Ask HN: What do you wish someone would build? - <AUTHOR> It's time for another go at this question; we had interesting ideas the last time. What do you wish someone would build, either for your personal use or for your business?<p>Edit: fixed typo <comment><USER3> A single IM platform through which everyone can talk to everyone regardless of their IM service, and I mean I wanna be able to send a message to someone's iMessage from my Battle.net account, and then receive someone's Facebook message on my Slack or something. Obviously IDK how this would be possible, but IM is now broken beyond repair by companies that tried to "fix" it. The list of IM apps on my iPhone keeps growing, I got Slack, Hangouts, Telegram, FB Messenger, iOS Messages, HipChat, and Skype, and whenever I need to search for a message I never know which one to look in, and whenever I need to message someone I never know which channel is the best to use, and it's just a freaking mess. I hate state of IM in 2016, and I hate the parties that were involved in getting it to where it is now.

<comment><USER4> This. It's baffling; we've "solved" email – anyone can have an account with any provider and is able to mail anyone else – why haven't been able to do the same with instant messaging already?

<comment><USER5> Then let's just use email as the underlying infrastructure to message people! You would just need to build a ui to make it look like you were chatting with someone :)

<comment><USER4> I was thinking about the same thing and just posted a comment to the same effect :o

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12578338](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12578338)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A slim, networked, pocked sized computer with a _physical_ keyboard, running android or Linux.

These used to exist - albeit disguised as phones - but the marketing department decided we don't need no friggin keyboards, and remove everything but the touchscreen and call it a tablet. The result is a consume-only device, on which it is all but impossible to input large amounts of text.

Nokia N900, Motorola Droid 3/4, HTC Desire-Z. These were the last of their species.

<comment><USER7> Like the pyra/pandora? [https://pyra-handheld.com/](https://pyra- handheld.com/)

<comment><USER8> I just wish that thing wasn't so much money. It's definitely worth it, lots of engineering behind it. It's still just a large chunk of change.

<comment><USER9> Depends on your perspective. What brought me around was comparing it to an iPhone - similar price, yet it addresses pretty much every standard nerd complaint about the mobile ecosystem (keyboard, free software phone, standard Linux). I felt that _not_ buying one would be simply hypocritical :)

<comment><USER8> That's how I feel. Then again, I'm a college student who can't afford one sadly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I hypothesize that the list of ideas that will be posted here will make for great examples of what _not_ to build if you're considering commercial value. Developers and the HN crowd make for a very small market and are very hard to monetize.

In that vein, I wish someone would build a list of things that regular, everyday folks actually would want and use. The middle manager working at BigCorp; the teenager; the stay-at-home mom; the retired; people who actually want to spend money to solve their problems.

<comment><USER11> Thought of this idea as a platform; Did market research; Not enough people think of their own problems in solvable terms; Also a lot of problems are too small ("mosquito bite") or general complaints about the situation ("it's too hot in southern France").

Might work as a curated list, but then it is hard to scale.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> 1) More high quality news analysis content. Think NASA Earth Observatory, The Information, or the best articles you've ever read, and put them behind a paywall. Consistently making top notch content is hard, but I suspect it can be easier if writers are paid good wages to explore their interests and the news industry decouples itself from advertising. I'd pay for it, and I suspect that over time, enough people would.

2) A personalized learning resource. None of this AI adaptive learning nor passive MOOC lecture watching. Get people who know what I want to know (usually job-related skills) and have them sit down and teach me things 2-3x a month. I want structured, supportive, long-lasting mentorship from people who genuinely want to see me grow.

3) A doctor that proactively cares about my health. I hurt my shoulder, but aside from a 30 min physical therapy appointment once every other month, I'm on my own. My posture sucks despite having a split keyboard, standing desk, and doing exercises to fix weak muscles. I need someone to make me diligent about my own well being, day after day. I want workout buddies. I want someone who will pick up yoga just so I'd have someone to do it with. I can get more health benefits from a concerned friend than a licensed medical professional.

4) Life training. Working in tech makes me feel detached from humanity. I want to be a more loving person (I am one, but the culture distorts things and makes me think about my skills/career/startups/work/money too much and life too little). I want someone to help me take 8 weeks off a year to spend time with family and go on vacations. I want someone to help me be a better parent when I have kids (my parents aren't great role models). I want someone to remind me to appreciate all the things I have in my life.

What products I use, how I store my data, etc are just sweating the small stuff. Health, education, happiness, sense of community, etc -- fix my big, recurring problems that truly matter to me as a human. Go above and beyond to do so and pay way more attention to detail than most software products do today. Relentlessly follow up on everything. Keep it human and personal.

These are probably not the answers you wanted to hear, but these are needs that grow bigger and are usually unaddressed over time.

<comment><USER13> I am working on #2. There has to be some sort of incentive for the mentors for this to be sustainable. As a mentee what can you provide to the mentor? What do you think will make this relationship be sustainable?

<comment><USER12> I feel like the best mentor/mentee relationships aren't based on incentives, but a friendship/concern for one another. A small handful of senior ex- colleagues who I've worked with genuinely look out for me and my career interests. It takes time from their day and often unrewarded intros to their network. Aside from goodwill (and maybe a referral bonus if it leads to a job), there isn't much incentive for them.

If we treat it as transactional, then certain relationships will never foster. For example, if some high school kid got admission to a university I went to a few years ago and wanted my perspective on how to make the most of his education, I have no discernible incentive whatsoever to answer (assuming he can't pay me). Giving a quick response is either useless or hurtful without taking the time to understand his needs and wants. But that kid could probably benefit tremendously if someone took him under their wing.

I think some people want to feel they have accumulated a lot of skills and experience and simply want an outlet to give back in a manner that feels effective to them.

Maybe universities can tell their alumni network that if people mentor new students, they get access to premium recruitment opportunities on campus? Or cities can give tax rebates to people who take an underprivileged youth under their wing. Employers can promote more externship/shadowing opportunites and give invites to the employees. Or maybe senior positions at companies should have "train junior employees" as one of their top job objectives, and alter promotion criteria to bias towards that.

<comment><USER14> As I've been told by people who helped me, you don't pay back, you pay forward.

When you're young, you need the help. When you've grown thanks to that you give it forward to the younger ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Sports (and events) Netflix/live streaming. That would kill cable for sure.

A curated "channel-like" experience for Netflix/YouTube shows. There's a LOT of good content out there, but it's hard to filter. And the "channel" experience of surfing and switching between programs has been kind of lost.

A different kind of smartphone, with actual buttons. Or maybe even what one manufacturer (Samsung?) tried to do, splitting the phone experience from the smart experience, with one ergonomically good device for calls, and another for messages and browsing. I also very often want to be looking at my screen while on a call (check mail, google stuff, look at maps).

I also miss the experience of the slide-to-answer on my old Nokia n86, or flip-to-answer like the Motorola Razr. I could also make calls without looking.

<comment><USER16> irt sports streaming: streamers/xmbc people have been doing that for a while [http://koditips.com/kodi-pro-sport-addon-streams-from- reddit...](http://koditips.com/kodi-pro-sport-addon-streams-from-reddit/)

there's even news of a crackdown going on in the uk with people who are selling modded boxes [http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/kodi-illegal-first- man-...](http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/kodi-illegal-first-man- arrested-8889099)

<comment><USER17> Right. So I imagine the OP would like a reliable service and not have to keep playing whack-a-mole chasing unauthorised sources.

A lot of the 10ft apps available on e.g. Amazon Fire TV etc fall short here too - I don't want to keep selecting the next 3 min clip, just instantly play me a curated stream.

Mark Cuban had good thoughts on TV vs VOD many years ago e.g. [http://blogmaverick.com/2010/10/26/the-value-of-your-time- an...](http://blogmaverick.com/2010/10/26/the-value-of-your-time-and-how-it- impacts-the-internet-video-vs-traditional-tv-battle/)

The issue is not technical, its the usual problem with audio/video content and vested interests - regional locks, contracts, existing cash cows etc etc. Tough for a startup to negotiate deals against Eddy Cue, I see the solution coming from the big tech Cos...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> An operating system with an interface that's a substantial improvement over POSIX. I'd like to see statically typed files and pipes, and a built-in file conversion solver so that if I have, say, a postscript file and I want it in pdf format, I can just tell the OS to use any conversion utility with a matching type signature and I don't have to remember what it's called.

I'd like a process/thread to be able to have multiple current-working- directories at the same time, so that a library can change the directory without effecting the rest of the program.

Similarly, I'd like processes to be able to operate on behalf of multiple users at the same time.

I'd like stricter security policies that deny network access, file system access, etc.. unless they've been explicitly turned on (like Android or IOS).

I'd like transactional semantics for filesystem updates. No process should be able to see changes made by another process until that process does a "commit".

I'd like to have a general command-line undo. I'd like to be able to do "rm -rf /*" and then undo the operation and have everything be restored.

I'd like to have something like proc files, but for user space applications.

My full wish list is quite a bit longer, but that's good enough for now.

<comment><USER19> elihu, these are some good ideas here. I would love to see your "full wish list". Can you post it somewhere?

More improvements on the POSIX interface:

\- Processes should be able to reserve some % of both CPU and I/O bandwidth. So you can have video players, games, etc. which remain perfectly smooth no matter what other processes are running at the same time.

\- I would also like it if the kernel and its drivers would refuse to 1) write to the boot sector of any disk, and 2) reflash firmware on any device, _even_ if requested by root, unless the computer is booted in a special "maintenance mode". That would eliminate persistent rootkits.

<comment><USER20> > \- Processes should be able to reserve some % of both CPU and I/O bandwidth. > So you can have video players, games, etc. which remain perfectly smooth no > matter what other processes are running at the same time.

It is far from the nicest interface, but I believe this can be achieved with cgroups in Linux (see `man 7 cgroups` "Cgroups version 1 subsystems").

The cpu subsystem: "Cgroups can be guaranteed a minimum number of "CPU shares" when a system is busy. This does not limit a cgroup's CPU usage if the CPUs are not busy."

The blkio subsystem offers "a proportional-weight time-based division of disk [I/O] implemented with CFQ." Though this only guarantees a proportion of I/O, not a specific bandwidth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> A stack for building web applications in the browser. HTML and CSS are pretty good for documents, but terrible for in-browser GUI apps that we're all building, its just piles of hacks upon hacks.

I want someone, probably Google since they own both a major browser and some of the most popular web applications, to re-invent the entire stack. Steal ideas from GUI-focused languages and toolkits, like QML, Swift, AppKit, etc. Lets pull in a superior scripting language like Lua and widget-layout framework like Qt, and support it natively and securely in the browser, building on everything we've learned in the last 20 years of creating web applications.

<comment><USER22> What if in the last 20 years we've learned that browser is not the proper place for applications?

<comment><USER23> Why would you say that? The browser has become the most successful app platform ever built.

<comment><USER24> I would have said Windows was the most successful app platform ever built.

<comment><USER25> keyword is was. no one is excited about making innovative windows apps, it's a way to get your thing out to everyone but with all the traditional blocks(users have to find and install, different configurations might mess up your app etc)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> A non-cloud off-site backup appliance.

This is what I want (I know there are alternatives, but this is what I want):

A device that I buy, and can plug at least one hard drive in to. I give it some sort of passphrase. I then place it in a friend's house and connect it to their internet connection.

I can then access it remotely from my house. I can easily backup my stuff to it. My backups are encrypted, both over the wire and on the drive.

When my house burns down, I can drive over there and get all my photos and records and stuff, instantly.

I don't pay a monthly fee. I buy the device and then it is mine.

I know I can build this myself. I don't have time. If I could buy this I would.

It would be nice if it was easy to use the other way around, e.g. buy one for your parents and keep it at your house and automate their backups somehow.

<comment><USER27> Hey there,

I know it does not totally answer your request, but you totally can achieve that with Crashplan; and for free. Simply buy a NAS or equivalent, place it at your parents and install Crashplan on it.

It is not as perfect as a totally untied system like you want, but it is free and offsite :).

I am a happy customer of Crashplan for a while but other than that I have no ties there :).

[https://www.crashplan.com/en-us/](https://www.crashplan.com/en-us/)

<comment><USER26> Yeah, I think it is close but not quite. It seems that you can back up to a friend's trusted computer, but it has to be turned on. Plus I don't necessarily want to trust them in that way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Instead of building, strengthen the independent pipe which is responsible for flowing the data/information across the Internet. I am talking about RSS. I wish more technical and policy people would consider supporting, or reviving, the RSS. RSS is practically not owned by anyone (like how email flows from one platform to another without ownership restrictions). The modern API world has proliferated silos and boundaries, which is ridiculous.

<comment><USER29> After weeks of Microsoft bouncing every mail our server sent to any of their mail properties (due to, I guess, some history on the IP before we owned it), I have begun to doubt the premise that no one owns email. The major providers can make your mail server useless to 20%, or more, of email recipients. That's a pretty big club to wield. (I understand why a mail provider would block, and I've instituted IP-based blocks on my own mail servers in the past. It's just that email is such a mess, and there's not a good way to solve it.)

But, I would love it if RSS made a huge comeback. Twitter, facebook, Instagram, etc., I'd love it if I didn't have to open any of them, but could still follow my friends posts. There's no technical reason for them to be walled gardens, only business reasons, which are at odds with my privacy and general happiness.

<comment><USER30> > There's no technical reason for them to be walled gardens, only business > reasons, which are at odds with my privacy and general happiness.

Then pay them! Hosting fees are not gratis.

<comment><USER29> Where should I sign up for the "privacy-respecting, no-advertising" facebook plan? Twitter have one of those, too?

<comment><USER30> Nope, but google is trying. See google contributor and youtube red. Start there.

<comment><USER29> Google Contributor looks neat, and probably something I'll try out...but, I don't see any indication that privacy will be respected with their plan. Seems like I still need an ad blocker and a privacy-respecting web browser.

It's unfortunate that something like Contributor can't be done in a peer-to- peer fashion. It requires a huge player with a visible impact on their entire web to be able to "sell" a different sort of web experience. That's actually kinda scary; it reminds me how much power Google has. While I have vaguely positive feelings about Google (and use gmail, Android, etc.), it's not great that one entity owns such a big chunk of the web.

I already have a couple of subscriptions to services that provide music. I don't know if I'll switch to Red; might try it out at some point. I should read up on it; I do watch a lot of tech videos and such on YouTube, and if Red actually supports the people who make them, that'd be great.

<comment><USER31> Youtube Red and Google Play Music come in a package, which is actually an awesome value. Red does support the creators whose videos you watch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> A great-looking, affordable, modular home kit. We did it 100 years ago with the Sears houses -- imagine what we could do nowadays with mass production and 3-d printing? Imagine if you could order a home kit and save half of what a traditional builder would charge you? How would that change opportunities for the middle class?

In a similar, Maslow's-Hierarchy-of-Needs vein, it would be great to have an app that crowdsources data about healthcare costs and other data points in your city. I'd like to know which hospital charges least for an M.R.I., which hospital has the highest rate of MRSA infections, which doctors are highest- rated by their patients, which insurance policy is the best in my location. Right now there's little-to-no transparency and, just like in Vegas, the House always wins.

In general, I would love to see tech take on disruption and increased affordability in the areas of true life _needs_ \-- affordable education, housing, medical care, healthy food -- and focus less on gaining tiny efficiencies in tools and workflows.

TL;DR -- I need an affordable home, not a refrigerator that sends text messages to my blender.

<comment><USER33> You likely wouldn't save half, I would guess ~20-30% provided you do the majority of the assembly. The era of Sears homes benefitted from lax or non- existent building code (especially for electrical/plumbing).

You may also have problems selling the house in the future being it was not built by a professional. In the near term you may be unable to get financing (if you do, it will likely be much higher than a standard mortgage rate) as there is no contract or guarantee the house will be completed; they are just paying for materials.

One of the biggest costs will be the property. You need a lot zoned for residential housing with available utilities (sewer, water, gas, electric) or alternatives (septic, well, propane, wind/solar).

The lot has to be surveyed, plans approved by the building commission and permits paid for.

The foundation plan will have to be drawn up by an engineer or architect because frost depths and local regulations vary. An owner could maybe pour a slab but likely couldn't do a basement on their own; either is best left to professionals.

Now the person has to assemble the house. You could get by doing much of the work alone but would likely need a helper for various stages throughout the project.

Most of the materials are cut but you still need some tools which would be another ~$2000+ expense; ladders, air compressor, nailers (framing, trim, roofing), drills.

When it comes to the roof, especially if a 2 story house you will have no choice other than hiring a crane to set the trusses. You'd likely have to hire a crew or at least have someone experienced working with you because this part is dangerous even for professionals. After the trusses are in place you could sheath/shingle the roof yourself.

Once the shell in complete you can move inside to finish the house. This is where your local laws will make the biggest difference in price. Some will allow homeowners to run plumbing and electrical themselves, others require all work be completed by a licensed professional.

After all the systems are installed (electrical, plumbing, gas, hvac) you can start finishing the house. This part is most conducive to the DIY process as it is all aesthetic. Drywall, flooring, trim, kitchens/baths.

TL;DR -- It would still cost a significant amount and require a huge amount of labor from both the owner/builder and professionals.

<comment><USER34> It's amazing how complicated and expensive we've made something that is relatively simple.

I've built most of a couple of stick-built houses and additions (fortunately in areas that have less insane regulatory codes), from the foundation up. It's really not that hard to do right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> A gmail clone with privacy monetized via charging me $50 or so a year. I'm currently a fastmail subscriber, and it is nowhere near as good as gmail.

Fastmail specifically is deficient in several ways:

* gmail conversations. it is threads done correctly. Fastmail half-does this but the seams peek through all over the place. Eg you don't have labels, you have actual folders and those two aren't the same at all.

* fastmail search is still mediocre, and is clearly intended to be used via their graphical menu rather than typing folder/label restrictions or other modifiers in the search box.

* A gmail style iphone + android app that works offline

* better polish throughout the app (eg: if something is incorrectly assigned as spam, when you say not spam, message routing rules don't apply to it. If you create a filter, you have no option to apply to existing messages. I could go on and on.)

* spam detection that works way better

Fastmail may eventually be what I want however. They've definitely improved over the last 2 years. Eg they used to use 2fa as a monetization source (10c or so per text message!) and have recently made gmail style 2fa free. They've also turned their settings UI from appallingly bad (it looked and felt like a very junior developer's first js project) to pretty good. Similarly with their rules routing engine.

<comment><USER36> Have you looked into Proton Mail? I use the android app and have had no issues post-beta. I also haven't gotten any spam whatsoever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> A way to use Mechanical Turk from outside the US. I've needed it with every client I ever worked with, and I need it now and know a dozen companies who do.

CrowdFlower has a de facto monopoly on the outside of the US supply and charges an enormous premium for it - enough to turn off most of them. I certainly don't want to pay several thousand a month for the right to submit jobs, although I was ok with the 25% premium in the old days.

If it's an alternative marketplace, it has to have excellent automation via API. I'm not going to use this for questionnaires, I'll be submitting thousands of jobs automatically.

If you have built this already, please email me.

<comment><USER38> Out of curiosity, what do you use it for? I'm intrigued by platforms like MT, but have never had a real use myself.

<comment><USER37> For my clients, the standard use cases for e-commerce.

For example, you might have 100,000 products plus another 5,000 new ones listed per month. Your human error rate might be 3%. When a product arrives, its buyer (the corporate person responsible for signing on the brand) gives it a category and it shows up on the site. So 3% of the new products are erroneously categorised by their buyer.

You give X human votes per product, say, 10. "Which of these categories applies to this product?"

If the votes agree with each other, you can just input that as the category. If there's a split, you can feed those products to a more open ended question like "what category is this product" and use that as a starting point for either renaming the categories, finding a new category, or tagging: if it's a 50/50 split, you can just tag the product with both categories.

This is all automated and used to cost me around $200 per 5,000 products.

Another example might be training a data set for a machine learning algorithm. You send a data set to be trained by Turk and use it as training/test sets. I'm keeping this one deliberately vague for now as AFAIK we are the only ones in our space doing this and I don't even want to mention the space due to a relatively smart competitor.

As a hypothetical example, you might be trying to predict the category from the description, gender, picture features, buyer and brand, and the above categorisation tasks can be used to train the algorithms you're testing out.

<comment><USER38> Interesting! Thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I wish someone would build an interactive teaching AI, (perhaps in a mathematical context at first). For example, the user might start with a goal such as, "I'd like to understand singular value decomposition." The AI would interactively assess the user's level of background and begin instruction at the appropriate level, leading to the desired goal.

<comment><USER40> See Neal Stephenson, the diamond Age. Yes we need a tutor.

Furthermore many times this topic was discussed here on hackernews, with good insights and further links. Now how to find those?

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Maybe not so technical but as a curious person i feel i collect so many articles in instapaper but never take the time to reread them.

I do read though, mostly offline. Books, newspapers and articles. My focus is better offline.

Combining data mining and my offline focus, it would be great if you could make a tool that categorizes my instapaper articles and converts it to theme numbers (big data, health care, artificial intelligence, food, etc) that can be downloaded in pdf.

Would be so cool! Thanks for asking the question.

<comment><USER42> Or! Sent periodically as a custom magazine when the theme has received enough articles / reach a volume threshold to justify the print and sending.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I would like a vi for spreadsheets. It should run in the terminal, and be able to read/save csv/xls/xlsx/ods files. It should understand formulas. I should let me navigate with vi-style keys, and have a separate mode for editing a cell's contents (with escape to go back to navigation mode). It should perform well even for very large documents (many rows or many columns, but especially many rows). I propose that it be called `vc`. :-)

<comment><USER44> Like this? [http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/10699](http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/10699)

<comment><USER45> I gave up on sc when I realised there is no npv function that accept a cell range as cash flow input. I also wish it supports having different sheets per document.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> A people-focussed email client.

Pretty much all email clients are message/thread based.

I'd rather have them people-based: A sidebar that shows a list of people who I have recently interacted with; and clicking on them shows all messages I've exchanged with them.

I don't really care about threads, because people just don't know how to use them. But even if they do, it often isn't clear when to start a new thread vs. continue an old thread.

Basically I want email to work more like an instant messenger app.

<comment><USER47> What OS? The only one I've heard of is Unibox (for macOS): [https://www.uniboxapp.com/](https://www.uniboxapp.com/)

<comment><USER46> Right, I completely forgot about this! I even bought Unibox on the Mac App Store when it came out! But while I loved the people centric concept, I just didn't like the design...

EDIT: I just downloaded it again, and here's why I don't like Unibox: it has a very low density design. It looks like a fancy website, rather than a productivity app. Lots of space is wasted on frames and borders. UI elements appear and disappear as you move the mouse. It's definitely a modern app, but I seem to prefer more traditional apps...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Simple, _user-serviceable_ appliances.

Not a fridge with an UHD screen, not a washer with Bluetooth support, not a toaster that talks to the cloud.

Just functional appliances with a level of efficiency that existed 25-30 years ago and can be repaired, rather than thrown away because subcomponents are sealed black boxes with little regard to durability.

And after that, the really hard work: doing the same with printers.

<comment><USER49> I agree about simpler, durable, repairable appliances. Eg, [http://www.jamesdysonaward.org/projects/lincrevable/](http://www.jamesdysonaward.org/projects/lincrevable/)

One important aspect is to ditch the electronic interface (buttons, LCD, etc), since it's often the weak point, both for durability and usability.

But IMHO you still need electronic control, for function/efficiency (timers, complex wash cycles, PID temperature control, dirt sensors, etc, etc), as well as usability.

However the UI should be replaced with a single on/off button, and bluetooth; the complex interface becomes a smartphone app or web page, which can be upgraded, hacked, and is in any case much more usable than LCDs, buttons and poorly designed constricted UI. And if there were a few cheap (super-mass- produced) general-purpose standard controller boards in use, rather than each manufacturer/model having a custom board, then repair/replacement of the electronics would be easy too.

<comment><USER4> > However the UI should be replaced with a single on/off button, and > bluetooth; the complex interface becomes a smartphone app or web page,

As someone who has played the Mega Man Battle Network series [1], I love this idea.

In those games (highly recommended and well worth getting an emulator for), every appliance and machine basically has a universal interface which your "Navis" (think anthropomorphized avatars of Siri) can "jack into" and interact with.

In the real world, I guess something like that could be implemented as:

\- Every appliance comes with an standard interface which exposes all its controls and configurable parameters.

\- The first time you unbox a new appliance, you register it with your control device (computer/phone/watch.)

\- After that you just use any app on your control device (like the HomeKit one on iOS) which supports the standard protocol, to enumerate and view each appliance's controls.

\- There could be different levels of access depending on authentication and proximity. Say, a web page might only show you the basic status of all your appliances, but being on the same local network will offer extra controls, while physical contact between your phone/watch and an appliance via NFC will reveal its most sensitive settings.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mega_Man_Battle_Network](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mega_Man_Battle_Network)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> A smart bank account:

I want to set up rules like "take 19 percent of every incoming transaction and save it to virtual account 'taxes'. Use this, account to pay invoices by $financialAgency"

Banking hasn't produced any innovation since online banking, it seems

<comment><USER51> I guess you're not based in the UK, but monzo(previously Mondo) ([https://monzo.com/](https://monzo.com/) ) sounds like the start of what you're looking for. Their API ([https://monzo.com/docs/](https://monzo.com/docs/)) opens them up to all sorts of uses for your bank account.

<comment><USER52> I don't believe they have a full banking license yet do they?

<comment><USER53> No, but we are led to believe this wont be long. They recently got partial approval with full approval expected next year. Not bad for a startup that has only been going ~20 months in quite a slow industry.

Money is currently stored with a third party that do have a license, so there are some guarantees that money wont be lost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I want Jarvis, literally the AI in the Iron Man movie. I want him to converse banter and operate my computers / servers with whatever I need, and do it FAST. Siri and Google are doing good things, but I want something I can host myself so its quick, responsive and feels like i'm talking to a real person.

<comment><USER55> [https://github.com/felixrieseberg/JARVIS](https://github.com/felixrieseberg/JARVIS)

is a start...

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> \- A legitimate successor to the original FJ40 Toyota Landcruiser, possibly electric

\- A version of this watch (maybe even a smart watch) that didn't cost $25,000: [https://ressencewatches.com/watches/type-3](https://ressencewatches.com/watches/type-3)

<comment><USER17> Which performance aspects of the FJ40 aren't addressed by modern 4WDs?

Is it just nostalgia? Or do you genuinely want a car that has readily removable doors and windscreen?

<comment><USER56> This is a very long story, but I do genuinely want that. That's not to say that there aren't any modern improvements I wouldn't want to carry forward (coil-sprung solid axles are better, good AC is a must have, leather interiors are great)

What I'd like from the 40-series:

\- A no-nonsense materials and rawer, more authetntic appearance. \- Less injection molding, obvious ways to remove major panels \- An upright sitting position with small pillars and great visibility \- Authentic small details, like kick-vents, metal bumpers, metal handles \- AK47-like reliability

The old pull knobs were great for tactile feedback when selecting various options and looked fantastic. I can imagine a modern take on that that incorporates the old, tactile UX with a USB-port/Phone app combination that gives you more information and control, allows you to play music (why have a stereo?) utilize a HUD for maps, etc. The phone would provide the additional brains and the vehicle would function fine without it.

There are additional details to get right, such as allowing natural materials to transition between one another (glass, rubber, metal) rather than having class slam into injection-molded plastic in a hidden, impossible to get to fold, and so on.

As I said, this is a very long story. :)

<comment><USER17> Ok fascinating. If you like the design aesthetics I fear you won't be satisfied unless you build one yourself...

I'm more concerned about entry angles, water crossing depth etc (it rains a lot on bad roads where I live). Also safety, old cars just can't compete traction control and 7 airbags.

Re reliability: is an FJ really more reliable than a modern equivalent car? And for me, I'm not repairing my own AK47 so it's more about cost of parts and availability of expertise, a modern Toyota makes a lot more sense...

<comment><USER56> _If you like the design aesthetics I fear you won 't be satisfied unless you build one yourself..._

I've resigned myself to that, which is why I own a 60-series, which is the closest thing to a modernized 40-series for less than 80k available.

 _I 'm more concerned about entry angles, water crossing depth etc (it rains a lot on bad roads where I live). Also safety, old cars just can't compete traction control and 7 airbags._

The 40 had great entry and departure angles (My 60 has bad departure angles). Most modern SUVs are horrific, really just slightly raised minivans, with all sorts of junk hanging off the bottom to get torn off. I have no beef with traction control, I'd just like a pull knob to engage it.

 _Reliability_

The 40 series was very reliable, and easy to work on by anyone. There have been improvements in machining, seals, etc. and I'd like a modernized, inline 6 turbo-diesel. Since none of this happening any time soon, especially in the states, I had this put in my 60:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woX_shdI2Xc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woX_shdI2Xc)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> An ebook reader/protocol that would let me write or read comments left by other readers or the author(s). It would also be nice to be able chat with other people currently reading the book, especially for more technical books. Basically, make ebooks a bit more like MOOCs.

<comment><USER58> [https://hypothes.is](https://hypothes.is)

<comment><USER59> This allows you to paste in a link and discuss the website, as well as gather materials for research.

I'd like the ability to join many others who are learning the same thing. I think we need a method of referring to sub-topics so others can join in on the conversation. So many answers and information is stuck in forums with a generic thread title. Information will only grow- how can we better self- categorize the content we create so others can find it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> A social media, messaging, and news aggregator that screen-scrapes or otherwise accesses FB, Twitter, Instagram, FB Messenger, WhatsApp, iMessage, Hangouts, GMail, HN, Reddit, etc, and integrates them all into one unified interface.

This of course would violate ToS agreements and various services would try to block it. But if it ran as a local app instead of in the cloud, and it was regularly updated, it would be very difficult to block with either technical or legal means.

<comment><USER61> Well, I have been trying a hobby-dev project that is kinda along these lines but I am almost on the verge of giving up.

The problem is, the feed/stream API endpoints for most of the services mentioned above, either do not exist or have been removed.

\- FB and Instagram no longer provide them, for sure.

\- WhatsApp doesn't have an official API - the last time I test-drove Yowsup, my number was 'blocked' by WhatsApp.

\- No idea if there's an API for iMessage, although I get the feeling there mightn't be...

Screen-scraping all of these services is way too much effort for way little reward. Not to mention that FB keeps 'updating' its UI/UX quite frequently and Instagram doesn't show a 'feed' on the web if you login.

\- FB messenger is based off the XMPP protocol, so yeah, there might be a way to access it without having to screen-scrape.

\- There's a free/paid service called Integrated Inbox which integrates Google's services: [http://integratedinbox.com/plans/](http://integratedinbox.com/plans/)

That leaves HN, reddit and the Google gang - is it really worth the time to integrate these into one service? Maybe one could build the basic structure over the weekend and then provide an option add-on different sites as a 'plugin'...

<comment><USER60> Well yeah, screen scraping would be required. The core of the product would have to be a screen scraping engine that makes it easy to build screen scrapers fast. You'd also have to commit to daily updates of all the various screen scrapers to keep them working. Without that it would fail.

Perhaps a machine learning approach could work.

<comment><USER62> You could be a little bit more adversarial in the approach. Create several accounts, have them each message one another. Since you know the message and can use OCR, you can easily automate compensation for changes in the UI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> An app that trains you to recognize logical fallacies and cognitive biases with suggestions on how to improve your thought process per case.

<comment><USER64> There's the Center for Applied Rationality, as well as what the other replier replied.

rationality.org

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Implement wikipedia as a Web 3.0 aka decentralized service using technologies like IPFS.

To show that this kind of setup can be cheaper than what they are running on today.

<comment><USER65> You might want to look into "Smallest Federated Wiki" by Ward Cunningham that is looking into using IPFS for example: [http://forage.ward.fed.wiki.org/view/interplanetary-file- sys...](http://forage.ward.fed.wiki.org/view/interplanetary-file-system)

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> An operating system built around IPFS. This would make the browser/native dichotomy irrelevant by offering the best of both worlds and then some.

AFAIK the reason web apps have become so popular is because they load quickly and don't require the user to manage installation and updating. IPFS would achieve the speed through caching and the installing/updating process with its namespaces feature.

<comment><USER67> How is this better than an OS based on http, besides privacy and democracy? I'm very interested in this idea, I just don't know if "normal" people care enough about P2P for something like this to receive mainstream adoption.

<comment><USER66> Performance: With HTTP you have to constantly check if what you have cached is up to date because it could change. And a bunch of other little performance advantages.

Immutability: with HTTP you have to save things you care about because they might disappear/move in the future. With IPFS you could pretty much always rely on at least Google holding a copy of something in the long term.

Basically the idea is to remove the concept of local vs remote files at the OS level. So as a user of the OS the file browser and the web browser are the same application. They shouldn't even be able to tell if something is on their computer or not. This could be implemented on HTTP but only as a prototype.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> a news aggregator that works. one where each person using it fills it with all sorts of metadata regarding why they liked/disliked a post/comment/embed etc, and then lets me use all the tagged metadata around content to sort it, possibly with some AI to help me.

slashdot seemed like it was on the right track, then the simplicity of the like/upvote threw complex out the window. buzzfeed came back with wtf/lol, but its not the same.

<comment><USER69> I don't think the complexity of the voting system had a huge impact on why Slashdot waned in popularity. That said, I can see a simpler system where it asks you why you upvoted or downvoted and provides multiple pre-set "reasons" for you to click on.

The problem is using those responses to find something you want to read. Tastes and interests change over time. You might be obsessed with electric cars for a month, then want to read anything but electric cars the next month.

That's the problem with using past data in this case; it's not a great predictor of the future. Social sharing of information from actual people is better and we already have lots of that. So what's missing? Why do we feel news "aggregators" like Twitter and facebook aren't good enough?

<comment><USER68> i think the complexity of tagging, moderation, and metamoderation stunted slashdots growth. digg and reddit were much easier to pick up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> I want more apps for [http://apps.sandstorm.io](http://apps.sandstorm.io):

Accounting like Gnucash but multi-user

Issue tracker (maybe just port Bugzilla or something)

Spaced repetition like Anki but for lecture/class room use

Meeting management (prepare Agenda, live minute writing)

Hosting roleplaying sessions like roll20.net

Virtual money prediction market

Q&A Hosting like Stackoverflow

Somewhat meta for Sandstorm: Sell hosting in Europe, so european privacy laws apply.

</comment><comment><USER71> A better and more modern VBA. Empowering non programmer office workers to automate their tasks easily, and become more than click-drag drop-copy paste factory workers.

<comment><USER72> Well ... there's a JavaScript API now [1].

[1] [http://dev.office.com/reference/add- ins/word/breaktype](http://dev.office.com/reference/add-ins/word/breaktype)

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> Something web or smartphone based that can automate the process of examining various health/exercise/diet event data points over time, and learn from them until it can highlight patterns and events that may be related.

<comment><USER74> I've been tracking my sleep, my weight, my body composition, my exercise, and everything I've eaten since Jan 4 (new year, new me, as they say). I was planning on doing an analysis of my own data to see how things affect my body, and maybe throw together an app like this.

<comment><USER75> Here's a guy who actually got this to work, at least for weight loss: [https://github.com/arielf/weight-loss](https://github.com/arielf/weight-loss)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> A good open source alternative to Google Apps. Secure by default, amazing UI, spam filtering and tools that will configure the thing properly so not to get blacklisted.

</comment><comment><USER4> Fantasy Tourism [1].

A VR app or game that lets me explore (or live in) fictional cities and places from popular works or standalone art. Like Hobbiton, Coruscant, the torus-city of Sigil from Planescape, or the Venice-on-Mars from the Aria manga/anime.

[1]: [https://medium.com/@Razengan/virtual-reality-fantasy- tourism...](https://medium.com/@Razengan/virtual-reality-fantasy- tourism-a27fcfc5e433)

<comment><USER76> These guys are trying to do that for Kyoto

[http://kyoto-vr.com/](http://kyoto-vr.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> A butler robot. Which will cook, wash clothes, iron, clean the house, fetch and prepare a drink, take deliveries, etc.

<comment><USER77> Don't forget caring for pets, including walks.

It's going to be a weird world when local parks are full of robots walking dogs...

<comment><USER71> And even weirder when some assholes in Russia will have hacked into them and the robots will be organising dog fights at the park with your pets, shouting and betting...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> An operating system which is a mix of OSX UI, Linux flexibility, FreeBSD network stack, and OpenBSD security.

It doesn't need NetBSD compatibility nor anything from Windows.

:)

<comment><USER30> Would you pay for it?

<comment><USER79> I would absolutely pay for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> API for sports data. If you want to build a great product based on sporting data, it is crazy hard to get. I think someone that made the pipes to all sports data (stats, schedules, lines, etc) could facilitate a lot of good innovation and build a solid business.

Not sure if this is a VC scale business, but I think it should exist and I'd love to be a user if someone built it.

<comment><USER81> The incumbent sports organizations will fight you all the way. I wouldn't count on getting the express written consent of Major League Baseball, put it that way.

Probably the best strategy is to give people an incentive -- even if only a social one -- to enter and maintain the data. WikiSports, basically.

<comment><USER62> Stats aren't copyrightable. You can build one without goodwill.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> I have a backup cam on my car, I want a little wiper on it, like my windshield. Every time it rains I have to get out of my car and wipe it off with my thumb.

<comment><USER83> Build it, Arduino micro, servo, Bluetooth module. What about the battery though.

<comment><USER84> Can do something even simpler for cars with rear window wipers.

Take bike brake line, attach one end to the rear window wiper, and route the other end down to where the camera is and use that motion to run smaller wiper over the camera lens. Probably set you back <$10.

For cars without it, use a 555 timer in one-shot configuration+mosfet/relay to drive a small 12v DC motor that is all powered off the reversing lights, so it automatically does 1 wipe every time you shift to reverse. If you didn't want the wiper to spin 360, you can adjust the pulse width of the 555 and use a spring to return. This would also cost about $10.

<comment><USER85> Or just get a plastic bottle and craft a small cover to stop the rain getting on it. Mine is angled slightly downwards and is covered (the license plate part and camera are recessed into the body a few cm), so when it rains it's not an issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> Editor's code completion based on deep learning.

<comment><USER87> I found GrepPage pretty interesting: [https://www.greppage.com/](https://www.greppage.com/)

<comment><USER88> Saw the video demo... i don't see how greppage is any different from the usecase they were saying it solves (googling). You still have to search, you still have to view the search results and choose a result and then view the chosen result... Its a small marginal improvement that isn't big enough to warrant it being another tool one has to remember and use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> A fully open source business workflow engine, pre-built with a great UI for the users to execute the workflow. Mobile friendly is a definite plus.

Almost all government software are essentially workflow engines. This would instantaneously solve loads of problems.

<comment><USER90> Drop me an email if it's something you're curious to work on - this is an idea I've been planning to have a crack at eventually…

</comment></comment><comment><USER91> Something that kills proprietary feed algorithms on popular social websites, and lets you browse data chronogically

<comment><USER92> One would need the entire dataset from the social website for this and that's not something any platform would ever make public.

<comment><USER62> The extension can P2P with other instances of itself in other browsers and share data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER93> Better reviews of everything. Solve (or ameliorate) the trust and incentivisation problem. It's stunning that something simple and non-optimal like Wirecutter is such an improvement, at least in the area of consumer electronics.

<comment><USER94> In Germany theres this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiftung_Warentest](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiftung_Warentest)

Not great, but it does a decent job. I use Wirecutter a lot, too.

<comment><USER93> Yea. To a less effective extent, the US has Consumer Reports. But as you might agree, these organizations are quite clumsy and difficult to finance, their recommendations are one-size-fits-all, and they have operated pretty much the same for half a century.

My Mom and I want different things out of a cell phone...

<comment><USER94> That sums it up pretty well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER95> Using Google's reverse image search for naming a folder containing pictures downloaded from the internet.

Removing watermarks or finding better resolutions if possible.

<comment><USER96> "Computer, enhance!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> A thin, laptop friendly, RJ45 replacement. Wifi sucks...

<comment><USER97> or, better wifi...

<comment><USER79> I am pretty happy with 802.11ac. It's the first time ever I don't bother with wired ethernet on my laptop.

I still have to carry with me ethernet cables and dongles (since I use a Macbook without an Ethernet port), but when I find 802.11ac I don't use them. I hope one day it will be ubiquitous so I don't have to carry all that crap.

<comment><USER71> It depends on people's needs. Transfering a 4GB file over wifi is pretty painful. Transfering a 50GB VM... forget about it.

<comment><USER79> Do you have 10GbE on your laptop? I only have gigabit ethernet on my laptop, and 802.11ac is theoretically _faster_. In real life I get about 80% of performance of wired ethernet, and this number will only go up in the future. Today, I am _very_ happy with the 80% I get.

<comment><USER98> Curiously enough, that ratio is about the same as it was with my first laptop and 10baseT vs 802.11b...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER95> Just noting that many answers here are of the type "an aggregator for x" to unify something (news, messaging, sports data, storage across devices, ...).

Perhaps interesting would be to find these themes that make good idea- builders.

<comment><USER11> Many small, money-making apps are just spreadsheets with better UI

<comment><USER99> Spreadsheets are just small-medium SQL databases with better UI.

The hard part is actually populating the spreadsheet/database and adding value to it. Almost anyone can envision and mock up the usability aspect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER100> I wish someone would build "Thunderbird" as a chrome application... Right now, there's not really a good multi-site email applciation... even if it were limited to IMAP, or on-server. Not sure what the limits on localStorage or indexedDB are for chrome apps. Would be happy if it stored the credentials online somehow allowing me to use it wherever.

That's what I'd like to see, though I get most of what I need with webmail a cross-platform, portable email app would be really nice, where _I_ control the data, not stored on someone else's platform, or from a party that doesn't control the platform. Though I do think if dropbox made such an app that used my dropbox for storage space I'd consider it.

\---

For that matter hosted/paid web apps... You buy an account on the platform with X compute and Y storage for $Z/month, could be built as a shim over DigitalOcean or the like... that just loads whatever apps you pay for, and/or free apps on the platform... you login, use your apps and they stay there, for you to access at-will.

<comment><USER101> > "Thunderbird" as a chrome application

[https://nylas.com/](https://nylas.com/)

[https://github.com/nylas/n1](https://github.com/nylas/n1)

<comment><USER102> I really enjoy Nylas. I got in under the 1 year free membership thankfully, but I'm for sure going to pay next year.

I've got so many different emails with different services, having it all under one (nice looking) interface is wonderful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER103> 1\. A worthy Google search competitor. Preferably open, open-source, federated, respecting privacy.

2\. A platform where scientists can discuss publications. It should be a "home" for every paper. Of course, also open, run by a nonprofit organization, or perhaps even federated.

3\. A good open (xkcd-927-defying) standard for chat that everybody will use. (Why can we have this for email, but not for chat?)

<comment><USER104> I would be really interested in facilitating 2

What's your vision?

<comment><USER103> I just posted what I'd like to see built, so I don't necessarily have a vision :)

But a few remarks: I think that getting something like this off the ground is more a social challenge than a technical one. The biggest question is how to get everybody to use such system, and make it into a hub. I imagine it could help if such a system cooperated with existing places which are often visited by scientists, like sci-hub, arxiv. I'm not sure if Google scholar would be a good match (because of their non-openness and privacy issues), but perhaps they'd like to help. Of course there are technical challenges. Like how to run this in a federated space. And UX challenges, such as how to handle moderation. And also basic UX requirements like a good formula editor and diagram editor should be considered. And there will be questions like how to incentivize scientists to comment on their own results, and to help other people (while not necessarily being paid for it).

Lots of requirements and questions :) It is a pity that I don't have time to work on this myself. So good luck if you want to try this :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER105> An automated ironing appliance. Drop unsorted clothes in, they come out ironed on the other side.

<comment><USER95> Sounds easy in theory but the machine would need to figure out how to sort any kind of clothing and may require a lot of space.

How about restricting only to dress shirts and having an automated inflatable dummy that uses steam to "iron" from inside out?

<comment><USER105> There is an automated shirt ironing machine I believe it's targeted to dry cleaners though. Even if someone creates one for home use it will take a considerable amount of space. Ideally we need something that can identify the type of garment (maybe even material) and then apply a particular ironing strategy. The only way a generic ironing appliance can be made is if it replicates a human ironing in a press. At the end of the day though wearing ironed clothes is a matter of fashion and materials. Might be easier to switch to materials that require minimal effort to be straightened or just people stop being concerned if their clothes are wrinkled.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER106> A big, high resolution eBook reader with fast refresh rate. And it should be extremely cheap. A phone/tablet with replaceable/attachable screen, to add an e-ink screen when I want to.

<comment><USER107> These exist (except the cheap part, which is really state-of-tech dependant).

Look at Yotaphone 2.

<comment><USER106> Yotaphone 2 does not have a removable e ink screen. I'm imagining a phone where the screen is removable/replaceable with another screen (possibly e-ink). Plug and play.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER95> Something that classifies all my open tabs (or articles saved for later) by similarity.

Edit: or PDF files!

<comment><USER108> Definitely this! Would be so incredibly useful. I actually explored into this a lot, the best way I found of doing it was via this API[0] or from building your own neural network.

[0] [https://developer.similarweb.com/website_categorization_API](https://developer.similarweb.com/website_categorization_API)

</comment></comment><comment><USER109> A PowerPoint replacement:

* multiplatform editor

* portable output in HTML/CSS/JS

* zooming and rotating à la Prezi (in addition to silly classic frame transitions that I never use)

* native support for SVG

 __don 't make me export to a bitmap

 __no need for a native editor (SmartArt) when it can 't beat Inkscape

* clipart, image and template library (drag&drop)

 __both a free one like openclipart.org

 __and a subscription-based professional one

<comment><USER110> [https://slides.com/](https://slides.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER111> I'm in desperate need of scalable Apache Spark cluster available through API that would make it easy to submit jobs that could process arbitrary size datasets but would let me abstract away the scaling part of the problem. I don't understand how there's nothing like that already considering popularity of Spark.

<comment><USER112> Would Databricks solve this problem? [https://databricks.com/](https://databricks.com/)

They are essentially Apache Spark-as-a-service and have an API that allows you to submit a job on a cluster that you can configure to autoscale: [https://community.cloud.databricks.com/doc/api/#jobs.JobsSer...](https://community.cloud.databricks.com/doc/api/#jobs.JobsService.createJob) [https://community.cloud.databricks.com/doc/api/#jobs.Cluster...](https://community.cloud.databricks.com/doc/api/#jobs.ClusterSpec.NewCluster)

</comment></comment><comment><USER113> A system for allowing all the devices on me to mount each other's storage seamless and make use of each other's various radios.

It drives me cray that I can have a phone with a 4G antenna, a laptop with wireless, and a kindle all three speaking bluetooth, and yet they don't transparently for my 'personal lan'.

<comment><USER114> apple products do this - but you have to go all apple. It's pretty cool - <USER2> my phone rings and I'm typing on my mac, my mac starts ringing - so I can answer the phone on my mac. Same with texting when I 'm using my mac. Same thing happens with my iPad too, but I don't use that as much. I can play movies on my apple tv to from any of my devices. Same with phone 4g using from your mac when you're out and so on. It's a bit magical, but as always, the cost is your soul :-)

Edit: why the down vote? not my fault that's how things work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER115> Disclaimer: I sort of tried to do this but keep running into problems- an Android app that registers an intent that intercepts Facebook's messenger play store nag and uses injected js in a WebView to reformat desktop fb messaging to fit my phone. If you want to collaborate let me know.

<comment><USER116> If you don't mind it's looks, try [https://mbasic.facebook.com](https://mbasic.facebook.com) \- it still has messenger capabilities, no nagging and is amazingly fast!

</comment></comment><comment><USER117> A simple plug and play referral program to let your saas customers get a recurring kickback when referring others.

It should integrate with stripe and let you configure behavior like adjusting payout percentages after a certain amount of time has passed.

Ideally it would have an admin panel for each referrer so they can see their performance.

It also needs to have pricing that scales from nothing so pre-revenue companies can set it up and only pay when they are making money. Ambassador wants an upfront fee of 5 - 20k plus they have mandatory "success coaching" that is like $200/mo extra. Not a lot if you are already in a successful business but rules them out for me while Im pre-revenue.

<comment><USER118> Referly did this before they pivoted to Mattermark: [https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/refer- ly](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/refer-ly)

<comment><USER119> Did Referly have a two sided marketplace? I knew Referly as a platform that allowed individuals (bloggers, authors, content marketers) to track the referral links that they themselves share.

I thought it was basically a database of referral programs where Referly was attempting to reach high enough volume to negotiate a rake from the company already offering that referral program. I never saw them offering to setup referral programs on behalf of companies.

edit: The answer to my question is: Yes. Not exactly what the top comment asked for but it was close. [https://techcrunch.com/2012/07/23/referly-gets- more-social-l...](https://techcrunch.com/2012/07/23/referly-gets-more-social- launches-api-now-any-site-can-have-a-referral-program/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER120> I wish we could have a web assembly backend for tcc. Emscripten is awesome indeed, but having a lightweight C compiler allows for many possibilities, such as online compilation within the browser.

If only I had enought time I would try doing that myself :(

<comment><USER121> tcc?

<comment><USER122> [http://www.tinycc.org/](http://www.tinycc.org/)

<comment><USER120> Yeah that tcc, should've mentioned that in my original post, thanks for the tip!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER123> OKC for child care. Families are _different_. Right now there is no way, outside of super-expensive agencies, to find a good nanny/family match.

Currently, THE website to find childcare is care.com . But when hiring families sign on, usually they auto-generate a profile using check boxes such as "We like arts and crafts!" or "Playing outdoors". So there is absolutely nothing to distinguish one family from another. (Hint: All parents say their kids like crafts and playing outdoors)

On the childcare provider side, since there is no good way to find the best match, the safe route is to also be generic. Maybe I could teach your kids to code and spin wool (true), but unless I'm willing to wait a long time for the right family to find me then I have to downplay (or just hide) many of the interesting things about me that very specific families would love.

Some families don't allow their kids to watch hardly any TV. Some allow them to play hours of video games. Some families want you to refer to dinosaurs as "dragons" because they are Young Earth Creationists. Some families want you to sing Mormon songs. Some families are fine with an LGBTQ+ nanny. Some would fire you if they knew.

I have worked for all of those families.

If that information could be gathered, and you could get a list of the best matches for your family (or vice versa), then the huge Russian Roulette risk of getting a new nanny/babysitter or finding a new job could be ameliorated.

<comment><USER88> Interesting problem. I'm intrigued.

But you say: >If that information could be gathered, and you could get a list of the best matches for your family (or vice versa), then the huge Russian Roulette risk of getting a new nanny/babysitter or finding a new job could be ameliorated.

Clearly relying on the user to provide that info will result in it being fashioned to be marketable. So how would you ensure correct data?

</comment></comment><comment><USER96> A vending machine that produces hot, customized meals from fresh ingredients on demand. [http://8-food.com/](http://8-food.com/)

</comment><comment><USER124> I'd like for someone to bring "social graph" in to center of computing. Now we have good tools for manipulating files/data but communication with others seems like an afterthought. Which it of course is because of historical reasons. To reach others I need to go through various platforms, which are self-contained with their own tools for text manipulation and image manipulation etc. Communication could be the starting point for new OS design.

</comment><comment><USER125> A service that provides a URL for a song. Right now if I write a tweet or a blog post that links to a song there is at least a 10% chance (even if to is an official post by the artist) that a few weeks from now the URL will be bad.

Some official service that the label can update when it decides to change it's "official streaming partner" would be great.

Perhaps it can be done without the cooperating of the artists/label. There are only some 100 million songs out there.

<comment><USER126> Why not link to Shazam's page for a song? It seems pretty static to me and includes other semi-useful information, including links to online music stores and youtube. Example: [http://www.shazam.com/track/52242019/wait-so- long](http://www.shazam.com/track/52242019/wait-so-long)

<comment><USER125> Thanks, that look pretty close to what I'm after.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER127> I have the dream of revival of the xbase spirit. This lead me to the idea of build a relational language ([http://lambda-the- ultimate.org/node/5353](http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/5353)), and it lead me to the idea of build a better relational database, where the LOG is a first-class citizen (so, like built-in event sourcing), the db is fully relational and other nice ideas.

</comment><comment><USER104> A way to find other people who think along similar lines to me/have related ideas

</comment><comment><USER128> A thing that removes thought loops from the brain

<comment><USER129> Hmm alcohol?

<comment><USER128> Alcohol makes it worse. Need permanent removal

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER130> Cross browser, cross platform, bookmark manager.

Bookmarks feels like the live in the 90s still! Please tell me there is something decent out there.

<comment><USER131> I use this :[https://www.xmarks.com/](https://www.xmarks.com/)

<comment><USER130> Looks perfect!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER132> A lockbox for real estate agents that has a built-in video camera and microphone+speaker.

I mean something like Ring (1) plus MasterLock 5400D (2) plus embedded 4G mobile connectivity. It must not be a permanent installation (like Ring) and it should not require visitors to be pre-registered (like Supra Keys (3)) in order to access the property (for example contractors, repair staff, delivery personnel, etc)

If something like this already exists, please let me know.

(1) [http://www.ring.com](http://www.ring.com) (2) [http://www.masterlock.com/personal- use/product/5400D](http://www.masterlock.com/personal-use/product/5400D) (3) [http://www.supraekey.com/Products/Pages/Products.aspx](http://www.supraekey.com/Products/Pages/Products.aspx)

* edits: fixed typos

<comment><USER133> Could you just attach a smartphone to a door, and have open one of those Supra lockboxes over Bluetooth? I guess the issue there is battery life.

I make prototypes of stuff like this as a hobby. You could use a fairly inexpensive SoC that has Wifi/Bluetooth built in ($6), attach a module for 4G connection (~$50), and give it a huge battery so that it can lasts a few weeks. It would be asleep most of the time, and wake up every 2 minutes or so to check for updates. Meaning you'd have to stand there at the door for a couple minutes before it'd give you access.

<comment><USER132> The cell phone + supra lockbox approach could work. One would need to be a realtor though. Supra only sells through realtor associations.

Thanks for the info regarding the components.

I wonder if there'd actually be a market for this kind of thing.. i.e. One person unlocking access to physical keys in a lockbox at a remote location so that another person can gain access to something. It would be used in a temporary installation, not like ring.com installed at a front door of a house or remote access tech built into cars these days.

Another case of technology in search of a problem... :-(

<comment><USER134> We actually built something like this but for bikes. [http://lockandgo.bike/index_en.html](http://lockandgo.bike/index_en.html), it has data connection for remote lock/unlock and even gps to get the position. There was no market. We could pivot to this easily...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER135> A platform to connect information / stories / images / video / audio to locations. There are thousands of small, mostly subsidized one-off projects but no general platform for everyone to upload material connected to places and create, say, a personal guided tour of their hometown.

<comment><USER75> Facebook?

<comment><USER135> Ok, so it's your first time in, say, Anchorage. How would you use Facebook to find interesting app-guided walks or tours, or a story told using RL locations?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER136> Genuine Portable Nuclear Battery [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#Energy_densitie...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#Energy_densities_of_common_energy_storage_materials)

</comment><comment><USER137> I wish someone would build an open-hardware unlocked-boot loader phone that could run any old Linux distribution I choose on it. It would be great to have real choice and a hardwarm that could support more than just a manufacturer approved Android version.

</comment><comment><USER138> New devices in the sub palm top class. Something like the psion 5mx, but with current hardware.

</comment><comment><USER139> Good FOSS 3+ axis CAM software, preferably OS-agnostic.

There's a quiet FOSS revolution happening in machine tool motion control: several usable CAD packages (FreeCAD, LibreCAD, SolveSpace, to name a few), a powerful motion controller (LinuxCNC), even a few open embedded servo drives. But flexible, powerful CAM to glue these parts together seems to be the type of tough niche problem, requiring a lot of domain knowledge, where anybody capable of taking it on wants to get paid for their work. A lot like the EDA field before KiCad gathered some momentum.

Not to ignore the work put into PyCAM and other small efforts in this space. It's definitely a start.

<comment><USER140> I think you could turn that into a billion dollar business. Start a consultative CAM company which used a commercial CAM software. Work closely with businesses to perform their CAM work for them. You'd need quick turn around and likely to do a lot of traveling. You'd need to hire some top notch NC programmers. Simultaneously hire some top notch software developers with either CAM or 3D graphics backgrounds. Initially have the NC programmers do all the work manually, then have the developers automate away processes so that the CAM work gradually becomes easier. The final goal would be to have software which is capable of taking data from a library of machine/control definitions you've built up doing work and using it to go straight from a CAD file to NC code; skipping the entire CAM process. In the end I think you'd have a cloud service which users uploaded CAD files to and downloaded NC files from. You could integrate this a step further by monitoring machine performance and integrating it with file generation. At that point you're in the "How could we apply machine learning to this?" territory. The neat thing is that you'd basically have the same upload/download workflow whether it was people or software doing the actual NC code generation, and that 3rd party NC code generation is a service which companies already pay for from small contractors. The biggest challenge would be liability in running the NC code. You'd need to work out all the contracts and having knowledgeable NC programmers would be key. Open source CAM software could be a side effect of this, something developed along the way to cut on scaling costs; if that makes sense. Though, just eliminating the manual CAM process would be the final goal, so I probably wouldn't invest too heavily into that. There's a million things which could be branched out into once integrated this heavily in the manufacturing process. You'd probably need about the standard YC handout to make the initial website and prove you could get orders to do the CAM work (this could potentially pivot into cloud based manufacturing management or services trade). You'd then need a couple million to actually hire NC programmers and computer programmers and deal with business costs. If you really wanted to do it right, add a couple million on to that for in house machines. At that point you're going to make back the investment money as the Uber of CAM services, and then, if you can pull off the engineering, you automate away the CAM process all together and completely change how subtractive manufacturing is done world wide.

</comment></comment><comment><USER141> Under 8" phablet with x86 processor and Thunderbolt for external graphics.

</comment><comment><USER142> A gmail application that would parse through your email (old and new) and collect all contact information without having to do this manually. Especially helpful if this can be done for older backed up email.

<comment><USER143> This can be useful. Connecting to Pop3/Imap to collect the data is not too bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER144> A LinkedIn that's not super awkward to use wrt personal relationships.

<comment><USER81> Isn't that the idea behind Google+?

<comment><USER121> I'm not sure anybody really knows the idea behind Google+.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER133> Adblock filter list that filtered entire websites for annoying features (full screen modals asking for email).

</comment><comment><USER145> An operating system which would run all modern games and be good enough for development such like the Linux is (i.e. being posix compliant-ish and have all the open source tools helps). I think open source MS Windows with all the spyware removed would be nice.

<comment><USER122> [https://www.reactos.org/](https://www.reactos.org/)

<comment><USER145> Yeah, there's hope.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER146> I would love and use a fastlane-like tool for google apps. Tired or setting up google groups for mailing lists and adding users to them manually. I've wrote bunch of scripts some years ago, but I'd love more complete and "proper" solution.

</comment><comment><USER147> Better humans

<comment><USER148> Feeling lonely, Adolf?

<comment><USER147> Nah. Frustrated with management at work. Maybe hoping to HN right after I got home was a bad idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER149> A decent solution for adding to / viewing Org-mode files on iOS.

MobileOrg is abandoned and was super clunky for editing. Currently I use IFTTT do note to append to a txt file in Dropbox which is re-filed later using a python script, but it's hacky..

<comment><USER104> I do something similar, except I have a shell script that pipes my notes out of Letterspace into a single giant text file, which I made a little web tool to filter by hashtags. Know anyone else who has this problem?

Also, do you happen to have the pain point of not being able to connect a related notes with current org-mode as well?

</comment></comment><comment><USER150> A usb-c wall charger with inbuilt hdmi and usb-a. Single device with prongs and ports.

<comment><USER133> So you can hook your TV's HDMI up to the wall outlet? I don't get it.

<comment><USER151> Presumably so you can "dock" your USB-C device near your TV/Monitor, output your device through HDMI and be able to use peripherals all with just one plug.

<comment><USER133> Makes sense, thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER104> Good personal note taking software that allows me to easily connect related notes

</comment><comment><USER152> A large p2p network for arbitrary content that's encrypted and anonymous by default. If only people cared as much about freedom of speech as they do about watching movies and playing video games for free.

<comment><USER133> Anonymous how? It'd have to be built on top of a network that worked like the Onion network. At which point there'd be absolutely massive overhead, and you can already today just use the Onion network to torrent (though it's a pretty dick move to do so).

<comment><USER152> Anonymous means your ISP knows _that_ you connected to this network, and neither they nor anybody else knows anything else.

Tor has a lot of weaknesses, but yes I'm just talking about a better Tor.

What I want is a network designed so that it's mathematically impossible for person, government, or LEO to regulate the transmission of any given bit from one place to another. The whole point would be to eliminate all the pontificating, moralizing, and witch-hunting currently still associated with transmitting bits.

<comment><USER133> I'm not sure 100% fool proof anonymous digital communication can exist. You can always trace the source of a digital signal. Bitmessage is a pretty cool solution that is "close enough" in my opinion. You should check that out.

<comment><USER152> At a glance, that looks awesome. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER153> MoneyGuidePro for individuals, instead of just financial advisors.

<comment><USER121> That's a pretty neat idea to use simulation as part of financial planning. I know I've seen general projections of retirement money, but using the simulation as an interactive tool to help tailor the plan makes it seem much more personalized and useful (though who knows if that is actually the case).

I'm not sure how successful this could be targeted at individuals without being integrated with some other financial product like a retirement account provider, though. It would certainly be nice to have something like Mint for retirement to consolidate and track overall allocations over many accounts from different providers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER154> Who is this app. You take a picture of a person and app looks through your fb and LinkedIn contacts and gives you short description if you know this person and their interests.

<comment><USER155> Like this? [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/17/findface-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/17/findface- face-recognition-app-end-public-anonymity-vkontakte)

</comment></comment><comment><USER156> A news source with objective reporting. Links to statistics showing relative risk of say a terrorist attack and compare it to something common like a car crash.

</comment><comment><USER157> 1/ Better laptop stands, that don't make the problem worse. 2/ Computer that lets me walk and ride a bicycle while working.

<comment><USER47> Regarding (2), here's some inspiration: [http://hackaday.com/2009/09/18/vintage-video-computing- acros...](http://hackaday.com/2009/09/18/vintage-video-computing-across- america/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER131> A computer monitor that has 0 backlight bleed, 0 uniformity problems, support wide viewing angle, factory calibrated, and AFFORDABLE.

</comment><comment><USER158> so this may be real: [http://atmotube.com/atmotube_user_manual.pdf](http://atmotube.com/atmotube_user_manual.pdf)

If every urban commuter biker had this w/ phone+gps app, the dataset over time would become very interesting on many levels. Think local governments, real estate, state tranpo authorities etc.

<comment><USER133> I make prototypes of stuff like this as a hobby. This is about $15 worth of easily purchased hardware. It'd make more sense to place them in permanent installations around a city - put them on top of traffic lights with a solar panel. People can't reach them and they'll run forever untouched. Have volunteers use an app on their phone that will connect to them via WiFi as they drive past to collect their data. This means not having an expensive (service + hardware both) cell connection needed for the units.

Alternatively, you can attach 433MHz radios to them and place them within about 300 feet of each other so they can all link up and share data and upload through a single unit close enough to a free/open WiFi network.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> Dirt cheap, stylish, recyclable clothing.

I really like this idea.

</comment><comment><USER159> A way for me to get what is in my head on paper without having to write it. Or 30 hours in a single day, whichever is easier :)

<comment><USER133> Voice to text?

<comment><USER160> Brain-Reading.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER95> Game: Something between overthrown.io and ingress.

Even greater would be if battles had to be waged in real-life like sports events.

</comment><comment><USER161> Fully automated German tax reports for stocks, ETFs, dividends.

Right now, ETFs and their various taxes can be a pain in the ass.

<comment><USER161> Because I was asked via email, here's some explanation.

I'm a beginner in the whole ETF investment area and my English financial vocabulary is quite limited. Here's what I know:

There are several factors that make taxes on ETFs either easy (nothing to do, all is done automatically) or tough (you need to figure out everything by yourself). These are:

\- Location of the company issuing the ETF. Germany: Easy. Luxembourg or France: Not necessarily easy.

\- Do the ETFs fully replicate or are they swap-based?

\- Do they pay dividends or are dividends reinvested?

From my understanding, if ETFs are reinvesting dividends, they must pay withholding tax. But the issuing company says they don't own the assets and every individual investor must declare how much withholding tax was paid. This can become quite cumbersome, because for every ETF you own, you must find documents which show exactly how they're structured and how much tax was paid/not paid. This situation can also become easy if the ETF swaps or hard if it replicates.

From discussions in German investment forums, I take that individuals usually separate between tax-friendly and tax-complicated ETFs. If you don't want the hassle, this would exclude some ETFs (e. g. there are no German-issued MSCI ACWI ETFs and you'd need to buy a tax-complicated ETF from a company in France or Luxembourg).

</comment></comment><comment><USER162> I would like a practical heads up display, powered by a local, open platform, not a cloud-based walled garden.

</comment><comment><USER64> A service for finding accountability partners that's more than a barely active subreddit.

</comment><comment><USER163> A good native gui based profiler. Essentially an affordable version of intel Vtune.

</comment><comment><USER71> An iphone 7 with an audio jack

</comment><comment><USER164> This is more of a re-engineering of modern society. I want a drone that carries babies and small children and follows you around. It can follow your car or follow you into large stores like Target and Walmart. That way I can go about my day with my kids effortlessly hovering around at all times.

<comment><USER165> Hopefully such a drone is hack-proof...

<comment><USER164> Of course it is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER166> Waterproof hearing aids.

Hey, a man can dream.

</comment><comment><USER8> A webtorrent-backed youtube, soundcloud, and social network.

</comment><comment><USER167> A good vive vr game

<comment><USER115> The mini golf game is the only one I play on my roommate's vive. Highly recommended.

There may be some confirmation bias here though because before the vive came out I declared that a VR zany golf would be the only VR game I would play.

</comment></comment><comment><USER168> An aerial personal transportation vehicle.

<comment><USER169> I don't believe it will be a widespread way to travel until it's automated. Humans can barely handle the two dimensions of driving a car in traffic, throw in vertical movement and the inherent risk of being much higher in the sky if you do hit someone else, and it would be a disaster.

Personal flying cars/vehicles are technologically feasible, they're just not an idea that could be part of mass transit unless all the nodes were controlled by some central controller.

That said there are some really cool personal planes/helicopters and even some people making reliable Jetpacks and Jet.. hover.. pad. Things. So it will be fun to see how they progress, even if it's not for transport.

</comment></comment><comment><USER129> openSolaris based desktop OS with OS X style GUI

</comment><comment><USER170> A paid Linux.

To get stunning UX design, upstream bugfixing and excellent marketing.

Let me explain myself. I love the levels of ergonomy and polish of Mac OS X. But it's closed-source software. If I use (and pay) Ubuntu, then great patches are sent upstream, which I can use in Debian on my servers and Arduinos. It becomes useful to everyone. With Mac OS X, we're not advancing the world. But when I used Ubuntu for work, I was impaired compared to my colleagues. Blame it on a lack of seniority, but a steep learning curve for my OS is the last thing I want at work. So no Ubuntu, no elementary.io, nothing that has rough edges.

What allows Apple to hire UX designers and do bugfixing is the revenue. Which in turns gets them a good marketing team, which persuades the world of adopting their software. Linux misses advocates towards B2B, B2C and B2Gov. If we want adoption, we need a stable income, to improve UX patterns, bugfixing and marketing.

The FSF says it's ok to sell open-source software, but you just can't prevent people from redistributing. So it's possible to design a system that requires a yearly fee to access the upgrade repositories. Of course hackers will find ways around, publish a torrent, or choose not to upgrade. But the majority of people want a system that "just works" and have money to put down for this service. Businesses, programmer shops, owners of Teslas and iMacs don't want to download their OS from an unsecure source: They want the top-of-the-art, official, upgraded releases.

My own threshold is €200 per year for my work computer. We pay that much of IntelliJ. The OS is the most important service in our stack, it deserves paid workers. My parents' threshold would probably be 50€/yr.

I think OSS volunteers will feel cheated at first sight, but the software should really push changes upstream and show the value in having a much bigger Linux community.

NB: For those curious, this comment has 18 points so far (10:43 GMT).

<comment><USER171> Would something like Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) or SuSE fit what you're looking for (both are paid, commercial Linux distributions), or am I misunderstanding?

<comment><USER170> I remember RedHat as ugly. It would be closer to elementary.io, but paid. Well, the installation process of elementary.io displays unfriendly information too... At the extreme, choosing Mac OS X requires very few decisions, so I don't want to compare Linux distributions either. One distrib should stand out for my usecase, be clearly differentiated from the rest of the market and be the obvious choice for me. (that's where good marketing proves useful).

I know, it takes 1000 customers at 200€/yr to hire the first developer... Too much, too little.

<comment><USER172> SO, is your issue with a decent windows manager? I work on RHEL systems daily, and under the hood (sysd arguments not withstanding) its no more or less clunky than any other 'distro' out there. I guess I'm just trying to figure out what exactly you're looking to buy?

<comment><USER170> Yes it could be summarized as a window manager if it takes over all aspects of managing the computer through a GUI.

I develop with Mac OS and deploy my cloud services on Debian. I don't know much about Linux beyond apt-get upgrade, nginx, Ansible and Java apps. I know when I install Mac OS X that the progress bar is gray with no text on the screen, which means I don't need to dive into the technical details at any point from installation to writing a presentation, displaying it on an external screen through HDMI, tuning a mouse or plugging a printer. Has RHEL improved that much?

On step further is of course being able to install a good clone of Keynote (slideware), iMovie and an image editor for $40-80 each, but that's after the ecosystem starts gathering around the OS.

<comment><USER8> Have you seen Elementary OS? It will suit you if you are a mac person who doesn't really like the no-frills of other linux distros.

<comment><USER170> Yes I have. The installation process shows a progress bar in an old-school bevel/embossed window, underlined with the filename it's writing. On my computer it showed alerts in the middle. Once started, it's just a normal Linux with sharp edges. Installation of at least one of my programs (probably IntelliJ) crashed, I think I succeeded to fix that using advice from Stack Overflow and the command-line, if I remember. Definitely working, but definitely not the experience we'd like.

It's already a great OS, to be honest, but what about adding 20-100 employees and making it a blockbuster?

<comment><USER8> When was the last time you checked it out? That's what the team behind it has been doing. From what I understand the last two where all just polish.

I'd love it if you gave it a go and told us how you felt the pain points where.

I'm not involved with the project I just want more users on Linux-based OS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER173> A decent portable computer.

Obscenely large, replaceable battery.

small screen (1080p or 720p at 10~13in) that i can actually slide up when open so i don't have to look down and kill my neck/back.

decent mechanical keyboard at least 90% size (like the eeepc1000)

it can be low on CPU but should have the most connectivity it can. It can weight a little more than a 15" gaming laptop weights today.

<comment><USER174> Get a thinkpad

<comment><USER175> Lenovo haven't made a decent thinkpad in multiple years now.

<comment><USER79> X61T was the pinnacle for me.

<comment><USER47> I have a X201, what am I missing?

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/ThinkPad...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/ThinkPad_X61_and_X200s.jpg)

<comment><USER79> Higher resolution 1400x1050 4:3 screen, instead of 1280x800 widescreen.

As a programmer I like large wide screens, but when it comes to laptops, I prefer 4:3 screens because I never have enough vertical screen estate.

The 16:10 screen in X201 was still usable, but with X220 they switched to a 16:9 1366x768 screen. This killed the X series for me. Nowadays they have higher resolution screens (still 16:9 though, which is stupid, because the vertical display bezels are huge, they could have put a 16:10 display there easily), I have a 1920x1080 X250. However, it's not very good. The pixel density is too high so you can't use in 1:1 mode, but it's too low to be used in retina mode. I need something like 1.33x scaling, which Linux doesn't do very well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER176> A programming language with the easyness of dealing with state and effects of a mainstream language and with the guarantees you get from a pure functional language

<comment><USER40> You mean getting the benefits of functional programming without learning functional programming? ;)

Once you find a way into it you really see its all "Lego's". You'll get there!

<comment><USER176> Yes. You can already get some of the benefits as evidenced in the slow adoption of functional concepts into mainstream languages. Lambdas, generics for example.

Being legos is fine but monad transformer stacks and free monads are legos that I can't see most coders putting in the yards to understand. But that's the level you need.to get to to do useful stuff, lest you just do everything in IO but that's imperative style really.

I think a great example of what I mean is Linq and async/await in C#.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER177> A robot to clean my bathroom, clean the floors, tidy up, do my laundry.</comment>


Tokyocabinet + LZ4 = Speedy Gonzales - <AUTHOR> http://blog.creapptives.com/post/25026698783/speeding-up-your-datastore-with-compression Using a simple compression technique can result in a huge difference. <comment><USER2> I got similar results compressing data for a mixed memory/disk based cache (Ehcache) using Java's in-built GZIP compression. Can't believe it took me so long to try this.

The cache values were in the 2-8K range and GZIP gave me about %90 compression. I also "compressed" the cache keys (which could be in 1-2K range) by using their MD5-sums instead of the actual key. The tiny chance of a collision was hugely outweighed by the memory savings.

<comment><AUTHOR> I totally agree with MD5 strategy, but using it can be a bad idea for range scans if you are want to use them at all in future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This works well if the value is 3K-4K.

But what about very short keys and values? Things on the order of 10 bytes?

I imagine that the compression header would not allow for meaningful compression.

What would be an appropriate compression library for this use case of compressing short texts? Particularly if we know that we are compressing English text? I have searched for such a library, but cannot find one.

<comment><AUTHOR> You don't need to worry about such small lengths of values

</comment></comment><comment> hero-nakamora How about doing some benchmarks with Redis?

<comment><AUTHOR> You can try it at your own. what I expect is that it would be much more faster, since you are pushing less data on wire.</comment></comment>