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Ask YC/HN: What's a problem you'd like to see someone solve?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Ask YC/HN: What's a problem you'd like to see someone solve?

#41

Post by tokenadult »

mrtron wrote: post #21

I got flamed for suggesting this recently, but I'd like to see it: Equal wages/prices for all regardless of geography, brought on by a single world currency and the internet? That would solve world hunger (which is a money issue, not supply issue). edit: Awesome. It's getting downvoted here too? What the hell is wrong with the concept? edit 2: Oh I was completely blind to the obvious here...I mean equal wages in term…

What's your recommendation for something to read about economics, a question I asked HN readers

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=415683

with fewer answers than I expected from this erudite group.

Re: Ask YC/HN: What's a problem you'd like to see someone solve?

#43

Post by z3r0p4r4d0x »

Mystalic wrote: post #31
mrtron wrote: post #21

I got flamed for suggesting this recently, but I'd like to see it: Equal wages/prices for all regardless of geography, brought on by a single world currency and the internet? That would solve world hunger (which is a money issue, not supply issue). edit: Awesome. It's getting downvoted here too? What the hell is wrong with the concept? edit 2: Oh I was completely blind to the obvious here...I mean equal wages in term…

Equal wages just kills this, that's why. I will simply say that I'm smarter and harder working than the vast majority. I deserve to be rewarded. More importantly, it's an incentive to be harder working.

Yes, but maybe there's a guy just as equally smart and hard working in a developing nation and he's getting peanuts even though his government doesn't provide him with health care or education or social security. Voted up.

Re: Ask YC/HN: What's a problem you'd like to see someone solve?

#45

Post by mrtron »

tokenadult wrote: post #41
mrtron wrote: post #21

I got flamed for suggesting this recently, but I'd like to see it: Equal wages/prices for all regardless of geography, brought on by a single world currency and the internet? That would solve world hunger (which is a money issue, not supply issue). edit: Awesome. It's getting downvoted here too? What the hell is wrong with the concept? edit 2: Oh I was completely blind to the obvious here...I mean equal wages in term…

What's your recommendation for something to read about economics, a question I asked HN readers http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=415683 with fewer answers than I expected from this erudite group.

I took quite a few economics courses in university - and all of the textbooks were poor.

The best course was on monetary policy, basically the type of modeling and process the Federal Reserve or the Bank of Canada go through.

Check out http://www.stanford.edu/~johntayl/MacroPolicyWorld.htm

Re: Ask YC/HN: What's a problem you'd like to see someone solve?

#46

Post by mikeyur »

Mystalic wrote: post #10
mechanical_fish wrote: post #6

Get people to stop using IE6 to visit sites, by any means necessary. Bonus points if you can take out IE7 as well.

I was just doing customer service help with someone today actually. IE 6.0. I wanted to throw the guy into a lake. Of fire.

"Ok, here's what I want you to do.. Go to mozilla.com/firefox"

Re: Ask YC/HN: What's a problem you'd like to see someone solve?

#48

Post by mechanical_fish »

tokenadult wrote: post #38
mechanical_fish wrote: post #6

Get people to stop using IE6 to visit sites, by any means necessary. Bonus points if you can take out IE7 as well.

Agreeing with your general sentiment, what are the specific kinds of technical issues that come up with IE? I've kept all the sites I manage browser-independent (some people call that "primitive"), so what am I missing by not building in features that would make me want my visitors to not use IE?

what am I missing by not building in features that would make me want my visitors to not use IE?

I'm guessing the answer is: Clients. I haven't had one yet whose site was so simple that it avoided issues with IE6. Of course, you might have clients who are less demanding or have more austere tastes, in which case they're really smart because working around IE bugs costs money.

The easiest way to answer your question is to point you at this catalog of IE's deficiencies:

http://www.positioniseverything.net/explorer.html

But if you want a document that really captures the essence of IE-induced terror, you can skim the invaluable "On Having Layout":

http://www.satzansatz.de/cssd/onhavinglayout.html

Don't read it all at once. It's exhausting.

IE, particularly IE6, is a great illustration of PG's observation:

The distinguishing feature of nasty little problems is that you don't learn anything from them... writing an interface to a buggy piece of software doesn't teach you anything, because the bugs are random.

Re: Ask YC/HN: What's a problem you'd like to see someone solve?

#49

Post by netcan »

Mystalic wrote: post #29
Dilpil wrote: post #16

One click install java IDE and compiler. One click install C IDE and compiler. One click install Erlange IDE and compiler. And so on and so forth.

It can be complicated for a non-techie to even set up an apache server on their computer. We'd probably have a couple more good programmers in this world just by breaking down that barrier.

Hence MAMP
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