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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?

#381

Post by barrysteve »

adeelk93 wrote: post #188
jamiek88 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always like reading about, and comments from, ESL people who learned basically Internet English. Subtly different to UK and USA English but comprehensible by all.

Subtly different how?

The difference isn't all that subtle. Uk and usa english have regional differences in their english that goes beyond putting the 'u' in colour.

Emphasis on streams of thinking and constructing sentences in ways that make sense to locals, is different to the formal-ish and almost toneless communication we do online.

Internet communication flattens out cultural shortcuts and cultural deepening you can do with fellow speakers in the same nation and locale.

Everything has to be expanded out so that you can 'see all the moving parts', whereas local english can be a lot more intuitive and cultural.

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

#382

Post by ripper1138 »

tylerlh wrote: post #306
ripper1138 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you’d be surprised at how many people at Amazon work on logistics.

The work they do behind the scenes is very impressive. An "AWS, but for supply chain" would be huge in my (biased) opinion, though I'm curious whether they would be motivated enough to share their progress with the rest of the world since it's been quite a competitive advantage.

In a sense they already do with “fulfillment by Amazon”. The only thing missing compared to UPS or FedEx is the retail locations and last mile pick up.

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

#383

Post by sofixa »

dredmorbius wrote: post #342
zip1234 wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trucking is also highly subsidized via highway money, with gas/usage taxes covering less than half of roads..= Take that away or make trucks pay for wear and tear and maybe we would see more investment in rail. Long haul trucking almost shouldn't exist given how much cheaper and more efficient rail is.

I recently ran across a mention that this was a deliberate decision made in the 1950s to help further break the power of railroad monopolies. The decision had merits at the time. Side-effects may be overwhelming those now, though I'll note that with only five US majors, centralisation within rail remains a concern.

A better way to do that would have been something akin to the "Rail Packages" of the EU, most notably the open access part. Infrastructure should be separate from operations, and access should be given to anyone at equal priority and fees. Monopolies are effectively broken, and that works for rail as well any other type of infrastructure monopoly - ISPs, power, etc.

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

#384

Post by oefnak »

charleshan wrote: post #239
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Educational games are not the same as "gamification" as an incentive structure, and I also think you're being very prescriptive of your own research style. I knew several academics in my PhD that thrived off being able to publish papers in better conferences, faster, etc than their peers. Also there's a pretty strong niche of puzzle game solvers (think the MIT Puzzle Hunts) that love thinking through problems in gami…

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…

I do none of those things.

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

#385

Post by dredmorbius »

sofixa wrote: post #383
dredmorbius wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently ran across a mention that this was a deliberate decision made in the 1950s to help further break the power of railroad monopolies. The decision had merits at the time. Side-effects may be overwhelming those now, though I'll note that with only five US majors, centralisation within rail remains a concern.

A better way to do that would have been something akin to the "Rail Packages" of the EU, most notably the open access part. Infrastructure should be separate from operations, and access should be given to anyone at equal priority and fees. Monopolies are effectively broken, and that works for rail as well any other type of infrastructure monopoly - ISPs, power, etc.

I wish I could remember the source, as I believe it had more context.

May have been Tim Wu's The Master Switch, though that doesn't quite seem right.

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

#386

Post by tomgp »

aappleby wrote: post #30

No single thing, but in general the gradually declining fraction of people capable of understanding complex systems "from top to bottom" concerns me. I have seen far too many projects become locally-smart but globally-incoherent due to the gradual dissolution of systemic understanding over time.

“Locally smart but globally incoherent” of a great, pithy way to describe many systems/projects/organisations I’ve worked with.

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

#387

Post by astrange »

mikewarot wrote: post #358
astrange wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost everyone who wants to fundamentally reinvent programming seems to come up with visual dataflow programming, which is strange to me because aren't those just function calls?

No... it's plumbing. Function calls are nested to-do lists. It's a different thing all together. Flows all have queues.

Function calls (called messages) can go in a queue in the actor model.

I do think dataflow programming might be interesting for low-level if it compiled to hardware as well as C. There's an old project for that here but the actual webpage and docs are gone:

https://github.com/orcc/orcc

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

#388

Post by snird »

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

I work on a gamification product. We have schools as customers, they made a game that engaged the students and in an a/b testing showed much better results over time.

They pay 0.1% of what other, non-education customers pay. Because that's all they could spare and allow.

Needless to say, the servers alone cost more than what they pay. Not to talk about the massive amount of support they consume.

So if you wonder why it's not widespread - that's why.

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

#389

Post by heurisko »

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

The reality of "technology in the classroom" for me was just a bunch of classmates goofing around and getting distracted with computers, whilst they could be reading a book combined with interacting with each other.

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

#390

Post by _448 »

Going back to basics. The fun there is in understanding the low-levels and being able to tinker is one of the most satisfying thing. Unfortunately we have added so much abstract layers over things using technology that no one knows anymore what exactly is happening under those abstract layers.

I remember my Dad use to do DIY of almost everything in the house, Radio repair, Grinder-Mixer repair, TV repair, Plumbing, Carpentry, Stove repair, Fan repair, Building his own tools for work, Electricals of the house, Sewing machine repair, Scooter repair(hell, he once even built a small moped for his boss's daughter!). And he had limited resources i.e. lack of tools. His education? A basic Diploma in electronics, in native language(not English) in a remote village and completed just few years after the country became independent from British rule?

But he was not unique. Most of my neighbours use to do DIY of most things. We are losing that art.

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