Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 818 posts

Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?

#391

Post by gxqoz »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #319
ta1234567890 wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kazaa

The only problem I had with Kazaa is how often people would rename files for reasons I'll never understand. Like...imagine downloading "The Matrix.avi", and you start playing it, and it turns out it was actually a copy of Fight Club. WHY!?

One thing I liked about Napster and the like is that bootlegs and B-sides circulated along with the official releases. I miss not having these on Spotify. Yes, there are official live albums on there. And yes, you can still find these bootlegs elsewhere. But there's enough friction that I rarely do this.

Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?

#392

Post by csteubs »

Hammershaft wrote: post #368
csteubs wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm working on a startup trying to make that happen now. There's an immense amount of "free energy" in the form of 120k+ flights around the world every day with that # expected to increase in the future with air taxis, delivery drones, etc. Idea is to hitch a ride on these platforms and crowdsource (cloudsource?) as much aerial image data as possible to create a map that updates every few minutes. Planet Labs and Max…

Interesting concept, but my gut says it could lead to some malicious use cases.

You're spot on, and that's something I think about daily. Satellite-based incumbents have an average revisit rate (assuming good weather) of roughly 2x/day, so hundreds or thousands of passes/day poses serious privacy and operational risk. We rely on guidance from EthicalGEO and other consumer privacy orgs when drafting standards, but the path to the type of hyper-revisit we're envisioning will need to be tread very cautiously.

Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?

#393

Post by tinus_hn »

core-questions wrote: post #335
sangnoir wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct - Opera had tabs way before Firefox, and Opera had a full mail client as well without feeling bloated or slow.

I strongly believe that if Opera had had a cool name, it would have been a real contender. People don't like operas, they're boring and stodgy.

Opera was a paid option. It was doomed from the start.

Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?

#394

Post by 015a »

Retool [1]. Its been years since I've ran into a software product to support software teams which could so fundamentally change how you build things, and how you build the things you build. Retool can basically cut down the effort of making internal administrative dashboards by, like, a solid 70%. I still sometimes run into dashboards other engineers have made on Retool and say "holy shit you can do this?" or "how did we have the time to build this, is it really that easy?"

I believe its possible Retool will become the next Jira, in the sense that its a totally internal tool that's so valuable companies hire people whose entire job is to just live in it and develop it out.

[1] https://retool.com/

Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?

#395

Post by yold__ »

aerovistae wrote: post #211
zachruss92 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss Firebug. Simpler times...

I don't. We have chrome dev tools and firefox dev tools which are both literally the same thing as firebug but with a decade of refinement. There are so many great aspects to those tools that firebug didn't have back then because it was the first version basically.

Seconding that. Although Firebug was wonderful, cross-platform development was not (IE and FireFox). Example of "quirks mode" nonesense:

1. The "hidden" element at the root of the IE DOM tree, only accessible with "*" via CSS

2. inline-block was broken on IE6 (but fixable with hacks), and no transparent PNG support.

3. The outline CS property was implemented the same as background in IE

Best of all was the dog slow IE 6 JavaScript interpreter, which was like 50x slower than Firefox and IE 7+.

Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?

#396

Post by wheybags »

safetytrick wrote: post #383
2bitencryption wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was the entrypoint to Firefox for millions of people. Unlike today, back then Firefox had a clearly expressive value proposition: Use this! It has tabs! It will change how you browse the web! Now the only value proposition is some wishy-washy privacy stuff that is much harder to sell people on, even if it's in their best interest.

To me, the value proposition is still tabs. I have hundreds open at a time. Once or twice a month I will cleanup hundreds of windows and tabs. I've created habits to open up most everything in new tabs and new "projects" in new windows. I think I do this as a self-remedy for my ADHD, I am likely to allow an interruption to disrupt me but I do need to close the loop on whatever I was working on before an interruption.…

I use a vertical tab extension, and with that I regularly get to > 1k tabs.

Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?

#397

Post by aerovistae »

x0x0 wrote: post #282
aerovistae wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no familiarity with #2 so that's interesting to me-- do you or other people actually use uber/lyft to get to and fro work? Isn't that like $15-20 each way every day, thousands of dollars a year?

in sf, pre uber, taxis just didn't come. They were extremely unreliable -- call, and they'd come if they felt like it. maybe. and on their own schedule. Also, they were run by utter assholes who knew you had 3-4 companies to choose from, and they all sucked. uber and lyft later turned it into a service that was highly reliable (came, or at least told you if they weren't coming). It seriously enabled the use of taxis…

Really interesting! Didn't know. In the northeast taxis are generally reliable, although I've never used them with the regularity of someone who uses them to get to work.

Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?

#398

Post by aksss »

mikewarot wrote: post #302
dimal wrote: post #263

USB. It's hard to imagine, but we used to have a thing called SCSI (pronounced "scuzzy", and that's how it felt) which allowed you to connect to exactly one serial device. The plug was huge. And cables cost $50. Mice used an entirely separate interface that was different on Macs and PCs, and since Apple was dying at the time, it was a struggle to get Mac mice for a reasonable price. With USB, you could suddenly attac…

>we used to have a thing called SCSI (pronounced "scuzzy", and that's how it felt) which allowed you to connect to exactly one serial device. No, SCSI was worse than that... you had 5 or so different types, about 5 different connectors, and you had to terminate things, set the dip-switches just right, have the right Adaptec card, with the right drivers, and if you didn't look at things too hard... you might be able t…

I was super excited the first time I personally owned my first SCSI card though. I look back on my fascination with the tech of those days fondly. It was super cool even though it badly sucked by todays standards.

Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?

#400

Post by tinus_hn »

yosamino wrote: post #249

Postfix. It's the only software package that I use where I am consistently sure that any issue I come up with is me making a mistake in configuration or me not having read the documentation closely enough. It's stable, it has good error messages, it supports all the different ways to send email. And it's documentation is just really well and precisely written. It's just really good . It's not that I think that Postfi…

And all that without having to learn the amazing m4 macro language so you can ‘easily’ configure Sendmail
Post reply on HN