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Ask HN: What do you wish someone would build?

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Re: Ask HN: What do you wish someone would build?

#221

Post by gtirloni »

tajen wrote: post #216
qznc wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is not really paid for the OS, but for the hardware. Selling an OS seems nearly impossible today.

"We can't do it because it's a different business model than Apple's" ;) ? From 9Gag to HN, Windows 10 is a recurring meme of disrespect for the -cattle- consumer, in a world of Snowden and Facebook where we don't even own our computers. I say there's a demand (with money available) for a trustworthy OS in the PC world, and for a open-source in the Apple world. Selling today's OSes might be impossible indeed. But a l…

Nobody (as in the general population) cares about all of that, unless they have been personally bitten by it.

Someone needs to take some Linux and focus solely on the desktop environment. Make it more beautiful than OSX and Win10 and that may drive attention. That's an awful lot of work (not only the apps but getting the ecosystem to cooperate).

We've driven ourselves into the ground with our desire for free things. And we paid with our privacy, willingly or not. I think that reverting this trend will take a very long time now.

Re: Ask HN: What do you wish someone would build?

#222

Post by Freeboots »

crdb wrote: post #194

A way to use Mechanical Turk from outside the US. I've needed it with every client I ever worked with, and I need it now and know a dozen companies who do. CrowdFlower has a de facto monopoly on the outside of the US supply and charges an enormous premium for it - enough to turn off most of them. I certainly don't want to pay several thousand a month for the right to submit jobs, although I was ok with the 25% premiu…

Out of curiosity, what do you use it for? I'm intrigued by platforms like MT, but have never had a real use myself.

Re: Ask HN: What do you wish someone would build?

#223

Post by icebraining »

jakobegger wrote: post #138

A people-focussed email client. Pretty much all email clients are message/thread based. I'd rather have them people-based: A sidebar that shows a list of people who I have recently interacted with; and clicking on them shows all messages I've exchanged with them. I don't really care about threads, because people just don't know how to use them. But even if they do, it often isn't clear when to start a new thread vs.…

What OS? The only one I've heard of is Unibox (for macOS): https://www.uniboxapp.com/

Re: Ask HN: What do you wish someone would build?

#225

Post by ciaranm »

jagermo wrote: post #200

A smart bank account: I want to set up rules like "take 19 percent of every incoming transaction and save it to virtual account 'taxes'. Use this, account to pay invoices by $financialAgency" Banking hasn't produced any innovation since online banking, it seems

I guess you're not based in the UK, but monzo(previously Mondo) (https://monzo.com/ ) sounds like the start of what you're looking for. Their API (https://monzo.com/docs/) opens them up to all sorts of uses for your bank account.

Re: Ask HN: What do you wish someone would build?

#226

Post by austinjp »

jagermo wrote: post #200

A smart bank account: I want to set up rules like "take 19 percent of every incoming transaction and save it to virtual account 'taxes'. Use this, account to pay invoices by $financialAgency" Banking hasn't produced any innovation since online banking, it seems

Jeez absolutely. The lack of innovation in customer services in banking is awful.

A bank account wherein I can ring-fence amounts and set a preferential order in which these ringed resources are drained. All with alerts on top. "Warning: you're spending more than recommended on fancy breakfast items, jeopardising your ability to pay your AWS monthly bill (which by the way has increased over the past 3 months)".

Re: Ask HN: What do you wish someone would build?

#227

Post by psynapse »

tommynicholas wrote: post #6

API for sports data. If you want to build a great product based on sporting data, it is crazy hard to get. I think someone that made the pipes to all sports data (stats, schedules, lines, etc) could facilitate a lot of good innovation and build a solid business. Not sure if this is a VC scale business, but I think it should exist and I'd love to be a user if someone built it.

TXODDS has various pull/push APIs. Betting odds is the focus, but they have more fixture/stats/resulting services under development and can be approached for custom solutions.

https://txodds.com/

Re: Ask HN: What do you wish someone would build?

#228

Post by austinjp »

jagermo wrote: post #200

A smart bank account: I want to set up rules like "take 19 percent of every incoming transaction and save it to virtual account 'taxes'. Use this, account to pay invoices by $financialAgency" Banking hasn't produced any innovation since online banking, it seems

I'm watching Monzo (previously Mondo) with interest.

Re: Ask HN: What do you wish someone would build?

#229

Post by adityab »

zevv wrote: post #129

A slim, networked, pocked sized computer with a physical keyboard, running android or Linux. These used to exist - albeit disguised as phones - but the marketing department decided we don't need no friggin keyboards, and remove everything but the touchscreen and call it a tablet. The result is a consume-only device, on which it is all but impossible to input large amounts of text. Nokia N900, Motorola Droid 3/4, HTC…

Agreed. They don't make niche devices anymore.

The last great phones for me where the N950 and N900.

Everyone is building what they think appeals to the "average consumer". With every yearly product iteration, features regress more towards the mean. They just build bricks that look the same now, competing with each other on how many fractions of a millimeter can be shaved off. This is because phones are no longer seen as productivity devices, they're a status symbol like cars and jewelry. A keyboard increases thickness, which would be unthinkable for them.

I actually invested in a Jolla phone two years ago, but the promised hardware keyboard never quite panned out.

Re: Ask HN: What do you wish someone would build?

#230

Post by olalonde »

An ebook reader/protocol that would let me write or read comments left by other readers or the author(s). It would also be nice to be able chat with other people currently reading the book, especially for more technical books. Basically, make ebooks a bit more like MOOCs.
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