Fair tax. I live in a country where persons must pay high tax. But companies (big) are doing all sorts of "tricks" and pay zero.
I have no problems paying tax myself and have huge benefit from that kind of system (health care).
But it is infuriating to see huge corps paying zero year after year. So somehow it should be easy to spot such companies and then avoid them.
Ask HN: What problem do you wish someone would solve?
81–90 of 173 posts
Re: Ask HN: What problem do you wish someone would solve?
#82Childcare, 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 p…
Some public schools are just fine. Some private schools are awful given who my kid is. I just want to know which one is which.
Re: Ask HN: What problem do you wish someone would solve?
#83Lack 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…
> Someone should set up simple SaaS to do automated appointment slots, schedule updates to customers, and billing. Charge $1 per slot. Sign up all the contractors.
This is going to end up bad for the contractors. Just look how Uber Eats et al robbed restaurant owners from the profitability of their businesses.
Re: Ask HN: What problem do you wish someone would solve?
#84Lack 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…
Fixer is an attempt to get this kind of reliability together, I think.
Re: Ask HN: What problem do you wish someone would solve?
#85High quality, low latency, whole house, distributed wireless audio without a disposable speaker tech business model.
Beep (YC S14) did this and made a gorgeous, inexpensive volume dial that lives on top of your speakers and speaks wifi. Unfortunately the company shut down but it was great while it lasted. It looks like there isn’t market demand for this without the associated speaker business or intelligent assistant.
It might also be patents from Sonos which are stifling innovation and competition in this space. See the discussions here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28273131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28273131
Re: Ask HN: What problem do you wish someone would solve?
#86Laundry. Fold my laundry with a reasonably sized device and you can take my money. It's been ~60 years since there has been any innovation in household appliances, and I just loathe folding clothes.
The better solution is eliminating the need to fold, probably.
I'm not sure if this is a joke or not.
I'm guessing if I said, "I would like a device to cook me dinner," your response would be "The better solution is eliminating the need to cook anything," and I'd be eating out of some NASA-approved squeeze tube or eating TV dinners for the rest of my life.
As I am a normal human, no, the answer is a device that actually organizes and folds laundry when I dump it into a pile out of the dryer.
Re: Ask HN: What problem do you wish someone would solve?
#87City to city high speed railway transit, so more railways. Last I checked, it would take me 24 hours to travel from Birmingham, Alabama to Chicago. It would route me through the northeast. Bham is almost due south of Chicago.
Re: Ask HN: What problem do you wish someone would solve?
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suspect VR workstations will help with this. Many ergonomic constraints come from ease of mounting monitors at eye level. With VR this problem no longer exists. You can be in any position you want - lying down, standing, sitting cross-legged on a cushion on the floor, etc. - and as long as you can type with separated keyboard halves for each hand you will be productive. Perhaps we should not be chasing the One True…
VR is uncomfortable
I stayed away from VR for the past eight years but picked up an oculus quest 2 for $180 on craigslist the other day. Other than the mandatory facebook integration (hopefully a thriving jailbreak/homebrew ecosystem pops up) I am blown away that something of this quality can be found for so little. VR computers are coming and I would happily pay a few thousand dollars for something that can replace my desk, chair, monitors, microphone, headphones, computer, and all the other knick-knacks necessary for those to work together. I think things have now reached the level where they can authentically compete with a real-world workstation, at the high end. Certainly they must be customized for your head/face shape and eye positions.
Re: Ask HN: What problem do you wish someone would solve?
#89Making 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…
Same here, but with hemisphere of clear plastic. I still put a cage over the sunflower seeds because otherwise the parakeets (yes they are now common in the UK) sit on it all day and would rather fight off other birds, including other parakeets, than eat.
Re: Ask HN: What problem do you wish someone would solve?
#90Lack 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…
Larry David’s new season of Curb Your Enthusiasm has an episode where he highlights exactly this problem and comes up with a way to fix it. He calls it House Husband where someone who knows a little about everything can come and check to see if the repair being offered is legit.
Did you watch the episode through? Slight spoilers so stop reading here if you haven't watched the new season. Leon ended up causing an inconvenience for everyone as the the services he negotiated in place of his clients in the end was done poorly xD.