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Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

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Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#201

Post by bumby »

morelandjs wrote: post #74
libertine wrote: post #13

Elderly care... in fact this pandemic showed precisely the opposite: our elders were neglected, converted into a statistic that dies more then young people. A complete lack of humanity in a lot of developed countries. This is the example we gave to the upcoming generations, we're fucked when it's our turn lol. I've been reflecting a lot on this, and thinking of ways to solve this, but it's not easy - it's bigger than…

I'd like to see a tech'd out nursing home. Gaming is really a perfect fit for nursing homes, and it will only make more sense as our population ages. Gigabit internet, house Slack, LAN parties, VR gear, zoom calls with family, rigs for new members... create house guilds. Set the tenants up with streaming setups and let them have fun. I don't think the gear would be prohibitively expensive given the cost of nursing ca…

I was just watching the documentary Alive Inside and one of the doctors talked about how the system allows him to charge $1k/mo. prescriptions almost without a thought but makes it nearly impossible to get a $40 iPod that significantly improved their quality of life.

It seems like the system works really need to change to get your dream to a reality

Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#202

Post by meowster »

Nextgrid wrote: post #131
DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #102

Designs for residential houses and appliances that ensure waste heat goes outdoors in the summer, and stays indoors in the winter. (And vice versa: refrigerators and freezers that take advantage of cold outdoor air in the winter, rather than using electricity to run compressors.)

Regarding refrigeration appliances, this is a solved problem. Most commercial refrigerators and ACs have a separate condensing unit placed outdoors (which also houses the compressor so its own heat doesn't affect the indoor location which is a problem when cooling). The problem is that most homes aren't build with this in mind and don't provide a place to run the refrigerant lines (nor comes with the lines built-in)…

When I build my next house, I am doing this for the refrigerator, not for the heat, but for the noise.

Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#203

Post by carapace »

Human tissue regeneration. Imagine being able to regrow limbs and organs!

For a long time Becker's book was about the only thing out there: "The Body Electric: Electromagnetism and the Foundation of Life" by Robert O. Becker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Body_Electric_(book)

Now there's pretty serious progress being made at Levin's lab: "What Bodies Think About: Bioelectric Computation Outside the Nervous System" talk by Michael Levin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjD1aLm4Thg https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18736698

Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#204

Post by jdkoeck »

cratermoon wrote: post #192

You know how we have an overabundance of ways to design, describe, develop, and document rpc-based distributed systems like REST and microservices? Why isn't there anything like that for event-driven, message-based systems? If there's a message bus in your architecture, it's usually just a pipe-shaped widget on a diagram. There's dozens of tools that can describe and API down to the finest detail, like swagger/openap…

Hi, you’ll be pleased to learn about the AsyncApi initiative! https://www.asyncapi.com/

Haven’t looked into it too closely but it looks promising

Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#205

Post by johnorourke »

gisborne wrote: post #84

Computing tools for non—programmers. In the early days of computing, we quickly came up with the spreadsheet and the user-friendly relational database (Access, FileMaker). Then we just sort of stopped. The no-code thing today is a step in that direction, but we could do so much better. I’m actually ashamed of the software industry that we have done so poorly at this.

We have not done poorly. Atall. "no-code" is a whole movement now - it's the modern day COBOL. See: * Airbase (imagine circa 1998 Microsoft Access but on the web and with integrations) * Infinityapp.com * Monday.com (easily recreate your business processes and types of data, and integrate with other systems) * Asana * ....dozens more.

Then add the universal integration tools: * IFTTT * Zapier * Tray * ...and many more

Basically we're now "post-app"... a non-technical user can go to a SaaS product, follow a tutorial, create something representing their business, and link it to other best-in-class products for accounting, warehousing, shipping, e-commerce, etc.

Don't be ashamed. We've a long way to go for sure, but we've come a long way, baby.

Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#206

Post by jiofih »

yosamino wrote: post #196

Geothermal Energy. Extremely simplified, all you need to do is drill a hole deep enough for a high temperature difference. Then stick in two pipes, on for sending water down, one for steam to come up. Run a turbine, add a valve to regulate how much water you want to converted into steam to be able to regulate output, enjoy your first mover advantage and price the competition out of the market. ... It's not that I do…

You’re underestimating the cost and difficulty of scaling that to any meaningful energy output.

Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#207

Post by joubert »

Tobias42 wrote: post #105
gisborne wrote: post #84

Computing tools for non—programmers. In the early days of computing, we quickly came up with the spreadsheet and the user-friendly relational database (Access, FileMaker). Then we just sort of stopped. The no-code thing today is a step in that direction, but we could do so much better. I’m actually ashamed of the software industry that we have done so poorly at this.

I recently thought about this, too. Is there any cloud-based, simple relational database, aimed at non-programmers?

Interesting. What do you envision non-programmers would do with it?

Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#208

Post by johnorourke »

Tobias42 wrote: post #105
gisborne wrote: post #84

Computing tools for non—programmers. In the early days of computing, we quickly came up with the spreadsheet and the user-friendly relational database (Access, FileMaker). Then we just sort of stopped. The no-code thing today is a step in that direction, but we could do so much better. I’m actually ashamed of the software industry that we have done so poorly at this.

I recently thought about this, too. Is there any cloud-based, simple relational database, aimed at non-programmers?

Airbase.

Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#209

Post by anken »

yosamino wrote: post #196

Geothermal Energy. Extremely simplified, all you need to do is drill a hole deep enough for a high temperature difference. Then stick in two pipes, on for sending water down, one for steam to come up. Run a turbine, add a valve to regulate how much water you want to converted into steam to be able to regulate output, enjoy your first mover advantage and price the competition out of the market. ... It's not that I do…

On bigger scale, it seems this can sometimes cause earthquakes... One geothermal power plant is going to close in France https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/Geothermal-power...

Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#210

Post by Trasmatta »

Solvitieg wrote: post #194

Better authentication practices. I've been writing auth for the web since 2005 and it hasn't gotten easier or more convenient as a programmer or as an end user. The problem is so bad that email/password combos need to be managed by 3rd party services. Migrating away from Google Authenticator was a massive pain for me this year and as we continue to use more services, this problem will grow. Some apps on my phone star…

2020 introduced a new major challenge with face id, given mask usage
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