Tell HN: your next idea should focus on aged care • Hacker News Board

Re: Tell HN: your next idea should focus on aged care

#31

Post by tcmart14 » Sat, Jul 13, 2024, 4:04 AM UTC

asveikau wrote: post #21

pzo wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn’t tech illiteracy eventually die out? Millenials are good with tech and gen z even better. It’s probably still a good niche for the next 20 years. On the other hand poor fitness and mental wellbeing seems affects all age groups.

I think normies (not hn reading outliers) in Gen Z and alpha may have regressed. Younger people come up in the era of devices and apps hiding the existence of a filesystem from you.

I don't think there is any regression. I think if anything, really overestimating how much people understood. Being a millennial and knowing a lot of other millennials and gen-xers, They can drag and drop, but they really don't understand much more than a folder is something files can go in. Files, you can tell them its fairy dust in a box and they'd believe it. Its just magic. I also work on a point of sale system with many users and clients who are gen-x and millenials, and seeing what customer support tackles, I don't think most normies ever really understood.

Re: Tell HN: your next idea should focus on aged care

#32

Post by asynchronous » Sat, Jul 13, 2024, 4:07 AM UTC

asveikau wrote: post #21

pzo wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn’t tech illiteracy eventually die out? Millenials are good with tech and gen z even better. It’s probably still a good niche for the next 20 years. On the other hand poor fitness and mental wellbeing seems affects all age groups.

I think normies (not hn reading outliers) in Gen Z and alpha may have regressed. Younger people come up in the era of devices and apps hiding the existence of a filesystem from you.

I’d say the gap is going back to being a large canyon. Just like in the before times, nerds are hyper aware and then everything else is abstracted away for the common person. Anecdotal evidence but my take.

Re: Tell HN: your next idea should focus on aged care

#33

Post by defrost » Sat, Jul 13, 2024, 4:08 AM UTC

chillingeffect wrote: post #3

Yep. Spend an hour with an elderly person trying to do things like change a password, unsub from a mailing list, connect a Roku, look at a digital photo album, etc. Will blow your mind wide open. We basically need an entire tier of easy internet for the elderly.

It's more than just a "tier of easy internet for the elderly" as that alone won't ease the suspicion that something might be going wrong.

There's demand for trusted verified handling of regular financial life interactions, bill paying, hiccups from cards being changed and regular direct debits needing resetting, etc.

Much like, Chubb (for example) remote monitor home security with liability should one of their employees start feeding "they're not home and they have valuables" infomation to thieves.

My own father was born in 1935 and he's still pretty sharp, handles his accounts etc but he still worries (quite rightly) about social engineering and scammers .. the very "ease" of something doesn't reassure, it's the fact that interactions have been double checked by a trusted party (me, I guess) that does the trick.

It's also an area that demands reputation, liability, and transparent auditing - conservatorships for the elderly, as for Britney Spears, are ripe with opportunities for graft and abuse.

Re: Tell HN: your next idea should focus on aged care

#34

Post by insane_dreamer » Sat, Jul 13, 2024, 4:12 AM UTC

Duanemclemore wrote: post #25

lolinder wrote: post #9

> or wiping his butt Slightly weird take: bidets have this field fully covered and the only thing stopping them from being widely used (especially in this domain!) is user resistance to an unfamiliar solution to a very personal problem. We don't need new tech for this, we just need a marketing breakthrough.

Having worked in high end residential, I can tell ya the LAST person who's going to want to use a bidet is ironically also the hypothetical "grandpa" who's not rich enough to hire someone to wipe his a$$.

Europeans have no problem using them

Re: Tell HN: your next idea should focus on aged care

#35

Post by cynicalsecurity » Sat, Jul 13, 2024, 4:13 AM UTC

There is no money in this business to make. Someone who didn't think of their old age in advance definitely hasn't got any money now. Sure, you can try to milk the government, but this is not really a sustainable business.

Re: Tell HN: your next idea should focus on aged care

#36

Post by toomuchtodo » Sat, Jul 13, 2024, 4:15 AM UTC

defrost wrote: post #33

chillingeffect wrote: post #3

Yep. Spend an hour with an elderly person trying to do things like change a password, unsub from a mailing list, connect a Roku, look at a digital photo album, etc. Will blow your mind wide open. We basically need an entire tier of easy internet for the elderly.

It's more than just a "tier of easy internet for the elderly" as that alone won't ease the suspicion that something might be going wrong. There's demand for trusted verified handling of regular financial life interactions, bill paying, hiccups from cards being changed and regular direct debits needing resetting, etc. Much like, Chubb (for example) remote monitor home security with liability should one of their employ…

https://www.truelinkfinancial.com/

Found them here long ago (YC S13), used them with an alcoholic parent I was acting in a guardian capacity for.

https://hn.algolia.com/?q=truelink

Re: Tell HN: your next idea should focus on aged care

#37

Post by CJefferson » Sat, Jul 13, 2024, 4:17 AM UTC

dghlsakjg wrote: post #12

chillingeffect wrote: post #3

Yep. Spend an hour with an elderly person trying to do things like change a password, unsub from a mailing list, connect a Roku, look at a digital photo album, etc. Will blow your mind wide open. We basically need an entire tier of easy internet for the elderly.

Holy cow, yes. I just spent an hour yesterday untangling my in-laws shared, paid, Spotify account. What had transpired is that they needed to confirm FILs physical address. So they sent him a link to an old email address, but no notification in app. He, reasonably didn’t see it within the 1 week deadline. So they removed him from his own shared account. Once he was removed there was no way to confirm his address and…

Honestly, I think for some of these types of things we probably need laws, providing minimal levels of support for paid services.

Yes, there are probably a whole bunch of paid services which simply can't function if they have to actually provide useful, easy-to-access support to their paying customers. However, I'm not sure it's a net benefit to let them exist.

Re: Tell HN: your next idea should focus on aged care

#38

Post by CJefferson » Sat, Jul 13, 2024, 4:19 AM UTC

pzo wrote: post #10

chillingeffect wrote: post #3

Yep. Spend an hour with an elderly person trying to do things like change a password, unsub from a mailing list, connect a Roku, look at a digital photo album, etc. Will blow your mind wide open. We basically need an entire tier of easy internet for the elderly.

Wouldn’t tech illiteracy eventually die out? Millenials are good with tech and gen z even better. It’s probably still a good niche for the next 20 years. On the other hand poor fitness and mental wellbeing seems affects all age groups.

Companies just get better at being abusive.

I'm a professor in AI, I still wasted two days of my life disentangling a mess caused by a family member ending up with two amazon accounts attached to the same e-mail address.

Re: Tell HN: your next idea should focus on aged care

#39

Post by k310 » Sat, Jul 13, 2024, 4:21 AM UTC

czbond wrote: post #16

k310 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shortly, I just rode out a heat wave. Glad to share. I'm 75 and very in tune with needs!

@k310 - I have to ask, is k310 your ham radio handle?

k310 is both the Koechel number of a great Mozart piano sonata, but the office number I had at Itek Optical Systems in Lexington, MA, now something else.

When I was crazy interested in ham radio as a kid, I didn't have enough money to buy or build any gear. I'd buy schematics and build stuff in my mind, which may account for some quirks, but they're almost entirely good quirks, which is why I am posting to help others, with problems way bigger than my own. Thanks for asking!

Re: Tell HN: your next idea should focus on aged care

#40

Post by ggm » Sat, Jul 13, 2024, 4:22 AM UTC

Where i live in an apartment complex the ground floor retail outlets struggle. They'd make awesome podiatry, physio, optical, aged care, you name it. With increasing trend to care in the home, and with apartment living common for the elderly, these kinds of service tenancy seem like a no brainer: your clientele is all around you.