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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?

#881

Post by walleeee »

searine wrote: post #108
dhruvkar wrote: post #9

Regenerating top soil. We have degraded 1/3 of the top soil in the last 150 years. At the current rate, we won't be able to grow food in 60 years. This is a significant threat to our food production capabilities as a planet, and has severe 2nd, 3rd degree repercussions as well. At the moment, agroforestry and syntropic farming are the only large scale solutions, but they need mass adoption. https://www.scientificamer…

This is really not an accurate depiction of the problem. First of all, it may take a 1000 years to naturally create topsoil, but that's not our problem. We have topsoil and can make topsoil much much faster. So how do we preserve, and continue to create topsoil faster than it is depleted. What is top soil? A collection of macro and micronutrients, microorganisms, and organic matter in the first 5-10 inches of soil. E…

> Farmers aren't dumb, they are incentivized to manage their soil as best they can.

Farmers are definitely not dumb. But many are not currently incentivized to manage soil and (more broadly) agricultural ecosystems with long-term viability in mind.

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

#882

Post by slothtrop »

chiefofgxbxl wrote: post #463
sjg007 wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meetup.com doesn’t solve this? I ask cause I work remote and meetups are basically what I used pre-pandemic.

I've found Meetup alright for finding things to do with other people, but it doesn't work well (at least for me) to find people to be with . Meetup helped introduce me to a once-a-month board game group which is nice, but the problem is that the people I meet through this are sort of stuck in that "role": they aren't my friends and won't be, they are just people I play board games with. Whereas my true friends are pe…

You're on the money. As I've elucidated elsewhere I think people are going about this backwards, because it's all we know: create organizations surrounding particular subjects, then have people join in. In many cases people are surfing around these groups as a means to an end, they don't care the slightest about the subject but they need it as a medium to connect with others. Not only is this contrived, it can lead to friction between individuals who want to focus on the subject and others who want to go on tangents away from it. This problem disappears if you simply have a space where people can choose to mingle or focus on their projects. There are collaborative workspaces, makerspaces, University grounds.. the issue is it can cost a pretty penny to rent, or attend, those spaces.

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

#883

Post by slothtrop »

tomatocracy wrote: post #114

Single subscription payment for news along the lines of the Spotify model. I'd happily pay a single subscription which gave me access to ALL the news websites, and divided payment up based on which articles people click on. Do that without tracking me between the different sites and I'm sold. Pressreader gets close but it only gives you yesterday's print versions (not current online content), it has a few notable gap…

I'll check it out. Personally I'm in for "slow news": a weekly/monthly reader like the Economist, CSMonitor, New Yorker etc. I don't actually want to read news every day and I think that would be maddening. I catch a glimpse of headlines from aggregators at most.

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

#884

Post by slothtrop »

yodsanklai wrote: post #462

Better cycling infrastructures, and some ways to prevent bicycle theft and vandalism. Cycling is a great mean of transportation, it's ecological, healthy, quiet, convenient. Lack of safety and theft are hindrance to more adoption.

Would like to see an innovation to improve this in the winter. It's too dangerous in snowy/icy conditions.

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

#885

Post by slothtrop »

renjimen wrote: post #125

Overpopulation. It's the main source of humanity's current woes and will only get worse with time. We seem to be content with addressing the symptoms rather than the problem. The idea of population control is taboo but will help everyone in the long run.

I agree. What's astounding to me is that people will in the same instance downplay the impact of population, but soothsay about global warming, land-use, other ecological issues. Most of the issues are moot if the population stagnates. More demand means more ecological destruction, you might increase efficiency but that is still the equation any way you slice it.

There are non-profits out there that might help to this end, but they are numerous. They ought to organize better. We need Universal access to contraceptives, and elimination of global poverty. Some organizations that may be helping: https://pai.org/, https://populationmatters.org/, https://www.ippf.org/, https://www.guttmacher.org/

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

#886

Post by 0-_-0 »

seibelj wrote: post #336
TrackerFF wrote: post #319

It IS being worked on, but things move quite slow - and there doesn't seem to have been much progress for decades, but: Cure for hair-loss. Some might say it's just vanity, but if someone could come up with a cure, and sell it affordably, that would be a multi-billion, maybe even trillion dollar industry. Going from quite balding (NW4-NW7 in balding terminology) to a full head of hair makes most guys look a solid 10-…

Just shave it off / short. The person it affects most is yourself, and confidence does not come from hair.

Bald guys are hot:

https://extrafabulouscomics.com/comic/180/

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

#887

Post by ValentineC »

Kluny wrote: post #368
uncomputation wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I see one more app to cure loneliness... It seems techy people have difficulty accepting non-techy solutions

I didn't see anything about an app in the op's comment... I started thinking about how to create a social hub where you can just go and exist. Like men's clubs that used to exist, but without the sexism and classism. A clubhouse where you pay some kind of membership fee and you get unlimited access to books, movies, a lounge, a bar, a few games leagues, some mild gambling, etc. Being a queer woman with a disability,…

This sounds a bit like a hackerspace. The bar and gambling would depend on local laws.

Does this sound like something for you? https://doubleunion.org/

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

#888

Post by slothtrop »

wussboy wrote: post #145
renjimen wrote: post #125

Overpopulation. It's the main source of humanity's current woes and will only get worse with time. We seem to be content with addressing the symptoms rather than the problem. The idea of population control is taboo but will help everyone in the long run.

This is a problem that is solving itself. As countries get richer, their people have less children. And this result holds true in every country for which we have data. The prediction is that the world’s population will peak at ten billion then start to decrease.

If that's true, it can be accelerated by eliminating global poverty and allowing universal access to contraceptives.

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

#889

Post by jbay808 »

michaelt wrote: post #840
gfxgirl wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Japan is any different than the USA here. If you go look at paperback novels in the USA they are 95% all the same width and height, only the thickness changes. https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-stack-of-science-fiction-p... Conversely there are plenty of randomly sized books at a Japanese bookstore. I can go walk to some today and take pictures if you don't believe me. It's possible the USA is 50% stand…

I think Japanese bookstores look very organised partly because they stock manga - where you will routinely get ten-volume series of books (with far fewer words per page than a novel would have, of course) So while every western bookshop has that shelf full of Lonely Planet travel guides that looks really organised, in Japan you can photograph an entire aisle of books that looks just as regimented.

Western bookstores sell manga too, these days! However publishers change the format size for western audiences. Here's what it looks like when stocked here:

https://s3-media2.fl.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/W4Jp1QrsdmGXmogVT8q4...

Each series is a uniform size but that's as much commonality as there is. The height and also depth of each is different. And that's starting from uniformly sized source material; Western graphic novels are even more extremely sized.

(The neat shelves in the sibling comment are mostly not manga, by the way).

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

#890

Post by slothtrop »

dartharva wrote: post #737

Sexbots. It may sound amusing, but there really are many sexually frustrated individuals who could potentially see massive improvement in their social and physiological life and lead to a net gain for the society. Also it might lead to a reduction in the overvaluation of sex in romantic relationships and thus happier couples. Add this to its potential of sexual education (by having realistic simulation devices) and i…

I think VR is heading this way. Ultimately it is probably more efficient, both in cost and experience, to improve VR with supplementary hardware than have sex-dolls that can walk on two legs for no reason.
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