Ask HN: What scientific/technical bounties with social impact would you support?

2 points by nemild 10y ago ↗ HN

For a long while, I've been thinking of crowdfunding bounties for solving socially valuable science and engineering problems.

I've always been inspired by examples of this through history including:

- Longitude Rewards (17th century): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longitude_rewards

- Orteig Prize for Trans-Atlantic Flight (1920s): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orteig_Prize

- Fermat's Last Theorem (1800s/1908): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_Last_Theorem#Monetary_prizes

- Ansari X Prize (1996): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansari_X_Prize

- DARPA Grand Challenge (2000s): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge

What specific problems would you want to donate a few dollars to see solved and that will work with prize amounts in the range $1k-$500k? What referees would you recommend to determine if the problem is "solved"?

4 comments

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edimaudo 10y ago ↗

better medical drugs especially antibiotics

nemild 10y ago ↗

Thanks! Which drugs are you thinking about? What goal do you think one could achieve for a few hundred thousand in incentives?

edimaudo 10y ago ↗

You may have seen something like this http://shanghaiist.com/2016/01/23/colistin_resistant_bacteri... a few weeks back. Imagine if you can't have basic surgery because of that. Nightmare scenario of course but still a major issue.

joeclark77 10y ago ↗

I'm interested in "off the grid" living, so I'd like to see some technologies to support that. For example, some good solution to the Internet without depending on expensive telecom companies (e.g. some kind of meshnet, or perhaps land-line based grid that relies on personally-owned routers). Also, can we make home electricity generation cheap and simple enough so that non-experts can figure it out? How about home production of auto fuel, such as ethanol or biodiesel, based on something you can grow in your backyard?

I'd be focused on cheapness, ease of setup, and ease of use with these challenges. Making a windmill more efficient than oil, or ethanol more efficient than gasoline, is not realistic and not necessary to the value proposition of personal independence off the grid.

The vision I have is: being able to have electricity and water, Internet and telephone, without having any monthly bills from utility companies.

I don't know how you'd set the parameters for a contest, or how you'd measure when you've arrived. This kind of lifestyle may be (mostly) possible today, but you'd have to have engineering skills and a lot of free time to make it work.