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

[neiman1]

Is there a task or activity that regularly causes you grief during your day-to-day (no matter how big or small)?

Post it here to potentially motivate someone to work on a solution!

Last thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29796099

[monster_group]

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.

[imglorp]

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.

[yucky]

Having worked on this the realization came that the problem isn't one that can be solved with software. There are a million solutions that in theory should work, if that were the case. The problem is a large percentage of people who work in the trades are flaky. This is not something that the SV crowd can understand. They don't want to be more efficient. They know their jobs can't ever be outsourced. They want to work when they want to work and to be at the bar or on their boat if weather permits.

[wara23arish]

Larry David’s new season of Curb Your Enthusiasm has an episode where he highlights exactly this problem and comes up with a way to fix it. He calls it House Husband where someone who knows a little about everything can come and check to see if the repair being offered is legit.

[bobwaycott]

So. Much. This.

I have spent the last year sorting a number of repairs that involved plumbing, drywall, paint, and trim to walls, floors, and ceilings to repair damage. In every case, I’ve had to ask for things to be done 2 or 3 times at a minimum just to get things done right and look the way they did before the damage occurred and the work began. Not once has the job ever been done correctly the first time I’m asked to take a look and sign off on completion. I feel I’ve only been able to leverage such refusal because I’ve been able to refuse to write a check (or asked my insurance company to do the same) until the work was right. I’m always told I’m wrong when I call attention to something, and I’ve even had to track down the original builder for records and materials to prove I was correct. And that’s excluding when the workers carelessly cause more damage by doing things wrong, making shitty cuts, doing poor work on drywall mud and corners, carelessly paint edges onto opposing surfaces with different colors, or, you know, split my granite countertop in two.

It is exhausting.

[bradlys]

So, I worked at a startup that specifically tried to work on this issue.

It ended up failing. You know why? People were cheap. They didn’t care at all about the quality of service until after the job was done and they paid bottom dollar.

People are incredibly price sensitive. If there’s a service that is 1% cheaper, they’ll go with that even if it causes 10x as many headaches. The reason? Money is obvious but luck isn’t.

It’s only when you get into business scale of stuff that do people care about quality. For most people - they’re shopping once a year for some handyman service. In those cases, they’ll do whatever they can to get the lowest promised rate upfront. This means they’ll go with untested folks as long as they’re cheap.

Truly, I think there is a way to have both cheap and good but it’s just not in the best interests of a capitalist. If you’re good, you raise your prices as high as possible. You don’t need to compete with shitty - you’re inherently better and thus feel you can charge more. Your clients will feel the same. But I think your clients aren’t likely typical homeowners in those cases. Maybe it’s commercial.

[boxed]

We are actually working on this! https://dryft.se but so far we're only in Stockholm, but expanding fast :)

[dagw]

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]

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.

[aliljet]

Couldn't agree more. Services like thumbtack and yelp seem to try to get you in the direction of good contractors, but the signal to noise is incredibly high. There seem to be very few reputational penalties for poor performance.

[colonelpopcorn]

Fixer is an attempt to get this kind of reliability together, I think.

https://fixer.com/

[neiman1]

That's a good one, the crux of the issue seems to be information asymmetry.

[trcarney]

Doesn't Angi.com solve this?

[greesil]

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 :)

[errcorrectcode]

Private schools. I went through a Challenger School in the US in the 80's, and that was pretty good. Specifically, they taught traditional phonics when California went to some ridiculous, untested nonsense (i.e., whole word method) because education academics have/had too much power to arbitrarily break education approaches and standards. Interestingly, the catchy "Hooked on Phonics" was a symptom of the widespread problem of the educational system failing students, not the students failing the system.

Climate change. Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). I frown on chemical and mechanical means because they can't scale inherently and would be very expensive. Farming oceanic life is likely the main answer to it, such as GM kelp or phytoplankton.

[monkeybutton]

Agreed. Also right wing extremism fueled and amplified by the internet. It's sort of technical problem, right?

[gopher157]

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.

[mdorazio]

Personally, I think inheritance is the ultimate expression of success = luck and should be capped hard with the remainder flowing back into support funds for things that help re-balance opportunities. However, most people I've brought this up with find the idea completely repulsive - the idea of "I want my kids to get the fruits of my labor" seems pretty ingrained.

[edanm]

The two big problems with this idea, IMO, are:

1. You're heavily disincentivizing people from doing their most to earn more money. Assuming you buy into capitalism in the first place (which I do), the result of this is generally worse for society. Less new inventions, less new medicines, less new technologies, etc.

2. The second problem is more philosophical, but... what right does society have to take away someone's property, which they presumably worked hard for? People often work hard to give to their children (hence point 1 above), what makes you think it's a legitimate use of the force of government to take everything from them? Most people think it's fairly unfair.

[loeg]

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]

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.

[ausbah]

100% estate tax, higher taxes on higher incomes and on established wealth, stronger funding for public utilities and institutions, etc.

these problems their solutions and nothing new, I think many people just don't want to pay more for "socialism"

[ahelwer]

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.

[disadvantage]

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!

[georgewsinger]

As of others have mentioned here, VR solves a lot of these problems. E.g.

> [VR], on the other hand, gives you the ability to move windows or even your entire workspace around at will, allowing you to change positions and achieve more ergonomic working stances throughout the day. You can even experiment with supine computing without purchasing any expensive desk setups.

VR computing also allows you to walk while computing (using an "AR mode" supported by passthrough front facing cameras).[1]

[1] https://simulavr.com/blog/why-vrcs-are-better-than-pcs-and-l...

[ahelwer]

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.

[f0e4c2f7]

Personally I've had good luck with the following:

-Herman Miller Aeron

-adjust height of chair so that feel are flat on the floor

-adjust desk so that keyboard is at elbow level and arms don't have to be raised

-raise monitors to put top 3rd at eye level

-scoot back and sit straight in the chair

I find if I check all these boxes I can work for 12 or 14 hours, stand up, and feel just as good as when I sat down.

[errcorrectcode]

Also, keyboards need to be split apart and attached to a chair like the DataHand keyboard (without the connecting board) of years ago. Typing on a single thing in front of you is asking for body wear and tear.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DataHand

[errcorrectcode]

Change positions.

Standing. Kneeling chairs. Posture ball chairs. Laying down (what's lower stress than this?).

[Trasmatta]

> I've tried standing desks, but never liked standing.

This is why adjustable standing desks are important. It's not good to be standing all day either. The best approach is changing your position between sitting and standing throughout the day, with frequent breaks.

[ollieglass]

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.

[amelius]

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.

[CodeGlitch]

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.

[jagger27]

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.

[barbarbar]

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.

[f0e4c2f7]

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

[mdorazio]

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.

[jacquesm]

Fix democracy without enabling something even worse, enable free speech without accidentally enabling fascism.

[Upgrayyed_U]

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.

[CommanderData]

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.

[pnut]

High quality, low latency, whole house, distributed wireless audio without a disposable speaker tech business model.

[conesus]

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.

[jagger27]

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]

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.

[vidoss]

Peloton for cooking. A self cleaning food processor/oven/cooktop equipment with meal kit delivery service and tons of recipe videos.

[justoreply]

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

[greenie_beans]

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.

[fis]

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