
Things I still can't do in November 2014 - imd23
https://facebook.com/frkrueger/posts/10154867033210444
======
gordaco
Honestly, I find some of these points quite disturbing. And a lot of them are
not a matter of technology.

 _13\. Keep track of where everybody in my team is physically right now._ I
don't want to work with you, ever. 40 hours a week are for the team, sure, but
during the remaining 128 you don't have any business in my life. What you
propose is creepy.

 _25\. Be able to take a course online and get graded -- and get a diploma
that means something. Education is really ripe for disruption: Coursera is OK,
but we need to invent Stanford 2.0_ For a diploma to mean something, what you
need is not to make the courses better, or harder to pass, or whatever you're
thinking; what you need is to convince your employer that you have the
required skills for your job. The diploma may or may not have something to do
with it, but in any case it's your employer's criterion. What you want may
happen over time, but it's definitely not a matter of technology.

 _26\. Be able to sell my advice online. It 's worth something and I should
have some way to monetize it._ Again, it's other people, not you, who will
judge whether your advice is valuable. Aside from that, it's not like it's
difficult to become some kind of consultant.

 _30\. Get a discount from the federal government for being healthy. Fat
people should pay more taxes because they cost society more. This means some
approved weigh in and testing centers._ What.

 _31\. Be able to get a $100 MRI. It can be done for this price._ There are a
LOT of things that will cost you far, far, far more than what they cost [EDIT:
to clarify, that I mean is: far than what they cost _to your provider_ ]. This
is pretty basic economy, IMHO. Also you may get it for free when you actually
need it, if you live in a place with a sane health system (i.e., not the USA).

But yeah, as jokoon said in
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8648325](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8648325),
most of those "problems" arise from politics and economy. I suspect that a few
of them have actually been tried, and either they're doing fine but in a local
scale, or they failed.

~~~
girvo
As far as 30 is concerned, we already make smokers and drinkers pay more taxes
through the various huge taxes on cigarettes and alcohol directly (at least in
my country). It's not so far fetched, and if it reduces obesity then it's a
net good for society.

~~~
frtab
The equivalent of taxes on alcohol and cigarettes would be a tax on unhealthy
food, not a tax on unhealthy people.

~~~
girvo
That was the solution I was implying, although I did so badly :)

------
nikcub
> 26\. Be able to sell my advice online. It's worth something and I should
> have some way to monetize it.

It is called Google Helpouts[0], and it isn't going very well. Reason why -
almost everybody overvalues what their advice is actually worth. People who
can provide value usually already are through their usual economic activity -
be it a job or entrepreneurialism (ie. If your advice was worth something,
you'd already be monetizing it).

Websites that create Shingy[1] As A Service type markets around paid advice
often just become cesspools of psychics and webcam sex operators.

[0] [https://helpouts.google.com/home](https://helpouts.google.com/home)

[1] [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/17/crystal-
ball-3](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/17/crystal-ball-3)

~~~
netcan
There have been a bunch of attempts. I think that one might eventually
succeed.

The problem is the difficulty in actually figuring out who's advice is worth
what & where. But, in many cases 30 minutes with the right person could be
incredibly valuable.

Technical/scientific/engineering expertise is one are, industry knowledge is
another one. I think the second might be the most important.

Say you have some sort of awesome technology that you want to market to the
hotel industry. You need to understand how that industry works. What software
they use & how. What they pay for various things. The right person could get
you months ahead in 30 minutes.

~~~
madeofpalk
The problem is the same as why Freelancer, ODesk and the rest suck so much:
majority of the good designers already have full-time jobs.

People who have valuable advice worth paying for are usually already being
paid by their employer.

------
jsnell
> 4\. Locate where my dog is right now using a barely noticeable GPS chip.

> 13\. Keep track of where everybody in my team is physically right now.

I think we can kill two birds with one stone here. Your team is collared,
right?

~~~
glenra
#13 seems easy and there exist apps for it. Not that the team would WANT to do
this, but if you had a sufficiently compelling use case the problem doesn't
seem difficult.

For instance, if everyone on his team carries a smartphone (iOS or Android)
they can all install google+ and turn on background location sharing so he can
see them on a map.

[https://support.google.com/plus/answer/3302509?hl=en](https://support.google.com/plus/answer/3302509?hl=en)

There's also Apple's "Find My Friends" cloud feature, and a bunch of 3rd-party
apps that do the same.

If they _don 't_ carry a cellphone then...um...give them one and tell them to
carry it. :-)

------
sgt101
1) Make everyone else do what I want, for free. 2) Discount the cost of other
peoples investment (capital and social) to zero. 3) Never have things go
wrong. 4) Magic.

~~~
stefan_kendall3
My advice is worth money, but things I want should be free.

...okay bud.

------
crdoconnor
"Get a discount from the federal government for being healthy. Fat people
should pay more taxes because they cost society more. This means some approved
weigh in and testing centers"

This argument seems to be pretty common among the glitterati from Wall Street.

I wonder why they don't see the incredible irony.

~~~
ue_
Not that I agree with the quote but, can you explain the irony?

~~~
crdoconnor
Bailouts and ZIRP facilitating and propping up the great American casino which
he was a part of cost trillions of dollars. That isn't even counting the many
Americans who have been scammed via their mortgages or 401Ks.

I'm not sure what fat people cost the taxpayer. Given that they typically pay
their own medical expenses, I would guess not a lot.

Also, clearly their sad state of affairs is due to the quirky American
agricultural and food processing industries. France doesn't have this problem
with obesity and neither did the US in 1970.

I don't see him crying out for a special tax on Monsanto. Maybe because his
portfolio would take a hit.

Either way, this facebook post is pretty representative of the inhuman views
that American neo-royalty holds.

------
jokoon
first world problems of somebody living in the silicon valley ?

sorry but most of those things either stems from politics or lack of market
development.

~~~
Osmium
I found it a little bizarre too, e.g.

> 11\. Get a quick, binding divorce online.

This makes absolutely no sense to me, in so many ways. Presumably a divorce
should be a rare enough occurrence that doing it in person is not a burden?

~~~
jacquesm
Besides that divorces tend to involve such little details as children and the
division of a large amount of property and it should be regarded as a good
thing that one spouse can't pressure another into a 'quick and binding
divorce' without at least a little bit of outside vetting.

Lawyers tend to make divorces harder for everybody and seem to be very good at
lining their own pockets so I'm sure there is room for improvement but 'quick
and binding online divorces' seem to me to be a dangerous road to go down on.

Just like you can't quickly and easily marry online.

------
fphhotchips
I remain frustrated that world financial systems are unable to handle instant
money transfers between institutions. There seems to me to be no good reason
that I shouldn't be able to transfer money between my accounts without waiting
until midnight for the funds to clear. Worse, the routine seems not to run on
weekends. Why is this? Is power unavailable on Saturday night?

~~~
BjoernKW
Apart from the reasons usually given (fraud protection etc.) the main reason
quite simply is that those systems are arcane and Byzantine.

We're talking about AS/400 mainframes here with software written in COBOL and
RPG (which actually was created for use with punch cards but still is actively
used today). The preferred mode of inter-systems communication on these
platforms is exchanging fixed-width files via FTP or socket services.

Not only are these systems difficult to maintain or update, connecting modern
systems isn't exactly easy either.

That said, there's a whole lot of money to be made in this area in the next 10
years or so because everyone who still knows COBOL, RPG and AS/400 stuff in
general is likely 50 years or older, which means there won't hardly be anyone
to maintain those monstrosities any more 15 years from now.

Many banks are currently migrating these systems to modern languages and
frameworks, which for banks and finance in general mostly means Java.
Unfortunately, that doesn't necessarily mean things will get better. There are
many stakeholders in this game and their interests don't always align with the
customers'.

~~~
jacquesm
Those are just figleaves. Banks are doing this for a much simpler reason: they
make money on it.

~~~
BjoernKW
That's certainly true as well. Not only is replacing those legacy systems
expensive but expediting the transfer process would actually be against the
banks' interest (because they're still able to use that money while it's in
digital limbo).

If banks were only allowed to subtract the amount from the sending account as
soon as they got confirmation from the receiving party that the money arrived
and was added to the receiving account this would incentivize them to make
this process as fast as technically possible.

------
ElectricMonk79
> 30\. Get a discount from the federal government for being healthy. Fat
> people should pay more taxes because they cost society more. This means some
> approved weigh in and testing centers

Perpetuating the myth that unhealthy people are a financial and social burden.
That's wrong because....

 __* MIND QUAKE: Fat people are 'on average' healthier!! __*

Why? Because they clutch their heart and die in an instant. 'Healthy people'
drag their boney carcasses from care home to care home for __decades __. Do
the world a favour - grab yourself a beer, a burger and some cigarettes. Knock
yourself out; literally.

~~~
gordaco
I don't think I buy it, do you have some references? There are a lot of
nonfatal chronic illneses derived from obesity, alcohol consumption and
tobacco.

My biggests problem with this point are not related with the veracity of his
implied statement, but rather, with the slippery slope of making people pay
more because of health problems (that are actually less in their control than
we may believe), which is anyway happening already in an indirect way; and
also, that it would constitute another form of poverty tax, considering that
obesity is often caused by the poor quality food that people with little to no
money can afford.

~~~
ElectricMonk79
[http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/healthcare/fatties-and-
smokers...](http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/healthcare/fatties-and-smokers-save-
the-nhs-money/)

> Ultimately, the thin and healthy group cost the most, about $417,000, from
> age 20 on. The cost of care for obese people was $371,000, and for smokers,
> about $326,000. And as Kip Viscusi has pointed out, when you add in the
> costs of the state pensions that those who die young don’t get, smoking and
> gorging save the government vast sums of money.

~~~
gordaco
Thanks. Quite a surprising finding. That article links to another one from the
NY times [1], with this interesting line: _The researchers found that from age
20 to 56, obese people racked up the most expensive health costs. But because
both the smokers and the obese people died sooner than the healthy group, it
cost less to treat them in the long run._

[1]: [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/health/05iht-
obese.1.97488...](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/health/05iht-
obese.1.9748884.html?_r=2)

~~~
flexie
20-56 is the working age. If you wanna do this comparison you should include
whether skinny people work more/pay more taxes while the obese are busy being
sick. It gets complicated :-)

------
S4M
> 6\. Get somebody to come to my house, pick up my dry cleaning and drop it
> back off the next day (Amazon "Clean").

Isn't this what HomeJoy is doing? If not, I have a friend who tried that, but
failed. I'd be happy to forward his details.

> 9\. Send $10,000 to my caretaker in France and have her get the cash and
> withdraw it from an ATM that same day.

Within Europe, you can.

> 10\. Get investors for my startup by advertising the stock offering on the
> web and selling shares directly.

Isn't that what KickStarter does?

> 11\. Get a quick, binding divorce online.

I think it's better that you can't divorce that way.

~~~
k-mcgrady
>> Isn't that what KickStarter does?

No you can't offer a % of your company as a reward on Kickstarter. I think
AngelList is probably closest with syndicated deals.

------
shruubi
The fact that this guy seems to want to be able to track his teams physical
location, sell his advice for a large sum of money and be able to get quick
divorces tells me this isn't the kind of person I want in any kind of real
power...

------
skrebbel
All of these score 1 on one of my favorite HN comments, the Yudkowski Ambition
Scale[0]. That's OK, but it's a bit disappointing for a post that clearly
tries to come off as visionary.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4510702](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4510702)

~~~
caseyohara
You're right that none of these ideas are ambitious, but that's exactly the
point. The list is "Things I still can't do in November 2014".

~~~
skrebbel
Yeah ok. I must've not had my coffee yet.

------
Omniusaspirer
Most of these revolve around non-tech industries having horrendously bad
tech/web presence. Laundry, musicians, hospitals, government, banks- all of
these are extremely traditional fields with many of them mired in incredible
amounts of regulation.

Hospitals are particularly embarrassing- even just moving to electronic
records is taking them over a decade and ~100 billion dollars to do. Many
hospitals are still fighting the transition heavily despite every estimate I
can find pointing to massive cost savings several times the initial expense.
Unfortunately I suspect we'll all be waiting a long time for even basic
conveniences like home blood drawings, let alone cheap MRI's.

[http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/24/5/1103.long](http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/24/5/1103.long)

------
estebank
> 30\. Get a discount from the federal government for being healthy. Fat
> people should pay more taxes because they cost society more. This means some
> approved weigh in and testing centers

Am I the only one finding this insulting, disgusting and backwards? People can
be overweight for a multitude of reasons, some of which are:

    
    
        * Genetics
        * Medication
        * Health conditions
        * Smoking
        * Enviromental reasons
        * Lack of sleep
        * Age
        * Pregnancy
        * An inactive lifestyle coupled with high consumtion of lipids
    

You want the government to spend less money in fat people? Make the government
first invest money to avoid having an epidemic of overweight people.

Some people have reasons other than stuffing their faces for being fat. It'd
be impolite of me to say what I think of this person for implying there
aren't.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Most fat people don't have reasons other than stuffing their faces for being
fat. As evidence for this, consider the fact that obesity is skyrocketing
while most of the things on your list are not changing.

~~~
brotchie
I don't disagree, but I feel you're implying that obese individuals have
complete "self-aware" autonomy over their decision making.

I can pick an obese individual out of a crowd and go "That guy is fat because
he eats too much. Dude... have some self control, stop eating so much, buy
healthy food, do some exercise, learn to cook for yourself."

Focusing on an individual, all these things may be true, and one may seek to
place all the blame on that individual. However, take a step back and look at
the cohort of obese people. When entire swathes of society are suffering from
these problems, I don't think you can point your finger and blame every obese
person for "stuffing their faces."

What collective forces are acting on the majority of the population that
results in them eating poorly, not exercising, putting on weight year after
year, etc?

The more and more I've read about psychology, self-awareness, political
science, etc, and observed how the media and business interests clearly
influence behavior, the less and less I feel it's a viable position to
attribute individual blame to "fat people" "poor people" "homeless people" for
what are society wide issues.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Society is an abstraction for the aggregated product of individual actions.
It's an abstraction layer above the level of individual choice, much as
thermodynamics is an abstraction layer above mechanics.

Now lets suppose we do want to work on the societal abstraction level. The
problem is that the proportion of people making a certain individual choice
has gone up. One solution is a pigouvian tax to disincentivize this choice.

I agree you can't blame every single obese person for eating too much. You can
only blame the vast majority of them - a small fraction really do have thyroid
issues (and could potentially be excused from said tax).

~~~
estebank
1) people want line item veto from taxes? Where can individuals opt out of
paying for wars they don't agree with?

2) taxing obese people would (beyond all the moral and ethical questions that
arise) disproportionately affect people that already screwed by the status
quo, people of lower income that cannot afford to eat better.

Obesity is a symptom, in the same way that homelessness is a symptom of a
failed policy towards mental disorders. Just as some people treat depression
and PTSD though alcoholism, some people consume unhealthy food that is cheap
and keeps them going. The same reason that demographic also disproportionately
smokes, it's a cheap chemical hit that keeps them awake while working two
jobs.

This reeks of "Fuck you, I've got mine".

~~~
yummyfajitas
_...people of lower income that cannot afford to eat better._

People of lower income can't afford to spend less money on food?

 _...keeps them awake while working two jobs._

Please familiarize yourself with even the basic statistics on poverty in the
west before discussing this topic further (hint: google the fraction of poor
people who work).

------
vermooten
"32\. Be able to get into an ER for under $100. It's ridicoulous that a mere
15 min consultation can cost somebody (the system) $1000+."

You can. It's called 'living in Europe.'

~~~
waterlesscloud
You even quoted the part where he says "the system".

He's talking about total costs, including to the government.

Rightly or wrongly, he believes there's room to dramatically lower actual
health care costs.

------
frtab
Some of those already exist, and some of those should never exist.

------
hakankibar
6\. Get somebody to come to my house, pick up my dry cleaning and drop it back
off the next day (Amazon "Clean").

We do exactly that :) [http://temizlikyolda.com/](http://temizlikyolda.com/)

~~~
Spidler
It's oldstyle in London too. Lockers in the basement, lock your laundry in,
send a mail off, and get them delivered in time.

Works brilliantly.

------
lazyjones
Underwhelming, mostly "luxury problems" other people don't have. He can
probably fund a bunch of startups to tackle most instead of complaining.

You know what I miss most? While there are plenty of online courses, some even
for particular specializations, noone offers "synthesizable" courses targeted
at arbitrary special fields with arbitrary preexisting skills. For example, I
want to learn everything about state-of-the-art battery production (e.g. how
factories operate, what the scaling issues are etc.). I have a background
mostly in IT, physics from school, strong in mathematics. I should be able to
choose this specialized topic and then "add" prerequisite courses until I'm
confident that I can build on my existing knowledge and get exactly what I
need to know to become proficient in battery production.

My current choices are either to study physics at a major university and try
to find courses that cover my target topic to specialize towards the end
(realistically, I'd have to read 100+ publications to cover recent advances),
or to find books on the topic and whenever I feel I lack knowledge to
understand a book, other books to cover these holes. Very difficult, trial-
and-error and slow. Or I could hire a personal trainer(?) proficient in the
field (how to find?) to get me there.

Neither of these seem very attractive and efficient and having a flexible
online course system for this purpose would really help. Any takers? Don't you
want a simple, effective way to become proficient in a particular field
without wading knee-deep through useless material for years?

------
pmontra
Most of the points are about scarce resources that must be retrieved using a
specialized network of experts. If a company has to build a solution, there
must be a market large enough to make it profitable in the long run. If no, we
need some crowdsourced enterprise similar to what OpenStreetMap did for maps
or Wikipedia did for general knowledge.

Some random thoughts on some points that stand out more for me.

There are tools for 4, but non barely noticeable. There are problems with
batteries too.

13 is disturbing. I won't work with him and he probably won't be willing to
hire me.

14 would be great but I'm afraid paper and pencil are still the best tools if
we want to trust the results of an election and keep ballots anonymous,
notwithstanding a lot or research on the subject. I won't trust any solution
with an IP header that can be traced to me or with a database that could
receive fake votes. At least in physical elections parties can send their
representatives to polling stations and check if anything strange is going on.

29\. Indoor Maps from Google is tackling that problem. Probably they are not
the only ones working on that.

Getting 31 for free is pretty common in Europe and probably in other areas of
the world. That's not a matter of being in 2014 but of where one lives.

------
sarhus
> 22\. have all my accounting being done as a SASS.

In UK that's done by Crunch
([http://www.crunch.co.uk/](http://www.crunch.co.uk/))

------
rdc12
Most of these seem possible and some of them are really creepy take this for
example [1], first off that would be unmanagable list, allready exists (dating
services, tinder, etc) and is presented in a very dodgy way.

[1] "27\. Be able to see a list of all single people in LA right now and
efficiently sort through this data, with two way opt-in, to find an ideal
match"

------
Beltiras
Much of this list is things you can do with a little ingenuity.

ER problem is US specific. Scandinavian countries don't have that problem (to
name 1st world countries that have "solved" HC).

What does he want to test via blood? There are a lot of specific solutions
available.

Some would argue he should buy a Tesla and that's that on the car front.

And then there's just the stupid stuff like "call FD with an app"..... cuz 911
is soo hard to remember. And the gross misunderstanding of Bitcoin. The value
fluctuates. That's any currency, not just Bitcoin. Even the value of the
dollar is volatile (inflation).

He couldn't find a physicist to teach him GR? That's so amusing it brought me
to tears. Did he try .... a local university?

The invasion of privacy he calls for is .... disturbing.

If he can get MRI's done @ 100$ per pop, he's got a business to run and money
to make. Go do it!

I could go on tearing that list to shreds.

------
mkaroumi
"Liked"

6\. Get somebody to come to my house, pick up my dry cleaning and drop it back
off the next day (Amazon "Clean").

There's actually a new Swedish startup (I'm not a part of it) that does
exactly this!
[https://twitter.com/LaundryOnlineSE](https://twitter.com/LaundryOnlineSE)

"LaundryOnline is a swedish startup created to make ur day more awesome by
taking care of ur laundry. We pick up and deliver ur laundry fast and easy."
Seems cool!

~~~
diziet
Washio does this in SF as well (I've been a happy user)

12\. Get a qualified guitar / piano / cello teacher to come to my house
without randomly calling people on craigslist or doing general google
searches.

13\. Keep track of where everybody in my team is physically right now.

Both of these are possible with the right apps~

~~~
stefan_kendall3
They also operate in DC apparently. It was significantly less expensive to not
meet the weight minimum and pay extra vs. use the hotel laundry service.

------
ryandvm
> 7\. Have my car keep a web record of everywhere it has been, how it is
> doing, and what needs fixing or updating.

There are a lot of worthy problems on this list, but #7 has been completely
solved by the current connected car devices like Zubie
([http://zubie.co/](http://zubie.co/)) or Automatic
([https://www.automatic.com/](https://www.automatic.com/)).

------
thomasfoster96
I'm sure 30 is probably best achieved by putting a 5% GST-like tax on food and
drinks that exceed a certain calorie, sugar or fat content. Making people get
weighed for their taxes isn't exactly going to be logistically, morally or
politically possible in the foreseeable future.

~~~
crdoconnor
Subsidizing fresh fruit and veg wouldn't hurt either.

~~~
thomasfoster96
At the moment in Australia we have 10% GST on things or no GST on things.
Changing that to 15% (for most unhealthy items) and -5% is the sort of thing
I'd like to see.

------
plus9z
"28\. Find a teacher of general relativity online. I tried." Really?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbmf0bB38h0&list=PLPPSIjDe9T...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbmf0bB38h0&list=PLPPSIjDe9T-81p1CjN49_Zi_L4-NQorTp)

------
netcan
18\. Invest $10,000 in Uber in the secondary market by buying some shares from
an existing shareholder -- with just a few clicks.

If this one gets solved, it would be weirdly ironic. That's supposedly what
public markets are for. This BTW, is one an entrepreneurial government could
tackle.

------
ddw
Most of these come down to "give me what I want now for less money!"

Is this all that technology is good for?

------
bryanlarsen
For #4: [https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/findster-the-gps-
tracker-...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/findster-the-gps-tracker-
without-monthly-fees--2)

------
Sgoettschkes
15\. Call the police or the fire department or paramedics using an app.

I think this app is called telephone. You use it by typing an identifier of
the service you want to reach (e.g. 911) and a call is dispatched.

------
therobot24
> 32\. Be able to get into an ER for under $100. It's ridicoulous that a mere
> 15 min consultation can cost somebody (the system) $1000+.

Thought this was basically urgent care.

------
theklub
Half of these are already available, I'm too lazy to go through and list them.
On a side note google "Fred Krueger"

------
GFK_of_xmaspast
"11\. Get a quick, binding divorce online."

If you google "divorce online" you get a shitload of links for existing
services.

------
recursive
> 5\. Share my health and fitness data with my doctor and my trainer in real
> time and get advice.

This is exactly what TrainingPeaks does.

------
sup
> 21\. take a picture of any object and find out where to buy it (Shazam for
> things)

Like Amazon Firefly.

~~~
eterm
I'm pretty sure that many of these problems could be "solved" by hiring a
personal assistant type person to do things like find out where to buy
something or coordinate his dry cleaning.

But it sounds like this person is incredibly self entitled and wouldn't pay
for that.

------
vseloved
Lots of 1st world problems here

------
peterkelly
> 11\. Get a quick, binding divorce online.

Umm... really???

------
bcardarella
#12 is trying to be solved by learnivore.com

------
krc5kz
I could see Theranos trying to solve #1

