Things I still can't do in November 2014

https://facebook.com/frkrueger/posts/10154867033210444

by imd23 • 12 years ago

80 143 12 years ago

mkaroumi2• 12 years ago

"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

"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• 12 years ago

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~

mkaroumi2• 12 years ago

Cool, thanks for the info. There's always "an app for that"

stefan_kendall32• 12 years ago

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.

jokoon• 12 years ago

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.

octatone2• 12 years ago

Or just dumb ideas.

Call the police from an app? Your phone is still a phone ...

ntietz2• 12 years ago

While it's easy to call emergency services by 911, it's more difficult to call, say, the local sheriff's office for something that's not an emergency especially when you're traveling. An app could help solve that and resolve the best non-emergency number for you in your current location.

antr4• 12 years ago

31. Be able to get a $100 MRI. It can be done for this price.
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+.

A good number are Silicon Valley (or US) problems, the $100 MRI is pretty much the cost of an MRI in Europe, but then, it's free for the patient. Same goes for the ER.

irremediable2• 12 years ago

A good number are Silicon Valley (or US) problems, the $100 MRI is pretty the cost of an MRI in Europe, but then, it's free for the patient. Same goes for the ER.

FWIW, while the patient-facing cost is about that, I think the actual cost (after accounting for taxes, charitable donations, the radiographer's time, etc) is quite a bit higher.

Osmium• 12 years ago

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?

jacquesm2• 12 years ago

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.

Gygash• 12 years ago

Uncommon as they may be, I imagine getting a divorce is currently a complicated, expensive process, even if the couple are in agreement about terms. Sounds like a good pain point to solve, though I have reservations about trying to automate complex legal, financial and emotional decisions like this.

yen223• 12 years ago

Saudi Arabia has solved this problem - at least one Saudi Arabian man divorced his wife via text message: http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2009/04/09/70302.html

michaelbuckbee• 12 years ago

http://www.wevorce,com

fphhotchips2• 12 years ago

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?

dasil003• 12 years ago

I'm pretty sure this is to enable an acceptable level of fraud protection. Within some countries (UK) it is more or less instant most of the time.

tomblomfield• 12 years ago

Since 2008 the UK, the Faster Payments Service[1] on infrastructure run by Vocalink[2] enable bank-to-bank payments that usually clear in a couple of seconds. This should work 24/7, depending on the sending and receiving bank. Many banks will "soft post" the payment during the day in a mirror ledger, and then run overnight batch processes to "hard post".

Of course, their batches only run on business days. Because there's no-one around at the weekend to crank the handles on the machines...?

I'd expect to see Faster Payments rolled out in the US in the next 5-7 years.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster_Payments_Service 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VocaLink

BjoernKW2• 12 years ago

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'.

jacquesm2• 12 years ago

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

plikan13• 12 years ago

I always thought the obvious reason for this is that it allows the banks to hang on to your money a little bit longer. At least that's how it works where I live. The money disappears from your account immediately, so essentially you give them a ~24 hour free loan. The banks win, so they have no incentive the change it.

tpeo• 12 years ago

There's no guarantee that individual banks will have enough deposits to cover their liabilities, so they first have to wait until the end of the day in order to clear all transactions made and fix any possible deposit shortfalls by operating on the overnight market getting short-term loans, either from the FED or from other banks.

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/overnightrate.asp

I'm not saying this is the reason why you can't instantly transfer money around, as there could possibly be a better implementation of such a system that allows consumers to do that. I'm just saying what I know.

sgt101• 12 years ago

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_kendall32• 12 years ago

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

...okay bud.

skrebbel2• 12 years ago

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

caseyohara• 12 years ago

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".

skrebbel2• 12 years ago

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

netcan3• 12 years ago

These are both kind of like brainstorming tools, ways of thinking about ideas. Your tool encourages one to aggrandise an idea, which can be useful. This encourages trivialisation an idea, which can be useful too. I think doing both at the same time is a sort of essential entrepreneurial doublethink.

Ideas, products, inventions and such are surprisingly (very surprisingly, to me) hard to place on that Yudkowski Ambition Scale. The line between trivial and revolutionary is surprisingly blurry.

I think one could argue or tweak several of these to be in the 2-5/6 range. At least they could to the extent that they can be argue to be a 1.

1. Get a blood test simply, myself, without going to a lab, and get the results overnight.

If you extend this past just bloods, combine this with DIY diagnostics tools, 23andme, items 5, 16, 31... I'm sure you can arrive at a sort of preventative medicine something something new paradigm. A Yudkowski 3?

2. Build a house myself using standard small interchangeable parts like legos.

Revolutionize town and cityscapes, quarter the cost of our single biggest purchase.... Yudkowski 3, I think.

Even Yudkowski's 1 & 2 could arguably be 3-5s.

eli_gottlieb• 12 years ago

That's hysterical! I like how the transhuman stuff starts at (6), the potential existential risks at (7), and by the time you get to (10) you're literally more ambitious than God.

Of course, there needs to be an analogous scale for controlling the outcomes of developing anything that ambitious.

And a choir that you can hire to follow you around singing the necessary Ominous Latin Chanting while you announce your ambition levels.

hakankibar• 12 years ago

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/

Spidler• 12 years ago

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.

frtab2• 12 years ago

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

Omniusaspirer• 12 years ago

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

S4M• 12 years ago

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.

swombat• 12 years ago

Isn't that what KickStarter does?

And a whole bunch of other crowdfunding sites in the UK - Crowdcube, Seedrs, etc. I don't know what the equivalents are in the US, but I'm sure they exist...

k-mcgrady3• 12 years ago

> 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.

jotm• 12 years ago

On 9. - you can't just send or withdraw $10,000 - you need to go to the bank, declare the purpose of this transfer, sign some papers and then wait a few days for it to be cleared. The limit varies between countries. Money laundering laws and all that.

Some banks actually decline large withdrawals (but not transfers) if you have a weak/suspicious reason ("I want to buy five 3D LED TVs today" :-)).

pmontra2• 12 years ago

Transferring money across countries in Europe (and even across different banks in the same country) is not that fast. Maybe it takes a couple of days. Doing it with PayPal is probably the closest thing to instantaneous transfers.

However actually getting those money out of the bank or PayPal as banknotes is more difficult. The times when banks and states where letting go the money in their vaults are long gone. Larger greeds and larger debts mean that there are de facto limits to how much you can cash out per day. I don't even want to think about what I should go through to get 10,000 EUR in cash at my bank.

sup• 12 years ago

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

Like Amazon Firefly.

eterm• 12 years ago

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.

gordaco4• 12 years ago

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, 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.

lingoberry• 12 years ago

Regarding 30. wasn't it recently concluded here on HN that obese people actually end up costing less to society since they tend not to survive into their 80s/90s? Not that his thought is good even if this was not true.

yummyfajitas7• 12 years ago

An obese person costs more per year but less per lifetime since he dies sooner. Correspondingly, an obese person should pay more each year but they will pay less over their lifetime.

dkyc• 12 years ago

"Be able to get a $100 MRI. It can be done for this price." [...] 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)."

As someone who lives in Germany where people pay almost 20% of their salary for non-opt-out health insurance, I'm astonished by people that think a state-forced health insurance gets you free MRIs.

gordaco4• 12 years ago

Yes, the usual nitpick about tax-funded services applies here. It's not actually free, as in it doesn't come from the sky, but if you pay your taxes you're covered, which means that A) you WILL have the service when you need it, with zero cost at the moment of purchase (that is the key here: no headaches related to money, no loans necessary, etc), and B) average Joe pays less in taxes than what he would spend if national healthcare was provided, since when it is not, the high entry barrier allows the development of a price-raising oligopoly.

I guess that it's a matter of opinion, but personally, looking at the state of healthcare in the USA, I'm quite glad I live in Europe.

matthewmacleod• 12 years ago

In the context of healthcare, "free" means "free at the point of use." This is perfectly sensible, because everybody is aware there is no such thing as healthcare which is literally absent of any cost. Given that, it seems like making this tedious statement every time someone references free healthcare is getting old.

I'd also point out that the insurance rate is actually 15.5%, that people with low incomes are exempt, that the total payment is capped, and that employers contribute around half of this payment.

Retric• 12 years ago

Healthcare is under 12% GDP in Germany so a 20% tax on everyone is clearly not happening.

girvo3• 12 years ago

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.

frtab2• 12 years ago

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

snarfy2• 12 years ago

Smokers die sooner and cost the system less. You should get a tax break for smoking. Forcing people's choices is not a net good for society.

flycaliguy• 12 years ago

Sit down with a social worker and try to explain the new weigh in system for a long list of reasons to abandon this concept entirely.

I don't even understand why this list is being taken seriously. The guy basically just said:

I want to have GPS for my dog, be able to buy nice art and, ya know, just live in a society governed by regulated physical fitness like some sort of Nazi.

ElectricMonk793• 12 years ago

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.

gordaco4• 12 years ago

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.

ElectricMonk793• 12 years ago

http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/healthcare/fatties-and-smokers...

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.

badgersandjam• 12 years ago

This. Plus its fucking miserable dying slowly over the space of 20 years. I've watched it happen to so many people. Avoid work, retire early, spend everything, eat everything, do what you must do as early as you can before probability becomes your worst enemy.

Edit: The people I've watched die had one regret only: Waiting until retirement to do what they wanted at which point they can't. Perfect cogs with pensions and private healthcare paid up through slavery for 40+ years. Nothing to show other than some bricks and a hip replacement and a nice plot in the graveyard.

Joeri• 12 years ago

The classic example is travel. Some people wait until their retirement before they travel the world, which means they can no longer do the physically demanding adventures and they have only a few years to enjoy the memories. Others travel before they start a career and family, allowing them to appreciate the memories for their whole life. Others still just find ways to travel their whole lives, and make it a part of who they are and what brings them fulfillment. It doesn't have to be travel, but I believe most people can find ways to be fulfilled their whole life instead of postponing it until retirement. I see plenty of examples in my surroundings of people who have psychologically locked themselves up in a non-fulfilling life. I can see the ways they could break out of it, but somehow they can't.

decasteve2• 12 years ago

And those of us who continue doing athletics into our "Masters" years burden it with injuries. My broken leg in a Pole Vaulting accident and its subsequent rehab was not cheap for the health-care system.

estebank2• 12 years ago

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.

jwdunne• 12 years ago

Medication resonates with me strongly. A lot of anti-psychotics increase appetite massively and are known to cause weight gain. I remember I was larger than I'd ever been and I'd got to that point very quickly.

A "fat tax" could very well hit some of the most vulnerable citizens. People with severe, long-term psychotic illnesses who are prescribed neuroleptics long-term and are unable to work comes to mind.

Perhaps making healthy foods more accessible than unhealthy foods is a better place to start. In the UK, for example, I could buy much more processed food stocked full with sugar than I can fresh vegetables for the same price.

k-mcgrady3• 12 years ago

I can see something like this making a little sense in a country with 100% free health cared paid by taxes. If you have a disease you've caused yourself (by smoking, taking drugs, eating badly) why should everyone else have to help you through their taxes? That's not my opinion though, I don't think that's how it should work but I guess that's how he's looking at it.

icebraining2• 12 years ago

Well, smokers already pay more (e.g, 80% of the price of a pack in France is taxes, and many other countries have similar rates). Sugar taxes are also appearing in some countries.

yummyfajitas7• 12 years ago

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• 12 years ago

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.

DanBC3• 12 years ago

I mostly agree with your point[1] but you should be aware that seroquel and abilify (the 5th and 6th most prescribed medications in the US) both lost increased appetite and weight gain as side effects.

The US also has a lot of "off label" prescribing of other anti psychotic meds. This includes risperidone - which again promotes weight gain. The rate of prescribing mental health meds has increased dramatically since the 1990s.

The mechanism of weight gain for some mental health meds is not just "increased appetite, eats more" either. Part of it is the sedating effect so people need less calories, and there might be some changes to gut flora.

Gut flora to lose weight: http://bbc.co.uk/news/health-22458428

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-gut-bacteria-h...

http://rt.com/usa/children-antipsychotic-taking-us-187/

[1] are you aware how you come across and just don't care?

epsylon• 12 years ago

You don't tax the fat people, you tax the unhealthy food. As far as I've noticed, this is another very US-centric problem: portions are much larger and the food is much more carb-heavy in the US (compared to other developed countries). There's a strong cultural aspect to that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soda_tax

bcardarella• 12 years ago

#12 is trying to be solved by learnivore.com

crdoconnor5• 12 years ago

"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_• 12 years ago

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

jboynyc• 12 years ago

Wall Street's irresponsible behavior -- several orders of magnitude more irresponsible than making the wrong dietary choices -- cost the American public quite dearly around 2008, remember?

crdoconnor5• 12 years ago

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.

myg204• 12 years ago

Maybe because wall street was deemed "too big to fail" and propped up with billions upon billions when it collapsed?

anw• 12 years ago

I agree. This is also a bit of a slippery slope.

My 2 previous jobs offered health coverage that included gym membership discounts.

This is a proper motivator [for me]. If I want to maintain and improve my health, I'm offered the benefit of doing so with perks.

But what advantage does it give to those who have something such as a heart condition that won't allow them to participate in the same exercises?

In this case, diet could be the helping factor. Then do these people get a refund on part of their grocery bill?

The problem is trying to create cookie cutter solutions to people that are diverse and have complex issues.

cm2012• 12 years ago

Is there evidence that fat people cost society money? They die earlier, and quicker, avoiding extremely costly end of life dementia care.

Beltiras• 12 years ago

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.

netcan3• 12 years ago

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.

sarhus• 12 years ago

22. have all my accounting being done as a SASS.

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

rdc12• 12 years ago

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"

peterkelly• 12 years ago

11. Get a quick, binding divorce online.

Umm... really???

vermooten• 12 years ago

"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.'

waterlesscloud2• 12 years ago

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.

nikcub• 12 years ago

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

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

netcan3• 12 years ago

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• 12 years ago

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.

cgio• 12 years ago

Have you seen 10eqs? http://www.10eqs.com/

Kiro• 12 years ago

There's a difference between personal tutoring and general advice. I believe he meant the latter. Like for example paying to see this kind of list.

decasteve2• 12 years ago

The best I've seen for advice online is https://clarity.fm/ which for the most part has a decently well curated list of experts.

yoha• 12 years ago

You are looking for the Dunning-Krunger effect:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

jsnell• 12 years ago

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• 12 years ago

#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

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. :-)

pmontra2• 12 years ago

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.

krc5kz• 12 years ago

I could see Theranos trying to solve #1

shruubi• 12 years ago

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...

thomasfoster962• 12 years ago

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.

crdoconnor5• 12 years ago

Subsidizing fresh fruit and veg wouldn't hurt either.

thomasfoster962• 12 years ago

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.

GFK_of_xmaspast• 12 years ago

"11. Get a quick, binding divorce online."

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

therobot24• 12 years ago

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.

bryanlarsen• 12 years ago

For #4: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/findster-the-gps-tracker-...

vseloved• 12 years ago

Lots of 1st world problems here

recursive• 12 years ago

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.

ddw• 12 years ago

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

Is this all that technology is good for?

ryandvm• 12 years ago

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/) or Automatic (https://www.automatic.com/).

lazyjones• 12 years ago

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?

plus9z• 12 years ago

"28. Find a teacher of general relativity online. I tried." Really? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbmf0bB38h0&list=PLPPSIjDe9T...

Sgoettschkes• 12 years ago

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.

theklub• 12 years ago

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

Things I still can't do in November 2014

Related Stories