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Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

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Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#751

Post by healsdata »

baron816 wrote: post #243

In-person social organizations. Social isolation is probably the biggest cause of unhappiness in advanced countries. Having a strong social network has lots of advantages including providing better romantic and career opportunities, as well as improving physical and psychological health. Humans have a long history of dishing out lots of money to be parts of strong communities too--country clubs and fraternities have…

> Humans have a long history of dishing out lots of money to be parts of strong communities too

I think this is the reason Crossfit got so popular. People could go every day, see the same people, compete against them, etc. Definitely more expensive than a regular gym but offered more than just renting time on equipment.

Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#752

Post by tonyedgecombe »

asperous wrote: post #558
gullywhumper wrote: post #543

Car-free or significantly car-limited communities. Cars that are safer for pedestrians (not just for occupants in cars). Better traffic safety enforcement. Automobiles kill ~6k pedestrians and almost 140k are sent to the ER in the US - many of which will have life-altering injuries. https://www.cdc.gov/transportationsafety/pedestrian_safety/i...

There is https://culdesac.com/ But I think the market has basically spoken on automobiles, people are more then willing to take the safety risk for convenience and many are willing to live far far outside the city for one extra bedroom.

>But I think the market has basically spoken on automobiles

I don't know about the US but within the UK you have to pay a premium to live somewhere where you aren't car dependent.

Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#753

Post by Ir0nMan »

lefrenchy wrote: post #604
oblio wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For news? I want an OS and browser integrate single payment system. I don't want to have to give my credit card details to everyone. I want a digital wallet that's an open standard and that's integrated with every form of online payment. Where I can cut off subscriptions easily and with no hassle, maybe one time payments, etc. For news, shopping, any kind of subscription (Netflix, AWS, etc.). I want banking-as-a-serv…

Isn’t this what Privacy does? https://privacy.com/

+1, I would highly recommend people check out Privacy.com. I have been using it for years.

Create virtual card numbers, set spending limits, frequency, and burn or pause a "card" at any time.

Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#754

Post by yosamino »

moralestapia wrote: post #664
yosamino wrote: post #196

Geothermal Energy. Extremely simplified, all you need to do is drill a hole deep enough for a high temperature difference. Then stick in two pipes, on for sending water down, one for steam to come up. Run a turbine, add a valve to regulate how much water you want to converted into steam to be able to regulate output, enjoy your first mover advantage and price the competition out of the market. ... It's not that I do…

>Extremely simplified, all you need to do is drill a hole deep enough for a high temperature difference. >There's plenty of asteroids rich in gold/titanium just floating around. All you have to do is bring them here.

I don't think this snarky comment is justified. Geothermal energy plants as I describe them already exist - I'm just surprised that this source of energy is not exploited more.

Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#755

Post by jbay808 »

marcinzm wrote: post #554
vinhboy wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spot on. Why don't we have milk crates for Amazon deliveries?

Right now, no one wants to pick up things from potential COVID plague bearers. Previously, probably how many wouldn't get reused and just get thrown away. Paper getting thrown away is eco friendly (renewable source, biodegradable, etc.), plastic is not.

Even if it's still cardboard, just some carefully thought-out size standards that take into account packing small boxes to fit perfectly into large boxes, and large boxes to stack perfectly onto trucks/forklifts/shipping containers, would have major effects because of the scale at which it would act.

It would also have knock-on effects -- by creating Schelling points for what are generally free variables, your water bottles would be more likely to fit in your car's cupholder, your tupperware would fit in the fridge, and so on.

Oh yeah, and you'd be able to ship your cousin's wineglasses using the boxes that your order of hand soap arrived in, and it would pretty much just fit perfectly.

Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#756

Post by Ir0nMan »

ineptech wrote: post #437

Personal server. If there were an open source project that made running server applications (personal blog, email, game server, file backups, mastodon, etc) easy for non-technical people, it would open up whole new use cases (in the same sense there are kinds of software now that wouldn't have made sense before everyone carried around a phone). It would also be a whalefall for the hosted vm industry if it caught on,…

Many cloud/VM providers like Digital Ocean offer one-click deployments of popular applications now.

Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#757

Post by DrRobinson »

meekrohprocess wrote: post #695
faluzure wrote: post #670

Human Longevity. 150,000 people die every day, and 2/3 of them die of age related diseases. The developed world and China are racing towards a demographic nightmare where fewer and fewer people are left to take care of the elderly. The older someone becomes, the more of a burden they become on the young. As people get older they begin to develop the diseases of old age and have an increasingly pain-filled life. Peopl…

That's always being worked on - modern medicine is nothing short of miraculous. People are trying. We want to cure cancer, and find effective general-purpose antivirals, and help people maintain healthy bodies, and figure out how to repair hearts, and cure diabetes, and fix autoimmune disorders, and figure out general-purpose gene therapies, and work out what exactly is up with the gut microbiome, and make prosthetic…

I think what OP means is rather than trying to fix deceases one by one, why aren't we focusing more on the root cause (aging)? This seems like a much more efficient way of solving many of these things. There are a bunch of initiatives in this area already, but not nearly enough to be proportional to the potential.

> but you can't just spend a trillion dollars and make people live an extra decade.

This I don't get though. Why not? We already do that. Making people healthier for longer is a massive win.

Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#758

Post by [deleted] »

Animats wrote: post #722
jbay808 wrote: post #414

Standardized interchangeable packaging for consumer goods. Ever been to a book store in Japan? Practically every book is the same size. As a result, bookshelves also are designed to be the right size to optimally fit books. This allows people to fit more books in small homes. It makes books easier to transport in book-sized boxes and book-sized bags too. You can get perfectly-fitting reusable cloth covers to protect…

Standardized interchangeable packaging for consumer goods. Marketing people don't like that. They want a unique look. Many US state laws requiring some standardization of sizes and fill have been repealed over the last two decades.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#759

Post by DrRobinson »

syndacks wrote: post #684
faluzure wrote: post #670

Human Longevity. 150,000 people die every day, and 2/3 of them die of age related diseases. The developed world and China are racing towards a demographic nightmare where fewer and fewer people are left to take care of the elderly. The older someone becomes, the more of a burden they become on the young. As people get older they begin to develop the diseases of old age and have an increasingly pain-filled life. Peopl…

End of life care is an incredibly expensive endeavor; why are we so adamant about extending the inevitable? IMO it's a subconscious projection of the fact that we do _not_ live meaningful lives in our day to day, and so we fixate on a fantastical (yet inspiring, universal) compensation of extending it forever. "Left to take care of the elderly" suggests we don't value life in the first place. Why extend it further?

The idea isn't that people will live in that fragile and unhealthy state even longer, the idea is to also extend how long we're healthy. Imagine being as healthy as a 30 year old when you're 70 for example. This is often also called healthspan and we probably don't want to extend lifespan too much without also extending the healthspan.

Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#760

Post by DrRobinson »

tuatoru wrote: post #685
faluzure wrote: post #670

Human Longevity. 150,000 people die every day, and 2/3 of them die of age related diseases. The developed world and China are racing towards a demographic nightmare where fewer and fewer people are left to take care of the elderly. The older someone becomes, the more of a burden they become on the young. As people get older they begin to develop the diseases of old age and have an increasingly pain-filled life. Peopl…

> As people get older they begin to develop the diseases of old age and have an increasingly pain-filled life. So, not longevity, then, but extension of the span of healthy life?

Correct!

Usually people imply extending both healthspan and lifespan when they talk about longevity.

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