Products I Wish Existed • Hacker News Board

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#71

Post by TeMPOraL » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 5:10 PM UTC

eladgil wrote: post #48

contravariant wrote: post #30

The author seems to have put more thought into what can exists, as opposed to what ought to exist.

This is purposeful. These are just some products I want. There are a lot of things that should exist but are harder to do: -Safe, cheap nuclear power -Longevity drugs (I am involved with two companies in that area) -Independent journalism school/foundation -Pioneer on steroids (how to identify and nurture the top global talent for every area of human endeavor) -Etc. But that is perhaps another post / different topic.

I think GP's point is that some things on that list ought not to exist. Personally, I have some reservations about the neighbourhood watch thing.

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#72

Post by thdrdt » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 5:18 PM UTC

dsalzman wrote: post #2

+100 "I would love to see the following analysis: A map of repetitious tasks, spreadsheets, and manual data extraction by function in the Fortune 500. Budget breakdown of current software spend, by function, by line, in the Fortune 500. A view of what Accenture, CapGemini, and Deloitte keep building over and over for large enterprises. Undoubtedly a subset of these custom consulting projects can be turned into SaaS s…

I believe ERP SaaS would fall in the category "falsehoods programmers believe about how companies store their data".

There is always this exception that makes a SaaS ERP not fit for a company.

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#73

Post by amelius » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 5:18 PM UTC

dsalzman wrote: post #2

+100 "I would love to see the following analysis: A map of repetitious tasks, spreadsheets, and manual data extraction by function in the Fortune 500. Budget breakdown of current software spend, by function, by line, in the Fortune 500. A view of what Accenture, CapGemini, and Deloitte keep building over and over for large enterprises. Undoubtedly a subset of these custom consulting projects can be turned into SaaS s…

> I would love to see the following analysis: A map of repetitious tasks, spreadsheets, and manual data extraction by function in the Fortune 500.

This is basically asking for a market gap in a potentially very profitable market. That's silly, everybody wants that.

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#74

Post by Patrick_Devine » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 5:18 PM UTC

nrjames wrote: post #68

Purple Air hits on a bit of the neighborhood pollution sensor idea: https://www2.purpleair.com/ I've used their API to look at California wildfire data.

Purple Air has been extremely popular in our community due to the wild fires here in California. There are quite a few sensors around town, and it gives you a good idea about how to prepare the kids for school and whether we should be riding bicycles.

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#75

Post by flanbiscuit » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 5:19 PM UTC

davedx wrote: post #32

> NoCode/LowCode (letting anyone build an app with a spreadsheet as a database representation) AirTable has made huge inroads here. I'm also building something in this area ( https://lightsheets.app/ ), turning slightly back towards spreadsheets instead of databases but then building enhancements and modern integrations on top. I think there's still lots of potential in this area, despite spreadsheets being 50 years…

Glide apps also falls into this realm. You make an app from a Google Sheet. Found out about it from HN

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19163081

https://www.glideapps.com/

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#76

Post by Scoundreller » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 5:23 PM UTC

cgriswald wrote: post #63

dwaltrip wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thankfully, people usually do a decent job of filtering themselves in meatspace. At least, they are better at it in person than they are online.

There are also social cues and the lack of an ever present mob. A lot of people who are political activists online are not actually that confident in their views and absent the audience and ready defenders, won't express their views because they know they can't back it up in a one-on-one conversation. Our city did a traffic survey of a local street that is the primary route for everyone going from surrounding neighbo…

Heh, a road to my parents’ used to be riddled with potholes and uneven sewer grates (Canadian winters + drainage issues probably).

The city spent months ripping it up and paving it nice and smooth.

Then a couple months later they put up speed bumps.

We spent a lot of money to get back to the speeds people already drove.

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#77

Post by paulgb » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 5:30 PM UTC

dr_dshiv wrote: post #9

Are there other rundown like this? I appreciate the concept more than the content.

There are a handful out there under the name "request for startups" (popularized by YC, I believe)

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22request+for+startups%22&t=fpas&...

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#78

Post by lisiado » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 5:32 PM UTC

mdorazio wrote: post #34

buldoeo wrote: post #20

Correct me if I'm wrong, but No 5 already exists?! I'm from Europe. I have an app on my phone that shows me the pollution in the city I am. I check on it every time I'm in different places. It's called AirVisual. I installed it from google play, I have android.

I think he means a much more granular pollution map than what's available at the city level. Something like being able to get accurate pollution data at sub-kilometer precision, especially in suburb areas where monitoring stations tend to be sparse.

There is a project in Germany which collects the data of stations you can build yourself with an esp8266 and a sensor. https://luftdaten.info/

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#79

Post by dr-detroit » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 5:34 PM UTC

There are no AAA social platforms without CIA backing from the start. It could never happen independently.

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#80

Post by secabeen » Mon, Jan 06, 2020, 5:34 PM UTC

jakelazaroff wrote: post #54

runjake wrote: post #8

#4 is a no-go in my book. Things like Ring, Nextdoor, and Facebook already exist. Nextdoor and Facebook are riddled with inanity, from political rants to dumb jokes to hoaxes to common scams to law enforcement rants. I don't want more information from my neighbors -- 99% of it is garbage. I want highly-filtered information. Basically, a neighborhood watch but with an aggressive spam filter. Right now I glance at the…

The "SaaS-ification" of security cameras should also worry us. Ring — not its customers — controls the videos taken with their cameras, creating a video surveillance network that the police can access without needing a warrant. They've partnered with 400 police forces to give them access to that data [1]. Although they claim to let customers deny police requests for footage, their terms of service allow them to hand…

> Although they claim to let customers deny police requests for footage, their terms of service allow them to hand video over to police if they deem the request "reasonable".

Defining what is a "reasonable government request" is a valid question, but it's really just not that high of a bar to get a records subpoena/search warrant for video like this. Courts sign off on those routinely, so I don't think you can really expect Ring or any company that holds your records to deny police requests for very long.

The system they have seems pretty balanced. The police look at the ring website to see who has cameras (they could figure that out by walking the neighborhood), they ask for the footage (instead of knocking on the door), they get turned down (or not), they get a warrant, the footage is released. Ring is reducing the overhead of asking somewhat, but they're not enabling mass surveillance or building AI systems that track suspicious people across multiple ring devices.

Is there something I'm missing here? If you record video of your front yard, and the police want to see it, they have a right to, subject to the normal judicial review.