*nix. Too bad its the best thing out there.
Ask HN: What annoys you?
81–90 of 355 posts
Re: Ask HN: What annoys you?
#82The fact that most people seem to think that it's okay to get sick from the diseases of aging, get frail, suffer, and die, and that we shouldn't try to do something to fix that problem (really fix it, not just prolong suffering a bit).
I think it's probably partly rationalization because they think it's inevitable (but it is not inevitable, and I'd like that to become a more mainstream view so we can hurry up and work on this problem), and partly ageism, which makes a lot of people think that old people have less value so their pain and loss isn't as bad.
Re: Ask HN: What annoys you?
#83People writing "loose", when they really mean "lose".
I can let any spelling mistake or grammatical murder slide except this one. I won't comment on it as that's a bit petulant, but I will seethe inside and often, almost without thinking, I'll disregard whatever else they wrote.
Silly I know!
Re: Ask HN: What annoys you?
#84People who can't keep their car at a constant speed on the highway; cruise control is the best way to do this if you don't want to keep checking your speedometer. To elaborate: If everybody picks a slightly different speed and maintains it , any encounter between two vehicles will never last very long. There's more distance between any two vehicles, so it's safer, and large, impassable clumps of vehicles are less lik…
I want a global movement to make the acceleration pedal actually affect acceleration, not horsepower as it does now. Imagine a pedal with a dead spot in the middle that represents 0 acceleration. Pushing down on the pedal increases the rate of acceleration. When you get to speed, ease back to the dead spot to maintain. Lift past the dead spot to decel. Think of it as a hybrid cruise control. I'm convinced it would so…
How do you solve this problem for those of us in Colorado (or other non-flatlands) where nearly every drive involves mountains and hills. Would the idea be that in the dead zone, the car is smart enough to increase or decrease horsepower to adapt to these conditions and retain 0 acceleration or...? I think you would run into the same problem that cruise control runs into in the mountains - we don't have variable ratio transmissions, so at some point going up a hill it has to shift down a rev in order to stay the same speed. Doesn't work very well.
Re: Ask HN: What annoys you?
#85Advertisements!
They're obnoxious, obviously biased, and interfere with whatever it was you were doing (watching a show, visiting a website, reading a newspaper, whatever). It's just wrong. And we all know this, yet we just accept it like it's some fact of life.
In addition, it doesn't just affect customers, but all newspapers/magazines/sites that rely on "advertisement income" to make a buck. One thing that puzzles me greatly is, how pageviews and sales are apparently their #1 concern, yet at the same time they're talking, in all seriousness, about "being objective" and "journalistic integrity". It just doesn't go together.
Since the internet is already beating the hell out of pretty much all old business models, maybe it will get rid of this one as well, or at least transform it into something more palatable. But so far, the industry's response has been to make advertisements (on websites at least) even MORE obnoxious and intrusive.
Re: Ask HN: What annoys you?
#861. Technologically possible things that have been castrated/restricted by business people (or that need to be hacked, i.e. can't be done by your mother, in order to get them to work properly). Examples: phone tethering, ring tones, lack of power outlets in economy class on airplanes, VOIP over 3G, media licensing (aka dvd zoning), inability to stream Netflix from different countries, inability to watch streams on ESP…
Actually, it's 160 7-bit bytes, so that's $0.25 per 140 bytes.
Re: Ask HN: What annoys you?
#87The fact that 100s of years of art and music are available, but people still gravitate towards whatever is being promoted--typically something recent and inferior. This is partly a function of marketing, partly of herding--both poor selectors of quality.
Things that were made in a different day and age will generally take more effort to understand or get into, though. It's easier to pick up what's already all around. I'm not saying it's better, but that's how it goes.
Re: Ask HN: What annoys you?
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
IMHO the only problem with Google Wave's implementation was that it didn't integrate with normal email, limiting its network to Google Wave users. This seems very obvious, but I rarely hear people mention this when Google Wave comes up. Did you have something else in mind when you said it had terrible implementation?
Oh man where to start. It's just a noisy mess, poorly designed, with a lot of weird design decisions and exotic patterns that only added to the noise. It starts with a way to complex proposition. Google basically created the entire vision instead of the basic core functionality and then expanded on that, optimizing in the detail rather than for the big shows. Etherpad started the right way. It started very lean with…
I don't think its extraneous features detract from it as much as you're suggesting, but I also am probably not so qualified to judge since I barely use it (since there's no email integration). We've got highly portable hardware that integrates IM, SMS, email and media two-way/embedding (smartphones) but there's definitely room for a software or web application to provide all of these in one place on their respective platform. That's what I was hoping Google Wave would provide, but the rollout and self-containment is the critical factor in crippling it
Re: Ask HN: What annoys you?
#89Food. I miss the healthy, affordable, sociable dining halls from university. There are people who cook better than I do, and who should be able to make great food at a reasonable price by buying fresh ingredients in bulk.
My options for eating are
* Cook it myself [1]. Cheap but takes time and effort to make good food.
* Restaurant. Good food but expensive and takes time. I don't always want table service and small portions.
* Fast food. Quick and cheap, but unhealthy.
* Supermarket ready meals. See above.
So yeah, I would love an urban cafeteria serving a handful of healthy, cheap, fresh meal options. I'm sure it can be done.
Edit, re Tel: [1] I love to cook, but not when I'm in a rush, and I'm not always near home.
Re: Ask HN: What annoys you?
#90The fact that 100s of years of art and music are available, but people still gravitate towards whatever is being promoted--typically something recent and inferior. This is partly a function of marketing, partly of herding--both poor selectors of quality.
I don't care much if other people like bad things, but it irritates me when societal structures don't exist to allow me to enjoy the good things properly.
For example, the other day I was listening to my opera channel on pandora, and because pandora has horrible displays for opera music, I could not figure out what aria I was hearing, and spent close to two hours trying to figure out what it was. ID3 is totally unsuitable for anything besides pop music.