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Ask: What would you do/make if you never had to monetize it?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Ask: What would you do/make if you never had to monetize it?

#13

Post by antiismist »

The "free" facebook.

- no ads, period

- all personal info is held under the watchful eye of a seperate, non-profit org that ensures no personal info is ever shared with third parties

- you can delete your own account whenever you want, and you won't get hassled. An actual deletion of your data, too

- all source code is open source, and people can contribute whatever features they want

Re: Ask: What would you do/make if you never had to monetize it?

#15

Post by aristus »

Kaizyn wrote: post #11
aristus wrote: post #5

A network of independent , redundant, internet archives.

What would you do with them? And why would more than one be needed?

They'd do what libraries do: collect and preserve. Several already exist, like archive.org and Google cache. But Google's cache exists for Google's purposes. Archive.org is often forced to take down material, especially since the DMCA. You need a real decentralized network that is both lawyer- and disaster-resistant.

It is impossible for, say, the New York Times to change or obliterate what it printed on some day in 1997. For NYT.com it's a simple as a mouseclick and a letter. That means there is no such thing as "public record" on the internet. Public record is the basis of a literate society.

Re: Ask: What would you do/make if you never had to monetize it?

#16

Post by dkokelley »

Xichekolas wrote: post #8

An alternative to hierarchical file systems.

I've been thinking recently about that too. It's inefficient to use a traditional folder/file system, at least for your personal documents (for system and program files I think they're better off the original way.)

What about folders that represent tags? I could tag a file (say a picture) with Danny (my name), Vacation, and 2007. The system creates 4 "folders" as we understand them, each one labeled with a tag, and the final one labeled as "images" or something similar (whatever the file type is). You could open the "images" folder and see the image, along with all other images. You could drill down further into images>vacation and see all files tagged with both images and vacation. You will also see additional folders for other items that have additional tags and fit in the images>vacation tag.

You could also get to the same file by going into the "Danny" folder, to see all files tagged with "Danny,"

It's a little difficult to explain, and I'm sure that what I'm trying to express is already being developed by someone, but either way, it is a more efficient system than what we already have. No more annoying shortcuts and restrictive folders.

Re: Ask: What would you do/make if you never had to monetize it?

#19

Post by michaelneale »

I think Arc - the 100 year language is a pretty noble aim. Just the idea that a programming language could be useful all that time - thats a pretty big step forward for technology. And its not likely to be any commercial motivation that causes it to come about.

Re: Ask: What would you do/make if you never had to monetize it?

#20

Post by ericb »

Evolutionary algorithms to create music (attached to libraries for sound generation and modification, drum beat, samples, etc) fronted by a reddit-like vote-up, vote-down system for the output of different algorithms. I'd try out different strategies for evolving things.

I'd focus on electronica or something without vocals initially. Each "subreddit" would be focused around the evolved algorithms for a different theme (trance, house, etc.)

Maybe there's something like this out there, but I'd play with it anyway...

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