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Ask HN: What product/service would you be willing to pay for?

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Re: Ask HN: What product/service would you be willing to pay for?

#71
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are several differences between the medical field and software engineering, some of which are: 1. The former is highly regulated because of potentially highly catastrophic outcomes in most cases. 2. The former also is several thousand years older than the latter.

The modern medical field is not thousands of years old. It actually emulates the air traffic control system when it comes to its internal regulations and division of labor. This is how they keep out quacks who still believe in bloodletting. We could do a lot better if we got over our hubris and tried to learn from how other more mature feilds run themselves. With self-driving cars on the horizon, and with our entire…

It’s not like nobody’s tried before. The term ’software engineering’ precisely stems from the idea that software development should be more like other engineering disciplines.

That those attempts didn’t work out probably has less to do with developer hubris but with software engineering indeed being different from other engineering disciplines.

After all, we don’t think of medicine in terms of ‘medical engineering’ or ‘human bio-system maintenance’ either, simply because it’s something else.

Besides, certificates are rampant in the IT industry. Most of those however tend to say very little about the actual skills of the ones certified.

Re: Ask HN: What product/service would you be willing to pay for?

#72

a good open source comment system which works with static websites which let's me avoid vendor/one-point lock in.

Take a look at https://github.com/gka/schnack https://posativ.org/isso/ https://github.com/adtac/commento :)

They all lack on one point. Schnack: Requires Github or Twitter account it seems (not everybody who comments has a twitter account). Isso: In princible ok too paranoia (strange icons, no Gravatar or any log in at all). Commento: Does not know how to handle links in comments and no login system.

So they are all ok but far away from a Disqus alternative.

Re: Ask HN: What product/service would you be willing to pay for?

#73

An app/service which provides the location of one mobile phone to another mobile phone. It should work across different manufacturers (iphone blackberry), across different service providers (verizon t-mobile).

I don’t like it, but WhatsApp does that.

Re: Ask HN: What product/service would you be willing to pay for?

#74
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just the voltage / amperage. Even if you buy a really expensive over-under that plugs into a 220 the lack of an output vent slows down drying dramatically.

Dryers are only vented in the United States. Most of the world uses condenser dryers that don't require venting. They also use less energy.

They also take significantly longer to dry your clothes.

Re: Ask HN: What product/service would you be willing to pay for?

#75
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. I would like open source + hosted version. Really simple hosted version for a couple of $ so you can have it on personal/project pages. There is of course disqus today, but never liked their ads, and of course its lock in.

Seconded. Disqus is bloated beyond repair. Open source + hosted is a fantastic model for consumers and entrepreneurs, and the hosted money would be enough to get rid of advertisements.

@therealmarv, @gingersnap and @vortico:

I suggest you take a look at EffectiveDiscussions: it's open source + hosted for €2. Demo: https://www.kajmagnus.blog/new-embedded-comments

It has improvements over Disqus ... and HackerNews: https://www.effectivediscussions.org/-32/how-hacker-news-can....

GitHub: https://github.com/debiki/ed-server. It's more lightweight: the script bundle is just 140kb in comparison to Disqus 750kb. (I'm developing it.)

Re: Ask HN: What product/service would you be willing to pay for?

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take a look at https://github.com/gka/schnack https://posativ.org/isso/ https://github.com/adtac/commento :)

They all lack on one point. Schnack: Requires Github or Twitter account it seems (not everybody who comments has a twitter account). Isso: In princible ok too paranoia (strange icons, no Gravatar or any log in at all). Commento: Does not know how to handle links in comments and no login system. So they are all ok but far away from a Disqus alternative.

There's also EffectiveDiscussions (https://www.effectivediscussions.org), which doesn't have any of those drawbacks. It has email+password login, Gmail, FB, GitHub. Open source, and hosted too, if you don't want to provision your own server.

Demo: https://www.kajmagnus.blog/new-embedded-comments

It has improvements over Disqus and HackerNews: https://www.effectivediscussions.org/-32/how-hacker-news-can.... GitHub: https://github.com/debiki/ed-server. (I'm developing it.)

Re: Ask HN: What product/service would you be willing to pay for?

#77

An app/service which provides the location of one mobile phone to another mobile phone. It should work across different manufacturers (iphone blackberry), across different service providers (verizon t-mobile).

I don’t like it, but WhatsApp does that.

Good to know but it is a no go since WhatApp is ending support for BlackBerry on Dec 31st, 2017. https://blog.whatsapp.com/10000617/WhatsApp-support-for-mobi... . May be it is time for me to move away from Blackberry altogether.
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