HN Explorer

Ask YC/HN: What's a problem, any problem, you'd like to see someone solve?

74 points by Mystalic ↗ HN
Just name it -- something you want to see solved but hasn't been yet. Political, technology, scientific...anything.

I hope to spark a discussion like the original version of this topic - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=442571. More importantly, maybe someone will do something about your problem.

230 comments

[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 257 ms ] thread
Qz
A better way to communicate between cars -- honking a horn seems kind of stone age at this point.
danicgross
i was always in favor of having the thing that squirts liquid on to your windshield inverted out. supersoak rather then honk!
d4nt
I like it! Something that tells me exactly when it's ok to pull out would remove stress from my day and improve traffic flow.
ottbot
This is interesting, what sort of thing did you have in mind?

I think a horn is more about communicating between drivers, not cars, and seems like an good solution for this.. In the "hey, im here!" sense, rather than "hey, fuck you buddy!". It provides an alert and rough location that doesn't require much processing by the driver.

khafra
Here are some things that I've wanted to communicate to other drivers:

"You might want to check the air pressure in your right rear tire, it's riding dangerously low"

"Your left turn signal's been on for three miles"

"Your gas cap is off"

"The speed limit in this section of road is 45mph"

"Your coffee mug is on the rear bumper"

etc.

nopassrecover
Flashing headlights is a common indicator where I live for alerting someone to any of these problems.
clavalle
Yeah but then someone flashes their lights at me out of the blue and my thought is 'Oh, s*, what did I do wrong? What is wrong with the car? Is there a speed trap ahead?' etc etc until I can stop and check things out...and it turns out that they just accidentally bumped their brights lever. Kind of the equivalent of grunting instead of talking. Would be nice if there were some standard tone set for different common signals.
thegoleffect
Directional speakers could be cool for this purpose. Like the ones used in theme parks where only people in the spotlight can hear. Would be nice to say thanks to a polite driver as if they were next to you. But sadly this could be abused. Examples left up to reader.
Qz
That's exactly my problem with the car horn. You can honk at someone for any number of reasons, and it can be very hard to tell why someone is honking at you, or if you're even the person they're honking at to begin with.

But at the same time, any new method can't be too complicated, as it would just be an additional distraction and encourage worse driving.

Then again, people are already operating GPS and talking on cell phones while driving, so if something could be designed to be only marginally more complicated than a car horn, but substantially less complicated than a GPS, I think it would be a fantastic improvement.

polymath21
I agree. I'm actually doing research right now on creating an ad-hoc network out of all the cars on the road, with the ability to flood in certain directions to notify of impending dangers, such as sudden braking up ahead (possibly a crash). 93% of car accidents are attributed to human error, so I think communication is definitely key.
shmichael
Waze are doing something similar to that.
nopassrecover
Enabling abuse probably isn't wise while driving a car.
NathanielMc1
Some car manufacturers have released technology which allows a car to see when you are getting too close to a car in front of you, adjusting your speed accordingly.

I imagine that using this technology along with local area networks you could improve on the existing technology to enable coordinated lanes. I think it could be incredibly interesting if you were able to have a lane on highways which only allowed linked cars to enter - they are each communicating to each other; establishing the speed of cars, as a group, instead of individually.

As I understand it, traffic delays frequently occur because of the ripple effect of one driver slowing down. If ther was a way to coordinate all cars accordingly, I presume that speeds could actually be increased significantly.

gridspy
I read that Simulations show only 20% of cars need to have automated radar speed control to help make freeways free-flowing.

You just need to sprinkle smart cars liberally and everyone benefits.

vishaldpatel
Stone age technology is still good technology if it does the job well. In the USA / Canada, people seem to get angered / offended when someone honks at them, and similarly people often honk out of anger.

Having phone numbers on license plates comes to mind... so you can call people and tell them to get out of the way =)

Things work slightly differently in India: most of the time you tap lightly to tell people that you're bigger, faster, and approaching from behind, and that it is safer for them to change lanes and let you pass =)

imgabe
I noticed this in the Middle East too. The horn is used just to announce your presence so they know to look out for you. It's an interesting cultural quirk. It was also common to flash your lights when you're changing lanes on the highway to pass someone, which is considered rude in the US as well.
StarLite
I often wish I had a huge LED board on top of my car, so I could send messages to other drivers: * "Your allowed to drive 120km/h here, your doing 95!" * "The right lane is free you know!" (replace with left lane in rhd countries ;) )

etc...

dagobart
I'd like to have the same for my bicycle, y/telling something like "you're supposed to give me 1 meter, not 30 centimeters".
ajb
Yes, although I think enabling subtler degrees of 'body language' should be the goal. Anything more conscious risks distracting the drivers.
morphir
what about a massive foam finger?
thorax
You mean like a CB? Why not make those standard?
kellogs
Making the publishing of negative data as prestigious and scientifically rigorous as positive data.
maximilian
Make the publishing of anything scientific independent from Journals and freely available to anyone.
michael_dorfman
Isn't that Arxiv.org?
olalonde
Right, although Arxiv.org is so 1995.
natch
Do tenure committees and other such parts of the scientific establishment give publication on arxiv.org the same weight they give to publication in traditional scientific journals? They didn't used to -- has this changed?
kellogs
nope, it definitely hasn't.
tel
This bothered me for a while because I'm not sure what you mean. I can take it three ways.

1. Negative means data that contradicts the popular hypothesis. This is frequently reported very prestigiously, though sometimes care has to be taken depending on just how deeply held the refuted belief is.

2. Negative means data that is highly inconclusive. This data is often non-reported since people continue experiments until they have a story or just drop inquiry. It should still (in some cases) be reported along with the final, telling data but probably isn't.

3. Negative means data that supports already "known" beliefs. Totally "uninteresting" results which just serve to give us the tiniest greater justification to believe what we do. Rarely reported.

I can see (2) but mostly (3) being suitable targets, but you might have a different idea in mind for what negative data is. In the end it sounds like a need to make big advances in meta-analysis in order to have data reported against a more quantified context.

Global, public, and automatic meta-analysis of the state of scientific belief is a hard problem I would love to see solved.

kellogs
Oh, I meant #2, inconclusive results. I believe that this research is extremely valuable. Scientific contribution occurs not just by finding a story and some supporting data - another source of great contribution could be saving time of many researchers by saying "this is exactly what i did. this is why i did it. and look, nothing came up." another researcher can look at it and think about improving the methodology. if published, this search to get it right becomes a-lot-of-people mission instead of a one-phd-student venture to do all the mistakes that everyone else did, and then start doing things right.

and to echo the above comments - arxiv is not prestigious. you wouldn't write a job market paper or pride yourself in terms of 10 publications in arxiv rather than 2 publications in Nature. i havent thought about the 'how', but i am convinced that the prejudice against negative data has to disappear for this whole thing to work.

tel
I totally agree with supporting (2), it's actually something I'm interested in as a research topic. Like I mentioned, I think part of the difficulty is the non-generality of being able to summarize that sort of material. There are (orders of magnitude) more inconclusive results than telling ones.

Now the idea of being able to search a scientific question and somehow find a meta-analytical summary of all the inconclusive results ever reported would be flat magical. If the summaries were really useful it'd likely generate a large number of telling results almost automatically.

Of course, a resource like that is almost mythical sounding for today.

kellogs
Oh, nice. Is this research in the pipeline or are you incubating the idea for the future? I am also thinking about this as a research topic - independent summer study, to be more specific. I am hoping to give the matter some serious thought - why negative data is not considered valuable, what sorts of conditions would make it valuable, and how the framework of publishing should be, so that others can easily access, understand, and reason about the data. Are you interested in a subset of these? Do you know any resources on where to start thinking? I know there's the Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine, but I don't know of other efforts or perhaps societies/groups for this cause.
dnsworks
The broken last-mile solutions in the united states.
lionhearted
I'd like to see a way to get a non-government based passport for travel, where the organization issuing it does basic checks and certifies you're not a criminal and can take care of yourself. It's a bit of a catch-22, but if you could get enough places to start taking this sort of passport for entry, then soon most places would have to. This would be good for people who like to travel to interesting places that are dangerous to travel with their native country's passport, and for talented people with dysfunctional/oppressive governments.
rmc
Dual nationality? Try to get a passport for a neutral country like Ireland (all you need is one Irish grandparent)?

An NGO passport won't work easily. It's much much too easy to set up a NGO. It's much harder to set up a new country.

And if your government is doing things that make it hard for you to travel, then it's up to you to try to fix your government. :P

todd3834
A better way to meet co-founders. Almost like a dating website but instead of going on a date you work on an Open Source project together with someone who would be a good match.
aneesh
fsav and I built http://www.clusterify.com/ last year to target this very problem.

Unfortunately, neither of us is working on it anymore, and the site is no longer very active. But the code for the site is open-source, so feel free to launch your own clusterify and build a community around it!

ordinaryman
Corruption.

It is a huge problem in India, I wish it is solved using transparent processes, aided by software tools.

RTI (Right to Information) act helps in bringing out issues to an extent, but those who file RTIs get threatened or can even end up being killed..

http://www.google.co.in/search?q=RTI+activist+killed

Something like anonymous or proxy RTI filings can help and all the results should be cataloged.

Tichy
I would guess corruption mainly comes about because individuals can be in positions in power. Ie it is not a real democracy and the legal system is defunct? Just guessing, but if that is so, I don't think transparency would help. The bribes would probably never be entered into the computer database either.
ordinaryman
The problem with knowing if corruption occurred or not is access to information, which was not possible earlier.

With RTI, officials have to provide requested information within stipulated time frame or face actions - including suspension from service.

But, this is pull model. RTI application needs to be filed to get information.

Instead it should be push.

All Govt. expenses, the authorization details for those expenses (who made it) and the reasons for making those authorizations (details of tenders received and why one was favored over the other), should all be made public. So that it is easier to find foul play.

All this is related to corruption in Govt. expenditure.

Regarding bribes, usually applications/files submitted to Govt. offices do not move if bribes are pending. Now one can file for information on why some particular file has not moved and if that details given are not satisfactory, one can use it to file a complaint.

vishaldpatel
Do a search on what the Gujarat government has been upto in terms of both fighting corruption and streamlining government services.
dpcan
Keys. Why, in 2010, do I still have 10 metal keys in my pocket. Why?
wyclif
Because of legacy hardware. Getting loads of locks re-cored is expensive.
nopassrecover
There's probably thousands of undeveloped patents preventing innovation too. I have a naive idea of how to get around the legacy locks problem without re-coring but I'm sure patents would stop any development.
gridspy
Wow! Patents foster innovation again!

You'll get sued anyway, relevant patent or not. Just give it a shot if you can.

nopassrecover
Not sure why I was downvoted. A 2 minute search yields just these patents:

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7069755.html

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5701828.html

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5974367.html

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5999095.html

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6325429.html

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6867685.html

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6483424.html

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6609738.html

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5886644.html

tlb
I would happily pay a locksmith to replace locks. But there's no electronic system I've seen that didn't suck.
imgabe
I am down to two, but some are replaced with bulkier plastic fobs.
dagobart
maybe somebody could make some shape-shifting general purpose key, locked/jailed down to only take the shapes matching the locks in your possession. Would need some very small actuators -- I guess, it's doable.
tel
A catalogue of charities giving information about their goals and their financials. Help me to help others most efficiently with my money.
lotharbot
Something like http://www.charitynavigator.org/ ?

Lists charitable organizations, including their mission statements and financials, and rates them within their specific fields. (A financially healthy museum will look very different from a financially healthy feed-the-children program, which is why it rates by category.)

tel
Actually pretty damn close to perfect. I'd wish there was a better overview (multiple comparisons) so that I could begin to get a better understanding for their ratings and charity expense breakdowns, but the information is all there.

Thanks for the plug.

ippisl
Givewell does research on the effectivness of donations to non-profits , and recommends the best.
tel
Engaging lay science journalism that doesn't suck.
TrevorBurnham
What about The Economist's science section? Or do you mean something a bit more lowbrow, or with more multimedia?
Ixiaus
Disclaimer: most of these aren't anything new or earth shattering things that need to be solved.

I dislike having a gazillion different Instant Message accounts with contacts that "only use MSN" or "only use AIM". SMS messaging may be a rip-off but there is one thing it has achieved: uniformity.

Craigslist is great but it caters to the lowest common denominator - which can be frustrating.

bpick
Shameless self-promotion disclaimer I have taken baby steps in trying to build a more intelligent classified site at yourgrounds.com

I too feel your pain, and any feedback you have would obviously be incredibly worthwhile - especially if you want to help solve this specific problem.

lurkerperpetual
"Deprecate the base of Maslow's pyramid" Inventing cheap and healthy concentrated 'food' that would allow people to eat once a month or even more rarely. Almost all other problems have a root in our needing to eat (work and cars, pollution, corruption, fighting for social status and it's consequences). You'd have the autonomy and time to take long trips without needing to carry much.
andrew1
On the other hand, eating isn't just about consuming food. On the average day I probably spend more time talking face-to-face with people while I'm eating than I do for the entire rest of the day. And I doubt that that's unusual these days.
lurkerperpetual
That is a consequence of needing to eat, not that of needing to interact with others, and you do that because 'more important things' such as work prevents you from taking the time to talk. You could talk to those people face to face without eating as well. Nobody would prevent anyone from eating, but for those who would rather do something else it would be a very welcome invention.
andrew1
> 'Nobody would prevent anyone from eating'

That isn't really the point though. Whenever there is progress the majority of people stop doing the 'old' thing in favour of the 'new' thing. Hardly anyone in the first world makes their own clothes these days as our standard of living/price of clothing makes it easy not to, most young people wouldn't even consider making their own furniture, people don't hand-write letters. I'm not saying that these things are necessarily bad, just using them as examples of things 'nobody would prevent anyone from [doing]' which people don't (generally) do.

My team at work tends to go out and get our lunch together then sit in the kitchen and eat together. We probably talk more in that half an hour than we do the entire rest of the day. If we all took our magic food pill in the morning then that just wouldn't happen. No one would be stopping us doing it but we still wouldn't do it; it'd be far too easy to tell yourself that you're too busy to take that half hour break.

lurkerperpetual
Having the tech available would indeed not prevent anyone from using the old ways. I wonder why not answer this to all proposals in this topic as those problems being solved would make people stop doing stuff the old way.

Also you miss a huge point: with such magic pills there would be no team. You would not need cranking out software for industries that would go away entirely if the problem was solved or for niche domains that would also become irrelevant. Most of our problems and solutions we are looking for today are indirectly related to our need to live and thus eat. Name one problem outside the realm of metaphysics, arts, emotions and the like that is not solved if the food problem is solved.

andrew1
I don't understand what you mean. Even imagining a world where we didn't need any food at all; we'd still have teams of builders building the houses we live in, teams of teachers teaching our children, teams of bankers doing what it is they do with our money, teams of printers printing the newspapers we read, teams of IT workers at ISPs. How would any of those jobs become obsolete because of the fact that we wouldn't need to eat food?
lurkerperpetual
Imagine for a moment that you do not need food, then see how many of the services you currently use you can do without as a consequence. Bankers? Really? What to use money for when nobody is anymore threatened by hunger. Even today you have plenty of people doing volunteer work, any problem in a society where there's no competition for resources would make that the norm. I am very disappointed that the answers to this thread are given without much thought.
andrew1
There are hundreds of millions of people in the Western world who are not 'threatened by hunger', and yet the vast majority of those people still go to work every day, still use banks, still want to earn more money than they could ever need for food. You seem to imagine that if everyone had enough food then our economy would grind to a halt; that there would be no commerce anymore. I think this is unrealistic because people will still want 'things'. I might want a larger house to live in, I might dream of owning a Ferrari, you might want to learn to fly a helicopter, someone else might want a new refrigerator. The point is that there are luxuries, as well as necessities, which people will want; it's possible that in this magical hunger-free world people will produce these things and give them away for free, but it seems a lot more likely to me that these things will be available to buy, and that if you want to buy them you will have to go and do some work, to earn some money, to pay for them. And so yes, bankers, really. In a world where you have to pay for things, even if those things are not food, people will want a way to maintain the value of their money, at the very least so that when they're old they'll be able to heat their homes, repair their homes, buy new clothes to wear, afford transport and afford medical treatments.

I don't understand your disappointment with this thread, you're taking a line of argument which I find completely fanciful, and which I'm sure at least some others do, where you remove one factor from the world (hunger/the need to eat) and extrapolate to all the ills of the world being cured, with no logic in between.

lurkerperpetual
why would one need a new refrigerator??? Having hunger solved in the western world is vastly different from having it solved globally and even more different from not needing food at all. Not having plenty of food. Not needing food at all. I am disappointed by what seem very shortsighted, almost knee-jerk remarks which illustrate the poster did not think much about the problem. As if the logical next step after realizing you do not need to eat is to go and work some more in that saved time to have more money. Depressing :)
andrew1
I think we should stop this discussion. You don't seem to have any interest in discussing how this hypothetical society would actually work, only in nit-picking mostly irrelevant points (and in response: given that people would be free to eat if they wished, why should they not want refrigerators).

Thanks.

andrew1
> 'I wonder why not answer this to all proposals in this topic as those problems being solved would make people stop doing stuff the old way.'

It wouldn't be inappropriate to - it's always worth considering both the positive and negative consequences of progress.

nopassrecover
There's no science in this unfortunately - if you gave someone a month's worth of food in one meal then they are going to put on a month's worth of food in fat in one day and spend the next 29 days starving hungry, consequently slowing their metabolism and making them fatter.
lurkerperpetual
There are plenty of advances to be made for sure, there's not much science for it 'yet'. That is why I mentioned 'healty'. Not some super-food to get you through a short period of intense physical/mental/emotional effort, but something that does not wreck your metabolism and plays well with your organs' age-old habit to be useful and doing their thing. So it would definitely not be just some bunch of nutrients but nanobots too that get cooperate with and monitor your organism. It's probably very hard, but if solved, it would make most (all?) other problems mentioned in this thread be non-issues :)
tgandrews
What if something was to break down slowly over the period of a month - possibly sitting in the stomach? Providing the correct sustanance on any one given day.
nopassrecover
You're right, combining with a hunger inhibitor would be a great start.
InclinedPlane
This is a little silly. In the developed world food is remarkably cheap. Go into a grocery store and price a 5lb or 25lb bag of flour or rice, we're talking pennies per meal. It's incredibly inexpensive (less than a dollar a day) to feed oneself at a subsistence level, what is interesting is why so few people choose to do so, even when it would make economic sense.
lurkerperpetual
Sigh. It's not only and indeed not primarily about price. What about the effects on the environment of growing and transporting that rice? Also I sure would like to go on a hike in the mountains without needing to carry 25 Kg of food for a week. It is not silly, you are looking at it very conservatively.
d4nt
Solar powered 3D printers that use the carbon in CO2 to make stuff.
Kliment
That sounds crazy, but why not actually? Trees do it. CO2->O2+C where the C is used for say nanotube production sounds pretty awesome.
dagobart
...or, why not some kind of Lego (?) nano bricks that can easily be ordered/reordered?
scythe
Rechargeable batteries good enough to power a vehicle would be nice.
InclinedPlane
I think by definition we already have such. Perhaps you should increase the specificity of your desire.
khafra
How about a re-usable electricity storage method with a power density equal to or better than petroleum?
natch
Now we're talking.
quizbiz
cancer
Mz
Most cancers are probably viral:

We know that cervical cancer is related to the human pappiloma virus, thus the annual "pap smear" for women. Warts and fever blisters are both caused by virii and cause growths, similar to tumors. I can't think of any parasites, bacteria, or fungi which causes similar growths -- and I've tried. (Anyone who knows of something else which causes tumor-like growths, please speak up. This question is of serious interest to me. Cancer runs rampant in my family.) Molluscum contagiosum is a viral infection which causes growths on the skin similar to skin tags. The cause of skin tags is "unknown" (yet it seems logical to me it is some other virus) but they are described as "benign tumors".

Although conventional medicine seems to find viral infections extremely hard to combat, alternative treatment circles I hang out in find viral infections very easily treated and offer a number of different options for doing so. I believe that I and my sons have been killing off whatever virus or virii we carry which eventually could/would turn into a diagnosis of cancer. I get die-off rashes that include skin tags and brown and red spots of the sort which look like pre-cancerous lesions. My oldest son has a very keen sense of smell and has been around several family members who had cancer. He says he can smell it when we have cancer die-off. Given my experiences with him, I believe him.

I generally don't talk about this in public. My personal problem is that people tend to either call me "arrogant and egomaniacal" or "a liar, charlatan, and snake-oil salesman". "Arrogant and egomaniacal" is probably the better thing to be accused of as it suggests people think it can be done, just not by little ole me. "Liar, charlatan, and snake-oil salesman" suggests people think it can't be done at all, by anyone, regardless of the resources at their disposal, much less by little ole me and my limited resources. I don't believe any technology will solve my personal issue of being accused of such things. It's an issue of "the hundredth monkey" or "mindshare" or "groupthink"....something along those lines -- ie: No one else is able to do it, so you can't possibly be telling the truth. To quote an old TV show: "There's always a first."

sb
a) an open source software repository of all programming languages/operating system software implementations. (Note: http://catb.org/retro/ is a good start, but there needs to be more)

b) improving democracy by reasonable application of at least some of the technological advances of the last decade; why hasn't that happened yet?

olalonde
University Research 2.0. It seems like universities are so lateeee on adopting new technologies. Most of them are still working with printed scientific journals / email / static HTMLs + GIFs from the 90s. They still do a lot of stuff through the mail and the count goes on... If you don't trust me, just take a look at http://arxiv.org/ or MIT's website. I'm pretty sure there's room for amelioration! If anyone wants to brainstorm on the topic, feel free to contact me.
Dejen45
There's some progress, although research, and implementation/execution are two very different concepts.

http://futurity.org/

olalonde
Sounds more like a news aggregator than a social platform for scientific collaboration.
MLnick
Mendeley may not be exactly what you have in mind, but perhaps starting to take some steps in the direction of more collaboration / social approach to research (including a personalized recommendation engine): http://www.mendeley.com/
wyclif
Job search is very broken. Monster/Dice/Craigslist &c are broken. Not sexy, I know, but I imagine the people who solve that problem will become quite rich.
aidscholar
Isn't this covered by Indeed/Simplyhired?
owinebarger
The best opportunities aren't the ones being screened by HR. Most job postings look like someone got a description of the job from the manager, looked for the sentence fragments that could be classified as skills or experience, then put those in as the list of requirements.

LinkedIn is probably a closer approximation to what's needed, but as far as I can tell it's hard to get far out of your acquaintances with a basic account.

dabent
SimplyHired and Indeed are mostly aggregators of other boards. It's just a slick interface on a broken system.

I'd like to see something that's a little more direct, that gets me to HR/hiring managers with fewer people in the middle.

slater
i had an idea of semi-fixing that, or rather rerouting around the problem by shifting the job-finding and -posting from the HR dept. to the individual employees.

Let's say you're a web programmer living in City A, and commuting to City B, a commute of 2 hours. Unbeknown to you, there's a web programmer in City B, commuting to City A every day. My idea would be to put these two in touch with each other, and eventually facilitate a job switch. You basically swap jobs (assuming you're both of equal proficiency, and the higher-ups agree to it), and don't have to commute any more. Yay/Nay?

sidmitra
You know i really think the idea is really unique. It might be difficult/impractical in reality?

A job is not just a location, but a combination of lot of things like salary compensation, work culture. So it will be difficult for two people to agree on something like this. One would always think, that he's losing out on the deal. It might still work!, but maybe it's just a little too radical.

I was toying with a similar approach, but i think the social angle on job search is still missing. Eg. recommending jobs for your friends, voting on which companies are good to work for etc. There are a lot of small companies that don't get a lot of good talent, just cos they're not Google/Facebook.

I would love to get a chance to discuss, brainstorm with you on this, since i've been seriously thinking of jumping into job search with the hope of doing it right.

dwwoelfel
Cheap and thin electronic paper. I'm talking about e-paper as thin as regular paper and bound into notebooks. Then I can buy ~5 notebooks that each have to ability to display any e-book or text based file. I also need the ability to write in these notebooks so that I can store my notes electronically.
albahk
"De-manufacturing" instead of throwing away things. A company that sells you an item must take it back at the end of its life and break it down into constituent parts to be re-used/recycled. i.e. cars, phones, computers, fridge, house, office fitouts etc. Companies will seek to maximise profits and so make things that are easily re-used/re-sold.

An example of a product like this is the 1981 Jeep CJ-7 I had when I was young. I could swap in pieces from around 4 other models from a range of 15 years of production and they would work... nowadays the door panel from a 2009 BMW 323 won't fit a 2010 323, its ridiculous and leads to a lot of unnecessary waste.

InclinedPlane
I don't like this idea for several reasons but partly because it implies that no-one but manufacturers can actually "own" anything. In this model you are only renting a product while you use it. This seems fine and dandy to you because it means that you get to duck the responsibility of having to dispose of it properly, and instead you get to put that burden on some "evil", faceless mega-corporation. But if you go down this route you'll end up ceding far more of your rights of use to the manufacturer than you'd like.
albahk
Just to clarify my original point, I don't suggest the consumer is forced to return these products - merely that if I want to throw away my first generation iPod then Apple should be the one that can take it back and reuse or recycle it; after all they know exactly how it was made. I feel it's a real waste to throw such a highly engineered piece of technology into landfill.
ahoyhere
This is already the rule for lots of things, in lots of countries in Europe. Including computers, bottles (both plastic + glass are reused, rather than broken down + recycled), batteries, etc. All vendors are required to accept them (in the case of bottles, give you the refund), and they are then compensated by the govt.

Which means that when I order a beer delivery online, they come to my door with 3x 6-packs, and then take away the bottles from last time, for free, and I rest easy knowing that A) I didn't have to take out the trash, and B) I'm helping reduce waste.

Yay!

YuriNiyazov
1) ubiquitous public transport. 2) Safe bicycling in most cities. 3) Better treatment for chronic pain
tynman
It might not be much safer than regular bikes, but electric bicycles are great for expanding the non-car commuting range of the average suburbanite. I ride a scooter-style ebike that has enough cargo room for a few bags of groceries and looks more like a Vespa scooter than a 10-speed. The headlights, tail lights, and turn signals make me feel safer than my mountain bike. Of course, cars don't pay much attention to mopeds or motorcycles either, so it's probably just a psychological safety net.
krmmalik
I'd like to see someone solve the problem of (snail) mail. Its the one thing that is really preventing me from living a digital nomad lifestyle. I still have to visit my office at least once a week just to pick up mail, half of which is often junk and half of which im normally too late for.
Tichy
I think there are or used to be services that open and scan your mail for you and email you the scans.
olalonde
The real problem here is why does mail still have to exist?
dagobart
The Deutsche Post is just about to introduce email that's guaranteed to reach the addressee. https://www.onlinebrief.de/ That would invite everyone to use e-mail rather than snail, except for the (iirc) ¢20 price tag per mail.
rsaarelm
A practical, robust method for separating essential complexity from accidental complexity in software engineering.

Trevor Blackwell has written about something like this: http://tlb.org/busywork.html

abossy
It fascinates me that Trevor Blackwell has AdSense on his essays.
tlb
I make like $150 / month from it even though my traffic is small, which I think is pretty cool. Essays about how to build stuff get high-CPC ads for servo motors & robot kits & stuff.
silverlake
Thanks for the pointer. Basically, Trevor wants the distraction of low-level tweaking so he can think about the high-level problem. That's the weakest argument for low-level languages I've ever heard. But Python fits the bill: Python for high-level, C libs for performance and low-level tweaking.
rsaarelm
The big solution I was thinking of would have to go a bit further than Python/C. Basically you should be able to write a description of the actual essential functionality of a program without going into data structure and algorithm implementation that isn't relevant to the problem domain. Something like Prolog or Haskell here, Python isn't all that declarative compared to them. Then you could write the bits that need tweaking in a lower level language, but you should be able to automatically verify that the low-level implementation matches the high-level description, at least through extensive QuickCheck-style automated testing if a full automatic proof isn't feasible. You don't get anything like this with a Python/C style solution.
tlb
I've ended up with that style. The robot software is Python at the high level, C++ for low-level or OS-specific stuff. It runs fast and is easy to hack on
TrevorBurnham
The world is definitely in need of more programming tools in general that reduce cognitive load while keeping details accessible. Personally, I think that's going to come in the form of a programming language that's completely different from everything that's come before, something that's more than just lines of plain text. Perhaps something along the lines of StarLogo TNG, which lets you write games by fitting puzzle pieces together, but much more polished and general-purpose:

http://education.mit.edu/starlogo-tng/

adamtmca
Space elevator in my lifetime.