Configuration management. A few years ago, I timed myself doing a full reinstall on my private notebook to switch to a different partition layout. I was done in 30 minutes, of which most of the time was spent waiting for packages to download and install and for the /home backup to restore. Without configuration management, this would have been a full day of work just installing stuff and figuring out things like "how…
Which specific software do you use for configuration management?
Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?
751–760 of 818 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?
#752Gmail. Using web-based email clients was a nightmare before Gmail. They had limited storage space, and the UX was pretty bad, they were hard to search, etc. You spent all your time figuring out what you wanted to delete, or seeing your emails bounce when people had full inboxes. If you didn't log in for a while, your account would disappear. And then suddenly, you got a GB of storage. For free. No questions asked. An…
Gmail was so good that when it was in beta i sold invites for £200 each.
Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?
#753Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some day, before I die, I hope that when I say "If it doesn't work for the developers, then soon it won't work for the customers," and people will know what the hell I'm talking about.
That's why Windows Phone didn't go far, right? Developers were spending so much time on iOS and Android that few companies were willing to spend time on another platform.
Microsoft historically did okay with DevEx issues. Urns out Microsoft doesn’t make money off of too many things. A lot of their software ends up being loss leaders to support Office and Windows sales.
I use my tablet occasionally for Numbers, but it never even occurs to me to try it on my phone.
Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?
#754Earlier 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…
Why is privacy intromission so trendy and tempting? I understand this in hard-to-reach areas or for wildlife preservation, but you're effectively adding a real-time aerial Big Brother on everyone's head. Is technology too widespread? Do we need moral courses, in addition to tech ones?
I understand where you're coming from, but it's much more nuanced than plainly-stated "privacy intromission". For all the good that has come from tools like Google Maps, there's an opportunity to extend that good. For all the nefarious uses, it's an opportunity to pioneer techniques to mitigate those externalities in a way Google and other map data providers have not or will not.
The world is constantly changing and we need better, faster, and cheaper methods of measuring those changes. We can respect (and actively lobby for) privacy while obtaining these results at the same time. Morality and technology should not run parallel to one another, they should both be woven into the products we use every day.
Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?
#755Hire engineers to fix the root cause instead of hiring "employees to do job X". Engineers can automate almost anyone away by fixing the root cause. Lemonade is doing a great job at this.
Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?
#756Earlier quoted context omitted.
> using Google for search in 2000 and being amazed at how much better the results were than AltaVista and Yahoo Search. Aaahhh. The year Google launched, a friend and I were sitting next to each other, at our PCs. Both of us were techie types and into innovative stuff, although working in a software services bigco at the time. I casually said to him: "I came across this new search engine a few days ago while browsing…
I still distinctly remember the moment of shock with the minimalism of their homepage at the time; compared to AltaVista jam-packed with ads and other stuff to the brim, seeing just the logo and the editbox on a plain white page made me startle and pause with some "Whaaat's going on???" and "This can't be true" feelings.
Ha ha, yes. So streamlined.
Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?
#757Here are a few that I did not see listed by others: 1. Automatic device discovery and driver installation (e.g., with USB devices (also USB device categories, etc.)). Instead of trying to find a driver, things just worked. 2. Automatic updates. Keeping everything updated, largely, fell into the background. 3. Graphical integrated development environments (IDEs) for software development. I realize editors can be conte…
>1. Automatic device discovery and driver installation (e.g., with USB devices (also USB device categories, etc.)). Instead of trying to find a driver, things just worked. I remember well when installing Windows went from "make sure you have all the driver CDs before you start" to "just make sure you have the network card driver and the disk driver (if needed)" and then it went to "as long as you can connect to the i…
I feel like automated kernel module compilation when updating to a new kernel (DKMS) is in a very similar ballpark for me as a user.
Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?
#758Earlier quoted context omitted.
Was Gmail really 10x better than Hotmail?
I don't use either but the hotmail/live/outlook system is a disaster. I think people who have addresses there must just use them as throwaways as they don't seem to have much utility. You can be a small email sender with everything right, clean IP, on no block lists, SPF, DKIM, mta-sts. You can have no problems with any other major email provider. You can be signed up to SNDS. And they will just routinely block your…
What gets me is they don't honour whitelisting email addresses when their reasons for blocking can be really spurious.
Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?
#759Showing my age: windows 95 being able to play FULL SCREEN VIDEO
The Weezer video it included! Still love that song!
YES! That’s the one I was thinking of exactly. Such a great video anyway but even more amazing on a 14 inch monitor that has only previously barely seen 256 colours moving about slowly.
Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?
#760WhatsApp relative to everything else at the time