5 ms·

Ask HN: Which tools are ubiquitous but badly in need of a redesign/reboot?

5 points by oliv__ 10y ago

Which tools/businesses would you love to see modernized? Where can friction/pain be taken out?

mikro2nd 10y ago
Mail servers for personal deployment.
marmot777 10y ago
* Airlines - I have no idea how but it's more important than the latest app. * Basic Infrastructure (e.g.,clean water, well maintained roads, sound bridges, beautiful parks) * domain information groper (dig) - Build a better dig and the world will beat a path to your door!
- _kyran 10y ago
  What would you like to see improved with Airlines?
  - marmot777 10y ago
    I was making a reference to the outage at Delta https://www.wired.com/2016/08/computer-outage-can-take-whole-airline/ https://www.wired.com/2016/08/computer-outage-can-take-whole.... I wish I had a good answer on what specifically should be done.
- mysterypie 10y ago
  > Airlines Airplanes are cool, so people keep pouring time and money into it, but the airline industry as a whole has made a cumulative loss during its 100-year history[1]. It's better to avoid any startup idea related to airlines. > Basic Infrastructure (e.g.,clean water, well maintained roads, sound bridges, beautiful parks) Ugh, local/state government with petty politics, corruption, insane levels of bureaucracy. Stay away as well. > domain information groper Have you seen the typical web service that provides information like that? It's either someone's hobby project, in which case they'll tire of maintaining it and paying bandwidth, or it'll turn into a spam-infested site like whatismyipaddress.com. You could make a good free tool, but you can't make honest money on those. On a related note, no one has been able to find an honest way to make money on caller-ID lookup (telephone directory lookup). Useful phone lookup did exist in the early web days, but today they are all unreliable, spam-infested, dishonest sites. The information on some sites is literally 100% fraudulent, giving fake names and addresses for every possible phone number. If it were possible to provide an honest, useful, and profitable service, it would be the top Google listing every time you searched for a phone number; the fact that it doesn't exist, means that it is not possible[2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline#Economic_considerations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline#Economic_consideration... [2] A significant factor is probably due to the lack of useful phone number databases since individuals and telecom companies want to keep their numbers private. But this can't be the entire answer since at least 80% of landline numbers are "published", but even landline lookup has become useless.
  - jermaustin1 10y ago
    There is nothing wrong with government. You just need to know someone. I have worked on multiple government contracts, typically through someone I knew who needed something done. I built a product and sat down with their purchasing manager, and grossed a few grand a month for pretty minimal effort. And the government is already so used to bad software, so long as it works, you are doing them a favor. As with most industries, you need to know a person, a problem, and a solution to make any money.
    - marmot777 10y ago
      Why is government software so bad? Also, why did you put in minimal effort?
  - marmot777 10y ago
    BTW, I was kidding about the better dig. Dig is perfect.For some reason find its full name funny.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
danbolt 10y ago
I've heard the source code for GNU Screen is pretty ugly and in need of a refactor, but I haven't had much issue with things user-side, so it's hard to say if that's really necessary.
sundarurfriend 10y ago
LaTeX. The tooling is awful, the error messages are close to useless, and any moderately complex document needs hacks and workarounds to accommodate the various quirks it has accumulated. I remember reading online somewhere "the best use of a 1 million dollar grant today to advance physics and math would be to redesign and develop LaTeX from scratch. The amount of productivity lost fighting against it is enormous." (Probably heavily paraphrased, since I don't remember the source.) Dr. Christoph Schiller, creator of the "Motion Mountain" physics book done entirely in LaTeX, mentions some of its other shortcomings here: http://www.motionmountain.net/onlatex.html http://www.motionmountain.net/onlatex.html

5 points by oliv__ 10y ago

Which tools/businesses would you love to see modernized? Where can friction/pain be taken out?

mikro2nd 10y ago

Mail servers for personal deployment.

marmot777 10y ago

* Airlines - I have no idea how but it's more important than the latest app. * Basic Infrastructure (e.g.,clean water, well maintained roads, sound bridges, beautiful parks) * domain information groper (dig) - Build a better dig and the world will beat a path to your door!

_kyran 10y ago
What would you like to see improved with Airlines?
- marmot777 10y ago
  I was making a reference to the outage at Delta https://www.wired.com/2016/08/computer-outage-can-take-whole-airline/ https://www.wired.com/2016/08/computer-outage-can-take-whole.... I wish I had a good answer on what specifically should be done.
mysterypie 10y ago
> Airlines Airplanes are cool, so people keep pouring time and money into it, but the airline industry as a whole has made a cumulative loss during its 100-year history[1]. It's better to avoid any startup idea related to airlines. > Basic Infrastructure (e.g.,clean water, well maintained roads, sound bridges, beautiful parks) Ugh, local/state government with petty politics, corruption, insane levels of bureaucracy. Stay away as well. > domain information groper Have you seen the typical web service that provides information like that? It's either someone's hobby project, in which case they'll tire of maintaining it and paying bandwidth, or it'll turn into a spam-infested site like whatismyipaddress.com. You could make a good free tool, but you can't make honest money on those. On a related note, no one has been able to find an honest way to make money on caller-ID lookup (telephone directory lookup). Useful phone lookup did exist in the early web days, but today they are all unreliable, spam-infested, dishonest sites. The information on some sites is literally 100% fraudulent, giving fake names and addresses for every possible phone number. If it were possible to provide an honest, useful, and profitable service, it would be the top Google listing every time you searched for a phone number; the fact that it doesn't exist, means that it is not possible[2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline#Economic_considerations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline#Economic_consideration... [2] A significant factor is probably due to the lack of useful phone number databases since individuals and telecom companies want to keep their numbers private. But this can't be the entire answer since at least 80% of landline numbers are "published", but even landline lookup has become useless.
- jermaustin1 10y ago
  There is nothing wrong with government. You just need to know someone. I have worked on multiple government contracts, typically through someone I knew who needed something done. I built a product and sat down with their purchasing manager, and grossed a few grand a month for pretty minimal effort. And the government is already so used to bad software, so long as it works, you are doing them a favor. As with most industries, you need to know a person, a problem, and a solution to make any money.
  - marmot777 10y ago
    Why is government software so bad? Also, why did you put in minimal effort?
- marmot777 10y ago
  BTW, I was kidding about the better dig. Dig is perfect.For some reason find its full name funny.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

danbolt 10y ago

I've heard the source code for GNU Screen is pretty ugly and in need of a refactor, but I haven't had much issue with things user-side, so it's hard to say if that's really necessary.

sundarurfriend 10y ago

LaTeX. The tooling is awful, the error messages are close to useless, and any moderately complex document needs hacks and workarounds to accommodate the various quirks it has accumulated. I remember reading online somewhere "the best use of a 1 million dollar grant today to advance physics and math would be to redesign and develop LaTeX from scratch. The amount of productivity lost fighting against it is enormous." (Probably heavily paraphrased, since I don't remember the source.) Dr. Christoph Schiller, creator of the "Motion Mountain" physics book done entirely in LaTeX, mentions some of its other shortcomings here: http://www.motionmountain.net/onlatex.html http://www.motionmountain.net/onlatex.html