Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

541–550 of 1001 posts

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

#541

Technology to store greenhouse gases

The most effective CO2 sequester technology already exists : trees. Once we end with the number 1 cause of deforestation and biodiversity loss, the very destructive animal agriculture industry, we'll be able to reforest / rewild UP TO 80% of the land that we currently use for crops because that's the part used to grow crops to feed the 75 billion cows, pigs, chickens that we unnecessarily breed, feed and kill every single year. 80% of agricultural land is wasted on that as it only produces 18% of our calories which will be easily substituted by plant-based foods. Also water waste : 55% of fresh water And much more In a plant based world, vast amounts of land will be able to rewilded, restoring the original habitats that were cut down (deforestated) to make space for all those cows that we don't need. If you want to see data about this check out the white paper from Climate Healers

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

#542
post #497

Why don't cars (or even pickup trucks) have modular storage? Why isn't there a way to load up your groceries in the store, put them in your car in a modular way, and help you unload them into your house somehow? It could go even further to mini palettes that can be loaded and unloaded automatically. And even electrical cool or cold boxes to keep stuff at the right temperature as you drive home.

I think storage bins/totes and coolers work fine for most people. Throw a folding dolly in there if you want to move them faster.

Bed organizers are already a popular addon for pickup trucks, including rolling drawers.

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

#543
Car-free or significantly car-limited communities. Cars that are safer for pedestrians (not just for occupants in cars). Better traffic safety enforcement.

Automobiles kill ~6k pedestrians and almost 140k are sent to the ER in the US - many of which will have life-altering injuries.

https://www.cdc.gov/transportationsafety/pedestrian_safety/i...

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

#544
post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meetup.com doesn’t solve this? I ask cause I work remote and meetups are basically what I used pre-pandemic.

I've found Meetup alright for finding things to do with other people, but it doesn't work well (at least for me) to find people to be with . Meetup helped introduce me to a once-a-month board game group which is nice, but the problem is that the people I meet through this are sort of stuck in that "role": they aren't my friends and won't be, they are just people I play board games with. Whereas my true friends are pe…

That has exactly been my experience too.

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

#545

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.)

This is called a heat pump, and you will likely see this replace or augment traditional A/C and water heaters over the next 5-10 years.

Unfortunately winter air is actually _too warm_ for heat pumps to use winter air for cooling! They use outside air for heating, year round.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vU9x3dFMrU

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

#546

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…

> 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? My cordless dewalt drill cost more than my mixer, immersion blendar, and food processor combined.

[deleted]

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

#547

Global warming businesses: carbon capture, emission reduction, etc.

The easiest is to change the content of our plates, without waiting hoping that maybe if we are lucky enough someone will come up with a solution for all the destruction that we cause in the first place when we buy products from the most destructive industry in regards of GHG emmissions, deforestation, fresh water pollution, ocean dead zones and much more : the animal agriculture industry. Watch "Endgame 2050" on YouTube or "Cowspiracy" on Netflix if you want to learn more

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

#548
Static code optimization, particularly for the web. There’s a really great thing happening where more and more frontend work is embracing static site generation, while using tools more commonly used for client rendered content (eg react), but the frameworks then ship tons of JS duplicating the mostly static content of these sites, roughly doubling page size and at least doubling render times.

Easy to use, type safe, automatically validated/decoded/encoded/documented interface boundaries. There’s awesome tooling for this and nothing I’m aware of checks all those boxes, at least on platforms I develop on.

I’m considering experimenting with solutions for the former, and actively developing a solution for the latter for TypeScript/Node.

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

#549

Premium-feeling laptops that aren't Apple machines. Yes yes, I get the economical barriers. I'm past caring. It is so incredibly frustrating to look outside the Apple ecosystem and feel like the entire PC industry is content to sell the bare minimum of quality (outside of Gamer hardware, which looks obscene - but I get that it's subjective). It's a horrible business idea on the numbers and nobody would do this, but i…

My Zenbook Pro didn't seem all that different to my 16" Macbook Pro which it clones.

The MacBook Pro has cooling issues, an awful keyboard and feels flimsy. The Zenbook had only a pseudo 4k display, a massive charger and a large bezel, although I believe that's gone on newer models.

I wouldn't call one premium and the other not. They were both kind of underwhelming.

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

#550

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…

I would hate your world of batteries-everywhere. I already loathe the fact that I need to constantly recharge my phone, my watch, my mouse, my kindle, my headphones, my camera, my doorbell, my torchlight, my tire inflator, my tv remote... some of these will be used so sparingly that the batteries might leak in the meantime, or they might just die, so now every time you want to use X you have to wait for the batteries to charge, from a few minutes to a few hours.

Personally, I'm more annoyed by the fact that electrical systems in buildings are still too hard to modify. As you say, you cannot really tweak much once the wall is done. In a day and age where electrical devices continue to multiply, it's sadistic to bang on about extender-cords being "fire hazards" while not providing alternatives. You don't want fire hazards? Give me a way to safely upgrade the energy distribution of my home that is as easy as plugging in an extender cord.

Post reply on HN