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Ask HN: Boring but important tech no one is working on?

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Re: Ask HN: Boring but important tech no one is working on?

#281

Post by Diris »

krapp wrote: post #266
Buttons840 wrote: post #221

GUI toolkits? Maybe? I wonder how much of the "everything is a service, access this calculator for a small monthly fee" problem is due to how poor GUI toolkits are.

I think a big part of the problem is we seem to have decided, as an industry, that Electron solved application development and in particularly GUIs, and left everything else to rot. And a lot of the alternatives seem more focused on leveraging specific languages than making the development process easier, which is really the problem that Electron (specifically the HTML/CSS/JS) model solves. Like, I would kill to be a…

Maybe QML with DOtherSide[0]?

[0]https://github.com/filcuc/DOtherSide

Re: Ask HN: Boring but important tech no one is working on?

#282

Post by 13of40 »

bee_rider wrote: post #157
sowbug wrote: post #138

Less a specific technology and more a mindset. Repairing things around the house. Today, it's almost always rational to throw out the broken thing and buy a new one. There are a bunch of reasons why that's true: cost of one's own labor, lack of discrete replacement parts, lack of repair documentation, improvements in technology since original purchase, risk of further breakage, risk of injury to self, etc. But the re…

Also it is just a nice feeling, every time you use something you've repaired. I'm not very handy, but every time I open the door that doesn't squeak anymore it cheers me up a little.

I agree. I just got hearing aids, and I've had to oil the hinges on several doors in my house.

Re: Ask HN: Boring but important tech no one is working on?

#283

Post by copperx »

Darkskynet wrote: post #241
copperx wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was watching a Pixar movie and wondered, "what if these resources were spent in creating, say, scientifically accurate animations of biological processes for people who are learning chemistry, anatomy, genetics, etc." We all have seen small animations of processes, but some are inaccurate or simplified due to time and money constraints. I've dreamed about this since I was a kid.

On the topic of 'scientifically accurate animations of biological processes'. You may know of these videos, but I thought these might be worth sharing for others interested in this topic: Here is a TEDTalk by Drew Berry: Animations of unseeable biology. (uploaded in 2012) https://youtu.be/WFCvkkDSfIU Here is also a more recent video by Veritasium on YT that also talks about these animations. (uploaded in 2017) https:…

I did not. That's fantastic. Thank you.

Re: Ask HN: Boring but important tech no one is working on?

#284

Post by Balgair »

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #236
dredmorbius wrote: post #51

Railroads. Specifically freight rail. There is stunningly little literature on any R&D in conventional freight rail transport, something I discovered when looking for any published research some months back. High-speed rail, yes. Regular old freight, no. Contrast this with autonomous and electrified trucking as alternatives, with which rail could offer considerable synergies. I'd suspect that break-bulk, trainset ass…

Self driving train seems like a no brainer. I suspect that even with the tech 10 years ago it could have been solved. Where are they and why isn't someone working on it? I suspect when something is this obvious, yet we don't see a product, it has to do with someone in the industry fighting change and making sure it does not happen.

Unions?

Re: Ask HN: Boring but important tech no one is working on?

#285

Post by Swenrekcah »

motohagiography wrote: post #200
api wrote: post #12

Improving the core of the power grid to prepare for the near-doubling of power demand that will occur when everyone drives EVs, and also making the grid more maintainable, more robust, and easier to fix if damaged by anything from mundane causes to EMPs. Some thoughts: * Equipment to allow existing runs to be upgraded to higher voltages or even HVDC while being compatible on the other side with existing equipment and…

Related question: this issue of power bill costs skyrocketing in europe and elsewhere, to where there is real risk of mass non-payment. Do we know what percentage of households being shut off would cause grid instability because of having to dump load from nuclear and other plants that can't easily be shut down?

I guess the simple way would be to cut off non-payers in smaller batches than would make problems for the grid.

But I guess there would also be industry willing to buy the excess immediately anyway.

Re: Ask HN: Boring but important tech no one is working on?

#286

Post by boredtofears »

iammjm wrote: post #36

Educational games. Hear me out. The way we teach us basically how we did it 500 years ago. This is stupid, boring and not scalable. We dont have enough teachers, attention span is short, education is costly. So we need something that scales, is fun and involves all types of media plus gamifies education. Think Skyrim or GTA meets MS Encarta

Games already do this all the time. Hades is essentially a fantastic retelling of many Greek mythologies.

Re: Ask HN: Boring but important tech no one is working on?

#287

Post by Aeolun »

thenerdhead wrote: post #260
iammjm wrote: post #36

Educational games. Hear me out. The way we teach us basically how we did it 500 years ago. This is stupid, boring and not scalable. We dont have enough teachers, attention span is short, education is costly. So we need something that scales, is fun and involves all types of media plus gamifies education. Think Skyrim or GTA meets MS Encarta

Why does education have to be entertaining? Interactive, sure. But not entertaining due to attention spans dwindling.

More like attention spans for boring stuff were always short for humans. Making it more entertaining means people don’t have such a hard time remaining focused.

Re: Ask HN: Boring but important tech no one is working on?

#288

Post by dredmorbius »

sofixa wrote: post #146
dredmorbius wrote: post #51

Railroads. Specifically freight rail. There is stunningly little literature on any R&D in conventional freight rail transport, something I discovered when looking for any published research some months back. High-speed rail, yes. Regular old freight, no. Contrast this with autonomous and electrified trucking as alternatives, with which rail could offer considerable synergies. I'd suspect that break-bulk, trainset ass…

Isn't that because rail freight is pretty much a solved problem with little left to research? Each one of those you mentioned have been discussed, optimised and reorganised hundreds if not thousands of times across hundreds of countries during the last more than a century of rail history. The answers are there, just not everyone bothers to look and apply them. Autonomous electric trains exist. Scheduling optimisation…

There's a argument to be made for this. As of about 30 years ago, I had the opportunity to observe a freight yard at which the tech was 1920s -- 1930s vintage (electromechanical relays controlling switches). I suspect there are many such instances still in operation. To an extent, what works, works, but there are also limitations and sheer maintenance.

But at a bigger-picture view, as I read what's being discussed for trucking, I keep thinking that far greater energy efficiencies are attainable by a switch to rail, though a huge problem remains in the flexibility and time elements. There have been expedited / express long-distance rail initiatives, though those have been on the range of ~14 days for coast-to-coast transit in the US.

There is a very small number of Class 1 railroads in the US: Amtrak, BNSF, Canadian National, Canadian Pacific, CSX, Kansas City Southern, Norfolk Southern, and Union Pacific. One of those is passenger-only, and two are Canadian-owned. That leaves five US-owned freight carriers. As with the broadband industry, these tend to operate independent territories and routes.

Re: Ask HN: Boring but important tech no one is working on?

#289

Post by throwaway9870 »

EDI gateways and conversion. Super important to large companies and the existing companies that can convert and manage the stream of it are incompetent at best. Small companies that interface with large companies use 3rd party gateways for conversion and compliance purposes. Great MRR business if you don't mind boring and no how to build reliable systems.

Re: Ask HN: Boring but important tech no one is working on?

#290

Post by rwnspace »

darepublic wrote: post #255
charleshan wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment reminds me of Status as a Service by Eugene Wei. "Some people find status games distasteful. Despite this, everyone I know is engaged in multiple status games. Some people sneer at people hashtag spamming on Instagram, but then retweet praise on Twitter. Others roll their eyes at photo albums of expensive meals on Facebook but then submit research papers to prestigious journals in the hopes of being publ…

Some status games are better than others. ie when the game requires some common good to be performed, or the mastery of a useful skill. Some status games reward things that only drag us down

As an aside, when people point out virtue signalling (I'm taking it as an analogue of status games) without adding some analysis my first assumption is that they are virtue-signalling to put others down or make others seem shallow (or themselves deep). The cornerstone of western morality is Jesus and he was quite the "virtue signaller". Point being that the observation on it's own is uninteresting without saying something about the context or consequences of a behaviour. There aren't many things that are /purely/ virtue signals (or status games) and those that are, are quite obvious.
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