Ask HN: What product/service would you be willing to pay for? - dev_256
======
gwbas1c
A better way to hire software engineers, or to find a software engineering
job.

The problem, when I'm hiring, is that so much of the interviewing process is
about determining competence. When I'm job-seeking, a lot of my time is spent
determining the competence of the people in charge of the company.

In the medical field, doctors and hospitals are accredited. Thus the
interviewing process isn't really about a doctor proving his or her
competency, nor does a doctor have to worry about the hospital going bankrupt
three years after taking the job.

We really need a professional licensing process for software engineers and the
firms that hire us. Even though the tools we use change from year to year, the
fundamentals of software development change about as fast as the medical
field.

I haven't really come across any hiring firm or headhunter who is really good
at determining the competency of a software engineer or the legitimacy of a
business trying to hire. It doesn't matter who they are, they always boil down
to middle men trying to sell whatever goods they have on hand while making a
honest attempt to manage their reputation. They need the licensing process as
much as we do because they just don't have the background to determine
competence.

~~~
BjoernKW
There are several differences between the medical field and software
engineering, some of which are:

1\. The former is highly regulated because of potentially highly catastrophic
outcomes in most cases.

2\. The former also is several thousand years older than the latter.

~~~
gwbas1c
The modern medical field is not thousands of years old. It actually emulates
the air traffic control system when it comes to its internal regulations and
division of labor. This is how they keep out quacks who still believe in
bloodletting.

We could do a lot better if we got over our hubris and tried to learn from how
other more mature feilds run themselves.

With self-driving cars on the horizon, and with our entire communications
infrastructure defined by software, the potential for catastrophe in our
industry is greater than the medical industry.

~~~
BjoernKW
It’s not like nobody’s tried before. The term ’software engineering’ precisely
stems from the idea that software development should be more like other
engineering disciplines.

That those attempts didn’t work out probably has less to do with developer
hubris but with software engineering indeed being different from other
engineering disciplines.

After all, we don’t think of medicine in terms of ‘medical engineering’ or
‘human bio-system maintenance’ either, simply because it’s something else.

Besides, certificates are rampant in the IT industry. Most of those however
tend to say very little about the actual skills of the ones certified.

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greaseball
I'd love to see a SAAS product for watching sports. Similar to Netflix in
terms of UI and pricing, but also with the support for live content. I know
this probably won't happen any time soon since major US telecom providers have
exclusive broadcasting rights to major sports games.

~~~
jlgosse
DAZN is making moves in Canada + a handful of other locations

~~~
greaseball
This looks promising. Although, it seems they only offer NFL, soccer, and
tennis coverage currently. Hopefully some day they'll add NHL and NBA games as
well.

------
weego
Potential spoiler: most people will not actually pay for something they say
they will pay for when asked for an off-the-cuff idea

~~~
enraged_camel
Seems to especially be the case on HN. Whenever someone releases something,
common responses are “oh this is like X but actually worse” or “I could do
this with 10 lines of code in my sleep”

~~~
scarface74
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect)

------
brndnmtthws
Pay someone a small fraction of my salary to show up at work and pretend to be
me.

~~~
sharemywin
Peter: "Is there any way that you could, sort of, just zonk me out so that,
like, I-I don't know that I'm at work... in here? Could I come home and think
that I've been fishing all day, or something?"

~~~
turc1656
One of the best comedies ever.

------
exDM69
A phone that will last for 10+ years. Easy change of battery, glass, display,
connectors, etc without specialist tools. Doesn't matter if it's a bit bigger
than a nice form factor phone, I'm just sick and tired of phones dying on me
and not being able to service them.

~~~
Klathmon
I'm convinced this is basically impossible currently.

Promising software updates alone for 10+ years is going to be a difficult
sell, even if you really intend to. And it's going to cost a significant
amount of money.

And 10 years is a LONG time. 10 years ago android didn't exist, iOS had JUST
come out, basically every "smartphone" out there was called a "PDA" and used
windows mobile with a stylus. Even getting connectivity hardware that would
work on those timescales is starting to get hard.

And let's be honest, the market would be extremely small. Most people _want_
the newest device every year, because hardware is still improving, new
features are added, form factors change, and styling is important. Trying to
sell a device which looks worse, costs more, is larger and has less features
to the general public just isn't going to work.

I get 5 years, but 10 seems to be really pushing it.

~~~
adrianN
My current laptop is nine years old. Phones are just smaller laptops without a
keyboard. I don't think there a fundamental engineering problems that need to
be solved before a smartphone could last as long as a laptop.

~~~
Klathmon
I wouldn't call it a "fundamental engineering problem", but over the past 10
years there have been some pretty insane strides in power consumption, size,
screen technology, and software that have made what we consider today to be
the "smartphone" possible.

The change in laptops hasn't gone a fraction as far as it has in cell phones
in the past decade. That might stop soon, but until it does getting a phone to
last 10 years is a pipe dream, unless you are okay with a severely out of date
device, which again, I don't think that 99% of the public will be.

And without customers, a company won't be able to support a phone for that
long, so you'd end up with a slow, expensive, dated looking, insecure device.

------
jacknews
I would pay (a little) for a purchasing/problem fullfilment agent.

An example: I have one of the new macbook pros, and it came with a "free" 3rd
party cheap-china usb C -> usb 3.0 hub. The problem (which I believe is quite
common) is that attaching it, disables wifi - I guess it's just crappy low end
chinese design and total lack of care for wireless compliance, etc.

So, I'd like to buy another hub that actually works without disabling my wifi.
I don't want to pay Apple prices. I don't want to spend a day reading between-
the-lines on aliexpress/ebay to ensure that it is genuinely compatible and
non-interfering with my macbook wifi. I'll pay a premium (but not too much)
for the best/best-value usb C hub for my purposes.

There are numerous examples of this kind of problem when buying products,
particularly electronics, of having to read the fine print to get particular
revisions that support some obscure use-case that I'm particularly interested
in, and it's a real drag to try and hunt the right combinations.

Another example: I got interested in mechanical keyboards. (I think) I'd like
a 68-key layout with rgb backlighting and gateron brown switches. Find one for
me.

------
eurticket
\+ A test or a person that tests and tracks my health and body nutrients or
lack thereof. Then designs a list of items or orders the food/vitamins that
have all the micro nutrients that a health body would require.

\+ Accurate food product reviews that test what is inside of the item and
reflect if the nutrition labels are correct.

~~~
atwebb
Labdoor for supermarket foods? Gotta keep them honest, as an app combine it
with price comparisons (where possible I know those DBs are hard).

------
sioux77
I live in apartment complex. I’d like to buy my own washer and dryer and be
able to rent out a place with water/dryer hookups and pay a monthly and usage
fees as to not use the gross common laundry machines. To my knowledge no such
service exists.

~~~
gwbas1c
When I lived in an apartment without laundry services, I found it was cheaper
to just pay a laundry service for pickup and drop-off at my front door. I paid
about $50 a month, when an in unit washer dryer would cost a lot more.

I also looked into a washer dryer unit that I could plug into my sink. They
are really common in Europe but not in the United States. The problem is that
American voltage is too low to run a dryer without a dedicated outlet.

With the way that batteries are going, you could probably make a dryer that
has a battery in it so it doesn't need a dedicated high voltage and high
amperage plug. Because all dryers need counterweights, the battery really
won't add weight to the dryer.

Without technology changes, you can still get an apartment washer dryer unit.
Most appliance store should be able to special order one for you. The problem
is that they will take all night to dry your clothing, because you are stuck
with the limited voltage and amperage that comes out of the standard American
wall outlet.

~~~
RhodesianHunter
It's not just the voltage / amperage. Even if you buy a really expensive over-
under that plugs into a 220 the lack of an output vent slows down drying
dramatically.

~~~
gwbas1c
Dryers are only vented in the United States. Most of the world uses condenser
dryers that don't require venting. They also use less energy.

~~~
RhodesianHunter
They also take significantly longer to dry your clothes.

------
therealmarv
a _good_ open source comment system which works with static websites which
let's me avoid vendor/one-point lock in.

~~~
jonas123
Take a look at
[https://github.com/gka/schnack](https://github.com/gka/schnack)
[https://posativ.org/isso/](https://posativ.org/isso/)
[https://github.com/adtac/commento](https://github.com/adtac/commento) :)

~~~
therealmarv
They all lack on one point. Schnack: Requires Github or Twitter account it
seems (not everybody who comments has a twitter account). Isso: In princible
ok too paranoia (strange icons, no Gravatar or any log in at all). Commento:
Does not know how to handle links in comments and no login system.

So they are all ok but far away from a Disqus alternative.

~~~
KajMagnus
There's also EffectiveDiscussions
([https://www.effectivediscussions.org](https://www.effectivediscussions.org)),
which doesn't have any of those drawbacks. It has email+password login, Gmail,
FB, GitHub. Open source, and hosted too, if you don't want to provision your
own server.

Demo: [https://www.kajmagnus.blog/new-embedded-
comments](https://www.kajmagnus.blog/new-embedded-comments)

It has improvements over Disqus and HackerNews:
[https://www.effectivediscussions.org/-32/how-hacker-news-
can...](https://www.effectivediscussions.org/-32/how-hacker-news-can-be-
improved-3-things). GitHub: [https://github.com/debiki/ed-
server](https://github.com/debiki/ed-server). (I'm developing it.)

------
maxxxxx
I would pay for a service that gives me constant 6% return on my money. Since
all financial advisors tell me that the stock market returns are muh higher
they should be all over this and make a lot of money.

~~~
philco
The good ones subscribe to Modern Portfolio Theory and don’t tell you stock
market returns are much higher than 6%. The bad ones try to sell high fee
advisory with a marketing ploy of getting you “alpha” (outsized returns). It’s
just a way to take 1-2% of your capital for doing nothing.

------
cagenut
I'd love to pay taxes for universal healthcare.

~~~
justincormack
The future is just not evenly distributed, try Europe.

~~~
GFischer
Or Uruguay here in South America, or New Zealand... You can actually emigrate
here very easily.

Maintaining an U.S. lifestyle OTOH is much more expensive, but healthcare is a
BIG plus.

And you WILL pay a lot of taxes - Healthcare-only taxes are 4.5 to 6% of your
gross income, and sometimes more on top of it. And then you have 22% VAT and
something like 30% of your salary if you're a software developer, and the
12.5% social security tax (all of those on your GROSS salary, and almost no
deductions)... prepare to get paid less than half your gross salary in hand.

------
cardplayer
There’s a better way to ask this question if you want Good responses. Just ask
for unsolved problems and listen or even better...go out and observe.

------
fiveFeet
An app/service which provides the location of one mobile phone to another
mobile phone. It should work across different manufacturers (iphone <->
blackberry), across different service providers (verizon <-> t-mobile).

~~~
ComputerGuru
I don’t like it, but WhatsApp does that.

~~~
fiveFeet
Good to know but it is a no go since WhatApp is ending support for BlackBerry
on Dec 31st, 2017. [https://blog.whatsapp.com/10000617/WhatsApp-support-for-
mobi...](https://blog.whatsapp.com/10000617/WhatsApp-support-for-mobile-
devices) . May be it is time for me to move away from Blackberry altogether.

------
lukego
Alert me when my service providers introduce newer better deals and quietly
grandfather me onto older worserer ones. Like today I called my ISP to upgrade
to a faster connection that is _cheaper_ than my old slow one.

------
majewsky
Twitter without bullshit (algorithmic timeline, "how to follow", ads,
tracking, t.co).

~~~
dualogy
Oh yeah? And how much do you believe you would pay for that =)

~~~
majewsky
5$ per month

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royka118
Password manager!

~~~
volent
Why would you pay for something that is already free ?

