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Ask HN: Things that suck?

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Re: Ask HN: Things that suck?

#51

Post by tombrossman »

paulgb wrote: post #35
Omniusaspirer wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately this is something that is intentionally designed to suck in almost all cases. It's even hard to pay someone else to do the canceling for you since you're generally required to offer up a lot of personal info to verify that it is in fact you that wants to cancel the account. I've personally had this range from phone number all the way up to SSN.

I'm not a lawyer but could something like temporary power of attorney be used here?

Read your contract. It will almost certainly have a section on cancelling which will give a postal address. Write a short letter with your account details and whatever else the contract says to provide, and cancel by mail. It is faster than using the phone.

I've been doing this for years and it always works. Pay a tiny bit extra and get signed proof of delivery. This is helpful when the company 'accidentally' loses the cancellation. It's good enough to beat them in court and god help them if they ding your credit and you have proof you cancelled (and that they received your cancellation letter).

Re: Ask HN: Things that suck?

#52

Post by robinhoodexe »

VLM wrote: post #39
robinhoodexe wrote: post #19

Having a physical card[1] with challenge & response codes for when using my bank and all pulic services in Denmark. I actually thought about making a simple CLI program that can OCR the card using tesseract[2], convert the output to a simple sqlite database and use GnuPG[3] to encrypt the database. The user feeds the application (probably just a simple bash script) the given challenge code, decrypts the database and…

Maybe start somewhere a little more basic. I've got C+R "cards" for my google acct and treasurydirect. And thats it. A little more might be nice.

Yeah I'm probably just overthinking this, although it could be a nice small project.

Re: Ask HN: Things that suck?

#53

Post by tdaltonc »

tester88 wrote: post #2

I completely agree with your DMV comment. I'd love it for someone to take a good look at DMVs across the country, and see what works and what doesn't. Can things be digitized that haven't? Can processes be split based on time (efficient, quick tasks vs. longer discussions)? I fear going to the DMV, but why should this be?

I haven't been to a DMV since I took my driving test (a decade ago). I just go to the AAA. They can do almost anything a DMV can.

I think that the relationship between the DMV and AAA is a great example of what can happen when government "services" are treated more like a platform and less like a service. The government specifies what government/citizen interaction needs to take place, private businesses can compete to fulfill that interaction as a service to citizens/customers.

The biggest downside to government-as-a-platform is that the service providers my lobby to make that interaction more cumbersome than it needs to be in order to make themselves richer: http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/27/turbotax-maker-funnels-mill...

Re: Ask HN: Things that suck?

#54

Post by comrade1 »

nilved wrote: post #48
comrade1 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Javascript is fine in itself as a language, but no one uses it like it's meant to be used. It's a prototype inheritance language and yet people try to use it like regular java (classes and instances). The problem you probably have is with the DOM, not the language.

No, my problem is definitely with the language. JavaScript has some PHP-level horrors in it, especially when it comes to type coercion.

I can't believe I'm having to stick up for javascript... I don't particularly like it myself, and I think the growth of node.js oven the past few years is one of the biggest jokes in our industry... But that said, every language has its surprises when it comes to coercion/equality/etc. When you move from Java to Ruby you get burned by the differences and when you move from just about anything else to javascript you suffer as well.

You as a programmer just have to know the differences between these languages and work appropriately.

Again... I can't believe I'm sticking up for javascript. I prefer strongly typed languages that can have projects with several dozens to hundreds of developers.

But I can see the appeal for javascript and other prototype inheritance languages. My first two languages were Dylan and Newtonscript.

Re: Ask HN: Things that suck?

#55

Post by enrmarc »

Temperature: I can't stand more than 25 °C (well, I can, but I don't like it).

Big software: I missed the old times where you just needed a text editor and a terminal in order to "create" computer programs. Nowadays it seems that you need IDEs (specially in mobile development), frameworks, unit testing frameworks, CI servers; and you have all types of "mini software programs" you have to use just because your team says "it's great". For example: Jasmine, Bower, Composer, Rake, Pip, Grunt, Gulp, Browserify, etc. I know all of them are pretty useful (and I would say, indispensable). Yeah, I know that the new rule in software development today is "write big-readable-maintainable-scalable-featurable software"... but as I've said I miss the little less-featured programs (like "ls").

Money: not to be able to buy online without a credit card. I would love to go to a physical store and buy a "pseudo credit card": "Hey dude, here you have 50 euros, give me a temporary credit card for that value". And then go to Amazon or whatever online shop and use that pseudo credit card without give any of my personal information or have to link the pseudo credit card with my bank account (like PayPal does).

Politics: I would love to see some engineers or scientists working in politics. I only see lawyers, economists and the like.

Re: Ask HN: Things that suck?

#56

Post by pavlov »

Computers, tablets and phones. I'd like to spend less time peering at these backlit screens, wiggling fingers at primitive input devices.

If only they weren't so necessary to get anything done at the speed or scale that is expected today.

Re: Ask HN: Things that suck?

#57

Post by rsp1984 »

I would like to point out that any existing issues with web technologies (HTML/CSS/JS/PHP/your newest hyped web framework) are merely a symptom. The underlying cause, and the thing that actually sucks, is the fact that the web has been designed as a sort of document viewing system, as opposed to a cross-platform app execution system.

And it sucks in particular that 20 years ago, when there was still room to steer things into the right direction, it seems that nobody was smart enough to anticipate the change of requirements or got the courage to stand up against existing authorities and bring the traditional web model into question.

Whenever I see some web demo of a particularly flashy CSS trick or the newest WebGL effect on HN, something inside me cringes because nobody of the hype crowd would ever consider giving a wet fuck about it if the demo was running in a native app.

Re: Ask HN: Things that suck?

#58

Post by na85 »

sehr wrote: post #38
CmonDev wrote: post #14

1. HTML (no fashionable crap like Bootstrap or flexbox is capable of giving me somethong as simple as XAML's grid, also dozens of quirks - http://wtfhtmlcss.com ). 2. JavaScript (not just dynamic but weak as well + dozens of quirks - http://wtfjs.com ). 3. Node.js and its hype, but at least I can avoid it.

Node.js is so last year. But in all honesty, it's transformed browser development. Common JS is everywhere now

>Common JS is everywhere now

That's not a good thing.

Re: Ask HN: Things that suck?

#59

Post by comrade1 »

na85 wrote: post #50
comrade1 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Javascript is fine in itself as a language, but no one uses it like it's meant to be used. It's a prototype inheritance language and yet people try to use it like regular java (classes and instances). The problem you probably have is with the DOM, not the language.

I think I can discern for myself whether I dislike the DOM or Javascript, thank you very much.

You only talk about client-side related features. Nothing about the language itself. I don't mean to be autistic - I now understand what you meant but it wasn't clear from the start of your post.

Re: Ask HN: Things that suck?

#60

Post by edavis »

Health insurance. All the terms (co-pay, co-insurance, deductible, premium, etc.) with non-obvious meanings. The delicate dance between me, the insurer, and the health provider when a bill needs to be paid. The whole thing feels scuzzy.

I would probably be more proactive about seeing a dentist or getting a physical if I knew I didn't have the headache of dealing health insurance on the other side of it.

And this is with good (I think) employer-provided health insurance! I can't even imagine the situation on the individual market.

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