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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?

#911

Post by faluzure »

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?

Yes, you're correct. Many researchers in the field prefer the phrasing 'human health', the consequence of which is human longevity.

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

#912

Post by eitland »

aphroz wrote: post #287

Smartphone Keyboard I cannot type a single sentence without making a typo and I have been using a smartphone for 12 years. I miss Blackberry's keyboard. At the moment I even cannot use my natural keyboard layout with a fast and responsive keyboard. I type 3 times slower on my phone than on a computer keyboard.

With a little tuning SwiftKey is amazing. (For me I mostly just need to turn off the replace-words-automatically-using-insane-replacements option.)

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

#913

Post by analyte123 »

ValentineC wrote: post #875
slothtrop wrote: post #866

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe this will be more important as the nature of work changes. In the short run, owing to more remote work as you say, and in the long-run, owing to jobs themselves being increasingly automated away. Irl organizations surrounding particular interests do materialize as extensions of online enthusiasm (we see this for meetup groups) but this is still insufficient. What's missing is accessible infrastructure to fa…

> We are going about things backwards, because it was all we could do: 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. As a long-time member of a hackerspace, I've always envisioned it as a "church" (of sorts) fo…

One thing I've realized is that if you actually do succeed in creating a strong community, there's a good chance it will raise the property values and appeal of your surrounding area and therefore the property taxes and rent for those in the community living nearby and possibly the community space itself, if the space isn't owned outright by a non-profit organization. Then you risk getting bought / pushed out by outsiders that just want a "safe neighborhood" or an "artsy area" and not really a community.

It seems like these social groups -- besides needing a non-financial mission, shared rituals and beliefs, and some kind of exclusivity -- need a strategy for dealing with the social connection-dissolving "market" that exists around it.

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

#914

Post by tonymet »

10000truths wrote: post #485
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.

Perhaps that's a good thing, because I'm almost certain that would be abused as a user fingerprint.

So is your password presently (via auth session cookies). The same whitelisting used for cookies today would work to allow fingerprinting of your personal certificate.

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

#915

Post by yoyonamite »

dkulchenko wrote: post #495
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…

Agreed. Why is there no Tinder/online dating equivalent for making new friends locally? Instead of dating-specific qualifiers, it'd ask for your interests, hobbies, values, age and other demos, then match you based on overlap. Not Meetup - it's not quite solving the same problem, and so it solves things differently (focusing on shared interests and on discrete meetup events).

I think there are enough ways to make friends and meet people that a general friend-making app just isn't a big enough need on its own.

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

#916

Post by analyte123 »

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…

"Working on" in-person social organizations (particularly starting new ones or restoring deteriorated ones) seems to require a good amount of personal charisma, ambition, social skills, organizational ability, and not desiring to simply make as much money as possible, plus a long-term focus on community health and success over your own personal gain. People with the first set of skills can make a lot of money in the marketplace. If you make a social organization instead of a unicorn, your "exit" would be being loved and respected, along with having your own friends and family growing up in a good community that maybe, eventually increases everyone's collective financial value instead of just your own.

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

#917

Post by yoyonamite »

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…

I've made friends with people at Meetup but I also agree with the above. My guess is that there are people that are looking to make friends, but whether they succeed or fail, they're going to stop going to the Meetup. What this means is that you're more likely to meet the regulars that really aren't that interested in making general friends.

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

#918

Post by jldugger »

trestenhortz wrote: post #773
jldugger wrote: post #692

Structured interviews. There's a massive literature supporting the idea that structured interviews outperform any other kind in predicting outcomes, and instead we get ten remote whiteboard screening apps, and adhoc interview panels of people with, frankly, conflicting values and evaluation criteria.

I’m interestsd. Can you link any of the literature you have in mind?

Well, the lit survey people tend to cite on interviewing is Schmidt and Hunter 98: http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/Schmidt-and-H...

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

#919

Post by dharmab »

trestenhortz wrote: post #762
m463 wrote: post #497

Why don't cars (or even pickup trucks) have modular storage? Why isn't there a way to load up your groceries in the store, put them in your car in a modular way, and help you unload them into your house somehow? It could go even further to mini palettes that can be loaded and unloaded automatically. And even electrical cool or cold boxes to keep stuff at the right temperature as you drive home.

I dreamed once if the car that has a little shopping cart that dicks with the back of the car.

Honda experimented with some ideas. The CR-V once came with an integrated folding picnic table and the Honda City had a space for a 50cc Motocompo folding scooter.

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

#920

Post by Animats »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #832
Animats wrote: post #722

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hence my regular ranting about the outsized negative effects marketing has on society. We really should stop accepting "but think of marketing!" as a valid reason to eschew interoperability and standardization. Marketing is ultimately zero-sum, it'll flourish in a constrained playground just as much as it does in an unconstrained one.

The dairy industry is desperately trying to break away from everybody having identical containers and competing on price.[1] Milk in sippable pouches may become a thing. With bigger markups!

[1] https://www.dairyreporter.com/Article/2017/06/09/Four-trends...

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