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Ask HN: What annoys you?

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Re: Ask HN: What annoys you?

#191

Post by Timothee »

ganley wrote: post #64
zyfo wrote: post #34

Phone calls - makes a lot of noise and interrupts me regardless of what I'm doing. I want some people to be able to reach me right away, while I couldn't care less for others. Creating barriers for interruption based on: a) the person calling b) the time of day c) the activity I'm involved in needs to become more accessible and intuitive.

Something I've always wanted is to be able to set up my home phone so that between (say) 9pm and 9am, when people call they get an automated response that says, "The person you are calling doesn't want to be disturbed at this hour. If your call is urgent, press 1 to ring them; otherwise, press 2 to leave a voicemail without ringing them." Technologically, it's nearly trivial.

I don't know if Google Voice can do that out-of-the-box, (though it technologically could) but services like Twilio/OpenVBX or Tropo can definitely do that.

I would think that one problem right now is that not many people are really thinking like that yet. So amongst the people who do think about that kind of setups, each solution tends to be pretty specific to their own use.

That's why you have on one hand Google Voice which presents some options around what I would call "programatic telephony" but not fully customizable, and on the other, OpenVBX's kind of solutions which are highly customizable but not trivial to setup for "regular" people.

But yeah, it's now trivial to do and I'm sure it'll come with time.

Re: Ask HN: What annoys you?

#192

Post by himmel »

heycarsten wrote: post #151

Cyclists that disobey the rules of the road, but complain when motorists don't follow the rules of the road really bother me. (I am a cyclist.)

I agree everyone needs to obey the rules of the road... But the situation is such that when a cyclist disobeys rules, it never causes the automobile driver to die. Whereas when a giant SUV disobeys the rules, it can kill a cyclist.

Disclaimer: I live in Florida. State with the highest cyclist death rates.

Re: Ask HN: What annoys you?

#193

Post by himmel »

joshfraser wrote: post #175

laundry. i think it's absurd that we can put a man on the moon and send a message around the world instantly (from a touch screen computer in my pocket no less!) and i'm still stuck moving laundry from one machine to another machine 2 feet away.

There exist combination washer/dryers (all in one, no moving laundry!)

Re: Ask HN: What annoys you?

#194

Post by barry-cotter »

tome wrote: post #137
Eliezer wrote: post #109

Non-teaching of explicit rationality annoys me. The most fundamental, elementary, and basic concepts of rationality are not systematically explained anywhere that I know of. It is impossible to engage the average PhD in a dialogue with agreed-upon rules of reasoning because they do not know why you can't prove things about the real world by arguing about the definitions of a word, or why it's a bad idea to pick a con…

I would be interested in reading your book, as well as a summary if you have one somewhere.

He's still writing it. The huge numbers of blog posts it is a synthesis of are available at http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences

Re: Ask HN: What annoys you?

#196

Post by Locke1689 »

MikeCapone wrote: post #82

The 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 wor…

I come from a family history of physicians. My father is an MD and professor at Johns Hopkins.

It's difficult to conceive how little we know about the human body and biology in general. People are working on things related to it, but we're really nowhere near even understanding the problem. Just because you don't understand something doesn't mean it isn't being worked on.

Re: Ask HN: What annoys you?

#197

Post by SandB0x »

emily37 wrote: post #181
SandB0x wrote: post #89

Food. 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 p…

I have the opposite complaint. My school's dining hall meal plan works out to $8+/meal and it's infuriating. I now spend almost half as much by shopping at Trader Joe's and cooking. What do you count as good food? I find that it doesn't take me that much longer to make something good and healthy (maybe not gourmet delicious) than it would to wait in line at a cafeteria.

Good food: Salad, main course and dessert for around £4. Lots of vegetables and other (healthy) perishable ingredients. The thing with perishable food at home is you either have to constantly buy in small quantities, which is time consuming, or buy more, plan your meals up-front, and hope you can use it up before it rots. This is also assuming it makes sense to travel home for dinner most evenings and cook, which is not true a lot of the time. Three good courses is what I'll do for a dinner party, not when I've come in late and tired.

Also, in a food hall you don't have to do the washing up.

Still, it sucks that your setup is so expensive and the queues are so long. The worst I've seen is a university where they've outsourced everything to a bunch of chains. The food is overpriced, processed and bland - it's just like eating in a mall.

Re: Ask HN: What annoys you?

#198

Post by dotBen »

blhack wrote: post #112
SandB0x wrote: post #89

Food. 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 p…

Have you ever been to IKEA? I wish that they would do stand-alone cafeterias like that have in the store, but place them around the city; I would eat there all the time. It's really good (and healthy [steamed vegetables, fish, etc.]) and really cheap; it's awesome.

Ikea restaurants are loss-leaders to get people into the store. I too will quite happily pop into an ikea just for food too but the idea is that you have come to shop.

But as a loss-leader it doesn't make sense to have independent stores in town.

Re: Ask HN: What annoys you?

#199

Post by orangecat »

MikeCapone wrote: post #82

The 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 wor…

I couldn't agree more. What can we do about it, other than donating to organizations like SENS?

Re: Ask HN: What annoys you?

#200

Post by nostromo »

harscoat wrote: post #23

Expense reports - eg. receipts collection, sorting them, scanning them (even if some solutions exist) but then accountants always want it in a different format/system that I use. (no standard especially outstide the US)

This is so true. My company uses Concur and I'm sorry to say it's actually worse than doing it the old fashioned way. You wouldn't expect that from their homepage, but the actual app is godawful.

I know the receipts are an IRS thing, but why can't the rest be easier?

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