14 ms·

Ask HN: What problem do you wish someone would solve?

• RickJWagner 5y ago
  How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Toosie Roll Tootsie Pop? (The world may never know.)
• inter_netuser 5y ago
  I know this might be asking too much, but: fix political corruption
  • em-bee 5y ago
    the only way to fix that is to improve education everywhere. that includes moral education.
    • inter_netuser 5y ago
      Plenty of countries with highly educated population are corrupt. Education is probably quite important, but it seems there are other important components. Are there any countries where level of corruption is much lower, adjusted for education? I'd wager most high-trust countries would do better on measures of corruption, adjusted for education levels.
      • em-bee 5y ago
        because they didn't have any moral education. that is the missing component. science and arts is not enough. we also need to learn to care for each other, to be kind, generous, not hurtful, treat others with love and respect and many more virtues...
• defaultprimate 5y ago
  Needing sleep
• XCSme 5y ago
  UBI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income If people stopped worrying about money, they will have time to create a lot of awesome stuff.
• diwcoder 5y ago
  Not having to fill out the same information every time I visit a new healthcare provider. They should just have some sort of centralized profile I can give them access to for my information.
• antifarben 5y ago
  How could everybody who wants self owned real estate actually get real estate. I guess it's usually an infrastructure problem. Plots are cheap in locations with bad infrastructure so the solution could also be to get infrastructure wherever you want.
• Gtex555 5y ago
  My inability to search through my youtube watch history.
• M5x7wI3CmbEem10 5y ago
  joint regeneration
• billconan 5y ago
  lack of code documentation
  • greesil 5y ago
    AlphaCode --> AlphaDocumentation
    • neiman1 5y ago
      As in text completions and corrections for software docs? Have been tinkering with this exact concept: https://i.imgur.com/txhgLiy.mp4 https://i.imgur.com/txhgLiy.mp4
      • greesil 5y ago
        C++ programmer here. I have a class that does something, so a header and a source file. I add some words as a primer on why the class exists, and the magic neural net adds comments in the header as to what the member variables are, and what the methods do. I'd be really curious to see if the output is comprehensible and informative. There's a huge training corpus for this do I'd assume this would work.
  • parasight 5y ago
    Self-documenting code
    • errcorrectcode 5y ago
      Not all code can be self-documenting, especially optimized algorithms and complex operations. Comments serve to add requisite context and clarification that code alone cannot provide. Simply regurgitating the obvious in comments is a waste.
      • billconan 5y ago
        yes, agreed. good document is about why, not what.
• disadvantage 5y ago
  One thing that bothers me and still hasn't been solved is the ergonomics of everyday computing. I don't care if people have Herman Miller chairs and use ergonomic keyboards, and an expensive mouse. You're still sitting on a chair which will kill your back. I've tried standing desks, but never liked standing. As for phones/tablets; I've only ever used them as consumption devices and no 'deep work' gets done on them like you would with a desktop PC. My strategy is to take regular breaks from the PC and stand up every 8 minutes and walk around to straighten my back, but it doesn't have to be that way. I just want to be plugged in for hours like I could do in my twenties. Solve that!
  • madengr 5y ago
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • ahelwer 5y ago
    I suspect VR workstations will help with this. Many ergonomic constraints come from ease of mounting monitors at eye level. With VR this problem no longer exists. You can be in any position you want - lying down, standing, sitting cross-legged on a cushion on the floor, etc. - and as long as you can type with separated keyboard halves for each hand you will be productive. Perhaps we should not be chasing the One True Ergonomic Body Position but should instead rotate through various positions during the day.
    • nso95 5y ago
      VR is uncomfortable
      • neiman1 5y ago
        For the time being.
      • ahelwer 5y ago
        I stayed away from VR for the past eight years but picked up an oculus quest 2 for $180 on craigslist the other day. Other than the mandatory facebook integration (hopefully a thriving jailbreak/homebrew ecosystem pops up) I am blown away that something of this quality can be found for so little. VR computers are coming and I would happily pay a few thousand dollars for something that can replace my desk, chair, monitors, microphone, headphones, computer, and all the other knick-knacks necessary for those to work together. I think things have now reached the level where they can authentically compete with a real-world workstation, at the high end. Certainly they must be customized for your head/face shape and eye positions.
• CommanderData 5y ago
  Otosclerosis. It causes conductive hearing loss, affects 10% of the population. Its essentially abnormal bone turnover inside the ear (Stapes) that becomes fixated leading to conductive hearing loss and eventually full deafness in some cases. The current solution is to remove the diseased bone and fitting a prosthesis, it has risks and hearing doesn't always return to normal. I always wondered why this can't be fixed using ear drops to administer Biophosphonates in the effected ear for a non invasive solution. In terms of 'lossening' an already fixated Stapes, why not a solution that is found to effectively dissolve the abnormal bone together with Biophosphonates. It could be administered every so often to ensure minimal progression.
  • mlac 5y ago
    Why don’t you email this question to a researcher in the field?
    • CommanderData 5y ago
      I would love to, how would you go about finding a researcher? Preferably someone local to the vacinity.
      • mlac 5y ago
        Look at local medical schools and their faculty lists. Universities as well. Basically write what you wrote and ask if they are the right person or know someone in that area of research.
        • CommanderData 5y ago
          Excellent thank you. I'll try my hand at this and see what happens!
      • 7steps2much 5y ago
        Be aware that I haven't done this before, but I imagine it would go like this: 1. Figure out which field of science you are interested in 2. Find a couple of universities that teach this field of science or you think have someone specialising in that on staff 3. Go through their list of researchers 4. Pick one out and send them an email. Or if you cannot find a mail address, send an old school letter to the university
• pacifika 5y ago
  Music (or bandcamp) discovery based on local music libraries
  • Kaze404 5y ago
    Not exactly what you're looking for, but Last FM gives you decent recommendations based on your listening habits, and all you need is a player that supports sending data to it.
    • toastal 5y ago
      I think this is one of the goals for the ListenBrainz project if you want to use a more open platform.
• monster_group 5y ago
  Lack of reliable service from plumbers, HVAC, appliance repair people. There are many people available but the quality and consistency of service is highly variable and chances of getting ripped off are high if you don't do your due diligence. I wish there was more standardization in these services where I don't have to worry about getting ripped off and can expect a decent quality of service without spending too much time on looking up vendors, reading reviews etc. If I want get a leaky washer fixed I don't want to spend my entire weekend to try to figure out if it can be DIY or not. I should just be able to call a reliable service, pay a reasonable price and get if fixed.
  • dagw 5y ago
    I've felt that this could be a place where unions and/or guilds have a role. If I hire a union worker then the union guarantees that the person shows up and does quality work. If that doesn't happen then the union is held legally and financially responsible. In this world I would be happy to pay a premium for a union worker.
  • thijsvandien 5y ago
    Reliable professionals for just about anything. There's a ton of stuff I'd happily leave to others at a premium price, if I could only rest assured that they'd do it properly. I simply don't know where to look.
  • trcarney 5y ago
    Doesn't Angi.com solve this?
  • boxed 5y ago
    We are actually working on this! https://dryft.se https://dryft.se but so far we're only in Stockholm, but expanding fast :)
  • imglorp 5y ago
    So many of these contractors have zero comms skills or infra because they focus on the work and not basic customer relations. My personal frustration: (0) have someone answer the phone, (1) tell me when are you coming, and (2) be there. I suspect they all have a family member with QB and an answering machine as their whole back office. Someone should set up simple SaaS to do automated appointment slots, schedule updates to customers, and billing. Charge $1 per slot. Sign up all the contractors.
• f0e4c2f7 5y ago
  Figuring out how America can go fast[0] again. Solving would be great but I would also settle for a theory of mind as to why we haven't been able to for the last 50 years or so. [0] https://patrickcollison.com/fast https://patrickcollison.com/fast
  • boxed 5y ago
    Moving fast is only good if you're not mistaken. Mao, Pol Pot and Hitler moved fast. But they were wrong. It was some of the largest disasters the world has ever experienced.
  • samwillis 5y ago
    Not just America, but the world has shown just how fast it can move in the last two years. We went from new virus causing a pandemic to over 60% of the world having at least one dose of a vaccine in 24 months. Far faster than anyone thought possible. https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations
    • Trasmatta 5y ago
      Yeah, that's the example I was going to give. The development, testing, production, and distribution of multiple effective vaccines was a demonstration of how we can still go fast.
  • kingkawn 5y ago
    The empire is over. Building it was a travesty. Slow down and enjoy life.
  • imglorp 5y ago
    Education, basic research, and infrastructure were the fuels that propelled our success until the 70s. We had these things up until Nixon and Reagan realized they could attack those institutions for short term gain, redirecting the funds to the 1% and calling it trickle down. Now we're paying for it.
  • generalizations 5y ago
• greesil 5y ago
  Childcare, housing, climate change, the usual. I'm sort of joking, sort of not. The first two affect 99% of my day to day, the last only when I will run out of water or there's a fire nearby. Edit: in the childcare and education side, something more informative than Greatschools. I know some neighborhood schools that have been gentrified and test scores have gone up, but it's still the same teachers, admin, and available resources. The ratings aren't a great signal. Things like how well resourced the district is for IEPs would be super useful as a parent. Edit 2: tie in something better than Greatschools with a search engine for preschools, after school programs, and the rest, and you would have a compelling product. The service would be to get your kid on the wait-list for the places you want them to attend :)
  • monkeybutton 5y ago
    Agreed. Also right wing extremism fueled and amplified by the internet. It's sort of technical problem, right?
    • greesil 5y ago
      In the short term you can just not log onto the outrage-o-verse. Long term solutions to the current state of affairs elude me.
      • imglorp 5y ago
        The problem is the outrage economy affects everyone, not just participants.
        • greesil 5y ago
          Yep! That's why it's a short term solution.
      • monkeybutton 5y ago
        Well the outrage-o-verse is leaking into reality with wingnuts occupying the capital of my country, waving confederate and trump 2024 flags to boot.
• pnut 5y ago
  High quality, low latency, whole house, distributed wireless audio without a disposable speaker tech business model.
  • conesus 5y ago
    Beep (YC S14) did this and made a gorgeous, inexpensive volume dial that lives on top of your speakers and speaks wifi. Unfortunately the company shut down but it was great while it lasted. It looks like there isn’t market demand for this without the associated speaker business or intelligent assistant.
    • yccs27 5y ago
      It might also be patents from Sonos which are stifling innovation and competition in this space. See the discussions here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28273131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28273131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28273131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28273131
  • jagger27 5y ago
    This one is kind of funny because the speed of sound makes sparse speakers tricky if you’re moving around. It can sound weird. If you’ve ever seen (and some milliseconds later heard) someone dribbling a basketball at the other end of a long quiet street you’ll know what I mean.
  • madphilosopher 5y ago
    I opted for a low-power FM transmitter fed by the music player daemon (mpd). Zero latency, always synchronized, works with any stereo receiver I want, plenty of clients to choose from (web-based, mobile, etc.) to control the mpd.
• ollieglass 5y ago
  Improved human <-> animal communications at scale. Given the state of machine learning with unstructured audio data, machine translation, and robotics, I would have hoped for better methods to communicate with wild animals, cattle and our pets by now.
• tofro 5y ago
  Waiting in hotline queues for some support agent to speak to. Sometimes just the plain phone number to call support, instead of jumping multiple hoops of "have you tried XYZ" FAQ answers
  • mdorazio 5y ago
    https://www.dialahuman.com/ https://www.dialahuman.com/ Like this? In most cases, the queues and prompts are in place because the majority of callers really don't need to talk to a human and waste support's time with very simple tasks.
• laurent123456 5y ago
  Making a truly squirrel proof bird feeder, that also lets slightly larger birds, such as robins, access the food. This is surprisingly difficult to find, and many squirrel proof feeders on Amazon actually get destroyed by squirrels in no time. Those that can resist the squirrel assaults have a cage that's too narrow for robins to get inside.
  • errcorrectcode 5y ago
    My mom lived in Paradise CA and had this problem. Anything birds can manipulate, most squirrels can too, except they can't literally fly or peck. She tried 5 different feeder designs and the squirrels all got to them. One solution is cage suet feeders. Squirrels can't peck into them. Another is throwing out enough seed / feed on the ground over a large enough area so that a variety of critters can get access. Crows, finches, jays, wild turkeys, and deer would feed at the same time. Yet another solution is to place a tree feeder on top of a greased pole away from trees so squirrels can't jump down to it or climb up it. Bird baths or other fresh water sources that are kept from producing mosquitoes larva are also good. The other critters of concern in the area were red foxes, vultures, hawks, and black bear.
  • mlac 5y ago
    After being given a bird feeder as a gift, I went down a rabbit hole. And it was just the feeder, btw. So nothing else. Well, with a feeder you need to put it somewhere. Tried trees. It was a squirrel feeder. Then I got a pole for the middle of my yard, away from all high objects a squirrel could jump from. Quickly became a squirrel feeder, as they can climb the pole. Looked at greasing the pole, laying out with a BB gun, and other options, but settled on a metal cone below the feeder. The squirrels in my neighborhood have bad short term memory, so they will see the feeder, make the association with food, start to climb the pole, get under the cone, and then sit there for a couple of seconds before forgetting their mission. I’ve had squirrels try to reach to the exterior of the cone, but it’s not stable, so as soon as they put weight on it they fall. I’ve heard squirrels elsewhere are smarter than this system (not sure how - team work?) but here they can’t figure it out. All that said, the “gift” of the bird feeder lead to $100 in purchases, regular seed refills, and hours of research. But I ended up with birds near my office window, so that’s nice.* 6/10 would receive again. Feeder pole: Your friend has shared a link to a Home Depot product they think you would be interested in seeing. https://www.homedepot.com/p/Vigoro-84-in-Black-Steel-Traditional-Single-Shepherd-Hook-844635VG/302643466 https://www.homedepot.com/p/Vigoro-84-in-Black-Steel-Traditi... Feeder: Audubon NAGOGREEN1 Going Green Ranch Style Bird Feeder Cone: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0010QD5QO?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0010QD5QO?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_... * in searching my Amazon order history to find the products I got, I realized we also had a ton of bird strikes into our windows, to the point that I had to get clings to go on the windows. These have been mostly effective in stopping birds from hitting the house.
• jacquesm 5y ago
  Fix democracy without enabling something even worse, enable free speech without accidentally enabling fascism.
  • kleer001 5y ago
    The first can be improved by replacing the first past the post system and removing gerrymandering. Even better have at least 5 political parties and a parliamentary system. The second can be improved by eliminating anonymous speech accounts. It doesn't have to be visibly tied to your legal name. But Socrates was right. Without accountability people will immediately do awful things. https://open.library.okstate.edu/introphilosophy/chapter/the-ring-of-gyges/ https://open.library.okstate.edu/introphilosophy/chapter/the... Neil Stephenson had a great idea in "Fall; or, Dodge in Hell", a fix. Online accounts had blockchain identities. But then again people will probably never stop feeding trolls and take into account other people's posting history. Nor will online forums come down as hard as they need to on abuse.
• jagger27 5y ago
  Some easy ones right off the bat: online extremism, public transit, housing, access to healthcare, chronic disease treatment. Online dating is pretty rough. I need a company to get extremely serious about desktop Linux and charge me $100/yr for something that actually works. Yes. It’s okay to charge for copyleft software.
  • timbit42 5y ago
    All but the first one are solved in the richest countries, except the US.
    • caskstrength 5y ago
      How is housing solved in other richest countries besides US?
  • codingmoh 5y ago
    >I need a company to get extremely serious about desktop Linux and charge me $100/yr for something that actually works Could you briefly describe, what you'd be looking for?
  • neiman1 5y ago
    What issues do you face with online dating?
    • jagger27 5y ago
      The “hook” is the worst part. It’s so hard to start a conversation from nothing and get it to stick in a meaningful way. People like to joke that those who treat Twitter like a dating app are misusing it, but I think it’s a better analog for real world dating than most things. Once you build a sufficiently big group of mutuals on Twitter and get to know them a little bit without the pressure of relationship expectations, sparks seem to happen so much more naturally and organically just as they might in a workplace or school setting. I don’t have much hope for online dating in its current form unless it gets to a level of AI invasiveness like in that one Black Mirror episode. Gatling gun dating just isn’t fun or effective.
• gopher157 5y ago
  Problem of unjust societies. My kid will be a multimillionaire in his twenties without a single day of work while his equally capable peers will enface a life of limited opportunity because the best they can do is to work their ass off to pay rent. It is structural and it needs to change. A truly liberal idea could be to reset the "score" when the game is over. Try to be the best you can and earn as much as you can - when you die, most of your wealth flows back into a large pond to the benefit of all.
  • loeg 5y ago
    The biggest obstacle IMO is that inheritance taxes are unpopular. We already tax very large inheritances (above $5M), but I don't think there is an appetite for stepping that top bracket up to 100%.
  • Wiseacre 5y ago
    Wealth tax still seems highly unpopular in the general public, not to mention on HN. I think the average user here is more interested in bringing home FAANG salaries than solving the wealth gap.
    • xboxnolifes 5y ago
      The problems with most talked about wealth taxes aren't the idea, but the implementation.
      • bradlys 5y ago
        Indeed. We already have a wealth tax for the overwhelming majority of Americans and they don’t seem opposed to it. It’s called property tax. They all know what it’s used for. The issue with a wealth tax is purely a marketing one. Rich people have truly done a great job distorting the wording around a wealth tax.
        • tim333 5y ago
          When people say 'wealth tax' they usually are thinking add up all your assets and pay some percentage of that each year. There are quite a lot of practical problems with that.
• Upgrayyed_U 5y ago
  Commuting. It was crazy to see how quickly we "solved" this problem during COVID, if only temporarily. I just wish to see more collective action to solve this on a more permanent basis. I'm partial to WFH plus moving away from car-dependence in North American towns and cities.
• mdorazio 5y ago
  I don't like working from home, but my day mostly consists of being on calls/video chats and discussing a lot of information that shouldn't be overheard by others. I want a private office option that doesn't cost a thousand dollars a month and I don't need all the extras of a co-working space like WeWork.
• ahelwer 5y ago
  Poor availability of introductory learning materials for grad-level study. Undergrad level stuff is pretty well covered by whatever MOOC you can imagine. But often for more advanced topics there is a large gap between what you know after an undergrad degree and what existing learning materials (if any exist) assume you know. Sometimes you just have to bang your head against papers until your brain melds with the concepts. It’s understandable why this is. Writing introductory textbooks in your area of study is not prestigious work valued by your peers, takes a huge amount of time, and rarely makes money. Perhaps the learning materials do exist, but there is no easy way to divine their existence. Expert-curated learning tracks might be valuable here. I’ll tell you what is not valuable, though: giant lists of “learning resources” in a github README that have no particular relation or sorting order and that the author/maintainer has never personally read. Perhaps the struggle is necessary for learning. I’ll never forget those times my mind finally makes by itself the leap to understanding, although I constantly forget whatever smoothed-down introductory learning material I have consumed in the past. Perhaps the solution is simply to hire a grad student for 1:1 tutoring at $50-$100/hr.
  • errcorrectcode 5y ago
    It's a values thing, partially. Instead of publish or perish purely on research, publish or perish value to industry, academia, and knowledge. Seems like there needs to be a "LinkedIn" for grad/postgrad that can present such academic CV items coherently. I agree that competent, thoughtful textbooks combined with amazing lecturers/TAs/peers are needed to transfer knowledge.
• fis 5y ago
  Cleaning and organizing the house. Decluttering, identifying the right place for all our stuff, keeping it here. Scrubbing, wiping surfaces. Washing, folding, putting away laundry. Sweeping and vacuuming floors. Cleaning and organizing the yard. Pulling weeds, avoiding them in the first place. Pruning and maintaining plants. Planning, building, and maintaining landscape elements. Collecting and disposing yard waste. Cleaning gutters. Cooking. Cleaning the dishes. Deciding what to cook for dinner given what's in the fridge and pantry. Meal planning
  • Irongirl1 5y ago
    THIS. This is what HomeJoy was supposed to be. Million dollar lawyers who don't understand business law??? How does that work??? During "IT" HomeJoy could have really made it's mark and cemented it's place amongst the SuperZips.
  • dgfitz 5y ago
    So a cleaning service, lawn service, a chef, and throwing out stuff that doesn’t have a home?
• amelius 5y ago
  Fix the economy, make it more fair. Make it so that the ones at the far end of the supply chain get the same chance of building a good business as the ones sitting closer to the end customer. Make it so that honest, hard work gets rewarded more than gaming the system. This is more important than apps that make $WHATEVER more convenient by an infinitesimal amount. But, probably not the kind of problem that you wanted to hear about.
  • errcorrectcode 5y ago
    Never going to happen because most people bought the idea that "greed fixes everything with magic." The policy prescriptions are obvious but unpopular. Instead, misery for most will continue to increase while the first trillionaires are made. Homelessness will skyrocket and the earnings of unskilled labor will fall through the floor. No amount of edumacation and retraining can turn everyone who loses a job into a software engineer or a solar electrician.
• vidoss 5y ago
  Peloton for cooking. A self cleaning food processor/oven/cooktop equipment with meal kit delivery service and tons of recipe videos.
  • Irongirl1 5y ago
    Have you seen the ads for Suvie :https://www.suvie.com/ https://www.suvie.com/ It looks really interesting.
• MattGaiser 5y ago
  How to measure productivity without leading to the generation of a ton of activity for the purpose of seeming productive. I suspect that several years of my life throughout my career will end up fed to a Scrum monster.
• donclark 5y ago
  How to chart/track issues/news/topics/mood/reliability around the world. (Think globally) How can we do the same locally - and provide help where we can - or individually where we think it is needed. (Act locally) TLDR A Craigslist.org that is focused on a specific zip code.
• CodeGlitch 5y ago
  Getting scans and tests from hospital. In the UK you can wait weeks just to get a blood test. Looking to the future, I'd like to see a full body scanner that you lie down in and it can diagnose the vast majority of ailments. See it has a combined x-ray/CT scanner. Sounds like science fiction? Would return instant results.
  • 7952 5y ago
    I would just like an appliance that can detect changes in the health of my teeth.
• abernard1 5y ago
  Laundry. Fold my laundry with a reasonably sized device and you can take my money. It's been ~60 years since there has been any innovation in household appliances, and I just loathe folding clothes.
  • 7952 5y ago
    Why not hang them up in a wardrobe?
  • Buttons840 5y ago
    The better solution is eliminating the need to fold, probably.
    • abernard1 5y ago
      I'm not sure if this is a joke or not. I'm guessing if I said, "I would like a device to cook me dinner," your response would be "The better solution is eliminating the need to cook anything," and I'd be eating out of some NASA-approved squeeze tube or eating TV dinners for the rest of my life. As I am a normal human, no, the answer is a device that actually organizes and folds laundry when I dump it into a pile out of the dryer.
      • em-bee 5y ago
        there is no need to fold clothes. a lot of clothes can be left hanging if you have enough space, or an efficient way to do that. i hang up clothes to dry on regular coat hangers, and ideally i'd just move them into a hanging closet. no need to take them down and fold. hanging clothes are also easier to search through to pick what you want to wear.
      • naveen99 5y ago
        Isn’t this the idea behind the paleo diets ?
• barbarbar 5y ago
  Fair tax. I live in a country where persons must pay high tax. But companies (big) are doing all sorts of "tricks" and pay zero. I have no problems paying tax myself and have huge benefit from that kind of system (health care). But it is infuriating to see huge corps paying zero year after year. So somehow it should be easy to spot such companies and then avoid them.
• greenie_beans 5y ago
  City to city high speed railway transit, so more railways. Last I checked, it would take me 24 hours to travel from Birmingham, Alabama to Chicago. It would route me through the northeast. Bham is almost due south of Chicago.
  • mlac 5y ago
    I hear you, but: - what’s the demand for travel from Birmingham to Chicago? - what’s the ecological cost of laying rail from Birmingham straight north? We could subsidize a lot of plane flights / busses on existing highway infrastructure before it makes sense to lay down rail, even between Birmingham and Nashville. And it looks like Birmingham > Nashville is a < 3 hour car ride. So would most people want to drive to a train station, wait at the train, then take the train 1.5 hours (assuming high speed at 140 mph) then deal with last mile transit / car rental in Nashville? Never mind that train route runs right through Franklin, which has insane property costs and I can imagine NIMBY-ism going on, so you’d have to route around it. The cost for a high speed rail is estimated at $154 million per mile, which would be $30 BN to build the segment between Birmingham and Nashville. Then it’s a billion dollar soft target, so security and terrorism are a concern, especially being the first example of high speed rail in middle America. It would take one extremist with a rifle to shut it down / reduce ridership. They wouldn’t even have to hit anyone, just shoot at it as it went past one of the many fields. And at 30 BN, you won’t ever see the ROI, and it would require federal funding - which many would ask why someone in Montana should pay for rail transport in between Birmingham and Nashville, and it would probably die before funded. The government spends $315 Million to subsidize small airports around the country per year, which may be a more effective use of tax payer dollars. All that said, I understand why you want someone to solve this problem - it would open up all sorts of towns for lower cost of living in Nashville / surrounding cities. Especially if it was subsidized for riders. If the hyper loop becomes a thing, I’ll be excited. I also understand there are people who just won’t get on planes. Cost estimate: https://reason.org/commentary/on-high-speed-rail-look-at-the-costs-and-results-before-you-leap/ https://reason.org/commentary/on-high-speed-rail-look-at-the... EAS subsidy: https://www.businessinsider.com/inside-aviations-battle-serve-remote-american-cities-reap-subsidies-2021-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/inside-aviations-battle-serv...
• type0 5y ago
  Affordable housing
  • lost_soul 5y ago
    Reading the piece the other day about Kansas giving away free property got me to wondering what it takes to make "affordable housing" worth "unpopular location".
  • timbit42 5y ago
    Housing co-operatives.
• type0 5y ago
  Reasonably priced, usable, open source, open hardware mobile phones and PCs.
  • georgewsinger 5y ago
    Not sure about "reasonably priced" (since early stage tech getting off the ground), but simulavr.com might be of interest to you.
• voisin 5y ago
  I would love a way to make a dumb treadmill into a smart treadmill the way people can buy sensors for dumb indoor bikes.
• justoreply 5y ago
  Have a open source smalltalk environment running efficiently on mobile phones, so it is possible to develop applications directly on them Have an open source smalltalk environment with working concurrency, in order to efficiently use all the core available
  • jdougan 5y ago
    David Buck may have you covered on the mobile classic Smalltalk front. . https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pigeontalk/pigeontalk-a-programming-environment-to-explore-computing https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pigeontalk/pigeontalk-a... There is also U8, which has an unusual UI, but it is Smalltalk. http://u8.smalltalking.net/ http://u8.smalltalking.net/
• swat535 5y ago
  Baldness and hair loss! Honestly , I'm surprised that there hasn't been any breakthroughs on a problem that affects half of the world population. We are even tackling aging but no one has bothered to massively invest in researching this and coming up with a potential cure? One could argue that it's not as important as deadly diseases but I would say the ROI could be phenomenal.. Admittingly I have no medical or scientific background so perhaps there is a good reason for this that I am not aware of.
• rurban 5y ago
  A string library for C. UTF-8 obviously. Modern (fast and secure) Hash Tables for C. Working on both, but not enough time.
• amelius 5y ago
  > What problem do you wish someone would solve? Finding me problems to work on.
• sliken 5y ago
  P2P E2E chat. Much like signal (support for IOS, Android, and desktop), just no central servers.
  • unraveller 5y ago
    https://status.im https://status.im does this for text and group text just not voice. p2p leaves a pretty wide attack surface from everyone's ISP.
    • em-bee 5y ago
      sadly uses blockchain which is no longer acceptable to many people at least until the environmental concerns and other issues are resolved.
• senectus1 5y ago
  sorry for this guys... A note taking system that works like my thought process does AND lets me very quickly add notes from my phone. (Android) needs search functionality and RTF.
  • BenjiWiebe 5y ago
    I don't know how your thought process works... I use Google Keep for note taking. It's not really fancy though.