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Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

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Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#351

Post by [deleted] »

graeme wrote: post #248
tomatocracy wrote: post #114

Single 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 this and it doesn’t seem to work too well. The trouble is the best publications can run their own offers and charge much more. FT and Bloomberg in particular tend to be corporate expenses. Apple news costs $120 a year. Basic digital FT is over $350. Premium digital even more.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#352

Post by uncomputation »

kreeben wrote: post #321
uncomputation wrote: post #300

Voice assistant technology. It seems like Alexa and Siri keep getting more features and integrations (one far more than the other) but the actual language processing is rather basic. A different way of phrasing something throws off the assistant entirely, or your basically using a hard-coded menu just with your voice.

It seems to me we that need an app on our devices that we trust that is divorced from the device's OS (and it's vendor's cloud) that will help us in transitioning from hard-coded voice interfaces driven by dictionaries of known commands and interfaces that simply fail to understand you to something that is truly useful to us and that gets better and more useful over time. Until we have a voice assistant or voice driv…

Very true. I feel open-source would be a great fit for a voice assistant

Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#353

Post by JabavuAdams »

ipnon wrote: post #345
carapace wrote: post #203

Human tissue regeneration. Imagine being able to regrow limbs and organs! For a long time Becker's book was about the only thing out there: "The Body Electric: Electromagnetism and the Foundation of Life" by Robert O. Becker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Body_Electric_(book) Now there's pretty serious progress being made at Levin's lab: "What Bodies Think About: Bioelectric Computation Outside the Nervous System"…

I discovered only about 10 million people in the world are amputees, having recently become interested in biomechatronics. Most of them live in developing countries. I suspect this is the reason for the relative lack of research. There isn't big money in solving the problem although its solution would be immeasurably valuable to those it aids.

I'd pay quite a bit for knees that were as good as in my '20s.

Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#354

Post by xavierlint »

mfontani wrote: post #310
slg wrote: post #279

A way for a company I interact with infrequently to identify me over the phone. Pin codes and secret questions are easy to forget when they can literally go years without being used. What was my favorite movie when I setup my ISP account in 2016? This leads to customer service reps that are too forgiving and are easily susceptible to social engineering.

Randomize the answers to those things, and stick them in your password manager alongside (or separate from) the log-in information. Site asks for my mother maiden's name? Let me check "pwgen 18 1"... That'll be "Viquo4cai2gienoo2p".

Never understood those kind of "security" questions. Is the site really going to hand out access to my account if that question gets answered correctly?

Also, some sites don't allow you to not set up one, so it's like forcing users to open up a new vector to be hacked.

Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#355

Post by ipnon »

ellis0n wrote: post #332

I think for developers (and users) everything is broken, just check https://medium.com/message/everything-is-broken-81e5f33a24e1 That's programming 1.0, and we're need programming 2.0 What I mean about programming 2.0: - better security - less bugs and more stability - less complex code and API - less APIs - no halts, reactive live coding everywhere - less coding, NoCode variants PS: Who works on programming 2.0 besi…

We need higher-level, context dependent programming languages. Homotopy type theory promises to be revolutionary, and Jet Brains is working on integrating the theory with their IDE, so you can write any program with well defined inputs I and outputs O and the computer will find all equivalent programs for you. Programmers would no longer need to get lost in the implementation details.

Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#356

Post by drzaiusapelord »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #102

Designs for residential houses and appliances that ensure waste heat goes outdoors in the summer, and stays indoors in the winter. (And vice versa: refrigerators and freezers that take advantage of cold outdoor air in the winter, rather than using electricity to run compressors.)

I think one thing worth mentioning is that any hole to the outside of your home is a huge deal from a maintence perspective. Animals try to get in through the exhaust holes, the 'flashing' around them goes bad and lets in air, they clog up with dust and dirt, the louver spring holding them closed ages out and lets cold air in, animals nest in there if the louver or grill breaks or rusts, etc. Oh and if we consider things like air fryers, toaster overs, etc then you potentially have a fire situation with whatever dust or food crumbs that may get stuck in there, a bit like a dryer fire because of lint.

I think no one wants a new hole in their home unless they can't avoid it. Its a hard sell all around I'm afraid. Not to mention the DIY spirit around electric appliances. They are such wonderful marvels because we can just buy them and plug them in! We don't need a credentialed professional running tubing or cutting through our walls to install them. A competitor asking for an exhaust port will simply get eaten up by the one not asking for it.

Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#357

Post by sirpunch »

TrackerFF wrote: post #319

It IS being worked on, but things move quite slow - and there doesn't seem to have been much progress for decades, but: Cure for hair-loss. Some might say it's just vanity, but if someone could come up with a cure, and sell it affordably, that would be a multi-billion, maybe even trillion dollar industry. Going from quite balding (NW4-NW7 in balding terminology) to a full head of hair makes most guys look a solid 10-…

And the opposite: permanent hair removal. My partner went through a laser treatment for over an year to get about 60-70% reduction in hair growth. It's immensely painful and time taking process that doesn't work for all akin colors and doesn't guarantee a permanent hair removal. With the current pace of medical research I would have imagined a simple cream that you apply on your skin and whoosh all the hair follicles would be permanently dead. But for some reason, it seems like a distant dream.

Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#358

Post by uncomputation »

kevin_nisbet wrote: post #309

Maybe not so much surprised but more disappointed that sustainable public infrastructure isn't more in focus. Things like road surfaces that don't need to be replaced every couple of years, or better consideration when large infrastructure spending comes around how those bridges, dams, water works, etc, etc will be monitored, maintained and expanded over time.

This is my cue to mention Solar Roadways, which I’ve been a fan of since 2013-14. They would solve or beautify so many existing problems

Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#359

Post by imgabe »

gangstertim wrote: post #317

Battery-operated household items. I have a cordless dewalt drill that I can use all day on my jobsite, but every single appliance in my kitchen needs a cord. Hand mixer? Immersion blender? Regular blender? Stand mixer? Everything has a cord. Why isn't there a kitchen battery system yet? Similarly: I'd love to have a little reading sconce on my wall next to my bed, but running a circuit through the existing walls with…

There's quite a few battery powered LED lights you can stick on the wall. Most of them are meant to go in closets or under cabinets, but there's no reason you couldn't put one next to your bed.

Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#360

Post by JabavuAdams »

screye wrote: post #252

A better whiteboard/notes/mindmap app. (for windows) I can't be the only person who uses graphs, flow charts and images as a primary mental model for idea representation. This a domain I have been obsessed with for ages. The tech seems to be there. Ocr, shape recognition, pen technology is all there. New devices increasingly have the ML hardware to support it. Why isn't it here yet? We are living in the midst of a re…

I'm working on something related in VR. I live in Evernote, Anki, and PDFs.
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