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Ask HN: What “missing” technical solution(s) do you wish existed?

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Re: Ask HN: What “missing” technical solution(s) do you wish existed?

#151

Post by adrianN »

ComodoHacker wrote: post #80
adrianN wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could the average user possibly verify any kind of modern technology? Programming VCRs is too hard for almost everybody, do you really expect these people to understand even the most basic explanation of how their privacy is protected?

You don't have to know how VCR works in every detail to use it and be sure it does what it should. You just look at the recording and see its quality. On the other hand, using some security product, you can't tell if it's secure or it's snake oil, even if source code is open.

There aren't any adversaries trying their best to sneak a different X-Files episode on your recording, so you can reasonably assume that checking the quality of the recording is enough to verify that the show you wanted ended up on the tape.

With security software, the threat model is completely different.

Re: Ask HN: What “missing” technical solution(s) do you wish existed?

#152

Post by stevekemp »

bradb3030 wrote: post #142

Home loan which re-amortizes to the full term every month so when you pay ahead on it, the amount lowers over time. Snowball your home loan, easily marketable.

Doesn't that automatically happen if you over-pay each month? I guess it might be depend on your mortgage type, and location.

I know in the UK I made no special effort to do this. I had a mortgage, and each month I was supposed to pay £260. Instead I paid £800 and I completely paid off my flat many years earlier than expected, with a corresponding saving in the interest I would have otherwise paid.

Re: Ask HN: What “missing” technical solution(s) do you wish existed?

#153

Post by Jarwain »

viewer5 wrote: post #115
tixocloud wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was actually building something like that for myself. Would you use it if you had to manually log it?

Yeah. Having to manually log to /some/ extent is actually my expectation; it just has to be simpler than typing out a whole log entry. I don't want to type out "dec 02 2016 Hung out with Alex and Sammy, talked about Star Wars and whether Darth Maul or Qui-Gon would win in a fistfight, Sammy was backing Darth Maul and won the argument" I don't have any ideas to improve that in any way, I don't know if it CAN be improv…

What about a Speech-to-text solution? Don't have to take the time to pull out your notebook or type on your phone's screen. Just tap a button on a headset or tell GNow to add a log entry, and speak the entry.

Communication; the next best thing to reading minds!

Re: Ask HN: What “missing” technical solution(s) do you wish existed?

#154

Post by Jarwain »

neuland wrote: post #148
x1798DE wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I specifically meant in a browser. I'm certainly planning on looking into Qubes for an OS, but this is really more of a problem with data leaking within a browser, I don't think the OS has much say in that.

Well, you'd ideally create different VMs for where you want barriers to data leak-age via cookies, history, session- + localstorage, and loading assets/scripts/etc from or making requests cross domain to 3rd parties. But to your point, even within a given browser/VM/whatever that I intend on using for a single task. I'd still eventually end up slipping up and going to a site that should have been in a different group…

Maybe visiting a site would locally select the appropriate group that site was assigned to. For example, going to gmail.com would automatically use the "Google" Group. If a site is assigned to multiple groups, prompt the user to select a group. An unassigned site would use a default group, or create its own group for return visits, or create a temporary group.

Re: Ask HN: What “missing” technical solution(s) do you wish existed?

#155

Post by stevekemp »

marktangotango wrote: post #41

I want a backend service I can call from my statically generated (i.e. jekyll) websites, to implement things like blog comments, analytics, etc. A true cloud platform where I don't have to mess with admining and provisioning servers and containers. I want to just upload my code and pay for the cycles and bandwidth I use. Aws lambda for http basically.

https://github.com/skx/e-comments/ was my take on that - a disquis-like service that allows static-sites to add comments via javascript inclusion.

Re: Ask HN: What “missing” technical solution(s) do you wish existed?

#156

Post by siquick »

ohstopitu wrote: post #118

I'd love to bring banking to the 21th century. (Ability to create virtual cards, scale bank accounts based on needs/usage, easy access to loans etc.). And all this would have to work internationally (go anywhere in the world...2 people have a smartphone? Great, this system works). Give people the ability to save, invest and help them along that way and give them more power about their money. Also the ability to get t…

>scale bank accounts based on needs/usageCan you give an example of this?

Re: Ask HN: What “missing” technical solution(s) do you wish existed?

#158

Post by tonyedgecombe »

Grishnakh wrote: post #52

A way of using nuclear power to directly generate electricity, without going through a thermal cycle first. Similar to how photovoltaics work: instead of capturing heat from sunlight and going through a Carnot cycle engine to generate electricity, PV directly converts photons to electricity. Something like this with nuclear power would be revolutionary I think.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_energy_conversion

Re: Ask HN: What “missing” technical solution(s) do you wish existed?

#159

Post by wanda »

holy_jeebus wrote: post #98

A parser that would walk all web document elements, exercise keyboard access functions, then report back on what is or is not accessible via keyboard, touch, or click.

If you would be happy with a browser extension or JavaScript library, I'll make it.

Re: Ask HN: What “missing” technical solution(s) do you wish existed?

#160

Post by wanda »

Thomas_9 wrote: post #44

I wish there was a good javascript library to handle table (filtering, sorting, paging, ...). The best I found so far was datatable, but it is not perfect.

I am not very familiar with datatable; could you tell me more about its shortcomings?
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