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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?

#801

Post by DrRobinson »

marcell wrote: post #796
pochekailov wrote: post #717

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really agree with you. I feel the extension of young and healthy life (ideally to infinity) is a number one priority. Surprisingly, people almost always strongly oppose when I just start expressing my views. I never understood this. Wouldn't it be nice to see Mars colonized and terraformed? Wouldn't it be great to see the completion of a Dyson swarm and using 100 % of the Sun energy for some ultra-mega-project we c…

I don’t think extending life to infinity is a good idea. Why would anyone want to live forever? What’s the point?

Not dying from aging in not the same as being immortal though. You could still die from a car accident for example, and there is of course the option to kill oneself (even if I'd consider that a tragedy.)

This is if biological aging could be _fully_ fixed, the first steps are rather to live a healthier life a bit longer.

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

#802

Post by DrRobinson »

powerapple wrote: post #790
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…

I don't think it is true for developing world. The cost of taking care of olders are low. Yes, they probably cannot afford the medicine to prolong the cancer patients for 6 months or 1 year, and maybe even other conditions, they are not worse off comparing to their previous generation. If you look from developed world of view, anything below the developed world standard is bad, but comparing to previous generations,…

I might be misunderstanding what you're trying to say, do you mean that because the previous generation had it worse we shouldn't strive to improve things even more?

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

#803

Post by geonic »

Klonoar wrote: post #379

Premium-feeling laptops that aren't Apple machines. Yes yes, I get the economical barriers. I'm past caring. It is so incredibly frustrating to look outside the Apple ecosystem and feel like the entire PC industry is content to sell the bare minimum of quality (outside of Gamer hardware, which looks obscene - but I get that it's subjective). It's a horrible business idea on the numbers and nobody would do this, but i…

This goes for many many things. Most products are produced and marketed for the general consumer. It‘s time-consuming and frustrating to sort through all that marketing crap when you‘re looking for a new device/product/part when you know what you want.

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

#804

Post by mnahkies »

WalterBright wrote: post #698
InvisibleUp wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a large part of this (in the USA, anyways) is due to how modern cities are structured. It used to be, 100 or 200 years ago, that your workplace, your home, and your usual hang-out place were all within reasonable walking distance of each other. It wasn't a huge deal to go out and meet new people, as you'd naturally bump into them every day. Nowadays we have a large portion of people in bedroom communities, is…

I miss living in the dormitory in college. Everything I needed was within a 3 minute walk. The dorm was full of my peers. There was always something fun going on. You had a room just big enough for a bed, a desk, and a sink. Everything else was common. If I was a developer I'd build a "dorm for adults" right next to places like Amazon, but at least around here zoning won't permit it. It's great if you're single and d…

A friend of mine actually lived in a place like this in Japan for a while - shoebox room, and then generous communal areas for cooking / living. It sounded like a great idea to me, and when I moved to London I tried to find somewhere similar.

There were a couple of places in this space when I was looking but I didn't go with them for a few reasons: - cost was high - contractual terms were long (6-12mo minimum) - reviews were mixed, but the general vibe was a "tragedy of the commons" type situation - location / transit links didn't appear great

I ended up boarding with an older couple for a while before finding a more traditional share house with other young professionals.

If I'd been able to try it out with a 1/2 month minimum I would've looked past the other issues to give it a chance, it seemed like it could've a great way to accelerate finding your feet in a new country/city

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

#805

Post by a5withtrrs »

jiggawatts wrote: post #702
Klonoar wrote: post #379

Premium-feeling laptops that aren't Apple machines. Yes yes, I get the economical barriers. I'm past caring. It is so incredibly frustrating to look outside the Apple ecosystem and feel like the entire PC industry is content to sell the bare minimum of quality (outside of Gamer hardware, which looks obscene - but I get that it's subjective). It's a horrible business idea on the numbers and nobody would do this, but i…

I've had a very similar rant yearly for over a decade. I used to do it on Slashdot before YC News was a thing. You're not the only one, yet I feel this won't ever change. Nobody in the entire laptop industry cares or even knows about our complaints. There seems to be practically zero overlap between the professionals that use laptops -- such as software developers -- and the hardware engineers that design the laptops…

> - Alternative keyboard layouts: Why must a $6K laptop for professionals (or gamers!) do idiotic things such as compress the arrow keys or hide the Ins/Del/PgUp/PgDn keys? Why can't I choose the keyboard layout?

This is actually a fantastic point! Some models of Dell/HP/Lenovo have easily removed keyboards by design in order to install additional RAM/service parts etc. All they have keeping them connected other than some sliding plastic tabs is the ribbon cable. I can't believe no one has ever made drop in replacements either from the manufacturer or as aftermarket parts. Having Ctrl/Alt/Super/Fn keys in a dozen different configurations due to different vendors makes switching between different devices a huge pain.

Imagine if you could even get customised switches on your laptop!

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

#806

Post by Too »

gfxgirl wrote: post #481
imgabe wrote: post #284

The phone system. It seems like it's an unholy mess. I moved from the US to Hong Kong this year. I have a US number that I want to keep, and of course I need a local Hong Kong number. So, the US number is on my Google Fi account that I pay to keep active and I get a prepaid SIM card for Hong Kong. I can switch the SIM cards if I travel back. But why? We have two semi-independent networks, one for voice and one for da…

I would add to this, why even have "phone service" anymore. I call my family via Facebook Messenger or Zoom etc... I'm surprised that more more companies don't let me call them via these services or that some new startup hasn't starting selling the intergration so a customer can click "connect via Whatsapp" to our customer service. I'm also somewhat surprised there isn't a standard for this (maybe one is being worked…

There is a standard for this which most vendors actually used to support: XMPP federation.

Not surprisingly most vendors also dropped support for this merely in favor of lock-in.

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

#807

Post by a5withtrrs »

mch82 wrote: post #660
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…

There’s probably something to be learned from how Mexico processes & reuses glass soda bottles (assuming they still do).

Mexico isn't the only one. I've visited many countries in Europe and Asia that actually recycle their glass bottles without crushing them/melting them down.

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

#808

Post by powerapple »

DrRobinson wrote: post #802
powerapple wrote: post #790

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it is true for developing world. The cost of taking care of olders are low. Yes, they probably cannot afford the medicine to prolong the cancer patients for 6 months or 1 year, and maybe even other conditions, they are not worse off comparing to their previous generation. If you look from developed world of view, anything below the developed world standard is bad, but comparing to previous generations,…

I might be misunderstanding what you're trying to say, do you mean that because the previous generation had it worse we shouldn't strive to improve things even more?

No, what I mean is looking at the world from your standard, you won't have patience for things to play out. We definitely should improve things, but also we need to have patience for people to catch up. You can definitely help, but help also needs understanding. For example, the problem you are looking at may not be something of high priority to people need help. To understand what people really need will require more than compassion.

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

#809

Post by habosa »

Data Insurance.

Almost every company out there is collecting tons of data, but 90% of companies don't have an IT department capable of keeping it safe and compliant with the latest regulations. Companies thought data was an asset but as the hacks and regulations pile up I think they will begin to view it as a liability.

So what are their options: 1) Try and beef up your tech operation. Maybe spend $xxM with AWS and hope their customer engineers can set you up right. This is a distraction from selling cars or whatever it is that you actually do, but the shareholders like that you're modernizing I guess. 2) Buy insurance. The same thing that people do to prepare for any other potential disaster that they can't prevent. If Russia decides to hack you there's nothing you can do, but at least the insurer will cover the bill.

The key is that this should NOT come from a traditional insurance company. Those companies do not have the ability to assess the risks properly nor do they have the expertise to recommend simple preventative measures or help a customer recover from an incident.

Instead there needs to be some sort of combination Cybersecurity consultancy and data insurance company. They come in, audit you, fix the low hanging fruit, and insure the rest. Maybe they even sell you some cloud services too for data warehousing, etc.

All the cloud companies are trying to sell Kubernetes to every traditional company out there. Forget it, just sell them insurance.

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

#810

Post by elgfare »

legerdemain wrote: post #578
InvisibleUp wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a large part of this (in the USA, anyways) is due to how modern cities are structured. It used to be, 100 or 200 years ago, that your workplace, your home, and your usual hang-out place were all within reasonable walking distance of each other. It wasn't a huge deal to go out and meet new people, as you'd naturally bump into them every day. Nowadays we have a large portion of people in bedroom communities, is…

This... still exists? It's called the Elks, the Kiwanis, the Odd Fellows, the Jaycees, the Rotary Club, the Knights of Pythias, the Freemasons, and some organizations based on blood or military service, like the American Legion or the Daughters of the American Revolution. Even here in the Bay Area I live just a couple blocks down from a huge and well-appointed Elks lodge, and just a few miles away in downtown Mountai…

>Freemasons

So, basically people just wanted to hang out but now everyone thinks they want to take over the world.

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