Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a google spreadsheet somewhere that circulated a few weeks ago.
Can't find it on a quick look at searchyc, do you remember any more details?
Ask HN: What problem is REALLY bugging you?
61–70 of 74 posts
Re: Ask HN: What problem is REALLY bugging you?
#62Quickbooks. Quickbooks is the single worst piece of software that I have ever had to deal with on a regular basis. I want to be able to reliably pull in all the financial transactions that occur for my company, and categorize them as quickly as possible. Quickbooks does this, but it fails on the reliably, all, and quickly aspects. I also need to be able to import invoicing information from my billing software, and ma…
Are you looking for something different than http://www.mint.com ?
Re: Ask HN: What problem is REALLY bugging you?
#63I know this might sound odd, but I'd like a "privacy policy" and "terms and conditions" generator that doesn't suck.
I'd be willing to part with cash for something where I just tick off the various things I want and it would generate those documents for my site.
Better yet, it would be nice if it was able to make these documents be localised to be legal in whatever jurisdiction (of my choosing) at creation time.
Re: Ask HN: What problem is REALLY bugging you?
#64Quickbooks. Quickbooks is the single worst piece of software that I have ever had to deal with on a regular basis. I want to be able to reliably pull in all the financial transactions that occur for my company, and categorize them as quickly as possible. Quickbooks does this, but it fails on the reliably, all, and quickly aspects. I also need to be able to import invoicing information from my billing software, and ma…
Are you looking for something different than http://www.mint.com ?
I'm not interested in personal finance. I'm interested in business finance.
Re: Ask HN: What problem is REALLY bugging you?
#65How ebooks that are distributed in pdf are so hard to read on small screens, and the lack of properly working pdf->reflowable format (epub) tools. This is a hard problem and I'd pay for a 80% solution. It would have to recognize and properly fix/insert chapter titles, initial caps, tables of content, other leader/footer material, ... It would have to properly insert images in a sensible spot yet remove background ima…
This task is on my TODO list. Why does http://calibre-ebook.com/ fail?
Because it is basically a glorified frontend (as far as pdf to other formats conversion is concerned) for pdftohtml. It treats every line as a paragraph, can't intelligently decide on what is a chapter heading etc. The problem I'm describing is AI hard, it can't be done be some rule based matching. I know that Calibre has some regex based rules for finding chapters etc. but that is way too hard and only solves part of the problem, besides many book don't use the 'Chapter 1: xxx' format anyway.
Re: Ask HN: What problem is REALLY bugging you?
#66I would need a decent 2D CAD for linux. 3D even sweeter. problem is that dudes who usually code and dudes who usually draw with CAD are two totally different breeds. And that's why we don't allready have a good CAD for linux. I would be possibly willing to pay 200eur for a copy(but I want to see a proper demo first), and I don't think I'm alone. And I don't need anything fancy like Autodesk's "AutoCAD revit architech…
Isn't there a version of Alibre 3D CAD for Linux? I've used the free Windows version and it's sweet!
Re: Ask HN: What problem is REALLY bugging you?
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've often wanted the same. The main problem seems to be that it is probably hard to make a living as a personal assistant at the prices you and I are willing to pay. There is also the trust issue: would you really trust a stranger enough to do sensitive things?
The main problem seems to be that it is probably hard to make a living as a personal assistant at the prices you and I are willing to pay. I'm not sure it's the actual rate of pay. I'd pay $20 an hour for these services no problem, and that's far above minimum wage. The problem is I'd ultimately be paying far more to do all the paperwork, have this person treated as an "employee", taxes, and red tape. If it was just…
Good point!
Taking care of taxes and red-tape should be scalable, though, right? Meaning that it should be possible for a company to set all that stuff up and then contract out the people. A consultancy for personal assistants.
New question: is there enough demand and margin to make this worth it for a company to do? Is there enough supply of people who want to be personal assistants? My guesses would be no and yes, respectively.
Re: Ask HN: What problem is REALLY bugging you?
#68I want a personal assistant for 5-10 hours a week. Not a virtual one because most of the things I want done are in meat space. Stuff like filling out forms, doing my laundry, waiting in line for me at the DMV, and dropping off my netflix returns in the mail. It sounds petty, but I really hate running errands and filling out forms. I'm considering hiring someone off craigslist.
Hmm, interesting. I could see this being a service that charges you a monthly fee. I'm sure that a lot of people(migrants mostly) would be more than fine working for fees which we consider really low. In more detail, if you make 100 an hour, giving 10/h actually earns you another 100/h every time that person runs a task for you.
Re: Ask HN: What problem is REALLY bugging you?
#69I don't have a business, just an office drone; but I have to find out about legal ownership of companies all the time, when our customers issue purchase orders we have to make sure that the names on the invoices we generate match them.
Changing the names in our CRM/ERP systems is a laborious process and we have to get the customer to sign legal documents confirming that all the software licenses owned by the previous company are now owned by the acquirer/new merger.
I think that a website containing all the name change documents, press releases and possibly a service that tracks legal ownership (though this could be hard to scale) could be worth pursuing, along the lines of a Duns and Bradstreet ( http://www.dnb.com ) type company.
It could be something like a more focused docstoc or perhaps a legal wolfram alpha.
Re: Ask HN: What problem is REALLY bugging you?
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
This task is on my TODO list. Why does http://calibre-ebook.com/ fail?
Because it is basically a glorified frontend (as far as pdf to other formats conversion is concerned) for pdftohtml. It treats every line as a paragraph, can't intelligently decide on what is a chapter heading etc. The problem I'm describing is AI hard, it can't be done be some rule based matching. I know that Calibre has some regex based rules for finding chapters etc. but that is way too hard and only solves part o…
We may have different goals in mind... I have a bunch of PDFs I need to get to my sony reader, for example academic papers. I want them to look basically OK, which I don't "think" is an AI hard problem. Detecting any text that represents a chapter certainly is... but I'm OK with writing regex to get my data out. I'll be posting in the mobileread forums about this at some point in the coming weeks if you're interested in whatever solution I hack out.