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Ask HN: What “missing” technical solution(s) do you wish existed?

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Re: Ask HN: What “missing” technical solution(s) do you wish existed?

#71

Post by protomyth »

lj3 wrote: post #70
protomyth wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why what I plug it into cannot have its own computing and storage power. There are wired caps on data too. In fact, why the heck did Apple sell a display and an iMac? Why not insert a processor board (a blade) into the display to turn it into an iMac? Why was the Mac Pro anything more than a bunch of slots for blades? I want to carry a small display, some storage, and computing power and be able to dock…

Hmm. That's an interesting idea. How would the phone and the PC work together, though? I could see it work if they were all the same architecture. Then you're just adding more ram and cores. Actually, the ram could be an issue. For example, say you're running a video editing program that's using 15gb of ram and you want to undock. You'd need some way of storing the state of the program and the ram its using when it's…

Storage was a solved issue with the Newton Soups in the 90's, but other systems won. Memory could work the same way. Run the programs that required the high ram on the machine I docked to (using local dock storage replicating what I need from my phone) and when I unplug save the state. Perhaps back it up to network in that state in case I plug into a different dock next time.

Re: Ask HN: What “missing” technical solution(s) do you wish existed?

#72

Post by adrianN »

andars wrote: post #35

FPGAs in desktop/laptop computers. That would open all kinds of interesting possibilities. Energy from nuclear fusion. Highly dense electrical energy source. I want to see electric planes, phones that last for months, drones that stay in the air for days, etc. Some kind of magical security system so we could return to native code instead of putting VMs on top of VMs. No idea if this one is feasible or how it might be…

I don't think that some kind of awesome battery will give us phones that last for months. We'd either make the battery smaller (=cheaper) or crank up the processor.

Re: Ask HN: What “missing” technical solution(s) do you wish existed?

#73

Post by darkblackcorner »

thexa4 wrote: post #8

A solution for game assets building. Ideally it would be possible to build all assets (maps, models, textures, binaries) in a game from source files to the format that's distributed to people. Unfortunately due to the build times for certain things like maps it's not feasible to rebuild everything before every release. Combined with the fact that the files are relatively large means that we can't store everything in…

Have you looked at Git LFS? https://git-lfs.github.com/

GitLab have it in the Community and Commercial Editions: https://about.gitlab.com/2015/11/23/announcing-git-lfs-suppo...

Re: Ask HN: What “missing” technical solution(s) do you wish existed?

#74

Post by adrianN »

ComodoHacker wrote: post #51

A secure communication technology that is understandable (after reading some mans) and verifiable by an average user, without being infosec expert. For now, there are so many unknowns in the equation, that users have no choice but to rely on vendor's authority, which means centralization. Don't tell me it's theoretically impossible because it's possible in almost every other area.

How could the average user possibly verify any kind of modern technology? Programming VCRs is too hard for almost everybody, do you really expect these people to understand even the most basic explanation of how their privacy is protected?

Re: Ask HN: What “missing” technical solution(s) do you wish existed?

#75

Post by andars »

adrianN wrote: post #72
andars wrote: post #35

FPGAs in desktop/laptop computers. That would open all kinds of interesting possibilities. Energy from nuclear fusion. Highly dense electrical energy source. I want to see electric planes, phones that last for months, drones that stay in the air for days, etc. Some kind of magical security system so we could return to native code instead of putting VMs on top of VMs. No idea if this one is feasible or how it might be…

I don't think that some kind of awesome battery will give us phones that last for months. We'd either make the battery smaller (=cheaper) or crank up the processor.

You're probably right, but I guess it would be a possibility if we just replaced the battery in current phones.

For the other things I didn't necessarily have a battery in mind (doesn't change your point though).

Re: Ask HN: What “missing” technical solution(s) do you wish existed?

#76

Post by ComodoHacker »

sp332 wrote: post #58
ComodoHacker wrote: post #51

A secure communication technology that is understandable (after reading some mans) and verifiable by an average user, without being infosec expert. For now, there are so many unknowns in the equation, that users have no choice but to rely on vendor's authority, which means centralization. Don't tell me it's theoretically impossible because it's possible in almost every other area.

How verifiable? You've seen the Underhanded C code competition? http://underhanded-c.org/

I'm not talking about code bugs and backdoors, which can always exist. I'm talking about protocols, encryption schemes and architectures. We need "comprehensible security", as opposed to incomprehensible, "NP-hard" and (soon) even "quantum-hard" security, accessible to only 0.1% of engineers, let alone users.

We still don't have digital signing technology that is verifiable as easily as paper signature and works peer-to peer, without some big corp/govt involved.

Re: Ask HN: What “missing” technical solution(s) do you wish existed?

#77

Post by TillE »

I want a simple bug tracker that's hosted entirely within my VCS repository, with a fully featured web interface.

There are a few abandoned projects like this, but they're all CLI-focused with view-only web at most. I want something better than just keeping a TODO file, not worse.

Re: Ask HN: What “missing” technical solution(s) do you wish existed?

#78

Post by marktangotango »

jwcrux wrote: post #45
marktangotango wrote: post #41

I want a backend service I can call from my statically generated (i.e. jekyll) websites, to implement things like blog comments, analytics, etc. A true cloud platform where I don't have to mess with admining and provisioning servers and containers. I want to just upload my code and pay for the cycles and bandwidth I use. Aws lambda for http basically.

disqus + google analytics?

I don't want disqus ads, nor google analytics referrer spam. Plus uBlock blocks ga, so it doesn't track the 'ghosts' ie technical users that are my target audience who use uBlock at a much larger percentage that the norm.

I'd like to just implement what I need.

Re: Ask HN: What “missing” technical solution(s) do you wish existed?

#79

Post by marktangotango »

mimming wrote: post #62
marktangotango wrote: post #41

I want a backend service I can call from my statically generated (i.e. jekyll) websites, to implement things like blog comments, analytics, etc. A true cloud platform where I don't have to mess with admining and provisioning servers and containers. I want to just upload my code and pay for the cycles and bandwidth I use. Aws lambda for http basically.

I started to take a swing at the comments part a couple years ago with firebase: https://github.com/mimming/firebase-jekyll-comments

That's pretty cool, what's the status? Have you had anyone adopt it? The setup seems a bit complex honestly. But generally, firebases nosql store is a turn off imo.

Re: Ask HN: What “missing” technical solution(s) do you wish existed?

#80

Post by ComodoHacker »

adrianN wrote: post #74
ComodoHacker wrote: post #51

A secure communication technology that is understandable (after reading some mans) and verifiable by an average user, without being infosec expert. For now, there are so many unknowns in the equation, that users have no choice but to rely on vendor's authority, which means centralization. Don't tell me it's theoretically impossible because it's possible in almost every other area.

How could the average user possibly verify any kind of modern technology? Programming VCRs is too hard for almost everybody, do you really expect these people to understand even the most basic explanation of how their privacy is protected?

You don't have to know how VCR works in every detail to use it and be sure it does what it should. You just look at the recording and see its quality.

On the other hand, using some security product, you can't tell if it's secure or it's snake oil, even if source code is open.

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