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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?

#931

Post by Shorel »

diarrhea wrote: post #52

LaTeX. We have Microsoft Office. Then we have its lacking competitors. There's also InDesign for professional creatives. There's a huge gap for LaTeX to fill, or to potentially fill, but it's not happening. The other day I saw it described as "a neckbeard knitting circle, not viable software". As a LaTeX "fan", that hurt but it's the truth. Over the past months, I had to collaborate with various different people acro…

I don't want more Word. I want a version of WordPerfect 5.1 that uses LaTeX underneath.

That's the holy grail of text processors for me.

Unfortunately the TeX rendering engine doesn't cache partial computations and every single keystroke requires calling the full rendering pipeline.

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

#932

Post by guildmaster »

Centigonal wrote: post #691
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-…

Male pattern hair loss is a Hard Problem. We understand that it is caused by androgens (maybe DHT?) and affects follicles on certain parts of the head differently. It's not simple to address something like this. Either you have to replace the follicles (e.g. transplant surgery), or mess around with people's androgens (right now, we can only do that pharmacologically). Drugs that affect people's hormones have a tenden…

This comment is like poetry

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

#933

Post by Jemaclus »

elihu wrote: post #825
Jemaclus wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Related to this, I'm kind of shocked that there isn't a strong third option for OSes. We've got Windows and MacOS, sure, but the nix ecosystem is so fragmented and not as well supported as the other two that it's hard to justify switching. Like you pointed out, Mac feels premium because of the software/hardware tight coupling, and it just works . Windows is the same, but for reasons can feel less polished than MacOS.…

I think the demand is there, just no one has the right combination of financial resources, technical ability to pull it off, the right sense of good design, and a way to make money off of it somehow other than by charging licensing fees (which is probably a non-starter if you want to grow the user base quickly and take advantage of network effects). The companies I can see who are in the right position to profit from…

Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head here. It's kind of sad... but surely someone will come along in the next decade...

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

#934

Post by Jemaclus »

Too wrote: post #785
Jemaclus wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Related to this, I'm kind of shocked that there isn't a strong third option for OSes. We've got Windows and MacOS, sure, but the nix ecosystem is so fragmented and not as well supported as the other two that it's hard to justify switching. Like you pointed out, Mac feels premium because of the software/hardware tight coupling, and it just works . Windows is the same, but for reasons can feel less polished than MacOS.…

You do have Android which is often overlooked in these discussions. Strong base of Linux in the bottom and a very cohesive app framework and ecosystem on the top. Polished and premium coupling to the HW from vendors (ok not all of them but don't tell me the latest Pixel or Samsung flagship isn't great). Only thing is, in the end it's not really a desktop OS.

Yeah, that's true, but remember the context of this discussion is how Apple products feel "premium", and there aren't very many (if any) Android products that feel like solid, premium products. Like, we're talking about the difference between a solid, dependable, easily maintainable Honda Civic versus a luxury, polished Tesla.

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

#935

Post by akouri »

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…

I was surprised at how many "dating apps" there are that are simply focused on showing people pictures and expecting that simply seeing a picture of someone is going to be a strong enough signal to filter out who is and isn't a viable candidate for dating. It's a tired argument to say it's superficial and shallow, but there are tons of people still doing dating apps like Tinder, Hinge, Bumble, etc. If you think about it more, I think this is a statement on just how much demand is out there [to meet new prospects] to put up with such a miserable experience.

When I tried using these apps, I found myself trying to reverse engineer the algorithm to figure out exactly how it was ranking me and how to optimize my match rates. Most of it comes down to picture quality and your looks in those pictures. I learned this by running my own A-B tests using different pictures, but unfortunately the apps don't really give any stats on which pictures on your profile are and are not performing. This gave me an idea to create an app to do just this. I called it Cupid's Critics, and you could upload candidate pictures and get people of a certain demographic to vote on them and collect statistics before pushing them live.

What I realized is that this is a band-aid to a broken system. I think a new system is needed entirely, which is why I am now trying to figure out how to make group dinner party dating scale.

If anybody is interested in building it out with me, please send me a DM. If you're interested in an invite/signing up for a group date, please fill out this survey: https://kadray.typeform.com/to/VmhktNHD

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

#936

Post by guenthert »

react_burger38 wrote: post #929
guenthert wrote: post #928

No mentioning of global warming, the most pressing of all issues? It might not effect your level of comfort or net worth in the next two or three years, but it does have the potential to wipe out humanity, if not life itself, in the next few hundred years. Unless you're actually going hungry right now or are sick or homeless, I don't know why you'd be worrying about anything else.

Does it really though? I mean the medieval warming period was ballpark the same temperature as we have now.

The temperatures today might be, the difference is however that the Crusaders didn't burn fossil fuels at even remotely the same level as recent generations. CO2 concentration assures that the comfortable temperatures today aren't those enjoyed by future generations.

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

#937

Post by ValentineC »

pfranz wrote: post #676
rilut wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Razer Blade Stealth 13 & Razer Book 13 fill this gap I use Stealth 13 and impressed with its metal body and touchpad, also no shiny RGB logo

I have notes from when I was researching around 2018. I had the Razer Blade Stealth in the running, but I was reading about support and longevity issues with them. Maybe they've been better recently? It's difficult to build a track record of longevity. I've had stellar longevity out of Apple hardware. I'm usually able to use it for a handful of years and sell it on ebay to put a good chunk towards something new. I ha…

> I had the Razer Blade Stealth in the running, but I was reading about support and longevity issues with them. Maybe they've been better recently? It's difficult to build a track record of longevity.

Razer still has hilariously bad product management.

One of their newest (non-hardware) launches is Razer Pay, a QR payment and Visa prepaid solution for Southeast Asia. It's been around since mid-2018, but they've just launched their prepaid card in Singapore.

The app and backend quality is below average for a large company like Razer (think: multiple incidents of double charging, and authorisation charges not being refunded), and has the app's UI is ugly.

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

#938

Post by Klonoar »

Shorel wrote: post #930
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…

Except: give me touch and a convertible laptop with a good quality pencil. And insane battery life. We have different needs. Your needs are not mine.

Not sure what's up with your tone, but sure, I'd agree with the needs comment.

That said, I would would wager that your needs are moreso met as an existing, direct market though - whereas what I'm after is splintered and left only to Apple.

To each their own, of course.

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

#940

Post by eitland »

faluzure wrote: post #923
eitland wrote: post #861

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably controversial here but as far as I can see correct: This seems like a shortcut to hell on earth. Who do you think will have the means to pay for this first? It won't be the saints, it will be the greediest ones. So we (or rather out descendants) would probably be stuck with a ruling class of demigods. Why? 1. They were already pretty well off (since they are the ones who can pay for this treatment in the fir…

Most things go to the wealthy first, but usually it's worse quality and very rapidly becomes democratized and improved. Consider how great life was 100 years ago for the wealthy compared to the average person today. I would definitely prefer air travel and computers to being wealthy but stuck in the past. Almost every technology has gotten much better when it becomes mainstream. If treatments become available, the pr…

The very nature of this (preventing death from aging) means that if everything else stays constant, populations will grow since fewer people dies.

I can think of ways around this, but none that I want to recommend, and I never hear proponents of longevity research mention it.

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