
Ask HN: So, what is your problem? - leftnode
We're all aware that if we're going to spend time building software, it should actually solve someones problem.<p>We also know that ideas are easy to come by, but solvable problems are harder.<p>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.
======
peteforde
I 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
Actually, 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> [2]:
<https://stripe.com/docs/connect/collecting-fees>

~~~
peteforde
Thank you so much! I don't know how I missed that.

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yummyfajitas
I 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.

~~~
imcqueen
One major factor in appearing well dressed is having clothes that fit
properly. Even expensive clothes look bad when they're not the right size and
cut. It may be cool if a startup could curate clothes that match both style
and body type.

This could exist by the way, I don't know of any off the top of my head
though. Bonobos.com is the only thing that comes to mind. They're not
specifically doing the above, but I think they offer a variety of fits/sizes.
I've had a good experience with them in the past.

~~~
cynicalkane
Some companies do computerized made-to-measure clothes. These reportedly work
pretty well, but the lead time and effort required by the consumer is very
large. The ones I know about only do business wear.

------
OafTobark
Probably 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
What 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.

~~~
peteforde
The 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
Wow. I was going to write a reply, but then I realized your own comment is a
perfect reply to itself!

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orangethirty
The 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
Anything 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

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jrkelly
Ever 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
Check out NewsBlur. 3/4 of the GReader junkies I know moved there. (including
me)

------
zainny
I'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.

~~~
Garbage
I remember someone saying, "if you don't know where to start, search for
'//TODO:' on Github." :)

~~~
SatvikBeri
Do 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.

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ganz
I 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
I 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
Something 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
Thanks!

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>

------
bobrenjc93
I would like more users to register my side project
(<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.

~~~
milesokeefe
A 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
1\. Agreed

2\. Meh, doesn't matter

3\. Yes

4\. Agree, I signed up and am intrigued, but still not totally clear on what
it does.

5 and 6. Sure.

7\. How do I add it to a wordpress blog? (just wondering, not a criticism).

------
cperciva
I 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
Is 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
I 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.

------
callmeed
1\. 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.

------
swalsh
I 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.

------
michaelochurch
This 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
Not 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>

------
amplitwist
I 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/>) 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/>), 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.

~~~
yolesaber
In regards to 1: Any decent editor should have highlighted parens matching.
What do you use for coding?

~~~
amplitwist
Emacs, but it's still hard to do. That code excerpt is nothing compared to
what I have worked with in some code I no longer I have access to; some of the
formulas stretched on for about 6 lines of 80 chars each. It's not so much the
unbalanced parens as it is about having the wrong thing in the denominator of
a gigantic multilevel fraction.

