Ask YC/HN: What's a problem, any problem, you'd like to see someone solve? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask YC/HN: What's a problem, any problem, you'd like to see someone solve?

#221

Post by andrew1 » Sun, Mar 14, 2010, 10:44 PM UTC

lurkerperpetual wrote: post #153

andrew1 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 'Nobody would prevent anyone from eating' That isn't really the point though. Whenever there is progress the majority of people stop doing the 'old' thing in favour of the 'new' thing. Hardly anyone in the first world makes their own clothes these days as our standard of living/price of clothing makes it easy not to, most young people wouldn't even consider making their own furniture, people don't hand-write letter…

Having the tech available would indeed not prevent anyone from using the old ways. I wonder why not answer this to all proposals in this topic as those problems being solved would make people stop doing stuff the old way. Also you miss a huge point: with such magic pills there would be no team. You would not need cranking out software for industries that would go away entirely if the problem was solved or for niche d…

I don't understand what you mean. Even imagining a world where we didn't need any food at all; we'd still have teams of builders building the houses we live in, teams of teachers teaching our children, teams of bankers doing what it is they do with our money, teams of printers printing the newspapers we read, teams of IT workers at ISPs. How would any of those jobs become obsolete because of the fact that we wouldn't need to eat food?

Re: Ask YC/HN: What's a problem, any problem, you'd like to see someone solve?

#222

Post by andrew1 » Sun, Mar 14, 2010, 10:52 PM UTC

lurkerperpetual wrote: post #153

andrew1 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 'Nobody would prevent anyone from eating' That isn't really the point though. Whenever there is progress the majority of people stop doing the 'old' thing in favour of the 'new' thing. Hardly anyone in the first world makes their own clothes these days as our standard of living/price of clothing makes it easy not to, most young people wouldn't even consider making their own furniture, people don't hand-write letter…

Having the tech available would indeed not prevent anyone from using the old ways. I wonder why not answer this to all proposals in this topic as those problems being solved would make people stop doing stuff the old way. Also you miss a huge point: with such magic pills there would be no team. You would not need cranking out software for industries that would go away entirely if the problem was solved or for niche d…

> 'I wonder why not answer this to all proposals in this topic as those problems being solved would make people stop doing stuff the old way.'

It wouldn't be inappropriate to - it's always worth considering both the positive and negative consequences of progress.

Re: Ask YC/HN: What's a problem, any problem, you'd like to see someone solve?

#223

Post by portman » Mon, Mar 15, 2010, 2:58 AM UTC

arethuza wrote: post #165

portman wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YMMV, but here's what I do: If it's a personal expense (90% of my purchases) I immediately throw the receipt away. If it's a business expense, I take a picture on my cellphone, tag it in Evernote, and throw the receipt away. This used to take me about 3 minutes (awkward) but now I can do it while I'm walking, so it adds no time burden to my day. Receipts of any kind are obsolete, IMHO.

I don't fancy facing auditors or the taxman with a picture of a bit of paper.

Actually, thermal receipts fade over time (often as quickly as 18 months) so a picture is much stronger documentary evidence.

Re: Ask YC/HN: What's a problem, any problem, you'd like to see someone solve?

#224

Post by chmike » Mon, Mar 15, 2010, 6:40 PM UTC

bricestacey wrote: post #214

vishaldpatel wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I know, academic institutions have a pretty large budget for subscribing to journals. If a member (prof, staffer or student) wants access to a certain journal that isn't available, the librarian can arrange for it. So in terms of accessibility to each other's scholarly articles, scientists in academia or larger industries don't suffer from a lack of collaboration. Since this covers most practicing academics…

You can also visit just about any university and use their resources for free. Most scholarly databases and journals restrict by IP address and many universities don't require people on-campus to authenticate.

What if you aren't in a university or if the university is not that rich to have an access to most popular scholar journals ? You are not aware of the luck you have if accessing scholar journals is as simple as that for you.

Re: Ask YC/HN: What's a problem, any problem, you'd like to see someone solve?

#225

Post by lurkerperpetual » Tue, Mar 16, 2010, 1:26 PM UTC

andrew1 wrote: post #221

lurkerperpetual wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having the tech available would indeed not prevent anyone from using the old ways. I wonder why not answer this to all proposals in this topic as those problems being solved would make people stop doing stuff the old way. Also you miss a huge point: with such magic pills there would be no team. You would not need cranking out software for industries that would go away entirely if the problem was solved or for niche d…

I don't understand what you mean. Even imagining a world where we didn't need any food at all; we'd still have teams of builders building the houses we live in, teams of teachers teaching our children, teams of bankers doing what it is they do with our money, teams of printers printing the newspapers we read, teams of IT workers at ISPs. How would any of those jobs become obsolete because of the fact that we wouldn't…

Imagine for a moment that you do not need food, then see how many of the services you currently use you can do without as a consequence. Bankers? Really? What to use money for when nobody is anymore threatened by hunger. Even today you have plenty of people doing volunteer work, any problem in a society where there's no competition for resources would make that the norm. I am very disappointed that the answers to this thread are given without much thought.

Re: Ask YC/HN: What's a problem, any problem, you'd like to see someone solve?

#226

Post by andrew1 » Tue, Mar 16, 2010, 10:25 PM UTC

lurkerperpetual wrote: post #225

andrew1 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand what you mean. Even imagining a world where we didn't need any food at all; we'd still have teams of builders building the houses we live in, teams of teachers teaching our children, teams of bankers doing what it is they do with our money, teams of printers printing the newspapers we read, teams of IT workers at ISPs. How would any of those jobs become obsolete because of the fact that we wouldn't…

Imagine for a moment that you do not need food, then see how many of the services you currently use you can do without as a consequence. Bankers? Really? What to use money for when nobody is anymore threatened by hunger. Even today you have plenty of people doing volunteer work, any problem in a society where there's no competition for resources would make that the norm. I am very disappointed that the answers to thi…

There are hundreds of millions of people in the Western world who are not 'threatened by hunger', and yet the vast majority of those people still go to work every day, still use banks, still want to earn more money than they could ever need for food. You seem to imagine that if everyone had enough food then our economy would grind to a halt; that there would be no commerce anymore. I think this is unrealistic because people will still want 'things'. I might want a larger house to live in, I might dream of owning a Ferrari, you might want to learn to fly a helicopter, someone else might want a new refrigerator. The point is that there are luxuries, as well as necessities, which people will want; it's possible that in this magical hunger-free world people will produce these things and give them away for free, but it seems a lot more likely to me that these things will be available to buy, and that if you want to buy them you will have to go and do some work, to earn some money, to pay for them. And so yes, bankers, really. In a world where you have to pay for things, even if those things are not food, people will want a way to maintain the value of their money, at the very least so that when they're old they'll be able to heat their homes, repair their homes, buy new clothes to wear, afford transport and afford medical treatments.

I don't understand your disappointment with this thread, you're taking a line of argument which I find completely fanciful, and which I'm sure at least some others do, where you remove one factor from the world (hunger/the need to eat) and extrapolate to all the ills of the world being cured, with no logic in between.

Re: Ask YC/HN: What's a problem, any problem, you'd like to see someone solve?

#227

Post by lurkerperpetual » Thu, Mar 18, 2010, 9:01 AM UTC

andrew1 wrote: post #226

lurkerperpetual wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine for a moment that you do not need food, then see how many of the services you currently use you can do without as a consequence. Bankers? Really? What to use money for when nobody is anymore threatened by hunger. Even today you have plenty of people doing volunteer work, any problem in a society where there's no competition for resources would make that the norm. I am very disappointed that the answers to thi…

There are hundreds of millions of people in the Western world who are not 'threatened by hunger', and yet the vast majority of those people still go to work every day, still use banks, still want to earn more money than they could ever need for food. You seem to imagine that if everyone had enough food then our economy would grind to a halt; that there would be no commerce anymore. I think this is unrealistic because…

why would one need a new refrigerator??? Having hunger solved in the western world is vastly different from having it solved globally and even more different from not needing food at all. Not having plenty of food. Not needing food at all. I am disappointed by what seem very shortsighted, almost knee-jerk remarks which illustrate the poster did not think much about the problem. As if the logical next step after realizing you do not need to eat is to go and work some more in that saved time to have more money. Depressing :)

Re: Ask YC/HN: What's a problem, any problem, you'd like to see someone solve?

#228

Post by andrew1 » Fri, Mar 19, 2010, 7:25 AM UTC

lurkerperpetual wrote: post #227

andrew1 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are hundreds of millions of people in the Western world who are not 'threatened by hunger', and yet the vast majority of those people still go to work every day, still use banks, still want to earn more money than they could ever need for food. You seem to imagine that if everyone had enough food then our economy would grind to a halt; that there would be no commerce anymore. I think this is unrealistic because…

why would one need a new refrigerator??? Having hunger solved in the western world is vastly different from having it solved globally and even more different from not needing food at all. Not having plenty of food. Not needing food at all. I am disappointed by what seem very shortsighted, almost knee-jerk remarks which illustrate the poster did not think much about the problem. As if the logical next step after reali…

I think we should stop this discussion. You don't seem to have any interest in discussing how this hypothetical society would actually work, only in nit-picking mostly irrelevant points (and in response: given that people would be free to eat if they wished, why should they not want refrigerators).

Thanks.

Re: Ask YC/HN: What's a problem, any problem, you'd like to see someone solve?

#229

Post by listic » Tue, Mar 23, 2010, 12:52 AM UTC

petervandijck wrote: post #139

A good photo management system for Windows that is designed to be useful over 10, 20 years (ie. keeps your photos stored, backedup, organized in a way that's not too proprietary). Picasa is powerful but has a CRAP ui, iPhoto is much better, but Mac only.

Actually, any technology designed to be useful after 10, 20 years is pretty impressive in our times. Which is pretty scary, if you ask me.

I've meant for quite some time to write an article about the fragility of human technological innovation.

Here are some examples that I can think of:

- I think I read about this case in a computer magazine: when the personal computers just started to be available they scanned and recorded in the digital form some ancient holy book so that it will be better preserved in digital form from then on. The year was 1982 maybe, the computer platform was not the one that would become mainstream and the recording media was some kind of digital laserdisc I think. The irony is, some 20 years later they had a really big trouble finding the computer to read the data back. (this is from my memory, can't find the source)

- Web platform once considered cutting edge (Macromedia/Adobe Shockwave), cannot run on modern operating systems (Linux) 15 years later. No replacement or emulation solution in sight; users depending on it are left in the cold.

- Geocities was shut down on short notice, with no exit strategy for its users 10 years after being bought for $3.5 billion

- Belt-clippable, battery-operated mp3 players like iRiver T10 (an achievement of its own, if you ask me) are nowhere to be found 5 years after they appeared (appeared ~2003, obsolete in 2008)

Re: Ask YC/HN: What's a problem, any problem, you'd like to see someone solve?

#230

Post by mtrimpe » Thu, Mar 25, 2010, 12:33 PM UTC

verec wrote: post #115

mtrimpe wrote: post #100

Efficient purely functional data storage and the algorithms and best-practices required to effectively use it.

starts with "best practices", ends-up with "six sigmas" and all the Enron and WorldCom of the world ...

Uhm, these would be more like garbage-collection 'best practices'...