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

Ask HN: What problem do you wish someone would solve?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 173 posts

Re: Ask HN: What problem do you wish someone would solve?

#61

Post by Trasmatta »

disadvantage wrote: post #3

One thing that bothers me and still hasn't been solved is the ergonomics of everyday computing. I don't care if people have Herman Miller chairs and use ergonomic keyboards, and an expensive mouse. You're still sitting on a chair which will kill your back. I've tried standing desks, but never liked standing. As for phones/tablets; I've only ever used them as consumption devices and no 'deep work' gets done on them li…

> I've tried standing desks, but never liked standing.

This is why adjustable standing desks are important. It's not good to be standing all day either. The best approach is changing your position between sitting and standing throughout the day, with frequent breaks.

Re: Ask HN: What problem do you wish someone would solve?

#62

Post by greesil »

dgfitz wrote: post #50
greesil wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the short term you can just not log onto the outrage-o-verse. Long term solutions to the current state of affairs elude me.

Not being on social media at all, I’m almost amused about the right wing comment. I don’t see that at all unless I read like nypost. It is a Facebook thing?

I'm a pinko left wing commie, and so are all my friends, followers, and people I follow. You can't get a purer bubble! But, my friends post things like "you won't believe what X said on OANN the other day. OUTRAGE!" So I just log off for a week. It's a just a property of human beings plus the engagement algorithms.

Re: Ask HN: What problem do you wish someone would solve?

#64

Post by Trasmatta »

samwillis wrote: post #15
f0e4c2f7 wrote: post #9

Figuring out how America can go fast[0] again. Solving would be great but I would also settle for a theory of mind as to why we haven't been able to for the last 50 years or so. [0] https://patrickcollison.com/fast

Not just America, but the world has shown just how fast it can move in the last two years. We went from new virus causing a pandemic to over 60% of the world having at least one dose of a vaccine in 24 months. Far faster than anyone thought possible. https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations

Yeah, that's the example I was going to give. The development, testing, production, and distribution of multiple effective vaccines was a demonstration of how we can still go fast.

Re: Ask HN: What problem do you wish someone would solve?

#65

Post by errcorrectcode »

amelius wrote: post #55

Fix 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…

Never going to happen because most people bought the idea that "greed fixes everything with magic." The policy prescriptions are obvious but unpopular. Instead, misery for most will continue to increase while the first trillionaires are made. Homelessness will skyrocket and the earnings of unskilled labor will fall through the floor. No amount of edumacation and retraining can turn everyone who loses a job into a software engineer or a solar electrician.

Re: Ask HN: What problem do you wish someone would solve?

#66

Post by errcorrectcode »

ahelwer wrote: post #48

Poor availability of introductory learning materials for grad-level study. Undergrad level stuff is pretty well covered by whatever MOOC you can imagine. But often for more advanced topics there is a large gap between what you know after an undergrad degree and what existing learning materials (if any exist) assume you know. Sometimes you just have to bang your head against papers until your brain melds with the conc…

It's a values thing, partially. Instead of publish or perish purely on research, publish or perish value to industry, academia, and knowledge. Seems like there needs to be a "LinkedIn" for grad/postgrad that can present such academic CV items coherently.

I agree that competent, thoughtful textbooks combined with amazing lecturers/TAs/peers are needed to transfer knowledge.

Re: Ask HN: What problem do you wish someone would solve?

#67

Post by xboxnolifes »

Wiseacre wrote: post #53
gopher157 wrote: post #38

Problem 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.

The problems with most talked about wealth taxes aren't the idea, but the implementation.

Re: Ask HN: What problem do you wish someone would solve?

#68

Post by donclark »

How to chart/track issues/news/topics/mood/reliability around the world.

(Think globally)

How can we do the same locally - and provide help where we can - or individually where we think it is needed.

(Act locally)

TLDR A Craigslist.org that is focused on a specific zip code.

Re: Ask HN: What problem do you wish someone would solve?

#69

Post by errcorrectcode »

greesil wrote: post #12

Childcare, housing, climate change, the usual. I'm sort of joking, sort of not. The first two affect 99% of my day to day, the last only when I will run out of water or there's a fire nearby. Edit: in the childcare and education side, something more informative than Greatschools. I know some neighborhood schools that have been gentrified and test scores have gone up, but it's still the same teachers, admin, and avail…

Private schools. I went through a Challenger School in the US in the 80's, and that was pretty good. Specifically, they taught traditional phonics when California went to some ridiculous, untested nonsense (i.e., whole word method) because education academics have/had too much power to arbitrarily break education approaches and standards. Interestingly, the catchy "Hooked on Phonics" was a symptom of the widespread problem of the educational system failing students, not the students failing the system.

Climate change. Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). I frown on chemical and mechanical means because they can't scale inherently and would be very expensive. Farming oceanic life is likely the main answer to it, such as GM kelp or phytoplankton.

Re: Ask HN: What problem do you wish someone would solve?

#70

Post by mlac »

CommanderData wrote: post #4

Otosclerosis. It causes conductive hearing loss, affects 10% of the population. Its essentially abnormal bone turnover inside the ear (Stapes) that becomes fixated leading to conductive hearing loss and eventually full deafness in some cases. The current solution is to remove the diseased bone and fitting a prosthesis, it has risks and hearing doesn't always return to normal. I always wondered why this can't be fixed…

Why don’t you email this question to a researcher in the field?
Post reply on HN