Ask HN: Where to Find Interesting Problems?

13 points by hieunc229 5 years ago | 13 comments

I’m curios if there is any online community, or group that people complaining about things?

Rather than my own, learn about others’ problems can sometimes gain good knowledge

Thanks!

I look at HN discussions. I deliberately look for technical subjects where people, in apparent popularity, claim cannot be solved or will not work versus the practical application for users in a business sense.

In the broadest of terms this frequently boils down to boring technology solutions to common business problems people are afraid to solve out of inconvenience. More specifically, recent subjects have included anything about privacy, IPv6, security, and just about anything disruptive to online advertising.

Edit:

I go out of my way to do the opposite where discussions popularly advocate for something with false expertise or clearly based upon a faulty premise. Examples of these subjects are security in software development, anything related to mental health, law enforcement, and so forth. All the garbage that seems popular online but is antithetical to real life practice from paid professionals.

hieunc229 5 years ago | |

Ah. I can see HN is a good place to learn problems.

i.e when someone posted a new or exisiting product, sometimes people will use them for comparison, or talking about missing features

As you said, there can be false expertise discussion too.

Thanks for the idea

Jugurtha 5 years ago |

I think you must be careful: many people are volunteer complainers about things that don't affect them at all. Many people complain about "Python not being scalable" or "Jupyter notebooks", and when you engage them and want to know what problems they have exactly, they'll make it obvious they're only repeating things they've heard, have not really used either, etc.

I'm not saying that Python or Jupyter don't have problems, I'm saying that many who complain are not necessarily the people you want to talk with, and it's better to be deliberate and conscious about targeting people who are actually having problems.

For example, one complained that a notebook didn't work on JupyterLab and that it worked seamlessly on Google Colab. Interesting. I asked whether it was a hardware issue or a JLab vs Colab issue: did they have enough RAM, a GPU on their local machine or they ran it on JLab + CPU + a bit of RAM on their local machine and then ran it on Colab + GPU + more RAM on Colab.

Would you be against learning about others' problems for a living? You can be in consulting. You'll have plenty of problems to solve. Here's a sort of mini blueprint[0]. I've worked on problems in different sectors and industries such as telecommunications, energy, banking, employment, healthcare, social work, communications and public relations, etc.

It is good to talk with people for whom the problem is actually a problem, not just blogging or tweeting about it or "building an audience", which you see a lot of creatures doing [X influencers/X thought leaders/X enthusiasts/motivational gurus]. You won't find good problems talking with these people because they're not the people "doing the deed", and problems to solve usually stem from doing something in life.

- [0]: https://twitter.com/jugurthahadjar/status/131066829330549965...

hieunc229 5 years ago | |

That’s what I concern too, whether they talked for themselves or making conversation.

Though I’m not looking for an idea to work on. Just curious and want to see something unusual

Thanks for sharing your thoughts

jamesmehaffey 5 years ago |

I have usually had at least fifteen stupid little problems by lunch time every day, so just try to be cognizant of the irritating things that you regularly come across. The chances are pretty good that someone is already selling some cool widget that attempts to solve your exact problem. I am not saying that you will encounter huge problems to solve, but you can at least easily entertain yourself.

Or you could watch MacGyver for some inspiration... I have been inspired to build a time machine to go back in time so that I can inform Richard Dean Anderson that the mullet is actually not a cool haircut.

giantg2 5 years ago |

I would imagine the most interesting problems are the ones that impact you or that you think of, because everyone if different. Sometimes they aren't even "problems" but just improvements or curiosities. You might just need to dig a little more or reflect on things.

For example, I taught myself Java for Android and created an app to calculate party alcohol needs. One part was pretty trivial - cost/volume calculation for the price per pure unit of ethanol. Then I modified the BAC formula so that I could plug in the variables (number of people, estimated average weight, hours partying, etc) and have a slider for how drunk you wanted the people at the party, then it would tell you how much alcohol you needed to buy. I found it very interesting to make. Sadly it never made me rich (or any money for that matter).

fuzzfactor 5 years ago |

>I’m curios if there is any online community, or group that people complaining about things?

I didn't think there was anywhere that people were not complaining since the beginning of time.

hieunc229 5 years ago | |

You’re not wrong

thedevindevops 5 years ago |

I'm not normally a big advocate of reddit but in case you aren't aware of it, there's /r/AppIdeas/

hieunc229 5 years ago | |

I’d be skeptic about ideas that someone came up by thinking.

I’ll give it a look anyway

bredren 5 years ago |

http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html

http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html

DanBC 5 years ago |

#medtwitter on Twitter.

yanngagnon 5 years ago | |

For example, Epic EHR has its own parody account of all the problems the software causes its users.