91–100 of 209 posts
Think about how many cool videos are made with the Go Pro. Snowboarding videos, skydiving videos, etc. Now think about how cool it would be to have the type of frozen fly-around video that you see in moves like The Matrix. In fact, it should be super easy to create such a thing. Instead of just a photo, why can't we have a frozen moment in time, virtually in 3d? In fact, I first thought of this idea in terms of weddi…
Links to previous weeks' Idea Sunday posts for reference: Last week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7654771 2 weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7616910 3 weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7582077 4 weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7541601
Up voted .. karma grab, yeah, but I was just looking for this.
A service that sits between my bank account and subscription services that only accepts charges that I've preapproved. This would let me keep track of the services that I have so I don't end up with subscriptions to sites or services that I've forgotten about. It would also let me revoke permission to charge the account at any time. No need to cancel a card if one won't cancel or changes the fees--you just revoke the…
Direct Debit in the UK does this. You can cancel any instruction at any time, usually through your online banking where all instructions and charges are listed. It is widespread and the norm for subscriptions.
An MMO where all content is created by players using a wiki-like interface. Editing privilege is tied to a "creation skill" that levels up with each approved editing action.
Worldbuilding as a game mechanic could be amazing. I have this totally evidenced belief that there are tons of people who are master worldbuilders and are poor at writing fiction/narrative or dislike doing so. I'd love to find a way to open up content creation to such a demographic.
I'd like some way to listen to Hacker News. I know that's ambiguous, and I'm not sure how it'd be implemented. But I often listen to podcasts when working from home and often wish for a way to consume Hacker News in the same way.
A service that sits between my bank account and subscription services that only accepts charges that I've preapproved. This would let me keep track of the services that I have so I don't end up with subscriptions to sites or services that I've forgotten about. It would also let me revoke permission to charge the account at any time. No need to cancel a card if one won't cancel or changes the fees--you just revoke the…
A gym I was part of required me to send my plastic barcode / keyfab to a PO Box in order to cancel my subscription. Kind of ridiculous. I'm pretty sure they'd continually charge me and send me to collections if the charges just got denied. Something to think about - canceling contractual subscriptions may require more than just a failed credit card.
A search engine for the legal system. I had sent this idea to YC 2013 and they asked me to submit a video, but I felt I don't have the creds to apply. Take each section of a country's law and convert it into prolog clauses. Queries can then be run on the legal engine. For defendants it gives you insights on how to build a case and for prosecution it identifies relevant sections and evidence that needs to be provided…
A/B testing for the masses. Here's an example: Say a someone is deciding which shirt to wear. They whip out their smartphone, launch the A/B app, takes a picture of themselves wearing each of two shirts. Within 30 seconds, they have an answer of which shirt hundreds of people liked better. While they're waiting for the reply, they're prompted to rate other people's pictures. This is as simple as seeing two pictures a…
This is actually pretty interesting. I think many people have thought of a product along these lines and, as mentioned by others, there have been several versions of this tried. I think the key is in the constraints you have outlined. Obviously it's a mobile app. You take two pics and post. You then vote on other's ABs. Every vote you make on someone else's AB earns you a vote on your own. If you want a bunch of opin…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
These solutions seem to, kinda, take a stab at the concept, but what we're really after is something way simpler. Think a simple text field into which you type a URL. Then this service would visit, crawl and compile the entire site into a static HTML site (with options to enhance the final version of the static site). This would have to work independently of the platform used to build the original site and ideally th…
Httrack does this.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I understand correctly, this sounds like an idea that I've been thinking about for a little while. Essentially, you do binary search-insertion into a list, where the comparison function is a prompt to the user asking "Is A better than B?" (If it's too difficult to judge "betterness" between two items, you could just as easily swap in a different comparison. "Is A funnier than B?") One thing that people always ask…
yup -- I believe this is a better user experience in terms of capturing ratings (by capitalising on the availability heuristic) What you're describing technically would work when each person compares every item (and would fall into the domain of condorcet methods). However in practice the election becomes a graph (rather than list or x/y table) with cyclical dependencies and conflicting comparisons -- it becomes quit…
Cyclical/conflicting comparisons are a function of faulty users, the algorithm can't take the blame for that! ;)