Ask HN: What are the problems that are willing to pay more than $1000 to solve?

24 points by max93 ↗ HN
Same as Title.

63 comments

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Solar batteries that last a week instead of a day.
Diseases, wars, pollution, hunger, crime, mental illnesses, racism, mobility/passports that suck or give you access to practically nothing, terrorism, poverty. The list goes one.
That reads like a laundry list of problems that money alone can't solve. (I guess you left off education.)
Are you really implying money cannot solve poverty, because that's genuinely hilarious but I cannot imagine it to actually be true
Absolutely.

Money can only solve poverty when property rights are respected and enforced, when there is an open market of sorts to spend the money for useful stuff, when the bearer does not spend the money on useless stuff (lotteries, payments to cult leaders, etc), and when the bearer is not addicted (to substances, games, etc).

All the above are not problems money alone can solve.

Addiction doesn't have to mean poverty, so clearly with enough money addiction does not (have to) result in poverty. The same goes for all the other issues, really.
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A branch and bound solver framework that accurately measures the impact that one component/heuristic has on time to proof of global optimality and any time behaviour under the optimal portfolio of those components and builds portfolio solvers
What do you mean by accurate? Deep learning may helps for non-convex space? But it may be no solution for global optimality.
Well if i make the simplex iteration 20% faster what does do that performance and any terms performance of my mixed-integer linear programming solver one might implement in the framework. Due to parallelism and shared state the answer is non trivial. Let's say you want to people to cooperate in writing such a solver with payout proportional to speed up the solver got over a certain family of problems then accurate estimates how much contribution a new component has for the performance would be really helpful and would be an alternative having big companies bank roll closed source solver development.

Deep learning is uterly irrelevant for the famework but it is a heuristic that could be employed ...

Living in a US city that has no cars for personal transport
You'd be hard-pressed to find an actual city anywhere in the world that's entirely car-free for personal transport.

Venice probably is the only place that matches that criterion.

On Malta, there also is Mdina, which is largely car-free but still allows for limited car usage by residents. Still, although it's called a city, at a population of less than 1,000 it doesn't really qualify by any modern definition of the word.

As for the US there's this list, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Car-free_zones_in_the...

However, probably none of these places could be called a city in the narrow sense of the word.

the villages in florida is somewhat golf cart centric
Mackinac Island, MI. Not a city, but probably the closest you'll get.
this but in the UK
This comes across as a lazy attempt to find business ideas.
I would pay that much for a programmable automated refactoring tool that actually worked on real code bases (I suspect some ppl would pay even more)
You say "that actually worked". What tools have you tried?
A retail level device capable of seeing inside one's body.
Are you thinking more along the lines of an x-ray, or a colonoscopy camera?
I'm thinking anything non-invasive that could be good enough to reconstruct the internal structure. Ultrasounds for example. Of course the more accurate/high def the better.
Interesting. I think the technology is not that expensive. But it was banned because uncontrolled x-ray dose is harmful to human body.
Never having to do paperwork ever again.
An assistant that fills forms out for you?
This is just turbotax for x. X being whatever you hate doing paperwork in.
Exactly; "paper" aside, there's a cost-of-regulation that's never factored into law.
So you lobby legislators to keep the paperwork flowing and then you sell a solution to deal with the paperwork? That's more akin to the broken window fallacy than to actually solving a problem.
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- Fully-guided health plan: diet, supplements, exercise, preventative measures, etc... SelfDecode gets very close, but I'm thinking of those reports analyzed by an assistant that would schedule and plan medical interventions, meal plan, provide accountability, be an advocate, etc.

- A system to build knowledge more effectively than whatever it is that people do now. This would go along with some sort of training to improve idea synthesis, factual integration, etc. Basically, activate my inner savant for the low, low price of $999.99.

- Direct training-to-employment pipeline: Employers provide the service a list of skills they need, the service generates a training plan, the employer approves the plan, vetted students pay to join with a guarantee of employment if they meet some milestones, successful students are refunded then employer pays the service a commission.

- A car service that shows up to do routine maintenance, clean your car and track major issues

Regarding your "Direct training-to-employment pipeline" I've been thinking about a very similar idea.

Do you think people would actually pay upfront to join on the promise they'll be refunded if they complete the course syllabus successfully?

I have assumed you'd have the offer the course for free and then make your money by placing successful "graduates" with employers who pay a commission for each one.

I think the upfront + refund + commission structure balances the incentives. It's something that is missing with ISA structures, which unevenly optimizes the school incentive. An upfront cost is table stakes.

The trainer is incentivized to perform because the collected tuitions might only represent a fraction of what could be earned. The commission is where the profit is.

I would personally be super motivated to sign up, especially if the curriculum and employer partnerships were attractive.

I'm riffing but I know it's a super hard problem. I wonder if game theory could or has helped here.

I really like your idea, it would certainly eliminate the timewasters.
I notice you mentioned trainers. I was thinking of using the free, publicly available course on sites like edX, coursra etc. and then providing mentors to help and support students. Any thoughts on that?
I bet training material development is a huge cost! That's a great idea. Licensing might be tricky with major mooc's but Odin project and freecodecamp might be MIT licensed... The accountability, structure, support and network seem like the major value adds.
> A system to build knowledge more effectively

Assuming you are "people", have you tried roam[1][2][3]?

> health plan

If you do end up figuring something out for this I'd be very interested. SelfDecode's privacy policy gets very close to being acceptable for me, but sadly 23andme-level genomic analysis is either prohibitively expensive (I simply cannot drop thousands on it) or it's actually 23andme and will sell you wholesale. That more than anything makes it unacceptable to me.

[1] https://roamresearch.com/ [2] https://www.orgroam.com/ [3] https://logseq.com/

I've tried roam, paid for hypernotes and set up tiddlyroam. I sorta get it, but they feel so hard to use. I got excited about hypernotes, especially because of how intuitive the graph view is. I lost interest, probably because I can't quickly imagine what is possible with that paradigm. How do you use roam?

Regarding SelfDecode, I literally had the tab open on my laptop and my phone for months before I signed up. I would revisit it every once in a while but the dystopian terror of my DNA on someone else's server kept winning.

My wife then got me an ancestry.com test, which I was hesitant about too. A month of being nagged finally got me to submit it. With that seal broken, SelfDecode wasn't such a leap. I submitted my ancestry stuff to them and I can honestly say that what their reports revealed has been life changing. The major revelation I'm still trying to accept is a marker that indicates I may soon develop an untreatable degenerative disease, the symptoms of which are beginning to show.

Anyways, if you can find a lab that has a policy you trust, there are genetic databases online that you can manually reference your results against. It's tedious, and requires interpreting piles of obscure research papers.

> How do you use roam?

I use it to structure projects I do for work (and in my personal life, but these days that is mostly eating good food and taking walks - no need for roam there :) ). I also have my daily task lists in there. What I like about it is cross-linking, especially with people (so I can easily see what I do for which people). When I have to pull apart an article about a new series of exploits I create cross-referenced entries about the techniques in the article, this allows me to more quickly get up to speed with other articles I read (because they often refer to the same concepts).

As time has gone on I've started to use it for more things. In the beginning I just had a few files with my tasks, which was already better than what I had before. I use org-roam and sync my org-files to all my devices and backup spaces with syncthing and rclone (with the crypt backend), which is nice because it means my todo entries come with me. For most people that is probably not such a big thing because they can just use "regular" cloud sync, which I will not use because of privacy reasons.

> there are genetic databases online that you can manually reference your results against.

This is a good idea. Perhaps I will try that, thank you.

> a marker that indicates I may soon develop an untreatable degenerative disease

That is rough. I hope knowing about it earlier at least lets you take some palliative measures. Good luck.

Solving one of the Millennium Prize Problems would pay $1000000
Completely getting rid of online ads for life.
Thats very difficult. I believe many online contents are actually ads.
Electrician work, plumber work, mechanic work, tree trimming, etc.

Skilled trades where once you need them, they have you over a barrel!

It seems the key is some level of gatekeeping from doing it yourself. Need a MD degree to get medicine prescriptions, need the town to sign off on electrical work permits, tree cutters need insurance and have up-front cost of equipment, etc.
And they are the reason why we have a housing and healthcare crisis.
When my phone rings I want to know, with a high degree of confidence, who is calling me.

The only way I can think to do this well is by giving everyone a different phone number, like many of us do with email addresses. Implementing this would require a way to create and vend phone numbers quickly, similar to creating a password with a password manager. There would need to be a way to associate each number with who I gave it to. When my phone rang that identity would need to be surfaced in some way. I would need a way to make outbound calls using these numbers.

I'd happily pay $100+/month for <some number of> phone numbers (50-100?) plus $x/month for each number above that. If the service was metered by call minute there would need to be a generous number included in the monthly flat rate and excess minutes should be inexpensive.

I imagine the user experience would be similar to what Sidecar/Flyp/Cloud SIM deliver.

Question: what if you got a screening service where someone calls a # and we do multiple checks... For example:

(1) if it's a blocked # or a # from a known blacklisted source -> straight to voicemail, and we notify you by text if a message was left (or we transcribe it)

(2) new # you've never discussed -> you can set up the options here, e.g. if commercial or otherwise, go to VM or enable to "ring" for you

(3) if the call a known caller to you -> pass through

Would you use something like this?

I hadn't considered human curation. Yes, that would work and I would use it, depending on the details.
Awesome, thank you!
Antiquated real estate agent system and realtor (TM) guild.
A wearable head massager/tickler. It's possible to buy head massagers which are hand-held, but that completely defeats the purpose. I'm aware this is a male-dominated community, but as a woman, I know other women would pay a LOT if this product existed.
Something to fold the never ending chore of laundry.
I'd like to not deal with recruiters and middlemen, at all (excluding the HR department of the actual company that is hiring).

Just this week, I had a recruiter tell me that they won't tell me the end client, until after the interview happens. They are expecting candidates to interview with them, without telling them who they would be working for (also, pay is shit).

Another recruiter sends a ridiculous legal document that I am supposed to sign (it was a long, scary document, I didn't understand most of it), before even revealing who they are hiring for. Yet another recruiter wanted to edit my resume and lie, before they'd proceed with the process.

Those are just a few examples. In case you are wondering if these are for high level positions, they are not. These are run of the mill, ordinary developer jobs.

I do not want to deal with recruiters, at all, ever. Even a 5 min phone call with these upstanding people is enough to ruin one's day.

So yeah, I'd pay for this "privilege"

Interesting. I think many people face the same problem and many people are trying new ways to solve it, but don't know why all failed.
The only way to solve it is to cut out the middlemen, that is unlikely to happen though. I tried it in a couple of places that I contracted at, but was quickly shot down. From an employer's perspective, it is very convenient for them to outsource everything except the actual interviewing, even if costs them more. They just don't want the hassle of looking through resumes, arranging interviews etc. It is understandable.
Dating app that actually lead to dates. Preferably with people who are of interest to me and of who I am of interest to. Dating has been an issue my entire life - I’ve only ever managed to be in one relationship and that wasn’t until I was 26 (I’m 31 now). I’ve never even really had so much as a conversation on a dating app and I’ve used them for years!

It’s not like I do well in real life either - it’s ultimately that most dating apps just amplify what I already experience in real life. I’m not physically attractive (5’10”, 120-135lb) and so I have always had a very large uphill battle trying to combat traditional western beauty standards. But if someone could figure out an app that got me out on dates - I’d pay that $1000+.

Great question!

Some mechanism to significantly improve intelligence. This could be in any form: book, coaching, game, etc. Some examples of benefits:

- Avoiding making mistakes that cost time among other things (an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure). Programming bugs are on my mind at the moment but could be in other areas as well.

- Make faster decisions with more confidence

- Crush programming interviews