Ask HN: What ideas have you had, only to see someone else go onto execute?

[uptown]

I'm sure many of us have had ideas for products or services, but either executed them poorly ourselves, or never pursued them at all, only to see someone else run with a similar idea and execute it successfully.

For my contribution, I thought up the idea of buffering the audio from discmans in a digital chip to prevent disruption when the discman was jostled. Discmans eventually added this feature, and of course now everything is on a chip instead of a moving disc. Another idea I once had was to interconnect radar detectors with a communication network in order to provide advanced-warning to drivers further behind you on the road. I believe some firm eventually brought this to market, but Waze seems like a superior solution.

I'm curious what ideas you've had that others have gone on to execute.

[grawprog]

Dude like one day I was totally sitting there watching that cartoon about the cavemen that totally push their little stone cars around with their feet and I was like duuude what if we like put a floor on the bottom of the car and totally like put some kind of like device that runs on controlled explosions of burning petroleum products and it like propelled the car forward then you totally wouldn't need to push it with your feet.... Then my buddy was all like. Duuuuuudddee that's fuckin gnarly....but like isn't that totally an engine???

Duuuuuuuuddddeeee

Then we hit the bong again.