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Ask HN: Idea Sunday

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#191

Post by wdr1 »

crusso wrote: post #102

I'd like to see a site that focuses on the construction of logical arguments supporting various political and non-political views. I'd like for the system to allow for continued refinement of arguments on various topics and to allow for various branching of thought. That is, I'm not looking for a democracy that rewards majoritarian thought and punishes less popular but logically consistent argumentation. As an end pr…

What I've learned is that complex political issues -- essentially anything that isn't a universal "no-brainer" -- comes down to tradeoffs.

In fact, I've found a good political test to see if the person I'm speaking to can articulate a valid criticism of their own position. I.e., if they're for universal healthcare can they state why one would oppose it, without calling into question the opposition's character.

If they can, you can have a fairly thoughtful discussion/debate on the topic.

If they can't, then there's no point discussing things.

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#192

Post by th0br0 »

Stwerner wrote: post #172
karangoeluw wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds interesting, but doesn't make much sense. Do you mind explaining a bit more?

Interesting to see this here, I had this idea a while back and have been discussing it with people before I go on validating/invalidating it. In my mind anyway, the idea is something like https://railslts.com/ but for potentially every other gem in your gemfile. We would provide security patches, bugfixes, features, documentation, training, version upgrade scripts/documentation and so on to subscribers. I really like…

I've also had this on my mind for quite some time.

How would you actually implement things though? After all, you're essentially trying to sell "support contracts" for open source projects via the platform. You could implement these by a) "hiring" the project owner to work on specific bugs/features or b) hiring freelancers to fix requested bugs.

Furthermore, how would you ...

* determine the value of bugs/features? * react to a project owner abandoning a project? * handle multiple upstream developers?

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#193

Post by tizzdogg »

yitchelle wrote: post #190
tizzdogg wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should check out gengo.com. Sounds like that's exactly what you're looking for, or at least they have an API that could be used to build the app you want.

Thanks for the heads up on gengo.com. I shall checked them out. Have you dealt with them before?

Yes I used them to translate some of the text in an app to a bunch of other languages, and it was pretty easy, and a good translation (so I am told, at least). Note that I'm not affiliated with them at all, and have only used it once a year or so ago.

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#194

Post by dbenamy »

rgarcia wrote: post #120

Something to help teams rotate passwords on regular intervals. E.g. I want everyone to rotate their Heroku/Google Apps/Github/etc. passwords every 6 months, or maybe after a major security event (like Heartbleed). Right now it means sending out a Google Doc for everyone to check off. Bonus points if it has some way of verifying that passwords were actually changed and the new password is strong.

Lastpass might fit your need.

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#195

Post by Houshalter »

atmosx wrote: post #177
crusso wrote: post #102

I'd like to see a site that focuses on the construction of logical arguments supporting various political and non-political views. I'd like for the system to allow for continued refinement of arguments on various topics and to allow for various branching of thought. That is, I'm not looking for a democracy that rewards majoritarian thought and punishes less popular but logically consistent argumentation. As an end pr…

In order for such a project to make sense, one must ask himself if he believes that there is one and universal truth that stands above human and physical laws. If there is such a thing, then there is a point in pursuing the truth, because truth gives the correct conclusions . If not, then there's no meaning in pursuing something that is relative .

Of course there is one truth. 1+1=2, Global warming either is or isn't real, gun control either does or doesn't reduce homicide rates, etc.

Aumann's Agreement Theorem suggests that two rational people can not disagree on a subject if they both fully understand all the evidence and arguments. All disagreements stem from some combination of misunderstanding, ignorance, or irrationality.

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#196

Post by staticfish »

yid wrote: post #135
throwaway_yy2Di wrote: post #55

Offline navigation map for mobile. Small thread here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7171919 The entire OpenStreetMap dataset is 23 GiB with moderate compression. With some optimization/truncuation the whole world should fit comfortably on most phones. This is very useful, for the times you're lost with a slow connection, no connection, in a foreign country, or with roaming charges. Also it's a fun algorithm-he…

Google maps will cache the current map view at the highest detail resolution if you type "ok maps" into the search bar and hit go. You don't even need an active SIM to use gps and zooming. I cached all of central London and used it from my otherwise non-functional Verizon CDMA iphone for months.

Unfortunately, Google maps caching works as view-only. There's no offline navigation at all, I imagine that's all done serverside. Only the tiles (or now vectors) are downloaded.

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#197

Post by oliwary »

qw wrote: post #165
oliwary wrote: post #157

This might already exist, but a user management as a service provider focused on security. I'm afraid that if I do a website and it is breached, all the users would suffer. Therefore I'd rather someone made a service that kept all sensitive user info, like email and password, separate from my webapp. The only way to access it would be via api over a unique user ID. Then I could worry about doing the website instead o…

I was planning to make something like that myself, but there seems to be plenty of competition from https://stormpath.com/ and others

Yup, that seems to be exactly what I was thinking about. Thanks for replying!

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#198

Post by Detrus »

nmrm wrote: post #156
crusso wrote: post #102

I'd like to see a site that focuses on the construction of logical arguments supporting various political and non-political views. I'd like for the system to allow for continued refinement of arguments on various topics and to allow for various branching of thought. That is, I'm not looking for a democracy that rewards majoritarian thought and punishes less popular but logically consistent argumentation. As an end pr…

Edit for down-voters: I'm not trolling/insulting (people who post on) internet boards. I'm hypothesizing that on most topics (esp. politically charged topics, which tend to rely on hard-to-assess factual claims), a high-quality argument for or against an opinion might require years of experience, and that often communicating that experience often requires journal-article-length explanations without drawn-out review p…

I upvoted you to counter downvotes. I think the downvotes are for the offensive part of "get off the internet." How dare you suggest such a heresy?

I agree that complex system discussions must be driven by people educated in the ways of complex systems, possibly from perspective of economists, justice system, etc.

Of course digging through the hieroglyphics around the issues becomes difficult for laymen, even those educated in the relevant topics. And it does become more work than fun. But many online discussions are at the level of work already. People start them for "fun" then get frustrated for being wrong, downvoted, misunderstood etc. There is an addicting effect and it turns from "fun" to work of salvaging reputation, revenge, etc.

Also content farms release misleading, throwaway information that gets attention. For them it is work and often very not fun.

Their efforts could be channeled to better ends by new software.

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#199

Post by sprobertson »

sjclemmy wrote: post #122

Github meets SoundCloud. When I create a piece of music (using something like Logic Pro) I go through many iterations and only end up with a mixdown piece and no idea of how it evolved to that point. so it would be nice to see the evolution of the piece. But the best bit would be the remix potential. Someone else could fork it and create a remix!

http://blend.io/

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#200

Post by Detrus »

atmosx wrote: post #177
crusso wrote: post #102

I'd like to see a site that focuses on the construction of logical arguments supporting various political and non-political views. I'd like for the system to allow for continued refinement of arguments on various topics and to allow for various branching of thought. That is, I'm not looking for a democracy that rewards majoritarian thought and punishes less popular but logically consistent argumentation. As an end pr…

In order for such a project to make sense, one must ask himself if he believes that there is one and universal truth that stands above human and physical laws. If there is such a thing, then there is a point in pursuing the truth, because truth gives the correct conclusions . If not, then there's no meaning in pursuing something that is relative .

Some questions of predicting a very distant future can't have an accurate answer today. But if we can simulate our world with a computer, try different things and see where they lead in the near future, we can answer most of our complex system/politic/economic questions.

But such a computer would obsolete humanity.

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