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

91–100 of 173 posts

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

#91

Post by CommanderData »

mlac wrote: post #70
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?

I would love to, how would you go about finding a researcher? Preferably someone local to the vacinity.

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

#94

Post by errcorrectcode »

teucris wrote: post #78
errcorrectcode wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> private schools From your description, it seems like what would really help is better policies and approach to public schools. Assuming that private schools would tend to pick better educational approaches seems flawed to me.

That's not how the real world works, only an idealized one. And not all public or private schools are the same. In the US, private schools were motivated (but not forced) to adopt better approaches because they were often competing with widely-available free public schools. Some public schools were being ruined by inept education bureaucrats, so wealthier parents moved their kids into better private ones. This is because some states and school districts were overriding the wishes of the parents, so the said wealthier ones did was was easiest: change schools. This created a two-tiered system in some areas where public schools got worse because they lost money per student as students left, had to cut budgets and good teachers, and concentrated poor and inner city students within underfunded, failing school districts. There are good public schools in some areas and there are probably plenty of horrible private schools too. It's my experience in the US that the best private schools tend to be better than the best public schools because of the extreme differences in resources.

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

#95

Post by errcorrectcode »

greesil wrote: post #82
errcorrectcode wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Where I come from is Almaden Valley of San Jose and Palo Alto, so YMMV depending on where you are. Barely-adequate public schooling doesn't work for my family. Many moons ago, the high school I attended was rich af and an overachiever mecca because of high property taxes and extreme property values. There are also excellent private schools, including some of the more specialized ones for higher gifted and genius kids that regular schools hold back.

In other countries like Finland, they have it right compared to US education system the genius W contributed to breaking: homework has no value, teaching answers to excessive standardized tests (NCLBA) has little value, and grading teachers on immediate performance of said standardized tests has little value.

To solve this problem of finding good schools, I believe word-of-mouth advice from more successful folks is more valuable than any website filled with sour grapes or unverifiable claims made by random, anonymous people. It also can be a problem that better areas tend to have better schools, so no website will be able to find what doesn't currently exist in low population or not-as-nice areas.

There are websites like USNAWR who attempt to rate K-12 schools, private and public. https://www.usnews.com/education/k12

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

#96

Post by lost_soul »

monkeybutton wrote: post #18
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…

Agreed. Also right wing extremism fueled and amplified by the internet. It's sort of technical problem, right?

I always wonder who benefits from the extremism.

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

#98

Post by neiman1 »

nso95 wrote: post #44
ahelwer wrote: post #19

Earlier 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

For the time being.

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

#99

Post by bradlys »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #67
Wiseacre wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Indeed. We already have a wealth tax for the overwhelming majority of Americans and they don’t seem opposed to it.

It’s called property tax. They all know what it’s used for.

The issue with a wealth tax is purely a marketing one. Rich people have truly done a great job distorting the wording around a wealth tax.

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

#100

Post by bradlys »

monster_group wrote: post #8

Lack 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, I worked at a startup that specifically tried to work on this issue.

It ended up failing. You know why? People were cheap. They didn’t care at all about the quality of service until after the job was done and they paid bottom dollar.

People are incredibly price sensitive. If there’s a service that is 1% cheaper, they’ll go with that even if it causes 10x as many headaches. The reason? Money is obvious but luck isn’t.

It’s only when you get into business scale of stuff that do people care about quality. For most people - they’re shopping once a year for some handyman service. In those cases, they’ll do whatever they can to get the lowest promised rate upfront. This means they’ll go with untested folks as long as they’re cheap.

Truly, I think there is a way to have both cheap and good but it’s just not in the best interests of a capitalist. If you’re good, you raise your prices as high as possible. You don’t need to compete with shitty - you’re inherently better and thus feel you can charge more. Your clients will feel the same. But I think your clients aren’t likely typical homeowners in those cases. Maybe it’s commercial.

Post reply on HN