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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?

#891

Post by trianglem »

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,…

I think being explicitly a male club is extremely important for something like this to be appealing. Otherwise it’s just a meetup or bar visit. I don’t ever think it should be race specific/racist but I do support “elitist” requirements to get in.

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

#892

Post by dartharva »

slothtrop wrote: post #890
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.

Sure, yes. That would be more realistic to expect than actual humanoid robots. I meant something similar, probably should have worded it better.

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

#893

Post by bigbizisverywyz »

cpursley wrote: post #399
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 110%. It's especially obvious after moving out of the US and it's hard to convey how much better cities built for humans are than cities built for cars than by experiencing it for yourself.

It looks like other people have got the message.

https://eurocities.eu/stories/reclaiming-the-streets/

and an article in the Guardian about Barcelona https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/may/17/superblocks-r...

I'm personally heartened by people's moves to de-focus the car in urban places.

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

#895

Post by krupan »

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 have a corporate issued MacBook Pro and an HP Spectre that I bought for myself. The Spectre is better than the MacBook. Both have aluminum bodies, 4K screens, big touch pads, they are the same size, both have great performance.

The HP has a much better keyboard. So much better. It runs Linux, not quite perfectly but pretty darn well. I actually like that the HP has a touchscreen, it’s often way quicker to reach out and touch a spot on the screen than to maneuver the mouse pointer to that same spot and then click. The HP has a regular USB port so I don’t have to keep a USB-C adapter around. The charger isn’t a giant heavy wall wart that falls out of older outlets. It’s a bunch of little things like that.

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

#896

Post by krupan »

tonymet wrote: post #228

User authentication using client-side (aka mutual) TLS certificates. This was promoted with netscape navigator and then never came to be. Be authenticated everywhere, without ever having to log in.

So much this! WebAuthn is sort of doing this, but I think it is way too complicated. Perfect is the enemy of good enough. All we have to do is be better than passwords, and that’s a really low bar.

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

#898

Post by gremlinsinc »

corobo wrote: post #22

Eliminating "poor" as an adjective for humans. If we must commercialise it, more people with money = more customers.. Apple, Amazon, etc.. there's billions of potential iPhone and Alexa users out there long term if you set something up to help them now. What, you don't think you'll be around long enough?

I'm wanting to work on this.

Think build multiple companies for services people already use/need competitors to existing products but they're owned by the community. People still pay for the service, but they earn shares for their loyalty to a product and get dividends from those shares.

Marriage of socialism and capitalism essentially. Marketplaces still exist, but union/co-ops thrive and make businesses more about building products/tools people want not for profit motives as much as to make society better / stronger as a whole.

If everyone could afford 4 year colleges and science degrees and didn't grow up in poverty how much faster could we as a society get to the stars? Fix global warming? Instead millions are lying in bed, covers over their head, depressed that next week they will be homeless or worse.

If the didn't have to worry about money, they could do something productive, drop the depression or work on fixing that, and live happier more fulfilling lives.

As a freelancer, I bounce back and forth in this situation. Doing good, to depression/sour grapes when clients are sparce.

So, part of my wanting to do this is self-serving essentially fix this for myself as well as others.

We could buy up hospitals, medical companies, etc... takeover 80% of the medical industry. Start our own medicare 4 all (who are in our union: workers, consumers/loyalists, adopted (need our help, but can't afford to consume)). We could lower costs, offer hospital boards like 300k salaries take it or leave it, and offer doctors/nurses the position instead. We could do single-payer negotiations with drug companies, etc...

If anyone wants to work w/ me on this... email me: patrickwcurl - gmail Trying to put a team together. Co-op style.

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

#899

Post by tabtab »

gjvnq wrote: post #135

Business automation. There seems to be so much that can be easily automated by simple scripts. We just need a better UI and a better way to teach people how to use it.

There's been a lot of products that try, including MS's current "Power Apps" and "Power Automate" utilities. But the problem is that lots of intricate business rules need to be understood and maintained longer term. RAD has had a problem with long-term maintainability of business rules. Instead, I'd like to see a focus on a stateful GUI markup standard so that it's easier to do regular code-based CRUD apps without dealing with screwy web (un) standards, such as bloated JavaScript libraries and CSS wankiness. The UI is a bottleneck to CRUD dev productivity.
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