

Ask HN: What are the biggest problems you think need fixing?  - philco

Im tired of seeing "yet another ___ app" being thrown around.<p>What are the biggest problems you face? If you're not facing anything significant, what are the largest problems you see the world facing?
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jstanley
I'm really bad at parking my car. I'm not interested in getting a machine to
park it for me, but a simple and accurate guide/tutorial on how to park might
help.

I am a member of my university's programming team, but I never have the
motivation to practice. I am aware that practice is what is needed, but when I
get time for programming I always spend it on other projects, rather than
contest practice. I don't know how to solve this.

Init scripts are a right hassle. You could provide (or write a guide
explaining, if one already exists) a tool so that you can turn any program
that runs as a main loop into a daemon, with an init script. And with as few
dependencies as possible. For example, I could just put a shell script in
/etc/init.d/my-program that has

    
    
      #!/bin/sh
      run-magic-daemon $* "my-program --options"
    

which then deals with the arguments to the init script, and deals with
starting up and daemonising my-program. It should also deal with redirecting
stdout/stderr to a log file, writing a pid file for later usage, etc.

I often end up with hundreds of tabs open. Something to close the ones I used
least recently might help.

Buying domains is really annoying. Why can't I just type the domain and click
"buy" without the registrar trying to sell me other services, or the same name
on other TLDs, etc? Just a simple domain registrar for human beings (or a
decent guide to the pros and cons of existing domain registrars) would be very
helpful. If you end up starting a registrar, it may be easiest to do it as a
reseller rather than ponying up the ICANN fees.

Hope these provide some inspiration.

If you want to talk via email, you can find me at james@incoherency.co.uk

~~~
jaredsohn
>Buying domains is really annoying.

badger.com provides a really nice experience (albeit only for
.com/.org/.net/.info/.me). Get your first domain for only $5 if you use my
affiliate code (<http://www.badger.com/fivebucks>).

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mkjonesuk
A quick web prototyping tool with no dependencies above what the browser can
run (JS/CSS/HTML).

I'm stuck using HAML and Bootstrap to throw quick mock-ups together. It's
great and works fine but I have to load a pre-processor app (like PrePros or
Koala) and HAML can't include elements into templates like header like
headers/footers I have to copy/paste into every new template I'm putting
together.

I looked into Moustache and Hogan but neither of these offered what I'm after
and they were pretty difficult to set up.

I think the Mixture app will solve this when released but I've had issues
getting the beta to properly run and it looks pretty bulky for what I need.

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turbojerry
Sociopaths in positions of power. While serial killers get most of the
attention, socio-/psycho-paths in positions of power in societies cause huge
problems, wars, financial fraud leading to financial collapses etc etc. So the
task would be to identify them, quarantine them and then work out how to treat
them so they could be safely released back into society. If this is not done,
there is an extremely high possibility that one or more of them will be the
cause of a human created extinction event such as global thermonuclear
conflict.

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tmoertel
One of the biggest problems in modern society is that most people are
quantitatively illiterate and therefore poorly equipped to solve the problems
of modern society.

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piratebroadcast
I'm in a web developer course and I really really need to get my Ruby in
good/great shape. It is my first programming language and I am not getting it
as quickly as others in the class. I'm not hopeless, but I am not where I want
to be.

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atgm
I was looking at furniture the other day and it's really, really hard to
visualize where/how furniture will fit in a given room with just pictures
(which can vary based on lens used) and dimensions.

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gesman
\- Spam

\- Depression

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Reallynow
Access to clean water. Diarrhea.

~~~
turbojerry
Michael Pritchard: How to make filthy water drinkable

[https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=5784565&whence=ite...](https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=5784565&whence=item%3fid%3d5782824)

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djb_hackernews
public works projects, gridlock traffic, effective urban planning.

