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Products I Wish Existed

blog.eladgil.com

231–240 of 434 posts

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#231
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.

How do you act on the air quality info? Seems to me that riding a bike or driving a car you'd be breathing the same air.

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you knew the technologies/software that Fortune 2000 companies are spending the most on, you should build complementary products, or similar things that solve the same problems those products are solving?

I think there's value in both. Consider Duo. They took a common problem - authenticating servers and services with 2FA - and made it easy to add to existing infrastructure. There's not really a consumer use for this product, aside from maybe a VPN, but there's absolutely a huge demand for it in business. I worked on many CRUD apps that had say 4 different groups of users. We made a library / system for determining wh…

Duo is awesome. I discovered it because it’s the system my employer uses for 2FA and push notifications are so much nicer than having to enter codes.

But similarly, I’ve found it convenient for all my other 2FA needs from GitHub to RuneScape. So even then, it has value to consumers.

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#233

I fail to see how TikTok is a "good reminder for the generational turnover of social products". Has an entire generation passed since Vine or Snapchat? If anything it's proof that securing an early lead in a new form of media (short form video in the aforementioned cases) doesn't guarantee success even for a generation. My takeaway is that young people are increasingly mercurial and disloyal. Chasing their attention…

Snapchat is still extremely popular among people my age (20s). Vine only died because it was killed off, the community was thriving. If anything, tiktok shows that it was a mistake to kill off vine; functionally it's the same sort of content.

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#234
There's an unmet need in social networks for "identity verified and protected", wherein the social network proves to a reasonable^ degree of certainty that you are who you say you are, and then you are permitted to maintain an anonymous identity (which you may end and replace with a new one at any time).

^ Notarization, at $25/each, would be sufficient. Bank account verification and credit card verification would not be sufficient, nor would "upload a photo of your ID". There's no sidestepping the "human being evaluates your actual identity documents" stage.

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#235

I can't say as I like his take on the longevity industry. It is the take that will produce few meaningful advances, the "looking under the lamp because that's where the light is" way of approaching life. Just more marginally better drugs that do a little bit more than those of 10 years ago. Sadly investors probably care very little from a financial position as to whether a drug works or not, as their exit usually hap…

Dude, you are on it! Congratulations.

(FWIW, I think that space colonization will only be practical if we develop either FTL or longevity (live to 1000+) and the latter seems way more doable than the former, eh?)

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> > get things shipped to work, use Amazon lockers, > These seem like reasonable solutions. Why not just do them? Because that's bending broken backwards to accept a broken neighbourhood and society. Where this stops? "Drive-by's are a thing, accept it and just were a bulletproof vest, it's a sensible solution"?

Needing to safeguard your possessions lest they get stolen is a sign of a broken society? By that yardstick, every human society past and present is broken. Leaving aside small sleepy towns, everyone locks up their house, car, bicycles, and other possessions, even the people complaining about stolen packages. That's not considered an unreasonable burden, but the minute unattended packages get taken off porches everyo…

Sure there are police in every society but even in cities some neighborhoods have bars on their first floor windows while others don’t. And if you go out of the country, you could leave a wallet on the street or bicycle unlocked in cities in Japan or Singapore.

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#238
post #55

About new social networks, I am building one that I am calling "a quiet social network" . Copy/pasting from my landing what it means: A personal journal and a social network that will provide a quiet space to reflect about yourself and also to nurture your long term relationships with the people that you care about. Why “quiet”? Because this social network won't have the frenetic rhythm of news and updates of all oth…

Your web site isn't loading at all for me. Glancing at the console it looks like you have a timeout error, and the loading gif just runs forever. Chrome Version 79.0.3945.88 (Official Build) (64-bit)

Thanks! If it is the same bug that I experienced, if you refresh the page it will probably work.

I am a 3-week vacation right now, away from my development laptop, but I will investigate this bug better and solve it once I'm back

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#239
post #33

While only a footnote, I like the nod to nuclear energy. I remember in the 1950s, there was a Popular Mechanics cover touting nuclear as a coming technology to power homes and even cars. Imagine the next Tesla-like company offering to install a small nuclear reactor in houses. Like solar, you can sell electricity back to the grid, charge your electric car with it, literally use it to heat your water.... Also might be…

Yes, absolutely. Today’s modern reactors are night and day compared to Chernobyl/Fukushima era reactors - they’re not even comparable. They’re fail-safe rather than fail-deadly, and are much more compact and efficient, with better controls and containment. The size of the reaction chamber is basically that of a household washing machine. I’d gladly live next door to a modern plant.

I dream of the day when all the oil derricks and refineries hidden behind facades all over west Los Angeles would be replaced by nuclear energy, not to mention the inglewood oil field.

Re: Products I Wish Existed

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Products turning into services, that's what wrong. You stop paying, the devices stop working. Or, they decide they're bored with providing the service, and pivot or get acquihired (or just decide to prod you into upgrading), the devices stop working. Plus, it seems that the new breed of service companies isn't satisfied with just providing a service in exchange of money. They also use the opportunity to exfiltrate as…

You don't subscribe to cable tv or netflix?

I do, but a) problems of these businesses are well-known, and b) there's a difference between a subscription to entertainment and subscription to necessities (or at least things with higher impact on one's life).

Also, in case of cable/Netflix, a lot of downsides are mitigated by piracy. There's no worry you'll be cut off from the entertainment you want, because you can always Torrent it if push comes to shove.

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