9 ms·
Ask HN: So, what is your problem?
We're all aware that if we're going to spend time building software, it should actually solve someones problem.
We also know that ideas are easy to come by, but solvable problems are harder.
So, what is your problem that needs solving? Either you'll get a response to something you didn't know existed that solves your problem, or someone might start working on a solution for it.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- philip1209 14y agoIs there a Twilio alternative where I can send SMS without controlling the number? I've seen some android apps that allow you to call from somebody else's number, but if I want to do it through SMS is there a suitable API? This is for a legitimate purpose - we would verify ownership first, but we want the person to continue using the number (e.g. their iPhone) without hinderance.
- OafTobark 14y agoProbably not worth solving, certainly not something I would solve myself but... I'm up late all the time working. True nightowl you could say. The earliest I'd go to bed is 6am. I sleep during the day and wake up around noon at the latest. I don't lack sleep, this schedule works for me. Point is, I'm up late and I'm sure there are others like me. I get hungry often. I don't cook. Few places if any are open. Those that do are unknown (what little and inccurately Yelp tries to cover with hours filtering) and certainly don't deliver. Broken solution, I'd like a list of all places open late, what they serve, and a way to get it delivered. I'd pay premium for it. I would task rabbit it or something but I don't know many rabbits working that late and certainly not a good enough resource to figure out what places are open. Not changing my sleep schedule either, f that.
- sgdesign 14y agoWhat does "I don't cook" mean? You don't like to cook? You don't know how to cook? You don't have the physical means of cooking? To me that sounds like the real problem to solve.
- OafTobark 14y agoI can cook some basic dishes, but I don't want to. I don't want to learn how to cook more stuff. I don't want to exert time or effort towards doing so, and the cost savings, etc... don't really matter to me. I've been eating out almost exclusively for the most part in the last 15 years. Might not be the healthiest or most ideal, but not really the issue I'm addressing here. My original point is I want a list of places open late, what they serve, and a way to get food delivered. I'd pay a premium for that. I'm sure other nightowls working late in the bay (anywhere too) would too even if they can cook, etc...
- peteforde 14y agoThe commenter will have to come to that conclusion on his/her own, if ever. You projecting your values on to them in a patronizing tone that doesn't answer his challenge is not a helpful contribution to the conversation.
- sgdesign 14y agoWow. I was going to write a reply, but then I realized your own comment is a perfect reply to itself!
- damian2000 14y agoIt sounds like that would be solved by some sort of 24 hr personal delivery service ... preferably local to you and on some form of cheap transport like a bike. Its been attempted at least once before ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kozmo.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kozmo.com
- usaar333 14y agoGiven how few places are open at, say, 1am, Yelp tends to work fine. Just use the 'open now' filter
- OafTobark 14y agoIt does not. I even specifically mentioned this in my OP. Yelp filters are busted because most of the hours posted on many establishments on Yelp are off basis in my experience. Some lack hours altogether.
- usaar333 14y agoSorry, missed that part. Out of curiosity, where do you live? AFAIK, Yelp's hours are user-submitted, so you might just be in a place with low yelp usage. I reside in their home city (SF), and I've rarely ever had issues with faulty hours. In your case, you might just need to hire someone to collect the data, since individually no one has enough incentive to do so.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- yummyfajitas 14y agoI pay $X for clothing (I haven't calculated it, but assume it's relatively average for a man who doesn't wear suites). I'll pay $2X if you can make me well dressed. Key point: I need to trust that your decisions are correct. What I want to pay for is not thinking about this and knowing that it's handled.
- jrkelly 14y agoBonobos does this already at about that price point. Just buy all your clothes from there and you will be good.
- cynicalkane 14y agoStyle consultants exist, but good ones seem to cost more than the price of a street clothes wardrobe (and even then there's no guarantee). I think style is too personal for a low-cost stranger to have an information advantage. As for shops that tend to have good looking clothes, those already exist. Unfortunately full packages must be built manually from modular components, and little progress has been made on systemic solutions to this problem.
- gabebw 14y agoTry Trunk Club: http://www.trunkclub.com/ http://www.trunkclub.com/ They do a brief interview with you over the phone, get your measurements, and send you a trunk of clothes every month. You only pay for what you keep. My friends have been very satisfied with that they've gotten.
- peteforde 14y agoI can't guarantee that it will work, but there are some really good sites and shows out there that exist to help guys like us learn to dress stylishly without breaking the bank or needing to learn a whole domain of stuff that we aren't terribly interested in. For example, I'm a big fan of Put This On: http://putthison.com/ http://putthison.com/ The blog is great, and the web series is really great. http://putthison.com/post/10287901291/put-this-on-season-one http://putthison.com/post/10287901291/put-this-on-season-one
- Kluny 14y ago
- peteforde 14y agoI have a major frustration with payment providers — even contemporary players like Stripe — that can't offer a 3rd party payments system. That is, anything resembling a "marketplace" where you sell things on behalf of someone else, take a cut and pass on the rest to the content creator requires the integrator to come up with a half-assed payout pipeline. This often results in sending cheques and/or making PayPal payments. My dream would be a product offering that offered pass-through payment processing, so my vendors have an account and give my store a key. Payments go directly to the vendor, and a pre-negotiated amount or percentage is automatically collected and sent to me. Both me and the vendor pay the same processing rate. I have several concepts I'd love to build and launch, but all of them fall down because I can't easily justify a 2x2.9% transaction fee.
- someone13 14y agoActually, you can do this with Stripe Connect [1]. The end-user signs up with a Stripe account, you get an OAuth key, and can make charges on their account. You can also collect fees on top of any payments [2]. [1]: https://stripe.com/docs/connect https://stripe.com/docs/connect [2]: https://stripe.com/docs/connect/collecting-fees https://stripe.com/docs/connect/collecting-fees
- peteforde 14y agoThank you so much! I don't know how I missed that.
- Breefield 14y agoHere you go :) http://balancedpayments.com http://balancedpayments.com
- peteforde 14y agoThanks for the link! I didn't specify that it would have to work outside of the US, which is my mistake. That said, I had no idea this existed and it's definitely on my radar now. Thank you again.
- bobrenjc93 14y agoI would like more users to register my side project (http://getmousetrack.com http://getmousetrack.com), but I can't seem to convert anyone who visits the project site. At this point, I think I would pay for some service that gives me honest feedback on my landing page and maybe suggest ways to improve conversion rates.
- peteforde 14y agohttp://www.feedbackarmy.com/ http://www.feedbackarmy.com/ "Simple, Cheap Usability Testing for Your Website. Start a usability test for your site in two minutes. Submit questions about your site and receive 10 responses from our reviewers. The cost is $20." I know folks that have used them, and loved it.
- sgdesign 14y agoThere are already a lot of services that do exactly that. I remember one that was pretty addictive where you'd give feedback on other people's sites in exchange for points that you could use to get feedback on your own. But some quick googling should turn up a lot of similar sites. And by the way, I don't want to be harsh, but you don't even tell visitors what your service does. How do you expect to convert anyone?
- milesokeefe 14y agoA few suggestions: 1. Increase the padding on nearly all the divs; the text is too close to the borders. 2. Remove the "Confirm Password" field. IMO the risk that the few people who mistype their password will never return is worth making it easier for the rest. 3. The video could be shorter. You don't need the 4 second title before the video starts, and the simulation of the signup process takes too long and is boring to watch. Edit the video so that the text fields are filled in as quickly as the viewer can see them filled in, not as fast as it actually takes. 4. Consider adding a few bullet points outlining the benefits of being able to track users' mouse movements. 5. A unique icon would be nice. 6. Make the "Sign Up" button a unique color so that it stands out.
- Kluny 14y ago
- michaelochurch 14y agoThis isn't my problem, but some of my friends were talking about it: something like Kickstarter, but for consultants. The genius of Kickstarter is the "transactional" (in the database sense of the word, wherein a set of operations is packaged so that either all happen or none do) nature of the thing: either the money is raised, or not; and if not, it's all returned to pledgers. If the consultant gets enough pledges/work to cover the next N months (N = 8 to 12) then they get the money and can start out as consultants. If they don't, the money goes back and they continue with their day jobs. One of the problems with consulting is that it's really hard for most people, while employed, to line up enough work that they can become consultants in the first place. Most people will never get the chance, even if they have the talent, because they can't front the initial financial cost. This keeps a lot of people out of self-employment who would otherwise be a better fit for it. The Kickstarter-esque idea seems strong, but the biggest problem with this idea is that people who have serious ($150+ per hour) work to offer generally don't solicit on the Internet if they can help it. They prefer to source through word-of-mouth, which is pre-technological and broken and leads to that imbecilic situation where you have to be in to get in... but I don't make the rules. That's why I haven't pursued it. It's one of those startups that requires fixing people, and any startup that goes long on human nature is facing extremely bad odds.
- peteforde 14y agoNot everyone should be freelancers. (You used the term consultants, but my gut tells me that you mean freelancer, which is a different thing.) When I first started out as a freelancer, what I lacked was not ability but connections. Freelancers without a solid network of people who speak well of them will spend a disproportionate amount of time looking for engagements. That said, someone who wants to make this transition needs to save enough for perhaps 3-4 months of not having a salary. If they can't pull that together, there might be deeper reasons behind them sticking to a salaried position. It's not likely the availability of work, because right now there are so many more opportunities than there are capable applicants in tech, you'd have to be trying hard to not find opportunities. Factually, the problem with the idea you present (Kickstarter-esque capacity scheduling) is that every freelancer is different, there is no apples to apples comparison possible. Likewise, are you going to take every customer that is willing to pay you? I sure hope not. I recommend that you block off some time and read The Win Without Pitching Manifesto. It is free online and seriously worth your time if you plan to work as a freelancer. http://www.winwithoutpitching.com/manifesto?toc http://www.winwithoutpitching.com/manifesto?toc
- zainny 14y agoI'd love to have an easier way to get involved in some open source project for improving my skills, enhancing my CV, etc. My main challenge is being overwhelmed with information and I can't seem to find a good place to get started on any project.
- xcubic 14y agoThat makes 2 of us! ;)
- Garbage 14y agoI remember someone saying, "if you don't know where to start, search for '//TODO:' on Github." :)
- SatvikBeri 14y agoDo you have any sources that elaborate? I've actually spent several hours trying to figure out how to contribute to open source, and given up out of frustration.
- hanleybrand 14y ago"I'd love to have an easier way to get involved in some open source project for improving my skills, enhancing my CV, etc." Not to sound trite, but I don't think the reasons you enumerated for contributing to a project would give most people enough incentive to spend the energy figuring out how to contribute to most projects. Find the project that makes you go "yeah!" and you'll find it much easier to get acclimated to whatever it is, because you'll really want to understand how it works.
- jrkelly 14y agoEver since google killed sharing within google reader itself (they meshed it into Google+) there is no way for 1st tier content junkies (i.e. people who have a ton of RSS feeds) to share good reads with each other. Twitter has horrible S/N, no one is on Google+ and if they were it would have same problem as twitter. Sharing within Google Reader was perfect b/c the majority of people who used Reader were other content junkies. HN does this but only for 50 stories a day and isn't curated from content junkies with my shared interests.
- ojiikun 14y agoCheck out NewsBlur. 3/4 of the GReader junkies I know moved there. (including me)
- cperciva 14y agoI get lots of email from cron jobs. I probably spend 5-10 minutes every day clicking through them and making sure that there's nothing "odd" in them which needs my attention. I would love to have some software which reads my cronmail, figures out what's "normal", and warns me when something isn't normal.
- OafTobark 14y agoIs there no way for you to create filters to solve this right now? Or is it too complex the way the reporting comes out?
- bartonfink 14y agoI don't know the scope of Colin's cron problems, but filtering out mail in this case seems like a less preferable solution than simplifying the way cron does email to begin with. Filtering e-mail in this case is like putting your fingers in your ears when you walk by a loud stereo you've left on instead of just turning it off. As a developer, cron doesn't give me a lot of control over where e-mail is sent unless I jump through hoops to give myself that control. Ignoring the complexity of the reports, and the fact that filters like that don't easily scale across different recipients, the fact is that cron's e-mail capability is extremely coarse-grained. For every run of every job, the entire output is e-mailed out to the address specified in the crontab. This gets very unwieldy. I've had to write cron table entries with a blank mail recipient in the crontab itself, and handle the specific mailing cases in the job script. This sucks. I'm not sure I think the solution is something that reads cron-mail and automatically generates filters, but I would very much like it if cron supported e-mail lists based on return codes or something else like that.
- AdamGibbins 14y agoUse passive nagios alerts. Or something like Cronologger.
- orangethirty 14y agoThe focus on finding problems to fix is a bit shortsighted. Focus on building what is missing. Somehow, hackers seem to forget this important detail. A problem that is fixed is no longer a problem. But building something that was missing is now a tool used my many. Facebook does not fix a problem. It built something that was missing (a good social network). Google did not fix the search problem. Is built something that was missing (a better way to search back then). AirBnB does not fix a problem. It built something that was missing (a platform for temporary private housing rentals). Twitter did not fix the blogging problem. It built something that was missing (a way for people to communicate quickly without much friction). Look around. What is missing? Go build it.
- bruceboughton 14y agoAnything that is missing can be re-phrased as a problem to fix. e.g. It's really hard to keep up with what's going on in all my friends' lives It's hard to find stuff on the Internet if I don't know who hosts that information Hotels are too expensive for medium-length stays
- swalsh 14y agoI have an infiniti with a backup cam. When it rains, the thing is sometimes useless. I'd like a windshield wiper thing or equivalent solution for that camera.
- ganz 14y agoI have a poor sense of how I spend all my time, and that leads to sub-optimal decision making. I've been building a web app to easily track my time usage and display it as a historical calendar, and adding features to get the most insight out of reflecting on it (running stats, notes, etc.) The most recent handy feature was an xmpp chat bot interface for lowering the friction on adding data. The inspiration was the quote "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it", which jives with the observation that how one spent their time last month is a better predictor of their future than how they wish they would spend this month. People have a lot of inertia, but tend not to notice. I'd be especially interested in any tips about research on past-time perception.
- milesokeefe 14y agoI have a hard time getting myself to do things and stick to them. I want to bet against myself; to put down money that I will complete a task, so that the only way to get my money back is to finish what I start. For example, I want to teach myself machine learning but find it hard to concentrate and stick through an online program. I would go to this site, put down "$80" as a bet, "a certificate of completion email for "Machine Learning 101" from stanford.edu" as proof, and "December 30" as a deadline. The website then bills my credit card for $80, and only refunds that amount back if a moderator receives the certificate of completion email from stanford.edu, verifying that I did complete the task. If the website moderator doesn't get the proof by the deadline, I don't get my money back. The task could be anything, but the proof would have to be very difficult to fake, and would require some effort on the part of the website moderator to enforce. I would love to make this service/website myself, as it would help people and be profitable, the only issue is that /I/ want to use the service as well, and by its very nature someone else would have to run it for it to work for me.
- ganz 14y agoSomething kind of close is www.beeminder.com where you can pick a goal, keep track of your progress, and have an auto-forfeit sum of money. It doesn't have verification built in, but it's part way there.
- milesokeefe 14y agoThanks! From that site I found this[1], which appears to be the closest existing service. The only problems are: 1. Bad site design. 2. Focused on exercising. 3. You have to choose who the money goes to. This could easily be an excuse to not complete the task, as giving up results in someone else benefiting. 4. No third party that judges whether or not you completed the task. You have to find someone yourself (they recommend family members and friends). #4 is the biggest problem for me. The crux of the service is that you can't back out on a whim, so having a strict, default third party is essential. [1] http://www.stickk.com http://www.stickk.com
- amplitwist 14y agoI work on numerical simulations, where I deal with colossal arrays of floating point numbers on hundreds or thousands of nodes. I want tools that can help with the following: 1. Visualizing code. Rendering C++ and/or Fortran as LaTeX would be very helpful for lines of code like this, where I've spent too much time tracking down misplaced parens: k1(1,1)=-Im*(Omega_minus_n*(rho13(i,j)+conjg(rho12(i,j)))-Omega_plus_n*(rho12(i,j)+conjg(rho13(i,j))))+gamma1*(rho22(i,j)+rho33(i,j)) 2. A better way to debug and test mathematical programs. Debugging is extremely hard when you have thousands of processes doing calculations that aren't reproducible by hand, so it's very difficult or impossible to create test cases for subunits of the program. The only tests are Fermi calculations and comparison of the whole program's output with an analytical solution, which is often not possible, and is not useful for debugging. 3. A language with the following characteristics: - Within 10% of Intel/PGI Fortran on tight numerical loops - Array and distributed/concurrent syntax with lightweight threads and syntactical support for GASnet/MPI. - Parallel load balancing, preferably across nodes. A few of the algorithms I use are adaptive or have parts of the solution domain that require much more work than other parts, leading to situations where naive/maintainable MPI code leaves most processors idle. - Hindley-Milner type inference, typeclasses/typeclass-like features, operator overloading/syntax extension, and effortless interoperation with C/Fortran. An IDE with syntax rendering like Maple or Mathematica's would be a HUGE plus. I don't know why this doesn't exist for usably fast languages. - Supports an interactive mode with easy visualization The closest language I've seen is Cray's Chapel, but there are several things I don't like about it. Its imperative/oo design and lack of first class functions/tco are unacceptable, since the algorithms I use need to use the integer side of the machine as well as the floating point ones. Right now I use either Charm++ (http://charm.cs.uiuc.edu/ http://charm.cs.uiuc.edu/) with Intel's array syntax, or Fortran 2008 for some inherited code. C++ has non-ideal semantics for numerical code, and doing non-trivial algorithms in Fortran is still a nightmare, especially when using MPI, as communication code quickly becomes the main part of the program. Something like Sisal (http://sourceforge.net/projects/sisal/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/sisal/), if it was modernized and extended to distributed architectures, would be amazing. It used to beat typical Fortran by 20%. 4. I absolutely need to account for cache behavior, otherwise my simulations will take months to run instead of weeks. I would love anyone who wrote a practical tool that automatically tiled loops, since doing this manually turns code into an unmaintainable rat's nest very quickly, or wrote a library of skeletons for tiled loops and cache oblivious algorithms.
- callmeed 14y ago1. I want to finish my CS bachelors degree online from somewhere reputable 2. I want an "Uber for babysitters" (yes I know of sitter city and the like, not impressed) ... we are very last-minute and spontaneous so our regular sitters aren't always available. 3. I often want to try making new/different cocktails but I never have all the ingredients ... ("birchbox for cocktails"?) 4. I have a close female family member that is overweight/obese and on a trajectory to get worse. No one else in the family knows how to help or even approach the subject.