8 ms·
Ask HN: What's an app or business you wish somebody else would build?
What is the idea? Why do you think it would be great and valuable? Why don't you work on it yourself? And who do you think would be best suited to making it happen?
- jadedbuthappy 4y agoUber for sex workers.
- toomuchtodo 4y agoThere was someone building a version of this called Pink, unsure if anything came of it. Sex worker positive apps seem to have a challenge maintaining traction for various reasons (edit: even in jurisdictions where it’s legal).
- DerArzt 4y agoProbably because in the majority of places (in the US at least) sex work is illegal.
- yellowapple 4y agoAnd even in places where it's legal (like here in Nevada) it's typically only legal in designated brothels and such.
- MerelyMortal 4y agoThey were taking investments before they launched and promised returns. The creators wanted to launch it in the U.S. where it is illegal, and wanted to remain anonymous. I'm all for innovation and trying to make things safer (I think they also said they would do background checks), but I was skeptical and thought it was more likely a scam than not.
- logicalmonster 4y agoAren't there hundreds of escort platforms on the Internet already?
- ngngngng 4y agoNot sure but there are tons of hot moms in my area looking to meet
- logicalmonster 4y agoMemories. I'd. Like. To. Forget.
- Dracophoenix 4y agoIn a way, that's what Backpage was.
- nonameiguess 4y agoAside from the legal hurdles, Uber seems predicated on minimally vetting providers, mostly accomplished via local licensing verification rather than anything done by Uber itself, and no vetting whatsoever of the customers. While I suppose you can argue that leaves things no worse off than the current sex work landscape, it seems like any company jumping into this isn't going to look good in the public and regulatory eye if their attitude is to just keep letting customers get diseases and providers get stalked and murdered. This is why brothels work. They can actually provide security. A phone app can't.
- leobg 4y agoGood point. And a good add application if Chesterton’s Fence as well.
- postalrat 4y agoI think something more like sex worker airbnb would be easier to pull off.
- chaosbutters314 4y agoa hotpot chain in the US. I don't do it bc I'm too poor. Americans don't get enough veggies, they love meat, and they love big quantities of food for cheap. The hotpot place next to me has a line out the door for 2 hours and can't keep up. I wish there were more of them around. Plus, all you need is raw, uncooked veg/meat and electrical outlets for pots. Little startup cost besides building. Secondly, an Indian version of chipotle. there is one in Montreal that is great and would prob thrive in US. Third, Super Giant games needs to make sequels to Hades for different religions and areas. An Aztec or Egyptian spinoff game would be dope.
- jimhi 4y agoThere's a few of these in Manhattan, there should be more
- aaaaaaaaata 4y ago> an Indian version of chipotle Naantastic / Halal Guys
- pimlottc 4y ago> Plus, all you need is raw, uncooked veg/meat and electrical outlets for pots. Little startup cost besides building. I strongly suspect licensing/permits are substantially more involved for a restaurant that exposes customers to uncooked meat and boiling hot oil and broth.
- justinram11 4y ago
- samemail88 4y ago- A non-profit that provides a social network without ads/tracking. Similar to what facebook was like (profile+direct messaging+photos+groups/forums) before they expanded into all markets. Charge a fee of $1-2 a year to keep spam away and maintain the cost of servers. The hardest part of this is getting a critical mass of users.
- lucakiebel 4y agoThe EU seems to try something like this, which I guess is the scale you need to get traction without being Meta or ByteDance. Though there’s only about a dozen users right now
- xigoi 4y agoWhere?
- homarp 4y agosee https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31193768 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31193768 or directly at https://social.network.europa.eu/about https://social.network.europa.eu/about Note that they only provide accounts on their instance for EU institutions, bodies and agencies.
- samemail88 4y agoBut mastodon is more like twitter and less like facebook. I don't everything I post to be public, I just want my friends to be able to see it.
- camdat 4y agoRe: charging a fee Whatsapp tried this. People are generally unwilling to pay any amount of money for a service if a free (ad-backed) version exists.
- mikkergp 4y ago
- reyostallenberg 4y agoA radio app in which you can make a schedule on what stream you listen at what time, so you can listen to programs you like off multiple radiostations without the switching interaction
- pjmq 4y agoI built that into my past music service of mine. It's a novel feature but was ultimately, little used, at least in that configuration.
- toast0 4y agoIt seemed like TuneIn was maybe supposed to be that (but it also seemed like TuneIn was too much work, so I abandoned without using it)
- telesilla 4y agoMany radio stations issue their programs as individual podcasts these days, so I find I can use a podcast manager to get much of what you seem to be asking for.
- kradeelav 4y agoMentioned this "would want/use" idea a few days ago, but a art blog static site generator. Despite searching high and low around the gazilions of "flat file CMSs" and "Static Site Generators", I have not found a single one that remotely caters to artists/illustrators who might want to simply post their art on an open-source, local, and truly free site with a RSS feed. No title, optional date label, nothing else around. "Image-centric" rather than text-centric if you will. I don't have the programming chops (I'm a designer) or the time to make it, but feel like it'd be a fairly simple month project with potentially big returns.
- leobg 4y agoWhat’s an example of a website of the kind which you would like to build with such a tool? And I am assuming the thing you would be adding on a regular basis would be image files with perhaps the title and a bit of text as a description?
- kradeelav 4y agoSure! My art log here (SFW) http://log.kradeelav.com/ http://log.kradeelav.com/ is what I was imagining; the "base" of the post being an image file, and a date/time stamp. Title, tags, and a one or two line description are all optional.
- IlPeach 4y agoOh man, so much this. I had to build that myself and still not 100% what I would like.
- poushkar 4y agoHonest question: why do you assume an artist is tech savy enough to deploy the SSG website on every change? Thank you
- kradeelav 4y agoNo problem! There's a static site generator called Publii that I tried once that was a simple "download linux(/win/mac) package, used a GUI to import posts from wordpress, and used the same GUI to post/deploy with two clicks." Very doable with 10 minutes of training (or far less if you know your way around things). (The app didn't work ultimately for me for text-focused reasons but it was the closest thing yet.) Couldn't see why a very simple GUI wouldn't be the game changer.
- aruanavekar 4y agoNews-subscription bundle, like for entertainment channels :) one-low price per month!
- homarp 4y agohttps://www.pressreader.com/subscribe https://www.pressreader.com/subscribe ?
- hestefisk 4y agoA platform for simple and real-time international remittance.
- rando_person_1 4y agoWhat's wrong with Wise (TransferWise)?
- kwikiel 4y agoSoftware compensation for non uniform screen brightness issues ( for example software fix for Apple flexgate )
- saad_123 4y ago
- WillAdams 4y agoI would like to see a project which addresses food shortages/availability --- why can't I have a pair of windows replaced w/ a pair of an aquarium and terrarium? Grow shrimp in the aquarium, lettuce, cherry tomatoes and so forth in the terrarium Each is monitored by a small computer w/ sensors which adjusts for nutrients, water, light, &c. --- at need, a vendor comes along, unlocks the outside access (which can only be unlocked if the matching inside lock is secure) and tops off/adjusts things. If I'm having a dinner, have an option to drop off tilapia or a lobster in the aquarium. I lack the green thumb, knowledge of electronics, and biological credentials --- it could be a nice gig for some person who is talented at growing things and has the computer programming/electronic sensor skills
- adammarples 4y agoAquariums really can't be automated like that. They need constant manual care and you need to empty the water out every few weeks and scrape the algae off the sides.
- WillAdams 4y agoCould it be that that just makes it a better business opportunity --- how many such tanks could one person clean in a day? What sort of franchise radius/density would make this workable?
- conductr 4y ago> have an option to drop off tilapia or a lobster in the aquarium I complain about having to mince my own garlic when I get a Blue Apron meal and you're willing to filet live fish? I don't see this working any where in the US, maybe somewhere else
- karencarits 4y agoSoftware to record audio (for hours) with proper timestamps and possibly event registration. Currently using audacity with timestamps via a plugin, it works but is rather cumbersome
- leobg 4y agoWhat’s the use case? What are the timestamps for? Which it what determines where a timestamp is set? Do you need transcription as well? How is the recording being used afterwards?
- karencarits 4y agoThanks for nice questions! I am currently working with multiple time series and when an anomaly happens in the time series, I have to check an audio recording to see what happened. The problem has been that all audio players and recorders that I have found starts at 0 and don't show recording time at the x axis, so I have to manually calculate the exact time in the audio recording, then listen around that time and register what happened and calculate the exact time for these events It is a quite basic problem, but I haven't been able to find a good solution yet: an audio recorder/player that shows the exact time instead of relative time. I'll be very happy for suggestions, and if not, then it's an app I would wish someone would build:)
- conductr 4y agoNot sure how you're capturing the audio but have you looked into timecode/sync? It's used in film to synchronize everything. Also I’m a bit rusty in this realm but probably running through some post production software could help
- b20000 4y agoa cloud spreadsheet that works and is not screwed with every 6 months
- eternityforest 4y agoI would love to see a self-hostable, decentralized, cryptocurrency-free Bluetooth network like Tile or Sidewalk, with 2 way communication. Being open would prevent the Tile/Airtag fragmentation, and allow the tech to be integrated in just about everything for insane levels of coverage. Not something that's useful without hardware availability and wide adoption, plus there may be legal issues with the GDPR. I would also like to see a non-vaporware GearEye that works with normal UHF tags. "Stuff" is one of the biggest detriments to my own well being, and many others. Any technology that manages stuff well is great. Being able to search storage boxes the way you search a computer would allow much denser packing and much less time looking for things, and make cleaning easier. I'd love it if there was an ISO like group dedicated to micro-standards, that worked with tiny companies. All these random electronic modules on eBay could share a common size and pin layout. Stacking boxes could all be stackable between companies. They would actively look for anything that has more than one part, make a standard, and promote it, or document the existing de facto standard.
- simon_acca 4y agoSomething along those lines: https://gotenna.com/index https://gotenna.com/index
- tobbob 4y agoTinder, but for everyone, not just single mums. Or less sarcastically, a dating site that actually works, where it doesn't revert to the whole game theory optimum strategy leading to the worst result overall.
- rep_movsd 4y agoSadly this is more an evolutionary biology problem than technical or social. Women are more valuable than men according to men (and women know this both consciously and biologically), hence it doenst matter what algorithm you use to match, 80 of of women prefer the top 20% of men
- leobg 4y agoSo how important are a woman's looks to you? If it was a site that suggested dates to you based purely on things like shared values, interests, etc., would you still want to use it?
- muzani 4y agoHealthy food subscription with delivery. Even if we have to cook, it's fine, as long as recipes are provided.
- rep_movsd 4y agoOnline streaming service aggregator Give me NetFlix, Disney+, Amazon Prime, Z Prime, Sony Liv, Discovery+ and all the rest in a consistent single UI, with a sensible, robust media player interface like VLC May be technically impossible given the propreitary nature of these services.
- conductr 4y agoI'd settle for Apple TV with a full featured remote. Would be great if I could have a number pad and assign "channels" as shortcuts to different services, deeper links to specific shows, and channel up/down helped me navigate them. The previous channel button is my most missed feature.
- vegetablepotpie 4y agoI need an app that lets you organize lots of disparate people into a meeting. Something like doodle, but it also has a chat box. It also has to have a competent web interface that I can share a link with anyone, and they don’t need to create an account for some functionality.
- leobg 4y agoWhat are “lots of people”? 10? 250? And the chat is the meeting? Or is the tool and chat just there to schedule a meeting, which is the to take place elsewhere (in real life, on Zoom, or whatever)? Does the group of people change each time? Does it have to work on mobile?
- wooque 4y agoCryptocurrency that doesn't require internet access to transfer money, kind of offline crypto that can be used like cash. Probably impossible to make.
- kar5pt 4y agoA pdf reader with highlighter/notes functionality that can sync the pdfs AND their hightlights/notes across multiple devices on different platforms. I was very surprised to find such a thing doesn't exist (to my knowledge). I've tried sending pdfs to my Kindle account and it silently fails (the pdfs never show on my device). I tried using a pdf reader+Dropbox combo, but the pdf reader kept having trouble saving to Dropbox and creating "MyPdf (2).pdf" copies. I would end up with 20-30 copies, making it impossible to tell which one had the notes I was looking for.