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jlevers

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Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on?

442 points·by jlevers·6 năm trước·689 comments

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jlevers
·5 năm trước·discuss
Uranium can be extracted from seawater, and my understanding is that there's enough uranium in the oceans to last 10s (maybe 100s?) of thousands of years at current energy consumption levels. It's also renewable, albeit on a very long timescale -- but the timescales of consumption and renewal for uranium in seawater are much closer in length than the consumption/renewal timescales for fossil fuels.
jlevers
·5 năm trước·discuss
I think that if you consider storage, then you can in fact amortize panel power generation across day and night, because you need more panels during the day to create the extra power that will be used at night (when none of the panels are actively generating power).
jlevers
·6 năm trước·discuss
I'll definitely start hitting reply, thank you!

That's a really interesting, but sensible, conclusion to come to. It seems to follow that generalists would make great business/personal coaches, as they're good at pointing people in the right direction. I'd be curious to look at great coaches and see if they had a ton of different interests.

I'm stoked for the next email :)
jlevers
·6 năm trước·discuss
Patagonia's also done a great job with this. I have no idea if all their advertising around not buying things you don't need has increased the number of items they've sold, or just the price they can charge for them.
jlevers
·6 năm trước·discuss
Wow, I just looked up light-fields. That's a super cool idea. It would be incredible if it were possible to make a 3d light-field camera, so that the person watching it in VR could look all around them.
jlevers
·6 năm trước·discuss
I'm extremely interested, but I don't see your contact info in your profile. My email's in mine, if you want to get in touch.
jlevers
·6 năm trước·discuss
Interesting, I'll look into LXDs. Thanks for the pointer!
jlevers
·6 năm trước·discuss
I remember reading that post and the surrounding discussion, and thinking it was a really tough (and worthwhile) challenge. Good luck, and I'm excited to see the first version when you release it.
jlevers
·6 năm trước·discuss
I dig it. Problems don't have to be world-changing to be interesting.
jlevers
·6 năm trước·discuss
Don't discount how important those problems are! Kudos to you for being intentional with them, and good luck. I wish you the best.
jlevers
·6 năm trước·discuss
That sounds super interesting. You should absolutely write a book...or, if not that, a blog. I'd read it.
jlevers
·6 năm trước·discuss
I'd love to read some of what you've written, if you're willing to share.
jlevers
·6 năm trước·discuss
I'd love to chat -- we have a lot of common interests. My email's in my bio if you're interested.

I particularly like your idea of keeping your entire net worth invested in the problems you're focused on, and I'm curious to hear more about it.
jlevers
·6 năm trước·discuss
That's enlightening, thank you. I was unaware that the type of medical care (within a specialty) can change the financial incentives of the doctor. As someone who was just told to get my wisdom teeth removed, this makes me want to seek another opinion.
jlevers
·6 năm trước·discuss
I'm guessing you already know about them, but you might be able to get some useful ideas from Eat This Much[0], who I think is the biggest competitor in this space. It's a very complex challenge -- good luck!

[0]https://www.eatthismuch.com/
jlevers
·6 năm trước·discuss
This is a great idea. Rediscoverability is a big problem, especially with the growing popularity of personal knowledge systems (Notion, Roam, etc), which have been discussed a lot on HN.

I take a ton of notes on Notion, but I worry that I'll never see most of them again. Maybe part of the value is just in writing the notes in the first place...?

Kudos for solving out this problem for Reddit!
jlevers
·6 năm trước·discuss
Would you be willing to explain what the applications of (2) are? I'll admit that I only undersetand a fraction of what you said in that section, but I'm curious what you're using it for.
jlevers
·6 năm trước·discuss
> I'm a diplomat working on international norms for cyber and information warfare.

I didn't know any such norms existed. What are some of the existing agreements, and if you can talk about it, what are some of the new ones you're trying to push forward?

Your career sounds crazy...in a good way! Was your initial involvement with the UN in a technical role?
jlevers
·6 năm trước·discuss
Amazing! It would be awesome if people living far from traditional agricultural areas could access fresh greens without insane transportation costs (both financial and environmental).

Are your farming systems fully automated? If so, has that been more of a software challenge, or more of a mechatronics challenge?
jlevers
·6 năm trước·discuss
Why would a new upper reservoir need to be so wide and shallow, rather than having much less surface area and being much deeper?