Ask HN: What hard problems are still underexplored?

Problem with ambiguous boundaries, messy constraints and no linear path to a solution

14 points | by brihati 2 days ago

12 comments

  • the__alchemist 1 day ago
    Chemistry (Or biology, as an extension of it) simulations. Current tools include Newtonian atom-centered force fields that are fit to a specific situation and lose validity outside it, and quantum computations that are very slow, and don't scale well.

    I have a hunch there is something about the underlying physics we are missing, and that we have not hit the endgame of modelling physics at this scale.

    • 392 21 hours ago
      I've been experimenting in this space, where might I find a guide for what to build that would be useful to you? I suspect most existing approaches are an order of magnitude slower and harder to use than they need to be.
  • ManlyBread 2 days ago
    Anti-cheat systems in multiplayer video games. It seems like every multiplayer game out there eventually gets overrun with cheaters and that cheat developers win every time.
  • cjbarber 21 hours ago
    1) Designing built environments that maximize the community and enjoyment of the people who live in them

    and perhaps even moreso 2) Figuring out how to get them built

    It seems we mostly know the answers for 1, we just don't know how to get them built in a sea of development regulations and entrenched interests etc.

  • austin-cheney 1 day ago
    What I want is something like the UI of the web platform but for desktop development exclusively. The differences between this and the current web platform are:

    * no certificates

    * direct access to a shell, network stack, and file system from api available directly within the viewport

    * a permission system allowing custom roles and security policies

    * a better mark up format that imposes accessibility criteria by default like type safety in rust

    * a buffer based data serialization so that I don’t have to parse/stringify on every transaction

  • mikewarot 1 day ago
    There's no capabilities based OS ready to be a daily driver. Until this happens we're going to keep seeing stories about hacked systems, and how we all need to rewrite applications in Rust.
  • codegladiator 22 hours ago
    There is a reasonable argument that your question is at least NP, and plausibly NP-hard or harder depending on how you formalize the verification oracle.
  • webglfan 2 days ago
    I'll give you one: "Do any odd perfect numbers exist?"

    You can read about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_number#Odd_perfect_num...

    You can watch a short documentary about it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zrv1EDIqHkY

    • gnatman 2 days ago
      Wonderful quote in there from James Joseph Sylvester:

      >>... a prolonged meditation on the subject has satisfied me that the existence of any one such [odd perfect number] —its escape, so to say, from the complex web of conditions which hem it in on all sides— would be little short of a miracle.

    • brihati 2 days ago
      Is 2+2 still 4 :p
  • mghackerlady 1 day ago
    Perpetual-ish motion machines. While a true perpetual motion machine physically cannot exist, a machine that operates at an efficiency rate to be for all intents and purposes "perpetual" is theoretically possible, if not physical
  • runtimepanic 2 days ago
    Observability that can produce causal explanations rather than just timelines. We have great tooling for logs/metrics/traces, but very little that helps engineers understand why a distributed system behaved the way it did. Automated causal graphs for incidents still feel like an open problem.
    • brihati 2 days ago
      In distributed systems, at least we have the variables, functions, pods, log traces, spans etc some pre defined structure, and some level of determinism. I would say Causality is still not fully explored territory when it comes to human brain.

      When I think of human brain or may be to some extent LLMs, it's difficult to understand what is invisible. For distributed systems we will build tools, there is ongoing research in LLM Observability, but I wonder what about human brain

    • l___l 2 days ago
      That you know of.
  • l___l 2 days ago
    Why should I tell you? What's in it for me?
    • ManlyBread 2 days ago
      Why contribute if you have nothing to say? What even is this reply?
      • verzali 2 days ago
        It could be a hard problem, no?
      • rl3 2 days ago
        >What even is this reply?

        I mean if you take a look at GP's username, it's arguably just tastefully subtle satire.

    • brihati 2 days ago
      What you say is what you get
      • l___l 2 days ago
        The problem with ambiguous boundaries, messy constraints and the perception that there is no linear path to transferring meaning in language.
  • ipaddr 1 day ago
    Teleportation
  • moomoo11 1 day ago
    Utilizing the smartphone to its full potential. IMO it is an underutilized platform. There’s more than just CRUD gambling or doomscrolling shit possible on it.

    There is so much possible with it!!!