Cleaning and organizing the house. Decluttering, identifying the right place for all our stuff, keeping it here. Scrubbing, wiping surfaces. Washing, folding, putting away laundry. Sweeping and vacuuming floors. Cleaning and organizing the yard. Pulling weeds, avoiding them in the first place. Pruning and maintaining plants. Planning, building, and maintaining landscape elements. Collecting and disposing yard waste. Cleaning gutters. Cooking. Cleaning the dishes. Deciding what to cook for dinner given what's in the fridge and pantry. Meal planning
Ask HN: What problem do you wish someone would solve?
51–60 of 173 posts
Re: Ask HN: What problem do you wish someone would solve?
#52Waiting in hotline queues for some support agent to speak to. Sometimes just the plain phone number to call support, instead of jumping multiple hoops of "have you tried XYZ" FAQ answers
https://www.dialahuman.com/
Like this? In most cases, the queues and prompts are in place because the majority of callers really don't need to talk to a human and waste support's time with very simple tasks.
Re: Ask HN: What problem do you wish someone would solve?
#53Problem of unjust societies. My kid will be a multimillionaire in his twenties without a single day of work while his equally capable peers will enface a life of limited opportunity because the best they can do is to work their ass off to pay rent. It is structural and it needs to change. A truly liberal idea could be to reset the "score" when the game is over. Try to be the best you can and earn as much as you can -…
Wealth tax still seems highly unpopular in the general public, not to mention on HN. I think the average user here is more interested in bringing home FAANG salaries than solving the wealth gap.
Re: Ask HN: What problem do you wish someone would solve?
#54Making a truly squirrel proof bird feeder, that also lets slightly larger birds, such as robins, access the food. This is surprisingly difficult to find, and many squirrel proof feeders on Amazon actually get destroyed by squirrels in no time. Those that can resist the squirrel assaults have a cage that's too narrow for robins to get inside.
My mom lived in Paradise CA and had this problem. Anything birds can manipulate, most squirrels can too, except they can't literally fly or peck. She tried 5 different feeder designs and the squirrels all got to them.
One solution is cage suet feeders. Squirrels can't peck into them.
Another is throwing out enough seed / feed on the ground over a large enough area so that a variety of critters can get access. Crows, finches, jays, wild turkeys, and deer would feed at the same time.
Yet another solution is to place a tree feeder on top of a greased pole away from trees so squirrels can't jump down to it or climb up it.
Bird baths or other fresh water sources that are kept from producing mosquitoes larva are also good.
The other critters of concern in the area were red foxes, vultures, hawks, and black bear.
Re: Ask HN: What problem do you wish someone would solve?
#55Fix the economy, make it more fair. Make it so that the ones at the far end of the supply chain get the same chance of building a good business as the ones sitting closer to the end customer. Make it so that honest, hard work gets rewarded more than gaming the system.
This is more important than apps that make $WHATEVER more convenient by an infinitesimal amount.
But, probably not the kind of problem that you wanted to hear about.
Re: Ask HN: What problem do you wish someone would solve?
#56Cleaning and organizing the house. Decluttering, identifying the right place for all our stuff, keeping it here. Scrubbing, wiping surfaces. Washing, folding, putting away laundry. Sweeping and vacuuming floors. Cleaning and organizing the yard. Pulling weeds, avoiding them in the first place. Pruning and maintaining plants. Planning, building, and maintaining landscape elements. Collecting and disposing yard waste.…
So a cleaning service, lawn service, a chef, and throwing out stuff that doesn’t have a home?
Re: Ask HN: What problem do you wish someone would solve?
#57Lack of reliable service from plumbers, HVAC, appliance repair people. There are many people available but the quality and consistency of service is highly variable and chances of getting ripped off are high if you don't do your due diligence. I wish there was more standardization in these services where I don't have to worry about getting ripped off and can expect a decent quality of service without spending too muc…
Couldn't agree more. Services like thumbtack and yelp seem to try to get you in the direction of good contractors, but the signal to noise is incredibly high. There seem to be very few reputational penalties for poor performance.
This is a problem more generally too. Performance management of employees is often haphazard as well for very similar reasons.
Re: Ask HN: What problem do you wish someone would solve?
#58Peloton for cooking. A self cleaning food processor/oven/cooktop equipment with meal kit delivery service and tons of recipe videos.
Re: Ask HN: What problem do you wish someone would solve?
#59Lack of reliable service from plumbers, HVAC, appliance repair people. There are many people available but the quality and consistency of service is highly variable and chances of getting ripped off are high if you don't do your due diligence. I wish there was more standardization in these services where I don't have to worry about getting ripped off and can expect a decent quality of service without spending too muc…
So many of these contractors have zero comms skills or infra because they focus on the work and not basic customer relations. My personal frustration: (0) have someone answer the phone, (1) tell me when are you coming, and (2) be there. I suspect they all have a family member with QB and an answering machine as their whole back office. Someone should set up simple SaaS to do automated appointment slots, schedule upda…
According the the footer in my receipt email the last electrician I used used Housecall Pro (https://www.housecallpro.com/) as their back office. It worked really well, I got SMS reminders about when they were on the way and even texted them a video explaining what I needed done so got an accurate estimate before anyone showed up. Now that I think about it I have no idea if the dispatcher I texted with was an employee of the electrician or this company, but I guess I don’t care.
Re: Ask HN: What problem do you wish someone would solve?
#60Making a truly squirrel proof bird feeder, that also lets slightly larger birds, such as robins, access the food. This is surprisingly difficult to find, and many squirrel proof feeders on Amazon actually get destroyed by squirrels in no time. Those that can resist the squirrel assaults have a cage that's too narrow for robins to get inside.
After being given a bird feeder as a gift, I went down a rabbit hole.
And it was just the feeder, btw. So nothing else.
Well, with a feeder you need to put it somewhere. Tried trees. It was a squirrel feeder.
Then I got a pole for the middle of my yard, away from all high objects a squirrel could jump from. Quickly became a squirrel feeder, as they can climb the pole. Looked at greasing the pole, laying out with a BB gun, and other options, but settled on a metal cone below the feeder.
The squirrels in my neighborhood have bad short term memory, so they will see the feeder, make the association with food, start to climb the pole, get under the cone, and then sit there for a couple of seconds before forgetting their mission.
I’ve had squirrels try to reach to the exterior of the cone, but it’s not stable, so as soon as they put weight on it they fall.
I’ve heard squirrels elsewhere are smarter than this system (not sure how - team work?) but here they can’t figure it out.
All that said, the “gift” of the bird feeder lead to $100 in purchases, regular seed refills, and hours of research. But I ended up with birds near my office window, so that’s nice.*
6/10 would receive again.
Feeder pole: Your friend has shared a link to a Home Depot product they think you would be interested in seeing.
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Vigoro-84-in-Black-Steel-Traditi...
Feeder: Audubon NAGOGREEN1 Going Green Ranch Style Bird Feeder
Cone: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0010QD5QO?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_...
* in searching my Amazon order history to find the products I got, I realized we also had a ton of bird strikes into our windows, to the point that I had to get clings to go on the windows. These have been mostly effective in stopping birds from hitting the house.