Journalism needs a WYSIWYG editor for stylized content -- content that is more visually diverse/interesting than the linear text+image+embed format, but not SO so custom/new as to truly require a developer to build it.
LaTex?
Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?
121–130 of 253 posts
Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?
#122This is a really simple but basic one. Market size might not be billions of dollars, but a basic learning management system along the lines of Teachable/Udemy that allows for code with built-in testing would be used overnight by a dozen code bootcamps and would pull a lot of people out of the other platforms. Maybe it's just a feature, not a full product, but it makes any "learn to code" MOOC unusable.
What exactly do you mean when you say testing? Like being able to write unit/integration tests? Or testing whether or not the submitted code fulfils some requirements/assignment?
Yes, unit/integration tests
Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?
#123This is a really simple but basic one. Market size might not be billions of dollars, but a basic learning management system along the lines of Teachable/Udemy that allows for code with built-in testing would be used overnight by a dozen code bootcamps and would pull a lot of people out of the other platforms. Maybe it's just a feature, not a full product, but it makes any "learn to code" MOOC unusable.
Isn't automated testing commonplace in MOOCs?
MOOCs yes, but not MOOC platforms
Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?
#124Software development infrastructure in a box plus strong training materials / guidance for scientists. Increasing numbers of scientists are writing code without any formal CS training, and the outputs are predictably awful and unreliable. It is very common to find no testing, no acceptance criteria, no version control, no formal planning, no code review, no style guide being employed, sparse commenting, fragmented de…
i can't see a business model - the scientist is already paying with their time to get something working that is just good enough for publication. all the problems you describe are down the road and scientists kick that to 'industry'. unless your 'right way' is also easier to boot, why would they add to their time?
I think that is indeed the perception, but that the time savings would actually be quite pronounced if people did things correctly. I've seen many projects get immediately bogged down by bugs / feature creep / lack of planning and end up taking far longer than if people had done things correctly. Also, many labs hand off code bases when post docs or students leave, creating chaos for the next person that is tasked with working on them.
As an example, I wrote a proof of concept script to show that we could automate some basic image analysis in my lab three years ago. That was immediately grabbed by an investigator and put into production without any further thought. Because it was a proof of concept script, it was of course very buggy and required substantial feature addition. This was added without any thought for design etc. Fast forward to today and this code base is a sprawling shit show which is being rewritten for the THIRD TIME. Each time has ended in failure because people failed to observe basic best practice, and this attempt will likely fail too. That is an ENORMOUS waste of investigator time. Another project I can think of involved a model which had a 10,000 line function. No one could trust what was being outputted by the thing, so they eventually abandoned it. That's hundreds of investigator hours down the drain.
Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?
#125Software development infrastructure in a box plus strong training materials / guidance for scientists. Increasing numbers of scientists are writing code without any formal CS training, and the outputs are predictably awful and unreliable. It is very common to find no testing, no acceptance criteria, no version control, no formal planning, no code review, no style guide being employed, sparse commenting, fragmented de…
Ironic that scientists are not conducting any testing.
I routinely bring this up actually. Testing is literally equivalent to running experimental controls -_-
Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?
#126I'll take a startup in a box. I want Kubernetes, Elastic, Kibana, FileBeat, Prometheus, Consul, Grafana, databases, HTTP gateways, etc all set up on on the cloud (or set of servers) of my choice and a dashboard that lets me add users (e.g. like a modern Webmin/cPanel+WHM) and make minor config changes if I don't want to run these myself. I want those things HA and I want stable hostnames for them (e.g. Consul DNS on…
Are you starting new companies that frequently?
Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?
#127Will someone please convince the trucking industry that "communicating" by swapping text files over FTP in an absolutely incomprehinsible, proprietary format is simply no way to live? Especially with the recent push by the fed to put electronic logging systems in every truck, this system is absolutely ripe for disruption. Downside is you'll be fighting entrenched companies like IBM for ground.
I work in the trucking (telematics) industry. I've dealt with a decent amount of ftp file transfers, but most stuff I've seen has been some sort of API based (SOAP, REST, etc).
Can you give a few more specific examples? Are you in the industry now? Working at a carrier?
Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?
#128Software development infrastructure in a box plus strong training materials / guidance for scientists. Increasing numbers of scientists are writing code without any formal CS training, and the outputs are predictably awful and unreliable. It is very common to find no testing, no acceptance criteria, no version control, no formal planning, no code review, no style guide being employed, sparse commenting, fragmented de…
I suggest you look into the Software Carpentry foundation - they are making a great effort to improve scientific programming through short workshops: https://software-carpentry.org/
Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?
#129Inter-operable video and phone conferencing without prior setup required. Probably half the video conferences I’ve tried to participate in in the last year have been a disaater, with people having technical problems dialing in, dropping out, etc. Even phone confernces (using VOIP conference providers) have awful quality. I want to be able to email some people a link, and with no account creation, registration, or sof…
The place I work uses BlueJeans and I really like it.
The dedicated app runs on just about everything'; iOS, OSX, Windows, Android.
On phones you can use Video and Audio or just plain Audio (Low Bandwidth mode).
You can send your BlueJeans room URL and they can join with just a web browser (Web browsers get less features though). Non-Hosts can join the meeting without signing up for anything. They just click and join.
I think the audio and video is pretty good. Much better than Facetime, which is not a good comparison because Facetime is pretty terrible. Audio quality is good.
There is dedicated hardware that supports BlueJeans so you can use it in conferences rooms.
You can record meetings.
All the standard stuff like screen share and what not. You can even ping pong back and forth. I worked with someone where they had to type in some stuff and I had to type in other stuff on their computer. They just joined my BlueJeans room and when I was not typing, they could type. No clicking to take control or give it back, it was more or less seamless.
Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?
#130I work in the humanitarian field in a poor country ravaged by war and famine. We have a number of humanitarian actors currently working in this country and no one actually has access to accurate population statistics. Well, none exists. The last census was conducted in 1975. I believe someone could use technology to get a much better estimate of the population. One thing that always springs to my mind is the possibil…
Why do you think there are millions to be made here? I'm sort of familiar with international development, and I'm surprised by that estimate.