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

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141–150 of 173 posts

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

#141
post #129

P2P E2E chat. Much like signal (support for IOS, Android, and desktop), just no central servers.

https://status.im does this for text and group text just not voice. p2p leaves a pretty wide attack surface from everyone's ISP.

sadly uses blockchain which is no longer acceptable to many people at least until the environmental concerns and other issues are resolved.

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

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How do you define success in a short term timescale to steer any adjustments though? If the goal is to educate children to become successful adults you have at least a 15-20 year time horizon. By the time you know if the methodologies are working or not, it has probably changed 3 or 4 times and most of the teachers have moved on, maybe if you're lucky there's an institutional "agenda" for lack of a better term that h…

it's a slow process but examples of better schooling do exist. it takes research and the willingness to look beyond your local region.

the problem has multiple aspects. funding is one, management another, actual teaching methodologies yet another. for all of those examples can be found. not everything is directly applicable and it takes some experimentation.

but a part of the problem is also the definition of success. the goalpost on that keeps changing too.

for adults to be successful the environment needs to be supportive too.

aren't there studies that show that children from poor families are less successful despite good schooling? so if we want children to be successful we also need to eliminate poverty. these things go hand in hand. and i suspect that some attempts at better schooling fail because other aspects like this are not being addressed.

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

#143

Some easy ones right off the bat: online extremism, public transit, housing, access to healthcare, chronic disease treatment. Online dating is pretty rough. I need a company to get extremely serious about desktop Linux and charge me $100/yr for something that actually works. Yes. It’s okay to charge for copyleft software.

All but the first one are solved in the richest countries, except the US.

How is housing solved in other richest countries besides US?

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

#144

City 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.

I hear you, but:

- what’s the demand for travel from Birmingham to Chicago?

- what’s the ecological cost of laying rail from Birmingham straight north?

We could subsidize a lot of plane flights / busses on existing highway infrastructure before it makes sense to lay down rail, even between Birmingham and Nashville.

And it looks like Birmingham > Nashville is a Never mind that train route runs right through Franklin, which has insane property costs and I can imagine NIMBY-ism going on, so you’d have to route around it.

The cost for a high speed rail is estimated at $154 million per mile, which would be $30 BN to build the segment between Birmingham and Nashville.

Then it’s a billion dollar soft target, so security and terrorism are a concern, especially being the first example of high speed rail in middle America. It would take one extremist with a rifle to shut it down / reduce ridership. They wouldn’t even have to hit anyone, just shoot at it as it went past one of the many fields.

And at 30 BN, you won’t ever see the ROI, and it would require federal funding - which many would ask why someone in Montana should pay for rail transport in between Birmingham and Nashville, and it would probably die before funded. The government spends $315 Million to subsidize small airports around the country per year, which may be a more effective use of tax payer dollars.

All that said, I understand why you want someone to solve this problem - it would open up all sorts of towns for lower cost of living in Nashville / surrounding cities. Especially if it was subsidized for riders. If the hyper loop becomes a thing, I’ll be excited. I also understand there are people who just won’t get on planes.

Cost estimate: https://reason.org/commentary/on-high-speed-rail-look-at-the...

EAS subsidy: https://www.businessinsider.com/inside-aviations-battle-serv...

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

#145

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…

I've felt that this could be a place where unions and/or guilds have a role. If I hire a union worker then the union guarantees that the person shows up and does quality work. If that doesn't happen then the union is held legally and financially responsible. In this world I would be happy to pay a premium for a union worker.

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

#146
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you define success in a short term timescale to steer any adjustments though? If the goal is to educate children to become successful adults you have at least a 15-20 year time horizon. By the time you know if the methodologies are working or not, it has probably changed 3 or 4 times and most of the teachers have moved on, maybe if you're lucky there's an institutional "agenda" for lack of a better term that h…

it's a slow process but examples of better schooling do exist. it takes research and the willingness to look beyond your local region. the problem has multiple aspects. funding is one, management another, actual teaching methodologies yet another. for all of those examples can be found. not everything is directly applicable and it takes some experimentation. but a part of the problem is also the definition of success…

I guess I definite success as going up in economic class or at least maintaining.

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

#149
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked on this the realization came that the problem isn't one that can be solved with software. There are a million solutions that in theory should work, if that were the case. The problem is a large percentage of people who work in the trades are flaky. This is not something that the SV crowd can understand. They don't want to be more efficient. They know their jobs can't ever be outsourced. They want to wor…

penalize the flakes, give steady performers a boost? after some point, no flakes on the platform.

Exhibit A

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

#150

Fix democracy without enabling something even worse, enable free speech without accidentally enabling fascism.

The first can be improved by replacing the first past the post system and removing gerrymandering. Even better have at least 5 political parties and a parliamentary system.

The second can be improved by eliminating anonymous speech accounts. It doesn't have to be visibly tied to your legal name. But Socrates was right. Without accountability people will immediately do awful things.

https://open.library.okstate.edu/introphilosophy/chapter/the...

Neil Stephenson had a great idea in "Fall; or, Dodge in Hell", a fix. Online accounts had blockchain identities.

But then again people will probably never stop feeding trolls and take into account other people's posting history. Nor will online forums come down as hard as they need to on abuse.

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