how I view arguments/debates) but it goes into so much more detail around the nature of online debate.

It's interesting to dive into the factors that influence online debates; reputation, trolling, anonymity, echo-chambers, the hive mind, language barriers, commercial interests.... There's so much more to an online discussion than just the argument presented...

silentsea90|5 years ago

Way outside my field, but a platform for global climate management that links current actions to future outcomes and accountability to nations and companies would be very cool, assuming it is taken seriously by parties involved (which is an even harder challenge). This is technically hard, but harder still from a people perspective.

sapientiae3|5 years ago

A Laser Mosquito Turret for homes, that uses a directional microphone to home in on the target.I don’t believe that it would be difficult to build the laser part, but the difficulty would be in making it safe for home use.

toomuchtodo|5 years ago

https://photonicsentry.com/

Dirak|5 years ago

An alternative to the html model for building websites. The html model is antiquated for building web apps, and inconsistent across various browsers x platforms. The direction of the spec imo is becoming an overengineered mess that is increasingly controlled by the Google (see portals and web packages).

With the arrival of webgpu, I predict we'll begin to see end to end frameworks for building web apps that own the entire pipeline of application state management to drawing pixels on the screen.

qlk1123|5 years ago

I have two regarding embedded software stack,

1. Memory Safety C-language literally dominates embedded software stack, while every on knows it is not memory safe and terrible memory bugs will be found but not yet discovered.

2. Compile time The whole GNU toolchain take minutes if not hours to make, which makes CI/CD painfully long.

runawaybottle|5 years ago

No one seems to trust vpns. I wonder if a VPN company almost needs to be law technology. All of our attempts at privacy is technically sound but lacks the backing of solid lawyers ready to hold it down. That’s got to be worth something.

ta17711771|5 years ago

So the implied trust due to legal backing through same ownership as a law firm?

Interesting.

steviekong|5 years ago

VPN's run through a company will always be subject to monitoring. I don't see a way around this other than something similar to TOR or mixnets.

p1esk|5 years ago

Making large transformer based models like Jukebox [1] efficient enough so that they can be trained on a single 8x GPU machine to the same level of quality as the original model, in the same amount of time.

[1] https://openai.com/blog/jukebox/

rapnie|5 years ago

Decentralized search in p2p / federated networks.

Privacy-respecting decentralized online identity.

ragerino|5 years ago

I am sure you know about Solid.

Just in case: https://solidproject.org/

literallycancer|5 years ago

Typed language with extremely fast compile times suitable for use by neural nets.

HelpEveryone|5 years ago

Spectacles that run 24/7

_alex_|5 years ago