7 ms·
Ask YC/HN: What's a problem you'd like to see someone solve?
Broad topic, I was thinking just about this while I was in the gym.
What's a problem you've seen that you just want to get solved? Any problem, big or small, just spit it out, as big as world hunger, as theoretical as string theory, or as specific as twitter API architecture.
Perhaps something good will come of this? I'm sure this has been done before, but you learn something new every time.
- keltecp11 18y agoVideo Game Systems For The Elderly... Very easy to use, big buttons, simple setup, focuses on hand eye coordination, and elevates heart rates (not just chess, checkers, etc.)
- mrtron 18y agoThe Wii? Seriously - a few of my friends' parents just bought it and love it. They play some of the simple games like sports to death.
- keltecp11 18y agoOh... and make my Iphone Battery last longer...
- Mystalic 18y agoI can see it now - the iPhone injection! Inject your iPhone with the stuff, get 50% more battery.
- mechanical_fish 18y agoBetter portable power sources are always on the wish list. Many, many electrical gadgets could be shrunk even further if it wasn't for the bulkiness of batteries.
- keltecp11 18y agoWhy not solar power chargers?
- mechanical_fish 18y agoThat might technically relieve the "bulk" problem, but only by substituting a "surface area" problem in many cases. Better solar cells are also on the eternal wish list, though. Not that they haven't been slowly improving, and not that they aren't already good enough for many things.
- axod 18y agoI thought I remembered reading about a new LCD touchscreen, coming to an iPod/iPhone soon perhaps, which is also a solar cell... That would simply rock.
- mechanical_fish 18y agoGet people to stop using IE6 to visit sites, by any means necessary. Bonus points if you can take out IE7 as well.
- Mystalic 18y agoI was just doing customer service help with someone today actually. IE 6.0. I wanted to throw the guy into a lake. Of fire.
- mikeyur 18y ago"Ok, here's what I want you to do.. Go to mozilla.com/firefox"
- silentbicycle 18y agoWhat if the computer is too old to run Firefox 3? Serious question. My fiancee was fixing up an old computer to give to our nephew, and when she tried to install Firefox, it refused, essentially saying, "Your computer is too old." * She grabbed a 2.x install file from OldApps.com, but many of the people still running IE6 won't be tech savvy enough to do that, and are likely to be running really old computers. (And even when FF can be installed, it tends to suck up memory. What do you do with a computer that maxes out at 128MB ram?) * I think it was a memory issue, but mainly I remember that it was unexpectedly off-putting.
- Freaky 18y agoRecommended configuration for Opera 9: Pentium II class system with 64 MB of RAM and at least 50 MB of free disk space
- silentbicycle 18y agoFair enough. I'm just saying that a kneejerk "use firefox!" doesn't necessarily help: it isn't that simple. Whether you should really need so much computing power just run a web browser is a different matter entirely. My cell phone probably has more processing power (and definitely has far more memory and storage) than my desktop computer did when I was in high school.
- mixmax 18y agoSelf replicating nano-machines. It's a powerful and dangerous thing to wish for though.
- nx 18y agoThat's actually one of my childhood fears. Just that they were live beings, not machines.
- tlrobinson 18y agoSelf replicating living beings? Wouldn't that cover just about all living beings?
- Dilpil 18y agoPretty scarey though aren't they?
- mechanical_fish 18y agoThis is another of those things that amuse me: People who think of tiny self-replicating nanomachines as a vision of the future, rather than as a reflection upon our mutual family history. I, for one, am pretty sure that I'm a colony of several trillion self-replicating cells, whose parts are self-replicating nanomachines. And that is an amazing realization. But not especially futuristic.
- Tichy 18y agoI also thought recently that grey goo is a very unlikely scenario. If there were a new kind of self-replicating naonmachines, they would likely also be subject to evolution and diversify into all sorts of colorful things, just like biological cells.
- nx 18y agoBut that multiply really fast. Like mitosis in 2 seconds.
- mrtron 18y agoI got flamed for suggesting this recently, but I'd like to see it: Equal wages/prices for all regardless of geography, brought on by a single world currency and the internet? That would solve world hunger (which is a money issue, not supply issue). edit: Awesome. It's getting downvoted here too? What the hell is wrong with the concept? edit 2: Oh I was completely blind to the obvious here...I mean equal wages in terms of task (not geography). A McDonalds worker should make the same here or in another country (assuming McD's was charging the same for burgers too). Software developers who contract online are approaching this equality. I am not suggesting communism or some sort of set rate for work, individual productivity is really important.
- johnrob 18y agoHow about free food for everyone?
- paraschopra 18y agoI don't understand why you got downmodded. Although I don't agree with you on equal wages/prices, I do +1 to you just for the freedom of speech sake.
- CaptainMorgan 18y agoI didn't down or upvote simply because I think it's an honest suggestion. But it's impractical because the diversity is too vast to warrant an equal playing field such as you're suggesting. There are those that try really hard and succeed magnificently, while there are those that sit back and are too lazy to get anything done and would rather collect welfare. There are polar opposites too, those that try really hard but fail, and those that are lazy and somehow succeed.... you're telling me that no matter where these groups fall, they should all receive equal wages? Reiterating that I didn't downvote you, I can certainly see why someone would. So the explanation I just noted is simply my view and what I've seen and ultimately your concept is not practical nor fair.
- yargseiks 18y agoI find it strange that the majority of people thought the OP was referring to equal wages regardless of effort. It was pretty clear to me that he was referring to the difference in salary between countries for the same type of work. It disheartens me sometimes hearing that entry-level programmers in the US make $20 an hour, while I, with more than two years of experience, make about $30 a day. People don't realize how vast the disparity of living standards are across the globe.
- enomar 18y agoI want to be able to pause and rewind audio from my car radio.
- parenthesis 18y agoIf you google "tivo for car radio" you'll see that you're not the only one, and that there doesn't appear to be such a product yet. I see money asking to be made.
- steveplace 18y agoPiggybacking off that, being able to use your cellular data service to get internet radio in your car. Much less overhead than XM and much better quality than local OTA stations.
- jd 18y agoThe build system on *nix. make, gmake, autoconf and related tools are really terrible.
- Dilpil 18y agoOne click install java IDE and compiler. One click install C IDE and compiler. One click install Erlange IDE and compiler. And so on and so forth.
- Mystalic 18y agoIt can be complicated for a non-techie to even set up an apache server on their computer. We'd probably have a couple more good programmers in this world just by breaking down that barrier.
- Dilpil 18y agoIndeed let me add: One click web development IDE.
- axod 18y agoYou don't think there are enough idiots who shouldn't be programming using php and javascript?
- netcan 18y agoHence MAMP
- tdavis 18y agoI would argue that someone destined to be a good programmer would have the ingenuity and drive to install a freakin' compiler and IDE. It isn't exactly rocket science.
- axod 18y ago"We'd probably have a couple more good programmers in this world just by breaking down that barrier." Couple more mediocre/bad programmers.
- silentbicycle 18y agoEverybody starts somewhere.
- gravitycop 18y agoProblem: lump-sum up-front car-insurance that fails to take into account how much customer drives, and other risks. Potential solution: Car insurance by the minute/mile with instant-update rates based on: * steering and pedal input * time-of-day/day-of-week * location * speed * acceleration data It's a $200 billion market (US only). http://www.ohioinsurance.org/factbook/2006/chapter1/chapter1_f.asp http://www.ohioinsurance.org/factbook/2006/chapter1/chapter1... With payment by the minute/mile, customers would instantly be rewarded for driving less, driving more-safely, and driving in safer conditions. Ceteris peribus, insurers would have lower claims costs, and drivers would have lower insurance costs. Everyone wins. No one loses.
- vyrotek 18y agoI believe http://inthinc.com/ http://inthinc.com/ and http://tiwi.com/ http://tiwi.com/ are trying to do just that :)
- gravitycop 18y agoTiwi is an insurance company? Is Inthinc an insurance company?
- vyrotek 18y agoNo but they are working with existing insurance companies to do exactly what you described. I'm not sure if its written out anywhere on their site or not. A coworker does contract work for them and told me about it.
- johngunderman 18y agoThe issue with this is common with all insurance. As we approach perfect information, the price becomes such that it is equal or greater than the value of any accident that may occur, which defeats the purpose of insurance. In my mind, the solution is to abandon traditional insurance and instead create a tax-free holding account where people can put aside money for critical accidents only. All else should come out of pocket. Of course, you do have a good point about your idea improving driver safety.
- notyouravgjoel 18y agoOnce you've identified what the exact problem, the solution is often obvious. And, since this IS a tech startup website, I cant imagine people who have possible solutions giving them away here.
- inerte 18y agoSome things are obvious but not doable by just one, or even ten, people :) For example, lately I've been thinking that a good solution for problems in Africa is to make possible to profit there. Just that. Companies will come, flourish, jobs will appear, health will improve, etc, etc... How do you enable business in Africa to be more profitable? First, you need law (a stable and predictable set of rules to operate), and then education. Wish I could dethrone the dictators there and stablish schools and colleges, but it's not going to happen. I am not claiming my solution is the best one, or that even it is original. But we do know the problem, now how work on the solutions...
- sachinag 18y agoReally? No world peace? No world hunger (where dwarf wheat has saved literally millions of lives: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug)? How about happiness? Comfort? Love?
- Shamiq 18y agoHard to quantify, hard to approach.
- blogimus 18y agopeace, hunger, education, heath, democracy (in basically that order). Enabling peace and reducing hunger are essential foundations for a more enlightened existence. With enlightenment, one is empowered to improve health, through all the avenues this implies (the environment, eating habits, exercise, lifestyle choices, and not necessarily in that order). With good health and even when of modest means, one can chose and (if sound mind), focus on developing and improving democracy, which helps everyone, even the very elite, because as the poor do better in a sustainable way, everyone else will benefit too.
- tdavis 18y agoAbstract concepts like happiness, comfort and love aren't really problems. By creating some sort of device which provides these things you are essentially eliminating their meaning in the process. How could you truly appreciate them if they were simply handed to you? Everybody wants happiness, comfort and love. We want them so badly that we spend our whole lives trying to acquire and keep them. When you start handing them out, why then do we live?
- paraschopra 18y agoEliminate Illiteracy completely!
- jwilliams 18y agoThis is an interesting question, because it seems so basic, but actually takes some thought. I think enabling cheap, sustainable energy would a good problem to solve.
- CaptainMorgan 18y agoThe rising cost of education. I've yet to receive a response from my institution or others that I've considered, of why it is they keep raising their fees, tuitions, etc.., especially in a recessed economy. It seems to me to be counterproductive - folks are losing their jobs, therefore losing their finances, and now possibly finding out that they need more training or they need to enter a new field, thus requiring education. Yet considering these financial difficulties, institutions continue to raise their fees with hopeless abandon. I asked multiple departments in my university about this and essentially they diverted my call or in-person conversation to some other department, or they said it was a political matter and basically being a lowly student, there's no way I could get a meeting with those that approve these raises, without my belonging to some student body committee protesting these rates... and then we're only supposed to be there for four years anyways as undergrads so it could take more than that to see any preferred and immediate result. I suppose this is where financial aid comes into play, but even so depending on your application factors, the fees still rise, so that could possibly mean that you'll owe more money when you get out or you need to be approved for more grants that don't need to be paid back which implies more scrutiny in your application. meh, I'm fed up with this subject.. any thoughts?
- tokenadult 18y agoThird-party payment is indeed the main reason nominal cost for education (I might say "degree-granting") rises without notable improvements in quality. In most of private industry in which customers pay for their own consumption, quality goes up over time at constant price, or price drops at constant quality, or you even get better quality at lower price over time. But not in education. Few people pay much directly out of their own pockets for the education they consume. See http://learninfreedom.org/school_state.html http://learninfreedom.org/school_state.html for some reading matter on this issue.
- rokhayakebe 18y agoMove to France or Germany. They hacked Education to the point where it is free, and in some cases you will get money for books,etc...
- 18y ago
- tokenadult 18y agoI'd like to see several huge improvements in Gmail's interface, for example more convenience in building contact groups with emails that have just come in (and thus aren't individually in my contact list at all).
- damienkatz 18y agoWifi debugging tool. Something that can tell me why the hell my signal drops 30 seconds every 10 minutes, etc.
- tomjen 18y agoI read that as wife debugging tool. Might be more useful.
- wlievens 18y agoIt's called a whip. Hurr hurr
- bk 18y agoCould be channel switching from interference from a nearby similar device. You can set your router to stick to one channel and this should stop.
- tocomment 18y agoI've noticed that too. Changing the channel helped somewhat. I figured it was some weird interference going on; portable phone, leaky microwave?
- ojbyrne 18y agoAfter the TED thread and watching a few inspired presentations there, I'm thinking "Kill PowerPoint."
- rokhayakebe 18y agoA web based programming IDE.
- wlievens 18y agoSeriously? I can't see much of a use beyond collaboration, and even that isn't a really open problem with proper version control.
- cx01 18y agoThis could be great for beginners; they could start coding without having to install anything. Maybe add some collaboration features to make it usable in school, e.g. students can send their code to the teacher for review by the press of a button.
- RossM 18y agoI nearly started a project like this but decided that it wouldn't be worth it - how many developers would be programming on anything except their rig?
- rs 18y agoDoesn't something like AppJet solve this ? http://appjet.com/ http://appjet.com/
- hrabago 18y agoDoesn't heroku solve this problem already?
- vaksel 18y agoLonger lifetime...200-300 years. There is just too much to do and time flies way too fast. One minute you are a 20 year old college student, the next minute you are 40 years old, running out the clock.
- ieatpaste 18y agohttp://www.methuselahfoundation.org/ http://www.methuselahfoundation.org/ has helped provide monetary incentive for longevity research. So far they have increased the lifespan of mice by 20%
- lliiffee 18y agoThe videos by Aubrey de Gray are absolutely fascinating. His solutions are (by design) risky and quite possibly will fail. However, the background he gives on problems is wonderful. This one, on cancer, mostly had the effect of convincing me that we aren't going to cure cancer any time soon. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROfCNrBv_00 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROfCNrBv_00
- bkrausz 18y agoBut is this of any use if we continue to deteriorate and need to spend more and more of our time one treating more and more aches and pains?
- oakmac 18y agoWhy only 200-300 years? Either go for the gold (live forever) or accept your mortality.
- lionhearted 18y agoI did some research into living forever at one point. Basically, three things kill us: Disease, old age, and trauma. Disease seems beatable. Reversing old age is going to be trickier, especially as things we don't expect to fail start failing after we prolong our vitals for longer. But these both should be doable. The real killer is trauma. I scubadive. Given forever, eventually I'm going to something stupid underwater and that'd be the end of me. The 200-300 years seems like a good place to start. It'd involve preventing or treating fatal diseases and finding ways to keep especially your vital organs running. I started spending more time in the gym and eating a bit better after my research.
- ddemchuk 18y agoUniversal language...there's no reason why people speak different languages anymore, they only create barriers now. In our newly technologically connected world, our languages we speak should not be getting in our way anymore...
- oakmac 18y agoEliminating languages would be devastating to culture. How about a software solution for translation that works perfectly?
- ddemchuk 18y agoSome would say that the amount of internationalization of the world has also devastated most cultures. Different dialects emerged because of regional isolation amongst different groups throughout times of historical growth. As the world is no longer isolated from each other any more, the need to persist those independent languages has lessened to the point where distinctly different dialects (alliteration?) only hamper communication. While a tool to instantly translate a conversation while two people speak would be amazing, it would have the same effect as having a universal language in my opinion.
- cx01 18y agoI think it's rather probable that speakers of different languages think different. So a unified language might lead to (more) unified thinking. I'm not sure if that would be a good or bad thing.
- DanielBMarkham 18y agoI believe that's called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_hypothesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_hypothesis), which I generally agree with. A universal language would change the way people think about stuff -- it's a very interesting thought experiment.
- zack 18y ago
- statictype 18y agoP=NP
- jdrock 18y agoQFT.
- wastedbrains 18y agoJust a small problem on macs, when I switch from single monitor to dual and visa versa I want the previous state restored. I want it to store the state of the windows and restore as many as it can from the last state... It would be great to keep all my terminals in the same location.
- trefn 18y agoI just started using an external monitor with my mac and I am irritated by the same thing. I've found a crappy semi-solution: If you're not going to be using the windows you have open on the external monitor you can minimize them before you unplug it. If you open them later when you're plugged in again they will pop up where they were before.
- wastedbrains 18y agoawesome... not a great solution, but this will definitely help. Thanks for the tip.
- liangzan 18y agoI'd like some company to do comprehensive and objective product comparison and evaluations based on a requirement list. Been spending lots of time doing such evaluations. I'd rather outsource it
- markessien 18y agoProper speech recognition, speech synthesis and object location and identification.
- RossM 18y agoA well worked natural language processor tied into this would work wonders. "Computer, call Home..."
- steveplace 18y agoI'm afraid I can't do that, Ross.
- decadentcactus 18y agoBreak the speed of light barrier. If it's not possible, then at least average out our speed to be faster (like the bending the universe sort of method). Even 1.1c would mean we wouldn't really know the limit, and would shrink the universe within reach.
- ggrot 18y agoEnd all fraud. The online version of this is, Spam, Phishing, Spyware, identity theft, etc. Offline: con artists, political bribery, tax evasion, ponzi schemes. I don't believe eliminating all crime is possible, as I can always whack my neighbor over the head with a stick and steal his wallet, but alot of crimes are only possible because the victim has a lack of good information. This is fraud. Eliminate or drastically reduce all fraud.
- oakmac 18y agoIn order to eliminate fraud of this kind you would have to change fundamental human emotions.
- alexandros 18y agoCrime helps point out design flaws (case in point: Email) and can be therefore be thought as a force fostering or even forcing innovation. Not defending crime, just pointing out that eliminationg crime is not a pure win-win situation.
- harpastum 18y agoWhy wouldn't it be a pure win-win? I see no way that we could 'magically' eliminate fraud, so getting rid of or reducing fraud would simply be the result of the "forced innovation" you're talking about. Disease forces innovation as well. The eradication of polio in much of the world is not a lost chance for innovation--it is a success story.
- albahk 18y agoSomething I thought of when I was studying engineering at Uni (I dropped out) was to fit a small device onto the accelerator cable of a car that can apply varying degrees of tension to the pedal. This device would be moderated by the computer in the car to "condition" the driver to adopt a more fuel-efficient driving style. If you drive in a non-fuel efficient manner, there would be more "drag" on the pedal, thus requiring slightly more effort. The "sweet spot" of minimal drag/tension would encourage drivers to maintain a driving style which is the most fuel-efficient speed/acceleration. This idea depends upon the ability to condition people over time in an almost subconscious manner. Not sure if it would work or not.
- Hexstream 18y agoMaybe people would just develop huge leg muscles on the right leg and then wouldn't notice the drag anymore.
- ejs 18y agoThis is being implemented, http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/News/articleId=130108 http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/News/articleId=130108 From the article: The [Nissan] Eco Pedal is designed to provide a "counter push-back control mechanism" if it senses "excess pressure" on the accelerator. In other words, it does not like lead foots. The premise of this new technology, which Nissan says is a "world first," is to help the driver get an immediate sense that he or she "could be using more fuel than required."
- albahk 18y agoIts good to see these kind of improvements make it through to production cars. Personally, I would be more aware of my fuel efficiency while driving if I had instant feedback. I suppose this is the constant guilt factor.
- ggrot 18y agoConvenient travel. Let me or at least my goods travel from any point to any other point with low overhead (<10 mins) at a speed of 100 mph or higher. And let me do so on demand without advance planning.
- mnemonicsloth 18y agoThis problem has been solved. Implementation is due Real Soon Now. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A2960633 http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A2960633
- ggrot 18y agoA solution between owning and renting. I don't want to purchase a home because the cost is too high and I have no interest in being "invested" into the real estate market. However, renting has limitations imposed by the owner: - pet/smoking/# residents preferences - can't realistically make significant improvements to the property
- oakmac 18y agoAre you suggesting that you want to have your cake and eat it too? Who's going to take the risk for the rewards you want?
- axod 18y agoIn the UK, (I don't know if such things exist elsewhere, I'd guess they do), you can go for shared ownership, Buy half the house, rent the other half, things like that.
- imgabe 18y agoCondo ownership or a co-op are in the middle, with varying degrees of trade-offs on the freedom/responsibility line.
- enomar 18y agoI'd rather make the system of home buying more efficient. I want to own my home, but I want the act of moving from home to home to be as easy as moving from apartment to apartment.
- axod 18y agoMoores law applied to Batteries.
- mnemonicsloth 18y agoWe already have that, but probably not in the way you mean. Lithium Ion batteries -- the current king of the hill -- are pretty much the same today as when they first came into use in the 1970s. We've been seeing longer lifetimes and shorter charge times because device manufacturers can afford to throw in more hardware to control discharging and recharging.
- huherto 18y ago"We already have that, but probably not in the way you mean." Please explain
- axod 18y agoI think he's saying we're already making massive advances in how to use batteries more efficiently. What's missing seems to be advances in making batteries actually store more energy. If I were a conspiracy nut, I'd suggest that perhaps companies have made massive advances in Batteries, but they would make far less money from them, so have hidden them in an underground lair.
- oakmac 18y agoI would like to see a digg/reddit/HN site where in order to post, vote, or comment your IQ must be greater than 3 standard deviations from the mean (ie: Mensa).
- yan 18y agoI see that sort of site just turning into a mutual-masturbation forum with people continuously trying to justify their intelligence and not discussing anything worthwhile.
- oakmac 18y agoI can't know this for sure, but I would hope those sorts of comments/attitudes would be voted down. A modification on the idea would be to only allow a site with people who have a net worth greater than a certain amount or who are in certain positions of responsibility or power (like CEOs of companies with a market cap greater than 10 million). You could extend this for any classification system: people with doctorate degrees, people with X many years of experience in Y field, etc. Basically I would be interested to see what sort of news and discussions would evolve from a meritocracy-based community. Think of the benefit that comes from the TED speaker's community.
- yan 18y agoWhat your advocating is exactly the opposite of the beautiful community that TED promotes and nurtures. Advocating an IQ or net worth barrier of entry for discussion will filter discussion by, in my opinion, by all the wrong values. While I'm not saying everyone in a top position of a profitable company has nothing new to say, there are people who are just hard-working, potentially well-connected and knew how to hack the system for financial gain. Would heiresses and lottery winners be excluded? Where would one draw the line? Ditto for math degrees, would you care what a Chemistry PhD trying to create better ways for oil companies to make money has to say? Who would decide what fields are "worthy"? Is sociology okay? Is botology? Is computer science? In my opinion, what made TED great is their dependence on the ideas themselves, and not credentials, to present to the world. The mix of people from all walks of life, from rural African villages, to dancers, to PhDs, to poets, to interns, to Nobel winners, to musicians, to Presidents (I can go on and on) is what made TED so great. Academic conferences existed before and will exist after, but very few will have the wide appeal and poignancy of TED. Hoping that my comment above gets voted down is exactly the type of community I'm afraid of. What about my comment or attitude would you hope to have less of? Is being afraid of a community where potentially empty credentials (IQ, family, race, etc) are valued over ideas really so wrong?
- oakmac 18y agoHere are a few Linux-specific wants: > an intuitive UI for configuring everything in xorg.conf > an intuitive UI for everything involving mounting, fstab, mdadm (raid), network shares, etc > improve the awk, cairo-bar interfaces to be on par with RocketDock > a more intuitive PulseAudio interface that controls everything relating to sound (including OSS and older)
- Shadow84 18y agoIf you approach problems on a big scale I definitely would suggest solve the problem of developing nations and their misery. I know actually it is a whole bunch of problems but I think that there is a solution which could be successful in the long-run: Educating people. Let them know what is possible and how to achieve things. Help the people, e.g. in Africa, to keep up with the world and especially also their elite which at the moment often is dominating them because they don't know better. The OLPC project took a shot at this but besides creating net-books it wasn't too successful, to summarize, the OLPC project was ambitious but rubbish ;-) I don't know yet how to solve the problem of educating people ion those countries, especially when it comes to basic things like literacy and/or math but I definitely think it would be worth quite a lot of effort and also be a business opportunity because of scale (if not now maybe also in the long-run).
- hrabago 18y agoI come from a developing country where most people are fairly educated. Education is nowhere near enough. Opportunity is needed as well for some economic growth. Honesty in government is needed to encourage and support growth. In some cases, behavioral issues that are detrimental to a nation's progress is so embedded in the people that an entire change in generation is needed, otherwise the people who start climbing the ropes of success will deter others.
- ible 18y agoLying politicians. I want all video of politicians to come with live fact checking, comparison against previous statements, and colour coding of statements for truth values. The comedy shows do it a bit, like The Daily Show's penchant for having pols debate themselves, but I want it everywhere all the time, so every time they lie, they get called on it.
- pclark 18y agoBetter courier services that let me know when my item will be delivered within ~1hr
- Tichy 18y agoThat certainly seems doable with todays technology, but how many people need it?
- rsheridan6 18y agoIt would be nice to know in advance not to be sitting in my underwear when the UPS guy knocks on the door.
- Tichy 18y agoI live on the fifth floor, so I have enough time to dress when the door bell rings ;-)
- DanielBMarkham 18y agoAn addictive game that teaches basic economic principals.
- corentin 18y agoA few years ago there were games such as Rollercoaster Tycoon and the like (see http://mises.org/article.aspx?control=772 http://mises.org/article.aspx?control=772 )
- RossM 18y agoSave mobile barcodes: http://www.alleyinsider.com/2009/1/are-mobile-barcodes-toast http://www.alleyinsider.com/2009/1/are-mobile-barcodes-toast Might be something to step in on.
- rsheridan6 18y ago- Internet advertising that doesn't suck. Adwords doesn't count. This would make it easier to monetize websites. - Micropayments. - Cheap, accurate simulation of protein folding and other biological systems. This would be a step towards greater control of our bodies and easier, more powerful development of medical treatments. - Affordable whole genome (and other ome) sequencing, with the result that there's lots of data freely available about people's omes cross-referenced to various facts about them (such as height, blood pressure, diseases, etc). Anybody with a computer could then be a scientist, trying to figure out what it all means.
- zitterbewegung 18y agoI would like to see myself solve P ? NP.
- rs 18y agoMaking long-distance plane travel shorter at a reasonable rate Long version: I live in London and home is in Malaysia, which is 13 hour flight. I would really really love an airline that can make that journey down to (about half) 6-8 hours at a reasonable rate. At the moment, flights might be somewhere between £700-£800 return - I wouldn't really mind forking out £300 more just to fly there in less time.
- lbrandy 18y agoThe Riemann Hypothesis
- brl 18y agoIt's probably true. http://i39.tinypic.com/k2n8n.jpg http://i39.tinypic.com/k2n8n.jpg
- rman666 18y agoYou silly people. Emacs has fixes for most of these problems built in since v22.
- rman666 18y agoNo one thinks the above is funny or worthy of upmodding? I think it's hilarious ... but I wrote it.
- tjr 18y agoI seem to collect a number of, e.g., Visa gift cards that end up with just a dollar or two left on them. I would like a service that lets me use multiple cards to pay for a single online purchase. Some online stores let you enter multiple payment methods, but (in my experience) most do not. Ideally, this would be some sort of temporary credit card number that serves as an alias to one or more gift cards, drawing from them as needed, and automatically ignoring cards once their balance reaches $0.
- indiejade 18y agoElimination of Realtors as a profession! Real estate is something of an amateur gig where the "transaction costs" have been ridiculously inflated through obfuscation http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/nar.htm http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/nar.htm
- indiejade 18y agoFrom the Antitrust Case: "M. “VOW” or “virtual office website” means a website, or feature of a website, operated by a Broker or for a Broker by another Person through which the Broker is capable of providing real estate brokerage services to consumers with whom the Broker has first established a Broker-consumer relationship (as defined by state law) where the consumer has the opportunity to search MLS data, subject to the Broker’s oversight, supervision, and accountability. N. “VOW Policy” means the “Policy governing use of MLS data in connection with Internet brokerage services offered by MLS Participants (‘Virtual Office Websites’),” adopted by NAR on or about May 17, 2003, and any amendments thereto." See also: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/28/business/28realty.html?_r=1&em&ex=1212120000&en=d24b1bd8549a7dd4&ei=5087%0A http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/28/business/28realty.html?_r=...
- oakmac 18y agoRealty's value as a profession is not completely without merit. Just because the true nature of the job has been obfuscated doesn't mean it should be eliminated.
- dmoney 18y agoThis may be several problems, but I believe they are connected: * Some people have to work more than they want to. * Some people have less work available than is required to meet their basic needs, even if they would want to work. * Some people would choose to do different work if available, or if money weren't a factor. * Or they would do the same work under different conditions.
- tocomment 18y agoRoom temperature superconductors
- tocomment 18y agoA Headless HTML rendering engine: http://www.holovaty.com/blog/archive/2008/05/02/0136 http://www.holovaty.com/blog/archive/2008/05/02/0136 So we can automate screen scraping of sites with a lot of javascript on headless servers, VPS's etc. It should be easy if I knew what I was doing (just remove the GUI part from Firefox, or webkit, no?)
- Allocator2008 18y agoP=NP is a problem I always wonder about. Can an answer that can be verified in polynomial time also be solved in polynomial time? I do think, modeled correctly, NP problems can become P problems, but that is the trick. How to model an NP problem so that it becomes a P problem? Or, if this cannot be done, then demonstrate a proof of that. Show exactly why an NP problem can never be modeled as a P problem. Maybe this will never be solved, but certainly worth thinking about.
- enomar 18y agoFix copyright and/or copyright for streaming radio... http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/webcasting.html http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/webcasting.html
- Flemlord 18y agoWorking AI--scalable and capable of getting smarter.