Ask HN: What do you wish someone would build? • Hacker News Board

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

#531

Post by tibu » Sun, Oct 02, 2016, 5:48 PM UTC

cromulent wrote: post #176

A non-cloud off-site backup appliance. This is what I want (I know there are alternatives, but this is what I want): A device that I buy, and can plug at least one hard drive in to. I give it some sort of passphrase. I then place it in a friend's house and connect it to their internet connection. I can then access it remotely from my house. I can easily backup my stuff to it. My backups are encrypted, both over the w…

My Synology NAS does exactly this. Besides this it backs up my Google Drive and Dropbox too.

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

#532

Post by pseudozach » Mon, Oct 03, 2016, 9:25 AM UTC

alex5092 wrote: post #416

whamlastxmas wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you just attach a smartphone to a door, and have open one of those Supra lockboxes over Bluetooth? I guess the issue there is battery life. I make prototypes of stuff like this as a hobby. You could use a fairly inexpensive SoC that has Wifi/Bluetooth built in ($6), attach a module for 4G connection (~$50), and give it a huge battery so that it can lasts a few weeks. It would be asleep most of the time, and wak…

The cell phone + supra lockbox approach could work. One would need to be a realtor though. Supra only sells through realtor associations. Thanks for the info regarding the components. I wonder if there'd actually be a market for this kind of thing.. i.e. One person unlocking access to physical keys in a lockbox at a remote location so that another person can gain access to something. It would be used in a temporary i…

We actually built something like this but for bikes. http://lockandgo.bike/index_en.html, it has data connection for remote lock/unlock and even gps to get the position. There was no market. We could pivot to this easily...

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

#533

Post by tboyd47 » Mon, Oct 03, 2016, 8:24 PM UTC

loco5niner wrote: post #528

tboyd47 wrote: post #371

This is more of a re-engineering of modern society. I want a drone that carries babies and small children and follows you around. It can follow your car or follow you into large stores like Target and Walmart. That way I can go about my day with my kids effortlessly hovering around at all times.

Hopefully such a drone is hack-proof...

Of course it is.

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

#534

Post by avhon1 » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 1:12 AM UTC

personlurking wrote: post #413

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…

Will this not be solved, partly and in a sense, by hologram keyboards? It seems your wish for a physical keyboard is not due to an enjoyment of the tactile nature of it but rather that it's quite hard to type on an in-screen virtual one. Hologram keyboards would still seemingly require a surface to type on, though, so it wouldn't solve everything. One might imagine a future where the phone is in your pocket but a hol…

You can't hold a phone by its holographic keyboard. That means you'd have to type with one hand. One of the big advantages of physical keyboards is the ability to type with 2 thumbs, or even 2 hands on devices like the Psion 5.

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

#535

Post by avhon1 » Sat, Oct 08, 2016, 3:22 AM UTC

olalonde wrote: post #230

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.

I believe that the first half of your want is already satisfied by amazon's kindle. When I had a kindle 3, I could turn on a feature to see highlights and comments from other readers.