Ask HN: Idea Sunday • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#251

Post by ENGNR » Sun, Apr 06, 2014, 9:41 PM UTC

drcross wrote: post #226

quaunaut wrote: post #47

This is less an idea, more something for someone to think about. We need to figure out how to defeat the internet echo chamber effect. Notice how often, when a community gets started between a small group of people(such as early Reddit or HN), it's a place of intelligent, productive discussion, where people measure what they say instead of just spouting extreme rhetoric? Yet, once these communities grow, you inevitab…

I think I have a solution to this, something I called Reddit150. You have divisions, like in soccer or american foot ball leagues, where the highest rated members can be promoted to the "higher" league and also demoted if their contributions are not good enough. People from a lower division cannot comment on a higher division, but everyone can view all divisions, this would result in situation where the media would a…

Wouldn't putting more emphasis on karma just lead to more karma whoring? You want to encourage quality dissenting opinions rather than just making the echo chamber louder

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#252

Post by rokhayakebe » Sun, Apr 06, 2014, 9:44 PM UTC

namanyayg wrote: post #239

rokhayakebe wrote: post #2

Keep Writing. I, sometimes, would like to write on a subject but I fear no one will read the material. If I had X people simply suggest to "keep writing" I would be more willing. Keep writing is something like Medium but it allows someone to post text (news, fiction, stories, anything) that is not complete. Writers set a (hidden) number of votes they should reach before they keep going then they publish what they cur…

I'm interested, but where would an author get people to vote on the piece? While a fiction story could get votes from various communities, I imagine it would fail for specific posts? Feel free to email, mail at namanyayg dot com

I think it could be a simple like button, hence it could be anywhere. You could also build the platform to write and publish if you wanted, but regardless of where it is it would work the same. I will email you.

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#253

Post by wpietri » Sun, Apr 06, 2014, 9:44 PM UTC

jtregunna wrote: post #218

mrfusion wrote: post #193

Put a drain at the top of toilets to prevent overflows (like sinks already have)

And where exactly would it drain to? Your toilet's output is plugged, thus causing the overflow, remember?

A more practical approach might be a way to stop water from going into the bowl. E.g., you lift up on the handle to close the tank flap. Or maybe there's a stop button next to the flush button.

That would be almost as good as an overflow drain, but wouldn't require adding second sewer pipe.

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#254

Post by peterjmag » Sun, Apr 06, 2014, 9:45 PM UTC

nemo1618 wrote: post #58

I have a strange fascination with knowing exactly how I discovered a particular artist, film, website, etc. I'd really love a browser extension that could keep track of how the user reached a given site. Then they could go back later and input, say, a YouTube URL, and it would show exactly what lead them to that song. I started writing such an extension myself, but I was clearly out of my element. So when Mozilla shu…

Same here! I've found that people often have really interesting stories surrounding their discovery of a favorite album (for instance), especially when they have strong emotional or sentimental attachments. I think it'd be really cool to tap into that and even help people recall things that they might not otherwise recall by showing them the "path" by which they arrived to an album, the date when they first listened to it, etc, and then collect those stories to share. Could also become an interesting approach to content discovery—through personal stories instead of similarity algorithms.

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#255

Post by nroets » Sun, Apr 06, 2014, 9:47 PM UTC

An app that shows me where my friends and family are.

(Like Google Latitude used to do)

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#256

Post by wpietri » Sun, Apr 06, 2014, 9:49 PM UTC

postsantum wrote: post #21

A notepad that can send my handwritten notes to the cloud. It should have a mini-scaner embedded into the top cover so when I want to backup a note, I just close the notepad, push the cover, remove the first page, close, push again. None of these ipad apps can substitute the good old pencil drawings

Instead of a magic notebook cover, people do this with a magic pen:

http://www.livescribe.com/en-us/smartpen/

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#257

Post by maxerickson » Sun, Apr 06, 2014, 9:50 PM UTC

avalaunch wrote: post #151

mattmanser wrote: post #34

Baby near me Amenities near by with baby facilities, possibly with user ratings. All of my recently baby-ied friends complain about finding places to go, especially groups of recent mothers meeting up in the middle of the day.

As a (relatively) new dad, I would find this very useful. There doesn't seem to be a central repository of such places and the ones in my city (Cincinnati) are really badly organized, maintained, ect...

There is room in OpenStreetMap for this sort of data. Parks and playgrounds are already frequently marked (along with stuff like museums), and there are at least a few people trying to figure out things like changing tables.

I guess it would take a while before people were chasing details like kids menus.

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#258

Post by andrewcooke » Sun, Apr 06, 2014, 9:51 PM UTC

a simple, motion-sensitive sleep alarm. i just tried to find one, but they all require a phone or tablet. they're nothing simple and stand-alone with a very basic interface.

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#259

Post by adam419 » Sun, Apr 06, 2014, 9:51 PM UTC

lucb1e wrote: post #209

adam419 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couple questions. Have you had any customers? What type of legal docs do you think are best to target? Are you trying to generate summaries programmatically?

> "Have you had any customers?" No, no, it's nothing like that. It's just a small Javascript thingy that tries to convert legal nonsense into sense. I got a contract in Dutch that I found took way longer to read than it should (like, really read and understand all implications), made this script and threw it online. It's in a directory with dozens of unfinished scripts that I wrote. So yes, summaries are generated pr…

How does it translate any legal writing into a simpler form? That sounds like a damn nearly impossible language processing feat.

Re: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

#260

Post by achal » Sun, Apr 06, 2014, 9:54 PM UTC

lucb1e wrote: post #103

nemo1618 wrote: post #58

I have a strange fascination with knowing exactly how I discovered a particular artist, film, website, etc. I'd really love a browser extension that could keep track of how the user reached a given site. Then they could go back later and input, say, a YouTube URL, and it would show exactly what lead them to that song. I started writing such an extension myself, but I was clearly out of my element. So when Mozilla shu…

> "I'd really love a browser extension that could keep track of how the user reached a given site." I used to love to have this. I called it "browser history", but then Mozilla decided it made the browser so terribly slow that you can now no longer really configure how long history is retained. After a while it just disappears. I used to have my history all the way back from 2006...

Is this true? I checked and I seemed to have lost my history from before 2012, and assumed I'd messed up somewhere in transitioning between computers. I couldn't find any info about Firefox doing this (arbitrarily deleting history from the past), but I'm almost sure it does.

Edit: This time I found it: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Projects/Places_async_expir...

I find it rather annoying, however, that this isn't obvious. I like keeping all my history :( I'd rather I could at least keep the history somewhere, even if it didn't stay in Firefox's history view.