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Ask HN: What annoys you?

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Re: Ask HN: What annoys you?

#111

Post by dminor »

zephyrfalcon wrote: post #71
ExtremePopcorn wrote: post #28

Psychological pricing - don't tell me that your product is $9.95; say $10.

I wonder if businesses actually sell more if their products are priced like $9.95 or $9.99 instead of $10, or that it's just based on the expectation that such prices are more attractive to the customer. Unfortunately, the Wikipedia article [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_pricing ] doesn't mention whether any research was done to verify this, much less any results.

It's probably more about phonetic symbolism: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100119111051.ht...

Re: Ask HN: What annoys you?

#112

Post by blhack »

SandB0x wrote: post #89

Food. I miss the healthy, affordable, sociable dining halls from university. There are people who cook better than I do, and who should be able to make great food at a reasonable price by buying fresh ingredients in bulk. My options for eating are * Cook it myself [1]. Cheap but takes time and effort to make good food. * Restaurant. Good food but expensive and takes time. I don't always want table service and small p…

Have you ever been to IKEA? I wish that they would do stand-alone cafeterias like that have in the store, but place them around the city; I would eat there all the time.

It's really good (and healthy [steamed vegetables, fish, etc.]) and really cheap; it's awesome.

Re: Ask HN: What annoys you?

#113

Post by klous »

davidwparker wrote: post #67
daleharvey wrote: post #5

Banking - My bank has a website that the 90's would be proud of, it gives me little to no information about my spending habits, transferring money is a nightmare, and using kublax (similiarly mint) had my account banned for security purposes.

I'd like to add that if you are/were in the U.S. Military at some point, (or even your parents, I'm pretty sure) then you should check out USAA. They have a fantastic website and awesome customer service. note: I have no affiliation with USAA other than I use them and really like them.

I believe USAA also supports check imaging - no need to physically deposit a check. take a picture / scan it from your home or office and it will be processed.

Re: Ask HN: What annoys you?

#114

Post by misterbwong »

ganley wrote: post #64
zyfo wrote: post #34

Phone calls - makes a lot of noise and interrupts me regardless of what I'm doing. I want some people to be able to reach me right away, while I couldn't care less for others. Creating barriers for interruption based on: a) the person calling b) the time of day c) the activity I'm involved in needs to become more accessible and intuitive.

Something I've always wanted is to be able to set up my home phone so that between (say) 9pm and 9am, when people call they get an automated response that says, "The person you are calling doesn't want to be disturbed at this hour. If your call is urgent, press 1 to ring them; otherwise, press 2 to leave a voicemail without ringing them." Technologically, it's nearly trivial.

I believe google voice does this

Re: Ask HN: What annoys you?

#115

Post by fragmede »

jasonkester wrote: post #95

Things that assume/require that I have exactly one physical address. That includes banks, insurance companies, government agencies, utilities, and pretty much every business that I need to deal with to do anything. 90% of the pain I encounter during my life on the road stems from the fact that I don't own or rent property in the US, and therefore don't have a fixed address. There are tons of people in my situation (e…

Or even just physical addresses in general. I wish there was an official registry a-la-dns, people would mail things to me, and the post office would route it to me based on what that registry said. Yes, you'd have to update it, but it beats having to update my address in a half-dozen places every time I move.

There are actually a few places that deal with this - http://earthclassmail.com/ being one of them.

Re: Ask HN: What annoys you?

#116

Post by zephyrfalcon »

what wrote: post #100
zephyrfalcon wrote: post #85

Advertisements! They're obnoxious, obviously biased, and interfere with whatever it was you were doing (watching a show, visiting a website, reading a newspaper, whatever). It's just wrong. And we all know this, yet we just accept it like it's some fact of life. In addition, it doesn't just affect customers, but all newspapers/magazines/sites that rely on "advertisement income" to make a buck. One thing that puzzles…

Would you be willing to pay to remove the ads from a website? Pay for each show you watch without ads? Pay more for an ad free newspaper? If not, you shouldn't be complaining about ads (even though they are pretty obnoxious). The ads support the content that you consume. Or do you have a better way to compensate the people that create this content?

I knew somebody would bring this up. :-)

What many people don't realize is that in the current situation, instead of paying (more) for the show/newspaper/etc, we pay for advertisements instead. When a business spends $$$ to promote their product, that money didn't fall out of the air; it's part of the price of the product they sell (much like some part of it is production cost, etc). So whenever somebody buys product X, they're also paying (a tiny fraction) for that product's advertisement.

So no, I would not be willing to pay to remove the ads from a website, since I am already paying to put them on there in the first place.

Personally, I would much rather that the price of all products would be a bit lower (i.e. minus any advertisement costs), and pay more for content that I actually want to see/watch/read, without obnoxious advertisements and commercials.

Admittedly, the current situation isn't anything like this, so if it were to happen, maybe I would actually regret it, or maybe it would have unforeseen drawbacks. (As it is, many people seem to be unwilling to pay for content...) It does seem like a fairer system though, that doesn't force consumers to read/watch things they don't want to.

Re: Ask HN: What annoys you?

#118

Post by seancron »

ThomPete wrote: post #42
mslate wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO the only problem with Google Wave's implementation was that it didn't integrate with normal email, limiting its network to Google Wave users. This seems very obvious, but I rarely hear people mention this when Google Wave comes up. Did you have something else in mind when you said it had terrible implementation?

Oh man where to start. It's just a noisy mess, poorly designed, with a lot of weird design decisions and exotic patterns that only added to the noise. It starts with a way to complex proposition. Google basically created the entire vision instead of the basic core functionality and then expanded on that, optimizing in the detail rather than for the big shows. Etherpad started the right way. It started very lean with…

I agree that they were missing some core features in the beginning. It has greatly improved though.

They've opened it up now so that you can design a better interface if you wish to. They've also opened it up to anyone with an email address now, and expanded on the robots and gadgets.

Now I don't use Wave that much because I don't often need the collaboration that it offers. However, if they could integrate Wave and Gmail, it would be immensely useful, especially the gadgets and robots.

Re: Ask HN: What annoys you?

#119

Post by tricky »

sanderjd wrote: post #84
tricky wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want a global movement to make the acceleration pedal actually affect acceleration, not horsepower as it does now. Imagine a pedal with a dead spot in the middle that represents 0 acceleration. Pushing down on the pedal increases the rate of acceleration. When you get to speed, ease back to the dead spot to maintain. Lift past the dead spot to decel. Think of it as a hybrid cruise control. I'm convinced it would so…

How do you solve this problem for those of us in Colorado (or other non-flatlands) where nearly every drive involves mountains and hills. Would the idea be that in the dead zone, the car is smart enough to increase or decrease horsepower to adapt to these conditions and retain 0 acceleration or...? I think you would run into the same problem that cruise control runs into in the mountains - we don't have variable rati…

Yes, the whole idea is the car is smart enough to maintain a speed. You're right about having problems in the mountains. If someone doesn't want their car to downshift, they'd just slow down by lifting and returning to the zero point. I think it would be a little better than cruise control in the mountains, but not much.

Re: Ask HN: What annoys you?

#120

Post by stcredzero »

SandB0x wrote: post #89

Food. I miss the healthy, affordable, sociable dining halls from university. There are people who cook better than I do, and who should be able to make great food at a reasonable price by buying fresh ingredients in bulk. My options for eating are * Cook it myself [1]. Cheap but takes time and effort to make good food. * Restaurant. Good food but expensive and takes time. I don't always want table service and small p…

I recall a cafe in Brussels I saw on some PBS travel show, where all the seating was long wooden benches. This is much more sociable than what I see in most US eateries.

I find that one of the Whole Foods in Houston is a good option, so long as I don't want to pig out. (The one off Wesleyan - 4004 Bellaire.) They have a couple of long tables, but not enough volume of people interested in talking. The food is top-notch, though and they have a great selection of raw foods. Kirby - the food isn't as good though okay and the customers are obnoxious. (Some of the help is pretty unconcerned too.) Westheimer & Wilcrest - I liked the store and what food there was was good, but selection was gimpy when I worked near there. The other Whole Foods in town are not worthy of the name as far as the hot-bar selections and attention to detail go.

Sometimes I've eaten at the Kirby Whole Foods and looked down the row of 2-seat tables by the window. 4 people in a row eating by themselves and reading.

(There's some weirdos at the cheese bar at the Wesleyan/Bellaire Whole foods who know a bit and give a damn about cheese -- enough to give out delightful recommendations.)

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