
Ask HN: What “missing” technical solution(s) do you wish existed? - webmaven
This could be just about anything, from &quot;project A but written in language B&quot;, &quot;an API or library for real world activity C&quot;, &quot;a unified solution for both D and E&quot;, all the way to &quot;An open source version of proprietary solution Z&quot;, etc.<p>Go wild, dream big. You never know, someone might respond with a link to such a project that already exists... or decide to start one!
======
TimJRobinson
A peer to peer encrypted datastore that everyone can use to store their own
metadata.

Facebook knows what movies I like and interests I have, Spotify knows what
songs I listen to, Amazon knows what books I like to read. All of these pieces
of data are currently silo'd and controlled by private corporations many of
which can do whatever they like with that data.

I want a private encrypted datastore that does this instead. Peer to peer so
nobody controls it or can kill it. And controlled by you so Government can't
get access. You set up a node and contribute CPU power and disk space. Then
you get a private address and key and can push small pieces of metadata to it.
This data is mirrored and very redundant so it won't disappear if some nodes
go offline.

Then any site can integrate with this store. People will build libraries to
write to it with various languages and others will build websites which make
it easy for the layman to store and get data from it. People could create
online "metadata banks" so that less technical people don't have to run their
own node. Integrating with this datastore will eventually be as easy as
integrating with current oauth services.

Having one global system not controlled by anyone also means there's now a
standardized way for any service to request access to your data. They don't
have to specifically integrate with Facebook, Spotify, Bandcamp, Last.fm etc,
they just have one integration point and you can choose what data you want to
share with them.

And in theory it will live on forever so as future services grow and die your
data doesn't die with it.

~~~
Qwertystop
Interesting. Major problem: Either existing services need to shift gears to
support this third-party that reduces their control over data (when often,
your data is how they make their money), or else new equivalent services using
said third-party need to be made and meaningfully dislodge them (difficult,
inertia is a thing).

~~~
TimJRobinson
These services already have apis that give up the data. So anyone could build
data extractors that allow you to regularly pull your Metadata from them and
store it in this new datastore.

Only the consumers of the data need to change their behavior. If there's easy
to use libraries to access the data store and enough demand for it then more
and more consumers will adopt it over time.

------
jmkni
I want to slot my phone into a dock connected to three high resolution
monitors and a keyboard/mouse and be able to do development work.

Essentially, when it's in my hand it's in Phone Mode, when it's in the dock
it's in Desktop PC mode.

We are getting there with tablets. You can do this with the Surface for
example thanks to Display Link technology. I just want the device to be _phone
sized_ , around 5.5" or so with a good battery life when operating as a phone,
a decent processor, a decent amount of Ram (8GB at least), and about 500GB of
SSD storage.

With a Surface or equivalent tablet, you still need to carry around a bag with
you to carry it in which is a pain. If that could be small enough to fit in
your pocket that would be ideal!

~~~
lj3
Does the development environment have to be housed entirely on the phone
itself? I ask because phones are too underpowered for most dev work. But,
cloud technology is getting to the point where you can play AAA video games
remotely with low latency using a modest computer as a client.

To extend on what you have, I think it would be really cool to have a phone
app that brings up a remotely-hosted triple monitor dev environment when it's
docked. The actual dev server could be anywhere and all you would need to
access it, both at home and at work, is the phone. Kind of like a visual tmux.

edited: removed "which is why the many attempts at making desktop docks for
phones have failed". There are many reasons they have failed, but not catering
to devs probably isn't one of them. :)

~~~
protomyth
Cloud is problematic because of cost of bandwidth and storage compared to
local solutions. Until bandwidth is actually plentiful, uncapped, and cheap, I
would rather have a local solution.

~~~
lj3
We're talking about a setup that's already plugged into the wall (triple
monitors, keyboard, mouse). Just have the phone use Wifi.

I'll admit, having a self contained setup would be nicer, but that's not going
to happen until batteries get much denser or phones get a lot more efficient.

~~~
protomyth
I'm not sure why what I plug it into cannot have its own computing and storage
power. There are wired caps on data too.

In fact, why the heck did Apple sell a display and an iMac? Why not insert a
processor board (a blade) into the display to turn it into an iMac? Why was
the Mac Pro anything more than a bunch of slots for blades?

I want to carry a small display, some storage, and computing power and be able
to dock it with more storage, display, and computing power. I really think we
need to examine the PC in the post-PC world. Given the prices, I'm fine with
the cloud being my backup, not work environment.

~~~
lj3
Hmm. That's an interesting idea. How would the phone and the PC work together,
though? I could see it work if they were all the same architecture. Then
you're just adding more ram and cores.

Actually, the ram could be an issue. For example, say you're running a video
editing program that's using 15gb of ram and you want to undock. You'd need
some way of storing the state of the program and the ram its using when it's
not docked. Either that or you'd be forced to shut it down completely.

~~~
Jtsummers
They wouldn't need to be the same architecture, but use a common means of
communicating for coordinating tasks.

There's some precedent in the design of the Transputer plus daughterboards.
Borrowing from the latter to handle the heterogenous nature of phone/PC
pairings.

Making it hot-swappable would, of course, be a challenge. Using physical
mechanisms to hold the device means that boards/phones/whatevers could be
ejected safely only once various conditions (state saving, rerouting of data,
etc.) were met.

------
mbrock
1\. A language that synthesizes the advantages of Bash, Node, and ML...
Basically an expressive yet simple type system, nice syntax, interactive
environment, fast compilation, the ability to run as a script in Unix, first-
class support for pipelines, files and sockets, and built in stuff for dealing
with HTTP, JSON, regex, etc.

2\. An event sourcing database that's not a gargantuan Java EE thing,
something like the Redis or SQLite of event sourcing. I just want to store a
bunch of events and build indexes in the form of update functions. And then
easily access the cached indexes and live event streams through HTTP.

3\. Something like Emacs but built on a React-like screen update model and
engineered to be fast on something like a Raspberry Pi. We have a common room
computer in our collective house that we use as a chat, todo, clock, etc, and
right now it runs Emacs in xterm which is pretty good but the programming
model is somewhat antiquated. (I tried making a React app but Chromium on the
Raspberry Pi 2 is laggy, and besides Emacs is much nicer as an interactive
environment.)

4\. A tiny laptop with no trackpad and an e-ink display.

5\. A scriptable bank account and a common metadata format for bills and
invoices.

6\. A low cost global roaming SIM card and a flourishing web of minimal
bandwidth text services.

7\. An accurate ebook parser generating semantic markup and a nice variety of
innovative reading interfaces, for example showing one paragraph at a time,
some kind of interactive mind mapping reader, etc.

8\. A collaborative text editor that works more like a chat than a word
processor.

~~~
BjoernKW
> a common metadata format for bills and invoices

Such a format does exist:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EDIFACT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EDIFACT)

It's just hardly anyone uses it. It's got some adoption with large companies
such as auto manufacturers that mandate their suppliers to use it but it's far
from wide-spread (and certainly not with SMBs or consumer-oriented offerings).

There also is MT940
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MT940](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MT940) )
which in theory can be used for exchanging and scripting bank accounting data.
The format is a terrible mess though with each bank implementing it slightly
differently (if they do offer it at all).

Then there is the Incoterms ruleset
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incoterms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incoterms)
), which is commonly used in supply chain management.

------
IvanK_net
I wish that webcams on laptops had open-source hardware and also a hardware
switch, which connects and disconnects the webcam from the laptop (and thanks
to open source hardware you can be sure, that the switch has no "back-door").
Turining that switch off and on would be much easier than putting the duct
tape off and on all the time.

Similar hardware switch would be useful for cameras and microphones in
smartphones. You can never be sure, what your iOS, or Windows Phone, or some
modified Android OS is actualy doing.

~~~
this-dang-guy
I really miss the laptops that had physical switches and the little sliding
camera covers.

I'd even settle for a good case that just covers/muffles all of that.

~~~
dandare
especially microphones are a problem - you can always sticky tape the camera
but you can not easily reversibly incapacitate the microphone

~~~
memracom
Sure you can. Think out of the box. A small speaker that sticks over the
microphone opening and constantly plays a recording with two voices overlaid,
one reading the Gettysburg address and the other reading the declaration of
independence, constitution and amendments. You would have to be shouting to be
intelligible over top of that.

~~~
shermanyo
Even better, think of how a microphone works. Its just a magnet and wire,
right?

Could you place a small magnet over the mic to essentially lock it in place?
no movement == nothing to record.

------
digler999
I'd like to see a "local cloud" computing system. Where CPUs/GPUs are stored
in a rack on site and at each workstation is only a KVM + monitor plus a high
bandwidth (say fiber optic) video link back to the cabinet.

This would be almost a regression back to mainframe days, but it could give
everyone the power of a high-end workstation as well as save energy since most
scenarios wont' have a 100% load factor. An office of 20 people probably never
actually _needs_ 20x (1CPU 1hdd, etc). You could buy one rack with 5 beefy
workstations and have a much more efficient load factor. As long as you could
keep the video link up, the users should never feel any lag.

edit: you'd also need a video-card multiplexer, so for the 20 worker scenario,
you'd have one board with 5-10 gpus multiplexed to 20 fiber optic outputs
(doesn't have to be fiber, but something high enough to give you 4k @ 60fps )

~~~
contingencies
Never thought about this architecture from an energy savings perspective but
it's actually probably really good. Another thing is USB over ethernet is a
now a thing in the Linux kernel... so even with pluggable hardware this could
make perfect sense. Interesting idea.

~~~
digler999
I could also see this in a suburban neighborhood. Instead of buying "internet"
from your ISP, you could buy "computing" from them. Every block has a server
cabinet, with fiber video links to each house. Then your ISP is responsible
for maintaining your OS.

This could go either way: given the current state of American ISP's, it could
be a disaster. But in a "perfect world", it would "just work" because as soon
as your OS went down, the tech would be dispached to remote in and fix it, or
drive out there and replace a blade in the server. In aggregate, this would
drive up demand and evolve a highly reliable OS. In that case everyone
_should_ have a highly reliable service (albeit with privacy concerns), as
long as the video could keep up.

~~~
contingencies
Not keen on this idea... I think individual independence in computing hardware
is a very important social and technological feature against fascist
technocracy. I think sharing infrastructure at the office level could make
sense, or within a home, but not across a neighborhood with current
technology.

While you may be right that overall availability would increase under such a
design, I don't really think reliability is a problem for most people right
now.

Maybe it would work in some special scenarios though? For example it may be a
viable model to provide 'basic service' computing to individual homes within a
low income / government supported housing environment, prisons, or hotels.
(Fun fact: In mainland Chinese hotels, they often provide computers
specifically so that people can watch porn.)

------
viewer5
I have a really bad memory, but the part that affects me most is inability to
remember conversations, even fairly recent ones (like the day before). Just
zero recall of it ever happening. I'd love a way to quickly and unobtrusively
log 'talked with Able and Baker about X Y and Z at such and such time and
place'. Right now all I can think of is typing it into my phone or writing in
a notepad.

But having such a solution, that I could review to improve recall, or search
if necessary, would be lovely. Something quick and unobtrusive.

~~~
mimming
Kind of like the rememberance agents the early wearable computing people used?
[http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~rhodes/Papers/wear-
ra.html](http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~rhodes/Papers/wear-ra.html)

~~~
viewer5
Something like that would be wonderful, yeah. Far as I can tell, it's not a
real existing thing, right? Just an idea that there was a prototype of?

~~~
tixocloud
I was actually building something like that for myself.

Would you use it if you had to manually log it?

~~~
viewer5
Yeah. Having to manually log to /some/ extent is actually my expectation; it
just has to be simpler than typing out a whole log entry. I don't want to type
out

"dec 02 2016 Hung out with Alex and Sammy, talked about Star Wars and whether
Darth Maul or Qui-Gon would win in a fistfight, Sammy was backing Darth Maul
and won the argument"

I don't have any ideas to improve that in any way, I don't know if it CAN be
improved without some element of literal mind-reading, I just know that typing
out the above is inadequate, it's too clunky, time-consuming, and conspicuous.

~~~
Jarwain
What about a Speech-to-text solution? Don't have to take the time to pull out
your notebook or type on your phone's screen. Just tap a button on a headset
or tell GNow to add a log entry, and speak the entry.

Communication; the next best thing to reading minds!

------
dandare
In the age of Single Page Applications that work almost without any backend I
am missing a BaaS - Backend as a Service, that would handle users (sign up,
sign in, forgot password), their data (save some user generated data, load
user generated data) and payment processing at the same time. Right now you
could try to combine Kinvey with Stripe or Cognito with PayPal but it is not
easy at all.

~~~
keenans
userapp.io

~~~
dandare
so it seems userapp.io is not very active, is the project dead?

------
bsenftner
You know how the iPod is now this tiny little clip on chip with earphones? I
want a phone like that. No app, no "smart this or that" \- just a phone, with
an contact list. The thing can to voice calls and SMS ONLY. It's a real
cellular phone, but without all the crap, and a monthly use cost of under $20.
Make that, and you'll see a revolution.

~~~
andars
What kind of revolution are you expecting? Loads of people already have
smartphones and I don't see them switching, and you can already get a flip
phone for < $10.

~~~
bsenftner
This point is a Trump/Brexit type phone - none of the built up cruft and
corruption of a "smart phone". If is just a phone. The "revolution" will be
the massive loss of revenue the popularity of such a device would bring, which
consumers could use as a purchase weapon to say "no more spy hardware!"

------
the8472
Source-specific IP Multicast support on the open internet, which probably
needs some serious magic to make it feasible on core routers, if it is
solvable at all.

Some shabby server in someone's basement could stream data to millions. CDNs
would no longer be needed.

~~~
bluejekyll
There is a great fear of Multicast from many network engineers I talk to. This
comes from at its core, it being too easy to create cycles. At the internet
scale the potential for cycles would be even higher, b/c the TTL needed would
have to be on the order of ~20-30 hops, and many engineers will just set this
number too high.

Now I don't have experience with Source-specific Multicast, which is supposed
to resolve the cycle problem, but I think there remains a lot of fear of
Multicast in the industry.

Can anyone else comment on cycle issues?

Also, in terms of scaling, Multicast requires of copy of the packet on the
router to every port which is registered as a listener to a Multicast address,
this will increase load on the larger routers.

~~~
the8472
About scalability, a possible compromise might be making some distance-based
limitations. I.e. limit subscriptions per prefix or adjust packet drop rates.

That way regional SSM can still be useful and local islands (which whould
hopefully grow over time) could be bridged by unicast links or - if they have
overlap - by leapfrogging.

Even at the ISP level there would be still be use-cases for SSM.

------
ohstopitu
I'd love to bring banking to the 21th century. (Ability to create virtual
cards, scale bank accounts based on needs/usage, easy access to loans etc.).
And all this would have to work internationally (go anywhere in the world...2
people have a smartphone? Great, this system works). Give people the ability
to save, invest and help them along that way and give them more power about
their money.

Also the ability to get the entire system to work electronically offline.

So we'd need advancements in not just technology (tbh, the tech would be the
easy bit), but laws and ideas/conceptions people have with banks/monitory
systems in general.

~~~
herbst
Currently a digital nomad in the need of a bic/swift able bank account with a
debit card attached and at best a proper online interface.

I really dont understand how this shit is so hard.

~~~
ohstopitu
like I said, because of a lot of reason (some personal, some unfortunate
incidents), I've been looking for the above solution for over 5 years and have
found none so far. :(

Sadly it's never the technology, it's the laws that are the issue (and I can
see why they are necessary too, so it's just in limbo)

~~~
herbst
Yeah absolutely. Were it just about the technology i am sure we could have
fixed that long ago :/

------
jamiecurle
I want a technology that reads and transmits blood, hormone and micro-biome
information so that I can optimise nutrition, rest and training. I'd accept
some form of implant but bonus points for the least invasive solution.

~~~
IndianAstronaut
Medical lab technologiats are in an ideal place to start delivering this sort
of information. If information and tissue/food/etc could be condensed on to
small disposable chips, it could convey a lot of information.

Get sick in the stomach? Put a sample of your food on small chips before you
eat and now we know that Chinese restaurant you ate at had high levels of E
coli.

------
wink
A browser on Linux that just works and doesn't use up all my RAM.

Basically like Chromium a year ago? before they removed support for Hangouts
and I had to switch to Chrome. Which crashes all the time, usually when using
Hangouts.

~~~
sp332
What's broken about Hangouts? I just tried it in Chromium for Windows and it
seems to work OK.

~~~
sp332
Late edit: This is a serious question. I can't find any information about
Chromium dropping support for Hangouts. What happened?

------
EFruit
>Go wild, dream big.

I want a DNS replacement that allows you to "subscribe" to TLDs, each with
their own policies and practices. Domains are identified by a tuple of a
public key and the domain name, so that if someone wants to share a domain,
the browser can let them select the host they want. It should have 3 (or more)
distinct modes of operation: Gossip, where popular portions of the zone are
continually shared between nodes; P2P, where queries traverse a graph of
peers, rather than a tree; and a Classic mode, which functions as DNS does.

I want a standard way for ALL OSes (incl. Mobile) to share notifications. I
can't even get my phone and smartwatch to share all the notifications I need,
and they're from the same manufacturer!

I want a protocol and software to combine the paradigms of Syncthing and FTP,
so you could download a folder's contents (or a subset thereof), or keep it up
to date, all with syncthing's discovery and authentication framework.

I want a platform where every action is entirely scriptable in something
that's not Javascript. Get an IRC message while I'm not there? Send the text
to program A. New USB device inserted? Launch a virus scanner there. It would
be exceedingly helpful if you could tie in to the browser and define scripting
events on 3rd party pages.

Finally, I wish Plan 9 was a viable desktop OS because its protocols and
paradigms line up very nicely with some of these. Plus, it's a really neat,
simple OS.

~~~
burkemw3
> I want a protocol and software to combine the paradigms of Syncthing and
> FTP, so you could download a folder's contents (or a subset thereof), or
> keep it up to date, all with syncthing's discovery and authentication
> framework.

Could you explain this syncthing desire more?

I developed SyncthingFUSE [0] for something that possibly sounds similar to
your desire. I've let the project languish, but planning to pick it back up.

[0]
[https://github.com/burkemw3/syncthingfuse](https://github.com/burkemw3/syncthingfuse)

------
TillE
I want a simple bug tracker that's hosted entirely within my VCS repository,
with a fully featured web interface.

There are a few abandoned projects like this, but they're all CLI-focused with
view-only web at most. I want something _better_ than just keeping a TODO
file, not worse.

~~~
lj3
Have you looked at Fossil?

[https://www.fossil-
scm.org/index.html/doc/trunk/www/index.wi...](https://www.fossil-
scm.org/index.html/doc/trunk/www/index.wiki)

------
andars
FPGAs in desktop/laptop computers. That would open all kinds of interesting
possibilities.

Energy from nuclear fusion.

Highly dense electrical energy source. I want to see electric planes, phones
that last for months, drones that stay in the air for days, etc.

Some kind of magical security system so we could return to native code instead
of putting VMs on top of VMs. No idea if this one is feasible or how it might
be achieved.

Cheaper IC foundries. I think there might be a market for old processes if
they were substantially less expensive.

~~~
adrianN
I don't think that some kind of awesome battery will give us phones that last
for months. We'd either make the battery smaller (=cheaper) or crank up the
processor.

~~~
andars
You're probably right, but I guess it would be a possibility if we just
replaced the battery in current phones.

For the other things I didn't necessarily have a battery in mind (doesn't
change your point though).

------
x1798DE
I would really like a (preferably cross-platform) solution for browsing the
internet in a maximally silo-ed way. I think Firefox has been making some
progress on this, but here's my ideal workflow:

\- I can set up any number of "site groups" that sites go into by default -
"www.google.com" and "www.gmail.com" are in the "google" group, and those
sites open in their own pseudo-profiles with their own history and own
cookies, etc. \- For a given site, I can open new tabs in any group (or for
sites in multiple groups, set the "current group" for the site. This way I can
have a github account for personal stuff, github account for a different
context, etc. \- For sites not on any "siloed groups, everything operates in a
"clear after closing" mode, where once all browser instances are closed, all
data, cookies and history is cleared.

Right now I just accomplish this manually by using a locked-down version of
Firefox for default browsing and different Chrome profiles for each "site
group". It helps that I've forsaken more or less all web-apps, so I don't have
to worry about accidentally clicking a link in Google Hangouts that will then
open in the Google profile.

~~~
neuland
Have you seen Qubes OS [0]? I have never used it, but the video demo [1] looks
to have exactly what you want. You define different "security domains" and can
open applications in each. Each domain has it's own data and can have multiple
applications. Like you could download a file from your Google Drive (in your
Google domain) and open it. But, that doesn't have any effect on other
domains. And, those domains don't see that file.

Edit: Just read the other half of your comment. There seems to also be a
throwaway domain that you can use that is doesn't persist data after you close
it.

[0] [https://www.qubes-os.org](https://www.qubes-os.org) [1]
[https://www.qubes-os.org/video-tours/](https://www.qubes-os.org/video-tours/)

~~~
x1798DE
I specifically meant in a browser. I'm certainly planning on looking into
Qubes for an OS, but this is really more of a problem with data leaking within
a browser, I don't think the OS has much say in that.

~~~
neuland
Well, you'd ideally create different VMs for where you want barriers to data
leak-age via cookies, history, session- + localstorage, and loading
assets/scripts/etc from or making requests cross domain to 3rd parties.

But to your point, even within a given browser/VM/whatever that I _intend_ on
using for a single task. I'd still eventually end up slipping up and going to
a site that should have been in a different group or logging into something
that I wanted in an ephemeral group.

There is a real problem currently with data sharing on the web, where it's
pretty much all or nothing. That'll still be true under the scheme you
mention, just the goalpost will be moved to within whatever grouping scheme
you pick.

It seems there isn't a good way to allow sites to do useful things like ajax
to lots of services not on the same domain, while preventing the site provider
from sharing your data with people you don't want to have it.

Ad- and tracker- blockers alleviate some of this by preventing certain
undesired code from running and thus sharing data. But, user tracking is still
possible (and used to actually happen by) using server-side logging and
shipping info to 3rd parties.

Ultimately, we are relying on the people or organization behind a site to not
share our data.

And, yes the tools could get a bit better with grouping/profiles. But, the
vast majority of users won't use these tools. And, even if you use them, you
have to be diligent in only opening certain sites in certain "groups" and/or
managing which group you are logging into your account in.

So, features like this always will be niche unless there is a revolutionary
shift in users' technical ability and attitude towards data protection /
privacy.

~~~
Jarwain
Maybe visiting a site would locally select the appropriate group that site was
assigned to. For example, going to gmail.com would automatically use the
"Google" Group. If a site is assigned to multiple groups, prompt the user to
select a group. An unassigned site would use a default group, or create its
own group for return visits, or create a temporary group.

~~~
x1798DE
Yes, this is what I was suggesting. Currently I am doing it manually, but if
you can assign groups by site domain, it should feel much more seamless.

------
znt
An open source & free, ACID compliant, horizontally scalable database that
supports versioned data out of the box.

Currently there is way too much time and money is being spent on re-
implementing this functionality on normal DBs.

PS: There is Datomic, but it's not free:
[http://www.datomic.com/](http://www.datomic.com/)

~~~
pjungwir
I wanted to say "Postgres with bitemporal tables"\---practically the same
thing. :-)

------
cdvonstinkpot
I'd like to be able to implant a tiny subdermal body heat-powered circuit in
an animal so I can track their location on a map.

~~~
jtolmar
Same thing, but very light weight and with a discount for buying in bulk.

(Best friend is an ornithologist.)

~~~
contingencies
This stuff must already exist for humans.

------
marktangotango
I want a backend service I can call from my statically generated (i.e. jekyll)
websites, to implement things like blog comments, analytics, etc.

A true cloud platform where I don't have to mess with admining and
provisioning servers and containers. I want to just upload my code and pay for
the cycles and bandwidth I use. Aws lambda for http basically.

~~~
mimming
I started to take a swing at the comments part a couple years ago with
firebase: [https://github.com/mimming/firebase-jekyll-
comments](https://github.com/mimming/firebase-jekyll-comments)

~~~
marktangotango
That's pretty cool, what's the status? Have you had anyone adopt it? The setup
seems a bit complex honestly. But generally, firebases nosql store is a turn
off imo.

------
psyc
"Within C++, there is a much smaller and cleaner language struggling to get
out." -Bjarne Stroustrup

I've had a not-specific-enough idea of what that language would be for a long
time. As far as I'm aware, nobody has created it yet.

------
ukoki
\- Realtime DBaaS/BaaS using GraphQL - ie, like Parse or Firebase but where
you don't have to use a vendor-specific client, just GraphQL. Sane
configuration of permissions/access rules.

\- Functions-as-a-service with a better UX than AWS Lambda

\- Server-side-rendering-as-a-service for React-based SPAs. When a request
comes in it renders the page, sends it up to the client, and automatically
'solves' hydration of data.

\- A better scripting language than Bash.. maybe Ruby but with a simpler way
of running shell commands / getting stdout+stderr. Should be really easy to
test.

~~~
sprobertson
You're on my wavelength with these, I've wanted each one at some point. #2
might become a reality.

------
thexa4
A solution for game assets building.

Ideally it would be possible to build all assets (maps, models, textures,
binaries) in a game from source files to the format that's distributed to
people.

Unfortunately due to the build times for certain things like maps it's not
feasible to rebuild everything before every release. Combined with the fact
that the files are relatively large means that we can't store everything in
one git repository.

I'd be very grateful if anyone knows a solution to this.

~~~
darkblackcorner
Have you looked at Git LFS? [https://git-lfs.github.com/](https://git-
lfs.github.com/)

GitLab have it in the Community and Commercial Editions:
[https://about.gitlab.com/2015/11/23/announcing-git-lfs-
suppo...](https://about.gitlab.com/2015/11/23/announcing-git-lfs-support-in-
gitlab/)

~~~
thexa4
I haven't yet, thanks for the suggestion, I'll look into it.

------
dougk16
A programming language and toolset that could transpile to human readable code
for just about every popular/mainstream language out there. The closest I've
seen is Haxe. This would be great for sharing business logic between different
platforms. Right now it's a fragmented mess of tools of various quality, many
using regexes to get you only 90% there. For example pretty much everything
can transpile very well to Javascript, so no problem there. But what if I want
to write common code for iOS, Android, and the web? I've never figured out a
good solution here besides contortions with C/C++ or Javascript that
introduced more problems than it was worth. Either that or you have to go all-
in with a big framework like Xamarin.

I think part of the problem is that there isn't a demand, and, if I may rant a
little, the reason there isn't a demand is that most developers do not
separate business logic and platform-specific stuff (rendering, I/O, etc.) in
the first place, whether from lack of skill/experience (which everyone
including me is guilty of early in their careers), or the fact that the
framework/platform you're working in "discourages" it.

~~~
tluyben2
What is wrong with C++ for that? Works fine but maybe you have a specific
case? What about C# or F#? That works fine as well for that purpose.

~~~
dougk16
Having done a few years of cross-mobile C++, we get into opinion territory
perhaps, but it was never a smooth experience for me. Apologies, but don't
have time today to go into too much justification for my opinion. It _can_ be
the lesser evil (e.g. you have an existing greater-than 10K LoC C++ codebase
that you don't feel like porting to both Java and Swift), but, let's say I
want to write a few methods, a few hundred lines of business logic, to
validate user input on all three platforms. Sure I can bring out the C++
hammer but I've found that decision comes with more tool-fatigue overhead than
it's worth, especially on Android. And I don't know the C++->Javascript story
that well, that may be smoothing out these days.

But even if all that worked smoothly, what if I want to move my logic to PHP
as well? I know, now I'm getting crazy, but that's what the poster asked for
:)

------
bni
A relational database that scales out infinitely. Is available as a service
and payment is per query, a long free period and very cheap

------
ComodoHacker
A secure communication technology that is understandable (after reading some
mans) and verifiable by an average user, without being infosec expert.

For now, there are so many unknowns in the equation, that users have no choice
but to rely on vendor's authority, which means centralization.

Don't tell me it's theoretically impossible because it's possible in almost
every other area.

~~~
sp332
How verifiable? You've seen the Underhanded C code competition?
[http://underhanded-c.org/](http://underhanded-c.org/)

~~~
ComodoHacker
I'm not talking about code bugs and backdoors, which can always exist. I'm
talking about protocols, encryption schemes and architectures. We need
"comprehensible security", as opposed to incomprehensible, "NP-hard" and
(soon) even "quantum-hard" security, accessible to only 0.1% of engineers, let
alone users.

We still don't have digital signing technology that is verifiable as easily as
paper signature and works peer-to peer, without some big corp/govt involved.

~~~
khedoros1
The challenge here is that it's super-easy to design protocols that the
average person would consider 100% secure, even after reading some
documentation. It's the same problem where anyone can create a lock/encryption
that they don't know how to break, but there's always someone smarter or
better versed in breaking it.

Subtle bugs don't look like problems until someone figures out an exploit
against them.

------
lsiunsuex
1 device with multiple Airplay points that can output to multiple amplified
speakers. Price would determine how many Airplay points / speakers exist (1
device for 4 speakers, 1 device for 8, etc...) Bonus points if the device has
the amplifiers built into it.

In my house, I have multiple Airport Expresses for the sole purpose of
connecting them to different channels on an amplifier to to stream different
audio sources to different parts of the house. So 1 point exists for the
speakers in the kitchen; 1 for the speakers in the dining room; 1 for the
patio, etc...

So the wife could be prepping dinner in the kitchen, listening to 1 music
stream and I can be on the patio prepping the brick pizza oven listening to
another stream (we have vastly different music tastes)

So I've always wanted 1 device with x endpoints that I could configure each
and connect to specific speakers.

Then again, with the routers being put on "hold" \- this may be moot and I
might have to switch to a Creston or something else.

~~~
stephenr
Couldn't this be simplified by just having an airport express + a set of
powered speakers (or appletv if there is a tv too) in each room/location?

------
pjungwir
I would like to see a SPA persistence framework that is based on the Command
pattern, so that it can give you an automatically-generated backend,
Operational Transformation-based collaboration, offline functionality, and
undo/redo.

------
jtmarmon
haskell on rails. the amazing static typing, binary compilation, etc of
haskell, with a large ecosystem and monolith framework (like rails) behind it.
haskell's community's focus on challenging, technical, scientific or
mathematical problems has left normal web developers plainly not using it. but
as our rails codebase has grown, it's hard to identify refactoring issues
outside of obessive and overlapping unit tests.

i think Java actually comes closest to what I want here but unfortunately it's
pretty hard to get past all the cruft the ecosystem has accrued over the
years, plus it's java and marketing that as a company/developer sucks. also
java is missing some expressiveness of haskells TS

~~~
sanderjd
I agree with you both that it would be amazing to see this in Haskell, and
that Java (which I'm using full time now, after years of rails) is close-ish
to what you want. I think this is what Scala is supposed to be, but I'm not
sure it has realized that potential. You should look into Kotlin - you'll
still miss Haskell's type system, but it's a good bit nicer than Java, and has
a lot less history.

~~~
jtmarmon
did you switch to java for work reasons or because you wanted to?

~~~
sanderjd
For work reasons, but I was very happy to do it. Java would not have been my
_first_ choice, but I would have preferred it to another project using Rails,
if those were the only options.

------
foobar16372883
Rails but for JavaScript. Today you have to pick and validate a crypto
framework to do token based auth. Or maybe not JavaScript.

A distributed application framework. You run software on your OWN machine,
offloading computation and storage needs to other trusted nodes. Framework
should have the trust system, a data store that automatically replicates,
system to explicitly show what data is being shared with whom. Effectively,
you can still log into your account from anywhere. The software and data will
sync. Won't work for problems that need large scale data and also lowers its
collective value. For instance, a social network but no advertising.

~~~
BjoernKW
Sounds a lot like Ethereum:
[https://www.ethereum.org/](https://www.ethereum.org/)

------
ddebus
I'd like some sort of AI to tag and classify my huge amount of epub, mobi and
pdf books.

------
joeclark77
I'd like a blend of Svbtle and Medium. Svbtle is the perfect blog editor
interface, and I like the way it displays code samples. (Medium's lack of
support for syntax highlighting without the GitHub Gist widget is a
dealbreaker for me.) But Svbtle has no social features or commenting features,
and I like those about Medium. I also like the social "highlighter" feature of
Medium. One thing I'd add (back) is the ability to write notes in the margin.

------
simon_acca
An immediately consistent NoSQL opensource database, so a CP system, that is
persistent, gets horizontal scalability right and is popular enough to be used
in production with confidence.

~~~
ddorian43
hbase?

------
bradb3030
Home loan which re-amortizes to the full term every month so when you pay
ahead on it, the amount lowers over time. Snowball your home loan, easily
marketable.

~~~
stevekemp
Doesn't that automatically happen if you over-pay each month? I guess it might
be depend on your mortgage type, and location.

I know in the UK I made no special effort to do this. I had a mortgage, and
each month I was supposed to pay £260. Instead I paid £800 and I completely
paid off my flat many years earlier than expected, with a corresponding saving
in the interest I would have otherwise paid.

~~~
webmaven
_> Doesn't that automatically happen if you over-pay each month?_

Short answer (in the US): Nope.

Basically, by default extra money comes off of the payments at the end of the
mortgage, not off the principal.

Now, that said, _some_ mortgages do allow you to apply an over-payment towards
the principal, but you usually have to specify it for each payment you send
in, they won't make it the default for your account. Oh, and they will likely
only recalculate the size of your payments annually.

One final note: Keep in mind that paying extra (regardless of how it is
applied) won't count for anything if you hit a bad patch and start missing
payments, so if you are going to dump extra funds into your mortgage instead
of hanging on to it, first build up a healthy cushion (3-6 months of all
expenses).

------
dozzie
* standalone stream processing engine ("event sourcing", "complex event processing") that can run queries (similar to how relational database runs SQL queries) and works in publish-subscribe mode, one that is not a proof-of-concept by some researcher, but actually working software

* database for system logs (JSON documents) that is not as brittle as ElasticSearch and not as big of a memory hog

* topic map engine usable from Perl or Python

------
devkhan
How about a music player based on YouTube(maybe built on yt-dl, and
X-platform), because of youtube's poor support for listening to music.

~~~
throwaway29292
Youtube generally disapproves of separating audio from video; google
'Streamus'.

~~~
devkhan
What if we don't separate them, just let the video play?

I'm talking about just a good player with nice features (easy playlist
manipulation, pre-buffering for next video, queuing up videos, etc.).

------
Thomas_9
I wish there was a good javascript library to handle table (filtering,
sorting, paging, ...). The best I found so far was datatable, but it is not
perfect.

~~~
wanda
I am not very familiar with datatable; could you tell me more about its
shortcomings?

~~~
Thomas_9
IMHO I think Datatable doesn't have a nice and clean interface. For example,
you can't just do table.AddRow({col1:'newCol1', col2 : 'newCol2'});

It is not always very clear on what plugin you should use for paging or
sorting, column reordering. Then it become heavy to save a state using methods
from different pluging.

So could be a lot simpler.

Still the best open source free js table on the market on my knowledge.

------
anaxag0ras
I wish we had a messaging protocol/standard so that we could chat with anyone
regardless of the messaging app, just like you can browse (mostly)any websites
regardless of your web browser.

I would also like the protocol/standard to be iterated upon to include new
features like bots, stickers, file transfers, etc.

~~~
stephenr
XMPP exists. Most major IM networks are built on it, but without federation
and without being-your-own-client.

------
cauterized
A brain-computer interface for entering text into a document without speaking
aloud or using my hands. This would allow much faster transcription of ideas
and the ability to do so while washing dishes, sorting laundry, hanging onto a
subway pole, carrying groceries home, etc.

------
worg
Swift support on android [I'm aware of kotlin et al, I'm the kind of guy who
never got well with Java]

~~~
herbst
Rubymotion, dozens of js frameworks, Xamarin...

I dont really see why swift.

~~~
worg
It doesnt have to be swift, it could be dart or something else, what I'm
wishing its a language distinct from Java but with first tier support, ideally
supported by google (We all know that JS/Xamarin/Rubimotion aren't there yet)

~~~
herbst
oh ok. Yeah i feel you on that. I doubt google cares tho. They seem to have
rather a lot of crappy apps than a few proper ones.

I stopped doing android ads because i dont like Java enough to make more than
a shitty app. So really with you on this

------
soulbadguy
1 - A better laptop : 14 inch, borderless screen like the xps 13, Keyboard of
a think pad or dell latitude and battery life of a mac book pro

2 - A better linux distro : basically the polish, convience, drivers and apps
support of windows/macos but running the linux kernel

------
qznc
I want more Sandstorm apps [0]. Specifically:

* an issue tracker (like Bugzilla)

* a money tracker (like Gnucash)

* a Q&A thing (like StackOverflow)

* a meeting organizer (tracking agendas and minutes)

[0] [https://apps.sandstorm.io/](https://apps.sandstorm.io/)

------
jtolmar
An easy to use parsing library with some sort of way to import sub-trees (ie:
everything between these parentheses uses this other parser) and good default
parsers for obvious things like C-style math and JSON objects.

~~~
bulutsuzku
That would be PetitParser
[http://scg.unibe.ch/research/helvetia/petitparser](http://scg.unibe.ch/research/helvetia/petitparser)

------
holy_jeebus
A parser that would walk all web document elements, exercise keyboard access
functions, then report back on what is or is not accessible via keyboard,
touch, or click.

~~~
wanda
If you would be happy with a browser extension or JavaScript library, I'll
make it.

~~~
holy_jeebus
I think that would actually be the best way to implement it. A bookmarklet
would be nice, however I don't see that fitting within the technical
constraints of size limits.

------
cruhl
I want a successor to Haskell which follows the Elm mantra.

~~~
radicality
Can you elaborate on that? What do you mean by Elm mantra, and what do you
think is blocking Haskell from succeeding in such that it needs a successor?

------
ddorian43
A "sharding framework". So I can kinda build my own db and the framework
making ~automatic sharding + ~cross-shard-query.

------
bradb3030
Tivo for streaming video on a PC so you can locally store/rewind/replay things
you've watched recently, locally.

------
adrianN
Something like cargo, but for C++ projects.

------
this-dang-guy
Something that allowed people to step back and evaluate issues realistically,
with correct (non-biased/non-skewed) data.

Unfortunately, the best we can do is use stats, studies, and reports. Nothing
that's truly free of bias and 100% accurate.

------
baccredited
native Ruby support for: 1\. amazon lambda 2\. iOS apps 3\. Android apps

~~~
herbst
Rubymotion covers 2 & 3.

------
Juliate
A Wikipedia for music.

~~~
andars
Would it store music, or just information about music?

------
throwawayiospy
ios pythonista like software for android

------
Grishnakh
A way of using nuclear power to directly generate electricity, without going
through a thermal cycle first. Similar to how photovoltaics work: instead of
capturing heat from sunlight and going through a Carnot cycle engine to
generate electricity, PV directly converts photons to electricity. Something
like this with nuclear power would be revolutionary I think.

~~~
3131s
Hey dude, I think you're shadowbanned! Most all of your comments show as
[dead] :(

~~~
grzm
Looks like it:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13066519](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13066519)

