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Ask HN: What annoys you?

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221–230 of 355 posts

Re: Ask HN: What annoys you?

#221
post #52

I'd love to see a text editor that let you select text blocks by drawing a box. (ie, you could draw the box selection style and select the last 5 characters of each line)

Many OS X text fields have built-in support this -- hold option and drag for rectangular selection. (And as someone else already noted, emacs of course can do this, albeit with a somewhat different UI mechanism -- see M-x apropos rectangle.)

Re: Ask HN: What annoys you?

#222

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…

Interesting, this reminds me of a book I thought about writing at one point titled something like "How To Tell What Is True"

Which would cover topics like:

* Peer review * Double blind experiments * Anecdotal evidence * Statistical Significance

But I sort of lost interest and ended up just making it a blog post instead... http://www.startbreakingfree.com/504/how-to-tell-whats-bulls...

Re: Ask HN: What annoys you?

#223

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.

When the clothes dryer is in cool-down mode and approx. 1 min from completion, why can't it send me an SMS message?

Re: Ask HN: What annoys you?

#225

Death annoys me. People who can afford $300/year for a cheap cryonics membership and life insurance, and who don't sign up, annoy me. A lot of them are probably being held off by the trivial inconvenience of signing a few papers without a paid salesman to hold their hand. It therefore annoys me that cryonics is poorly marketed and that there are no paid salespeople - that no one gets a commission when you sign up for…

I have no faith that a cryonics company is going to last for more than a few years. If the money doesn't run out (which it will because someone will get greedy), all it takes is one incompetent employee to open the wrong door or push the wrong button for my investment to be entirely wasted. (or it could be an earthquake, or a 100-year flood, or rising sea levels...)

"I have no faith that a cryonics company is going to last for more than a few years."

Alcor and the Cryonics Institute have been around since the '70s and don't appear to be in any danger.

Re: Ask HN: What annoys you?

#228
post #72

Finding people to work on short, proof-of-concept projects with. I have a list of more than 25 items that I would love to work on, but have little motivation without someone willing to help out. I don't necessarily want to form a startup on these ideas, just get the ball rolling and see where it leads. I would like a site that enables me to find others and create prototype apps in a matter of days, almost like a flas…

I would love this site if it existed. I also have a list of projects that I would love to work on, but I like working with other people the most so I haven't started many of them. This site would also be a great place to meet new people with similar interests.

It would probably be difficult to go from a joint "proof-of-concept" project to a company unless all parties are on the same page. Like you mention, maybe the site could have optional legal agreements or something. Perhaps you could partner with something like LegalZoom.com to take care of those agreements for the users.

Re: Ask HN: What annoys you?

#229
post #184
post #72

Finding people to work on short, proof-of-concept projects with. I have a list of more than 25 items that I would love to work on, but have little motivation without someone willing to help out. I don't necessarily want to form a startup on these ideas, just get the ball rolling and see where it leads. I would like a site that enables me to find others and create prototype apps in a matter of days, almost like a flas…

Not to recurse on your comment, but can we build a web app for this some weekend?

I would also love to help build a web app for a site like this. I tried to email you, but there is no contact info in your profile. Shoot me an email (in my profile) if you are interested!

Re: Ask HN: What annoys you?

#230
post #92

The 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.

Personally, I'm offended by the popularity of "Classic Rock" and the fact that marketing channels have broken down to the point where there's no connection between great music being made today and many listeners. I grew up listening to "Classic Rock" in the 1980s, and it took years for me to realize that this had deprived me of the authentic music of my youth... It was the music of somebody else's youth, which makes…

Yeah I have 2 (probably more) Clear Channel stations in my city and I can drive clear across town without hearing anything but ads and a dj talking. Then they proudly claim 50 minutes of (insert music type). Yet I just drove 20 minutes without a single song, and it happens all the time.

It seems worth investing in a station to replace these. (anyone have a good source on how to start one?)

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