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Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

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Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#781

Post by arbol »

gangstertim wrote: post #317

Battery-operated household items. I have a cordless dewalt drill that I can use all day on my jobsite, but every single appliance in my kitchen needs a cord. Hand mixer? Immersion blender? Regular blender? Stand mixer? Everything has a cord. Why isn't there a kitchen battery system yet? Similarly: I'd love to have a little reading sconce on my wall next to my bed, but running a circuit through the existing walls with…

Using batteries like this sounds extremely wasteful. A lot of energy goes into extracting the lithium and it's not like they last forever.

Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#782

Post by jobigoud »

mindvirus wrote: post #47

Subvocal recognition (wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvocal_recognition) - it seems like it's a mostly solved problem in labs, but hasn't been commercialized. I feel like being able to do voice control silently would be a major paradigm shift in how we interact with computers.

Yes, this a step towards technological telepathy.

Something that hasn't been tried as far as I know is to design a new human language from the ground up with only phonemes that are easily distinguishable when spoken silently.

That is, first we figure the kind of signals that are well separated by ML interpreting EMG output on the throat when subvocalizing a range of sounds, and then we build a conlang using only the precursors to these signals.

Possibly this conlang could then be parsed and translated and the recipient of the message could hear their native tongue instead.

It could start as a computational language at first, only used to send commands and control to software, but then it could be expanded with more nuances and human-centered constructs.

Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#783

Post by wallacoloo »

bawejakunal wrote: post #216
schnevets wrote: post #40

Innovations in publishing. Books are still being written, customers are still making purchases, there's clearly an appetite for longform writing, and yet everyone seems to have given up after Amazon "conquered" the industry with the Kindle.

Do you have any concrete thoughts that you would want implemented in this domain ? Amazon/Kindle self publishing is actually a less known but pretty clever innovation they did, especially for printed physical books. The books are printed on-demand after a customer places order on Amazon, instead of advanced publishing. This cuts down a lot on costs and resources for each book, cuts out lot of middlemen for a writer a…

Print On Demand has been around for decades. Before Amazon, it was companies like Lulu. I haven’t used Amazon’s POD, but I’m pretty sure the concept itself isn’t their innovation.

Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#784

Post by EricMausler »

baron816 wrote: post #243

In-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 think a lot of this does exist, it just isn't formalized. In person socialization happens at a public place. If you go to the same public place the same time each week, odds are you'll find yourself as part of a casual community after a few months.

Coffee shops are great for this. Game shops as well

Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#785

Post by Too »

Jemaclus wrote: post #443
Klonoar wrote: post #379

Premium-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…

Related to this, I'm kind of shocked that there isn't a strong third option for OSes. We've got Windows and MacOS, sure, but the nix ecosystem is so fragmented and not as well supported as the other two that it's hard to justify switching. Like you pointed out, Mac feels premium because of the software/hardware tight coupling, and it just works . Windows is the same, but for reasons can feel less polished than MacOS.…

You do have Android which is often overlooked in these discussions. Strong base of Linux in the bottom and a very cohesive app framework and ecosystem on the top. Polished and premium coupling to the HW from vendors (ok not all of them but don't tell me the latest Pixel or Samsung flagship isn't great). Only thing is, in the end it's not really a desktop OS.

Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#786

Post by Sol- »

faluzure wrote: post #670

Human Longevity. 150,000 people die every day, and 2/3 of them die of age related diseases. The developed world and China are racing towards a demographic nightmare where fewer and fewer people are left to take care of the elderly. The older someone becomes, the more of a burden they become on the young. As people get older they begin to develop the diseases of old age and have an increasingly pain-filled life. Peopl…

And then we end up with a Gerontocracy where 100+ year olds are in charge of humanity's future, no thanks. What good is it to live forever if society stagnates intellectually? You may argue this wouldn't happen or that these treatments would also rejuvenate the mind in some fashion, but that seems dubious.

Science advances one funeral at a time and so does perhaps also humanity in general.

(That's not to say that I didn't wish that friends or family lived long lives, but that's not the point here of course.)

Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#787

Post by makuto »

spurgu wrote: post #536
lmm wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found the Surface Book had a wonderful premium feel; I went into the shop with a list of specs in mind, and Microsoft was the last manufacturer I'd imagine going with, but it's a powerful machine and also just a beautiful object. Metal case, relatively subtle/classy logo, absolutely beautiful screen, nothing else was compromised for the sake of touch, clean baseline first-party OS. If you really want a premium feel…

Does it run Linux properly? googling Answer seems to be maybe: https://www.most-useful.com/ubuntu-20-04-linux-on-surface-pr... https://old.reddit.com/r/SurfaceLinux/top/?sort=top&t=year TBH I hadn't really considered Surface's before due to them being Microsoft devices.

I have a Surface Pro 2 running with the linux-surface kernel [0]. It feels like it has some rough edges - you have to decide between having pen support or having touch screen support, and suspend can be unreliable. These issues may be fixed now. Also, I encrypted my Windows partition, and now it requires the key each time to boot up, so I recommend against doing that.

Overall, I do agree that the hardware feels quite nice, and besides those issues I listed, the Linux experience is quite good. I was very happy to not be forced to use Windows.

[0] https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface

Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#788

Post by annon_dater_000 »

With the rise of video based meetings, I'm surprised more products around video first dating haven't appeared.

It seems to solve several issues with apps like Tinder / Bumble etc. I guess a negative is that it's more nerve-wracking to video-date complete strangers, and to ensure it doesn't go the way of chatroulette.

Over quarantine I started something in this space [1], but I thought some of the larger dating companies would have introduced products around this concept too.

[1] https://copperdating.com/en/

Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#789

Post by theonemind »

TaupeRanger wrote: post #444
InvisibleUp wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a large part of this (in the USA, anyways) is due to how modern cities are structured. It used to be, 100 or 200 years ago, that your workplace, your home, and your usual hang-out place were all within reasonable walking distance of each other. It wasn't a huge deal to go out and meet new people, as you'd naturally bump into them every day. Nowadays we have a large portion of people in bedroom communities, is…

You aren't more isolated living in a suburban house than in an inner city apartment. Isolation mostly has to do with your desire/initiative/ability to engage in social activities.

The higher barrier will isolate a person more. Whatever initiative a person has encounters higher barriers, with the net effect more isolation in aggregate.

Advertising basically works this way. Nudges demonstrably work at a population level without anyone feeling coerced. In aggregate, for the population as a whole, it likely makes a statistical difference, even though no one in particular feels like it makes a deciding factor. Like, say, with organ donation. Make opt in default, an enrollment goes up.

Unless some other factor associated with suburban living cancels the effect, it seems extremely unlikely that it does not make a difference, even if every individual feels like "the only thing that dictates it is my desire/initiative/ability".

Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#790

Post by powerapple »

faluzure wrote: post #670

Human Longevity. 150,000 people die every day, and 2/3 of them die of age related diseases. The developed world and China are racing towards a demographic nightmare where fewer and fewer people are left to take care of the elderly. The older someone becomes, the more of a burden they become on the young. As people get older they begin to develop the diseases of old age and have an increasingly pain-filled life. Peopl…

I don't think it is true for developing world. The cost of taking care of olders are low. Yes, they probably cannot afford the medicine to prolong the cancer patients for 6 months or 1 year, and maybe even other conditions, they are not worse off comparing to their previous generation. If you look from developed world of view, anything below the developed world standard is bad, but comparing to previous generations, they are not.
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