That all parents must attend parenting classes. We have drivings licenses to drive a car. Yet there’s no such skill requirements for parents on how to raise children.
Cost of dealing with miss raised children is very high.
Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?
401–410 of 1001 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?
#402In-person social organizations. Social isolation is probably the biggest cause of unhappiness in advanced countries. Having a strong social network has lots of advantages including providing better romantic and career opportunities, as well as improving physical and psychological health. Humans have a long history of dishing out lots of money to be parts of strong communities too--country clubs and fraternities have…
This is essentially what the book Bowling Alone is about. It's worth reading, along with the writer's other research.
I've had Bowling Alone in my to-read Queue, however I think it might be way too depressing to read it in the middle of quarantine shelter-in-place! Would only emphasize the current dire straights!
Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?
#403Premium-feeling laptops that aren't Apple machines. Yes yes, I get the economical barriers. I'm past caring. It is so incredibly frustrating to look outside the Apple ecosystem and feel like the entire PC industry is content to sell the bare minimum of quality (outside of Gamer hardware, which looks obscene - but I get that it's subjective). It's a horrible business idea on the numbers and nobody would do this, but i…
If Lenovo would ship Coreboot Linux laptops that would fit the bill as premium and good laptop with open boot loader.
This comes close, but I don't find the build to be as nice as a MacBook, and trackpad is the same issue.
I do often look at a ThinkPad and wonder, though.
Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?
#404Business automation. There seems to be so much that can be easily automated by simple scripts. We just need a better UI and a better way to teach people how to use it.
This so much. Also I'm a big fan of chat-bots. How about a chat-bot that answers typical HR questions for an organisation? "How much leave do I have remaining this year?" -> 16 days. "Book the dates 10/5/2021 to 11/5/2021 as leave" -> Confirmed. Request sent to your line-manager. etc... I've seen so many bespoke web pages for these sorts of tasks. Including emailing someone in HR to do it for you. I'm sure a system e…
I think the opposite. Those questions are incredibly easy to answer, why would an HR organization pay for something that's about 2 clicks away on a (yes crappy, but readily available) web portal?
It's the questions that are difficult that you need people to answer and some chat bot cannot figure out. "Chatbot, does my spouse taking a new job trigger health plan reselection allowance for my family?" Go figure out that one and maybe you've got an idea.
Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?
#405Premium-feeling laptops that aren't Apple machines. Yes yes, I get the economical barriers. I'm past caring. It is so incredibly frustrating to look outside the Apple ecosystem and feel like the entire PC industry is content to sell the bare minimum of quality (outside of Gamer hardware, which looks obscene - but I get that it's subjective). It's a horrible business idea on the numbers and nobody would do this, but i…
The XPS 15 is basically that laptop and is only hamstrung by dell being slow to move to Ryzen 4000 mobile chips. Mobile intel runs hot and slow.
I'm sure some people like the XPS 15, but having tried it, I don't believe that it fits here - and honestly, I've not found _any_ Dell hardware to have fit and finish remotely close to a MacBook.
Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?
#406Ok I'm guessing this is super naive, but holy cow someone sell me a home robot. Ideally something with a good enough arm to load small things into the dishwasher, or at least unload onto a surface, open the front door, get the mail, put shoes where they need to be, pick up socks, dust/mop/broom, mow the lawn, fold towels, fold clean clothes from a basket, replace toilet paper, clean toilets, scoop out kitty poops, an…
I have a robot under way that can pass the butter, sadly.
But jokes aside, what a terrible life for an AI to live.
Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?
#407In-person social organizations. Social isolation is probably the biggest cause of unhappiness in advanced countries. Having a strong social network has lots of advantages including providing better romantic and career opportunities, as well as improving physical and psychological health. Humans have a long history of dishing out lots of money to be parts of strong communities too--country clubs and fraternities have…
I would argue the issue is there are only so many people talented at this particular skill, "making a meet up that works" and so it doesn't scale.
There are all kinds of issues. Setting an agenda. Getting people to follow the agenda. Fostering conversation. Finding venues. Getting the right mix of people. I've been to so many meetups where these kind of issues were not handled well.
If you just want random people you can go to a bar. If you want "like" people it's much much harder.
Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?
#408Premium-feeling laptops that aren't Apple machines. Yes yes, I get the economical barriers. I'm past caring. It is so incredibly frustrating to look outside the Apple ecosystem and feel like the entire PC industry is content to sell the bare minimum of quality (outside of Gamer hardware, which looks obscene - but I get that it's subjective). It's a horrible business idea on the numbers and nobody would do this, but i…
I share this surprise.
My guess is that, at this point, Apple has absorbed the vast majority of people who care about these things. And that is causing the other manufacturers not to care, because they have already lost the audience who does...
Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?
#409A truly free and open internet mesh network. We are so dependent on big telecom conglomerates as an ISP that run the last mile for the internet backbone. Wireless technology is simple and ubiquitous. I surprised we haven't come up with an ingenious way to connect all of our mobile and wifi hotspots together yet.
Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?
#410Remote isolated browsing. It's supposed to be next big thing. I created an feature complete, clientless OSS version but interest in this has mostly been from random individuals not enterprise