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Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?
111–120 of 1001 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?
#112Elderly care... in fact this pandemic showed precisely the opposite: our elders were neglected, converted into a statistic that dies more then young people. A complete lack of humanity in a lot of developed countries. This is the example we gave to the upcoming generations, we're fucked when it's our turn lol. I've been reflecting a lot on this, and thinking of ways to solve this, but it's not easy - it's bigger than…
This is a project my uncle designed where 4 houses in a block share a common care facility, allowing the people requiring care to live in a regular house without costing a fortune. https://darrenchester.com.au/freedom-housing-project-officia...
It is definitely a step up from a nursing home, especially for people who would like to live with their family or chosen roommates.
Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?
#113Animal Sensation of Earthquakes. Though a not well studied phenomenon (thankfully), it is well documented and seems to be a reliable, if brief, predictor. Even if it is only a few seconds of warning, that could mean a lot of lives saved by announced warnings or via automatic means. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_prediction#Animal_b...
> only a few seconds of warning the lead time is important for the value. I don't think a 3 second warning is valuable at all, but a 30 second warning might be. so we have stats on this?
> I don't think a 3 second warning is valuable at all
3 seconds is plenty of time for a sensor to trigger an actuator to close valve, say a natural gas valve that could leak and cause fires.
Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?
#114Single subscription payment for news along the lines of the Spotify model. I'd happily pay a single subscription which gave me access to ALL the news websites, and divided payment up based on which articles people click on. Do that without tracking me between the different sites and I'm sold.
Pressreader gets close but it only gives you yesterday's print versions (not current online content), it has a few notable gaps which matter to me (the FT, The Times (of London), Bloomberg news among others) and it doesn't really collate different sources for the same story very well. Though I have to say it's great for magazines.
Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?
#115A friggin' printer that friggin' works.
Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?
#116Computing tools for non—programmers. In the early days of computing, we quickly came up with the spreadsheet and the user-friendly relational database (Access, FileMaker). Then we just sort of stopped. The no-code thing today is a step in that direction, but we could do so much better. I’m actually ashamed of the software industry that we have done so poorly at this.
I recently thought about this, too. Is there any cloud-based, simple relational database, aimed at non-programmers?
Microsoft Access is a database aimed at non-programmers. I'm not really sure why you would care if it's cloud-based or not if you aren't a programmer though. You could have Access save your database file to One Drive or something. Access also integrates with SQL Server and you can probably get a free tier one on Azure.
Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?
#117Single subscription payment for news along the lines of the Spotify model. I'd happily pay a single subscription which gave me access to ALL the news websites, and divided payment up based on which articles people click on. Do that without tracking me between the different sites and I'm sold. Pressreader gets close but it only gives you yesterday's print versions (not current online content), it has a few notable gap…
Apple News is trying. Also better for magazines than current events.
Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?
#118Regenerating top soil. We have degraded 1/3 of the top soil in the last 150 years. At the current rate, we won't be able to grow food in 60 years. This is a significant threat to our food production capabilities as a planet, and has severe 2nd, 3rd degree repercussions as well. At the moment, agroforestry and syntropic farming are the only large scale solutions, but they need mass adoption. https://www.scientificamer…
Despite getting repeated a lot there's no evidence to support this.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24232291-100-the-idea...
Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?
#119An immediate push to simplify complex concepts / ideas given that we know from history how much the efforts pay back in terms of broader adaptation / understanding by the masses. Examples: quantum mechanics, string theory, certain advanced algorithms, AI etc.
Hi! I am Xavier, Mathematical Artist and am leading an initiative to do just that with a form of thinking called “Omnidisciplinary Thinking” or Thinking OMNI. The intent is to encourage people and organizations/groups to identify the root structure of concepts (“Engage with the Root”) and to use any shared structures to help them reason quickly and accurately across, within, and between domains, disciplines, and industries.
The applications of this are intended at the personal, interpersonal, and social levels. At the personal level, the mindset can be used to make sense of complexity and for self-understanding. At the interpersonal level, such a mindset is useful for finding common ground/understanding between philosophies such that we can have difficult conversations with those who seem most different from us. And at the social level, we have many applications such as more efficient and rich education, and for companies and job seekers we get better talent recognition and integration into organizations (e.g. removing the keyword bingo everyone must play on resumes).
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Think OMNI
Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?
#120Voice interfaces. We have Siri and Alexa, yes, but they're very limited -- they just have a list of pre-programmed tasks they know how to do. I realize that a fully-general voice interface is an "AI-hard" problem, but surely we can improve over what's on the market now?
I think ironically your criticism of voice interfaces actually betrays perhaps their biggest weakness over visual interfaces - it's not immediately obvious what their capabilities are, what they will respond to or understand, or what your options in a situation are.
Super users and developers of these systems are likely able to harness them for much more powerful usecases than the average person, but how do you make those options and usecases visible to the end user?
It would seem like the answer is either 1) a robocall / callcenter bot style solution (press 1 to ____, press 2 to ____, press 3 to ____) where you must listen to lists of things but can more expressively verbally respond rather than press 1, or as you said solve the Hard AI problem of the bots contextually understanding your current situation and suggesting options based on it.