problems you have upvoted

Reading screenplays takes too long #screenplay #TextToSpeech

Sun, 10 Apr 2022 12:23:00 +0000

My friend who works in Hollywood was complaining about how much reading he has to do, and how he wished someone could just read his screenplays to him in the car while he sat in LA traffic. We looked at the existing text to speech options out there, but because screenplays have atypical formatting the existing solutions didn't sound great. 3 points posted by egibney

A simple event management platform #events #web

Mon, 04 Apr 2022 18:02:00 +0000

I was speaking to my 19-year-old sister recently, and she was telling me about how she and her friends create a WhatsApp group for any social event they plan together. I thought this is a little crazy, since those groups just become stale soon after the event is over, and WhatsApp gets filled with unnecessary items.

Then I realized, that this is the younger generation, many of whom have never been on Facebook. I'm fairly confident that many in this group are not even aware that something like Facebook Events even exists. I'm 26, and my friends would always use Facebook Events for planning such events.

I know that there are also many others, who want to leave Facebook, but benefit from using Facebook Events to plan events.

I have a good feeling that it would be great to have a simple platform that helps create and manage small events, like birthday parties.

3 points posted by perry

Analytics data without cookies or fingerprinting #analytics #web

Fri, 01 Apr 2022 16:43:00 +0000

All industry-standard methods to collect data for web analytics are relying on the identification of recurring visitors and transmitting personal data to third-party companies. The problem here is the data privacy aspect.

Within the European Union this constellation leads to incomplete data in web analytics. Consent banners are implemented on websites to block any trackers and only allow tracking once visitors click something like 'yes please track me'. Obviously, a high number of visitors does not accept that.

For some use-cases, there is no alternative to visitor consent and profiling-based tracking. Just think of aggregating customer data within your CRM or tracking conversions and reporting them to ad networks. But there are other analytics tasks that would not require personal data or the identification of visitors.

Plain statistics about the number of website sessions, acquisition channels, or the performance of your content could be generated from technical website activity data without any connection to a visitor. We would not even require the IP addresses for this.

3 points posted by matthias

Automatic checking of downloaded file integrity #cybersecurity #hash

Mon, 28 Mar 2022 14:58:00 +0000

We are at higher risk of supply-chain attacks than ever before, A seemingly innocuous file we download from a trusted website could have been maliciously altered to compromise our systems by an attacker but the file integrity checking mechanisms are beyond the reach for an average Internet user.

Websites which care about the security of their users provide hash(MD5/SHA) or GPG signature file which can be used to verify the integrity of the file with a couple of commands, Although its straightforward for the power users it's not ideal for those who have never executed commands in the terminal/command prompt.

If the file verification can be automated at browser through standardized specification of hash signatures then end users need not verify the integrity of the files manually.

3 points posted by Abishek Muthian

Existing deployment services aren't portable #web #jamstack

Sun, 27 Mar 2022 20:07:00 +0000

Currently, existing deployment platform such as Vercel or Netlify, enforce users to use their own CDN. This turns out to be an expensive solution when traffic is high or team is large. It'd be nice to benefit from their nice developer experience while still owning our deployment artifacts and deciding where to upload / host these files. 3 points posted by svedova

OkCupid for Jobs #employment #jobboard

Mon, 07 Mar 2022 15:18:00 +0000

In a discussion about replacement for StackOverflow jobs in HN; User 0xbadcafebee comments about the need-gap in job search websites,

Somebody please make OkCupid for Jobs. Both employers and applicants fill out questions that the community curates (so they can be job-specific, industry-specific, etc). Both employers and employees get matches via algorithm rather than receiving 100 random resumes or 100 random job suggestions that have nothing to do with you. Existing sites do this, but very poorly, because they only try to detect information out of a resume and detect keywords in a job listing. There is only so much data you can gleam from those sources and it's highly variable. You need to ask specific questions, like "Is Functional Programming the best form of programming?" or "Do you prefer asynchronous communication when dealing with coworkers?", or "Do you like being in an office?", or "Do you like working in finance?".

3 points posted by Abishek Muthian

Typical freelancer needs to use too many tools #freelancer #productivity

Fri, 11 Feb 2022 00:07:00 +0000

A lot of people who freelance already use too many tools in the stack. e.g. a lot of freelancers use Freshbooks, Asana, Toggl, Jira, Calend.ly to manage their business. They have either to integrate it or manually rewrite information between apps. Not to mention some features missing like simply tracking invoices sent/invoices paid.

Also, many people right now are quitting their jobs and moving to freelance, and they are worried about how to choose the right tools, which won't be very expensive (for example they were working in enterprise segment, and they had all the tools paid by their company - now they have to buy it on their own).

There are number of solutions which lacks some of the features of "all-in-one" stack, or are too expensive to buy.

3 points posted by tomw

Web page categorization #web #category

Mon, 07 Feb 2022 13:33:00 +0000

Website categorization is the process of classifying websites into different categories using its content. Categorization of websites is useful for aggregation, security, moderation, archiving etc.

There are are several website categorization tools which work fine for well-known websites, But fail for newer websites or web pages with lesser text content. This limits the use cases for which those tools could be used.

I'm exploring whether there's a need-gap for more robust website categorization tool which can identify the category of modern websites, web pages with lesser text content.

3 points posted by Abishek Muthian

Track the p/l of multiple investment accounts #investment #reports

Fri, 21 Jan 2022 04:35:00 +0000

I have a stock/options brokerage account and a crypto account and I can’t find a single platform that allows me to track my overall p/l with ease. All the tools available online have one or more of the following:

requires me to tediously enter information of my every single stock trade using a poorly-designed web interface
has a limitation on the number of trades that I can enter
doesn't show the performance metrics that I want (e.g. time-weighted return, money-weighted return, on a monthly/annualized basis, CAGR, IRR, Sharpe Ratio, Omega Ratio etc..)
limited benchmarking options
charges a monthly subscription
does not support data logging of my options trading
does not support crypto
cannot unify the p/l of multiple accounts / assets / currencies into a single report
low customizability of the portfolio reports

3 points posted by JMaven

Small social bits like memes aren't interactive #photo #socialmedia

Fri, 14 Jan 2022 22:02:00 +0000

Missing a simple way to create small interactive experiences

The range of small content creation on mobile encompasses single photos, customising gifs and composing entire movies. There are no options for users who want to make interactive experiences.

Workarounds

Two common ways for users to create an interactive experience are building a website or a game. There are a few website builders that run on mobile (eg: Universe) but these are still deployed via web, not providing content you can deliver directly.

Historical Technology

Two generations of technology have allowed end users to easily create experiences. These pre-date the rise of mobile devices. Both created a document which could be played on a commonly-available runtime. The Hypercard environment was bundled with Mac computers for several years (pre-Web).

3 points posted by andydentperth

Link rot, Invalid web URLs #web #archive

Mon, 10 Jan 2022 13:27:00 +0000

Link rotting is when a particular URL is not valid anymore, Usually because the content has been removed. Link rot is an issue we face with needgap as the majority of links here are of side-projects and when the project unfortunately ceases to exist the links become invalid.

If the links are automatically archived then it can help the community can understand what it offered and perhaps even help understanding why it didn't succeed.

Of course link rot is not specific to needgap, Whole wide web is affected by the link rot.

3 points posted by Abishek Muthian

Boilerplate for building SaaS products #SaaS #web

Tue, 28 Dec 2021 20:46:00 +0000

Every user-facing SaaS product requires a basic set of features that are common to every SaaS. This includes features like:

user registration / authentication
email / password reset (general app settings and user preferences)
sending emails
file storage on cloud services
error tracking
deployment configuration files
payments!

Implementing these features is a major distraction for founders, because this takes up time they cannot spend building their own business logic. And when done correctly, this can easily take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months.

3 points posted by siddhantgoel

Journaling diary starting with the birth date #journaling #writing

Sun, 26 Dec 2021 06:25:00 +0000

A custom diary/journal should have the option to start from birth date which makes more meaning when it comes to personal writing to start with every real new year.

Example: I want a diary for where I expect the start start date shoud be 12/02/2021 and end date should be 12/01/2022.

This can be called as "Birthday Diary" For those who believe new year is their birth date and want to take resolutions or start writing their journals from birthdate with new motive each year.

Personal note: Writing in a physical notebook is the best thing which adds muscle memory and more memory power than the digital tools which gives modern stat/graphs, easy to do stuffs / storage /portability. A physical pen and notebook gives more value when it is personal.

And with our modern printing technology, this birthday diary printing must be a simple one which is not ready just.

3 points posted by Samarasam

Historical datasets are expensive, hard to find #finance #datascience

Mon, 13 Dec 2021 06:45:00 +0000

With all the WallStreetBets hype I've been developing/testing automated investment/trading strategies in crypto/stocks. I was struggling to get large amounts of data cheaply like total historical stock/crypto prices or historical news, eCommerce pricing and stock levels. To resolve this I had to rely on heavy scraping or work with a variety of vendors who specialise in different datasets which increases infrastructure cost, risks getting IP blocked, increases load on the target server and increases data sourcing cost. I spent more time managing scrapers, bots and data streams instead of working on the analysis, research and building my app

3 points posted by gigadata

Funding not aligned with building business #funding #saas

Wed, 08 Dec 2021 20:56:00 +0000

Too many investment and accelerators models built around getting funded by classic VCs (be it VC equity, debt or a hybrid of the two). Investment terms suit a multiple rounds of VC raising, but aren’t really aligned with the way of building businesses that most founders prefer. There is a significant lack of source of capital that is aligned with founders who want to build a healthy, sustainable, profitable business.
Revenue-based funding requires no equity to be sacrificed by a founder and it could be a solution unless it takes the form of another black-box 'computer says no' type of approach. There needs to be a revenue-based funding with the human oversight to see the founder/business behind the numbers (MRR, churn etc.) and also work out a truly appropriate solution for the founder's need.

3 points posted by Alex_EpsiFund

Gadget recall monitoring and alert #monitor #alert

Mon, 22 Nov 2021 13:45:00 +0000

Gadget recall happens all the time, Usually due to safety concerns regarding battery or fire hazard from the electronics.

Those who have registered their product on the manufacturer's site or use a connected device where the manufacturer knows the email id get intimations via email about the product recall but others loose out.

There are several reasons for why someone might never register their product, Especially common among aged people. I think it's about time we come up with better mechanisms to monitor gadget recalls and inform the owners.

3 points posted by Rakesh

Localization for No-Code platforms #language #nocode

Sat, 20 Nov 2021 14:03:00 +0000

I recently reviewed couple of no-code platforms to recommend to a friend and learnt that even major platforms lack in localization[1][2] both in the apps built through them and as a platform themselves.

Lack of localization seems like a major de-limiter to anyone who wishes to build apps for regional audience using these no-code platforms.

3 points posted by Abishek Muthian

Linux phone for India and the world #smartphone #India

Mon, 15 Nov 2021 15:45:00 +0000

India is the second largest smartphone market in the world with 439m users in 2020 which is only poised to grow in future. India has one of the largest Linux user base, if not the largest.

What connects those two statements? When the rest of the world have started to look at 3rd alternative to mobile operating systems in the form of smartphones[1][2] powered by Linux Operating Systems(Mainline kernel) India has been left behind due to it's policies with pre-built smartphone hardware.

India has exuberant import taxation for pre-built smartphone hardware and offers incentives to manufacture smartphone in the country which propelled it to become second largest smartphone manufacturer in the world.

I think there's a need-gap for a smartphone manufacturer to build Linux smartphones for India and the world from India.

3 points posted by Abishek Muthian

Sales funnel for WordPress are complicated #sales #wordpress

Fri, 12 Nov 2021 09:08:00 +0000

Last year, we wanted to implement sales funnels for our other plugins on our WordPress site.

But we couldn't find a native solution to WordPress that we could call a complete sales funnel builder. There were a couple of WordPress funnel plugins but they were so complicated and took a lot of steps to build a funnel.

Plus, there were no WordPress tools with a visual funnel planner. People used external tools such as Funnelytics or Prettyfunnels to plan their funnel steps.

Overall people spent over 30-40 mins just to create a simple sales funnel.

Meanwhile, when we looked into SAAS tools, we found Clickfunnels, Kartra, and many others. But they were so expensive. Plus, most of them also didn't have a funnel planner.

So we found out:

- Funnel building takes over 30mins (for beginners it could take even more).

- It took multiple tools to plan and build funnels.

- No WordPress plugins had a visual funnel planner.

- WordPress funnel plugins were so complicated.

At the end of the day, we couldn't get the solution we were looking for.

3 points posted by CSSultan

Configuring custom domains for SaaS is difficult #domain #SaaS

Mon, 08 Nov 2021 18:33:00 +0000

Mature SaaS products often allow users to bring their own domain / subdomain. This allows for customizability and familiarity for their customers. Or perhaps you need to have a 3rd-party tool hosted under your domain for technical reasons. Scaling the SSL / TLS certificates for all these custom domains is very complicated!

In addition, your SaaS might need to support white-labeling so that clients can have their own branding on your app, such as their logo, colors, and other customizations to make it appear like part of their application. This is important when your user is trying to establish a consistent brand with their customers.

3 points posted by yroc92

Prevent arguments related to scorekeeping #sports #tracker

Sat, 06 Nov 2021 16:19:00 +0000

For anyone who has played football, basketball, badminton, or spikeball etc. - you would probably have a good rally, or long passage of play and then when someone does score, everyone seems to have a different interpretation of what the score was/should be.

It's a bit annoying to argue over something so simple. So there should be some kind of scoreboard app that's easy to view and update without disrupting the flow of the game.

3 points posted by jamesfromldn

Finding makers for our product #hardware #freelancer

Fri, 05 Nov 2021 06:07:00 +0000

Developing IoT or other hardware products at scale as a small startup or as a solopreneur is hard as building hardware involves various nuances such as design, development, supply-chain, logistics, manufacturing, quality control etc.

The freelancer ecosystem for software is robust enough that a minimum viable software product could be built using Gig workers, But assessing a gig worker for a hardware product is not as easy because unlike a software not two hardware product is exactly same and the freelancer marketplaces lack specific features to address issues with employing the gig worker for hardware development.

I think there's a need-gap for a marketplace which enables end-to-end hardware product development using gig workers.

3 points posted by Abishek Muthian

Stock market investment decision is hard #stockmarket #reports

Tue, 02 Nov 2021 07:54:00 +0000

The fundamental data and also all the financial charts, doesn't really help me in making a stock market investment decision. It's too polar opinionated and complex, for someone with basic finance knowledge.

Need something easy to grasp and actionable so that I can focus on my day to day work.

3 points posted by Abhikuch

Business analytics in one place #anlaytics #dashboard

Mon, 01 Nov 2021 03:02:00 +0000

In order to run a business in today's world, there's a lot of analytics involved. Some basic analytics every business use would be,

Google Analytics/some other audience analytics tool
Stripe/any other payment provider
Twitter/any other social media platform
Mailchimp/any other email marketing tools

These are some of the basic tools every business use, if not more. In order to get a grasp of what's happening on day to day basis, you either have to visit each of these websites on daily basis or subscribe to their email notifications.

What if there's a platform that pulls the data and gives you a super easy dashboard for various businesses?

3 points posted by jgm

Self-hosted online course distribution platform #tutorship #education

Sat, 23 Oct 2021 16:45:00 +0000

EdTech startups at scale serve the interests of neither the educated nor the educator but themselves.

As an alternative tutors need to host the course on their own platform, Which is easier said than done for educators who are not coders themselves.

There is a need-gap for platform which can enable the tutors distribute courses under their own infrastructure (incl. easy deployment to cloud). Such a platform should include video content distribution, chat, course work submission, assessment, certification etc.

3 points posted by Abishek Muthian

A tracker for everyday activities #habit #lifestyle

Wed, 20 Oct 2021 15:42:00 +0000

I could not find a proper tracker to keep a tab on things. A few examples can be,

Weight, height, Steps taken
Vacation, books read, and a lot more

Probably build a community around this to bring like-minded people together. I could find one similar app for iOS - Haptic, but, few key points are missing there. Like presence in android, community, multiple profiles, etc.

3 points posted by jgm

IP addresses leading to wrongful arrests #Internet #privacy

Tue, 19 Oct 2021 13:46:00 +0000

There have been numerous incidents of IP addresses leading to wrongful arrests, be it due to a typo, 'AM-PM' goof-up or wrong time-zone.

These people having to undergo ordeal for no fault of theirs were the lucky ones since the truth came out in the end but it's not unreasonable to think that many innocent people are languishing in the jails due to wrongful convictions sighting false IP addresses as evidence.

It's naive to expect all investigative agencies to have knowledge about how Internet protocols work or ISPs to act with caution and sincerity when the police ask them to match the IP address to the real geographical address. Yet the governments still rely upon IP addresses at large to prosecute cyber crimes.

3 points posted by Yogesh Basu

Doubts about fit when shopping online #clothing #eCommerce

Thu, 14 Oct 2021 12:15:00 +0000

When I shop online it's so hard to make a choice! Not only I can't understand what would be the right size (when I'm shopping for a brand for the first time), but also I don't understand how the particular garment will look on me. On the other hand, I find shopping online so much more convenient than in stores.

3 points posted by Ekaterina Ulianova

Browser tabs become unmanageable fast #tabs #productivity

Tue, 12 Oct 2021 03:20:00 +0000

When working remotely at a tech company, I use a lot of different SaaS apps, so essentially, all my work is done in the browser. So very quickly, I find that the number of tabs in my internet browser grows to unmanageable counts.

This forces me to stop what I'm doing, and spend time curating my window of tabs to reduce the count so I can continue doing my work. Existing solutions often facilitate curating your tabs in different ways.

Chrome profiles work up to a limit, but when you are multitasking everyday, it doesn't make sense to create multiple profiles for even short-lived distractions.

3 points posted by TabWorkx

Lack of critical thinking when consuming news #news #thinkingaboutthinking

Mon, 11 Oct 2021 20:36:00 +0000

Many people lack trust in news and the time or skill to critically think through each article (for bias, ownership info, alternative perspectives, opinion or more factual). There is a need to reward users for performing functions which would encourage critical thinking to find answers in news and fight misinformation at the same time. 3 points posted by Chamira

Buy Me a Coffee without commision #payment #donation

Mon, 11 Oct 2021 13:56:00 +0000

Buy Me a Coffee is a good way to receive payments without much effort and a widely used method to support indies.

But with the introduction of Stripe Payment Links it doesn't make sense to use BMaC type services anymore, Especially since we'd end up paying commissions to both BMaC and Stripe. I myself use stripe payment links on static websites like my blog and other places where I used BMaC before.

But BMaC does have some features like listing recent payments and comments which might result in better conversions. Features which requires custom implementation and might be out of the reach of no-code developers.

There is a need-gap in bridging Buy Me a Coffee and Stripe Payment Links.

3 points posted by Abishek Muthian

I need to know what recipes I can make #food #recipe

Mon, 11 Oct 2021 11:45:00 +0000

I am not very creative when it comes to making dinner for my family. I have a lot of recipe books, but it's time-consuming to find a recipe, scan my pantry to see what I have and don't have, figure out if I can substitute ingredients, etc.

Current solutions either let you search by main ingredient, or multiple ingredients without considering you might not have all of them or the right quantity.

https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/ingredients

https://recipeland.com/recipes/by_ingredient

https://www.supercook.com/

3 points posted by dwatling

Difficulties cashing paychecks #banks #money

Tue, 05 Oct 2021 15:05:00 +0000

Inspired by this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jl-XVqcJA7s

I've noticed many people have trouble cashing their checks on their banks because their processes are very slow and usually leaves to stand in front of long lines. For that reason, going to the bank can be very frustrating to a lot of people going there and therefore, cashing a check can be a nightmarish process for a lot of people.

3 points posted by rgm48

GST compliant invoice for stripe #billing #invoice

Sat, 02 Oct 2021 05:23:00 +0000

Stripe supports outstanding invoice, i.e. statements of amounts owed by the customer and receipts after payment. But in India's GST regime, tax invoices are to be provided after delivering the service i.e. after payment and has very specific rules for how the invoice should be.

Stripe's invoice is not compliant with the India's GST invoice regulations(lack of required fields), Forcing me to generate my own invoice; Which is fine for the SaaS products where I have back-end to process the invoice but on services where there's no back-end e.g. static websites I have to generate the invoice manually.
I have a separate Stripe account for each product/service for convenience under single GST registration which requires the invoice number across accounts to be in same sequence but is not possible with Stripe.

These are some of the major need-gaps I have noticed with Stripe's invoicing service in India, It may or may not be applicable to GST regimes of other countries. Companies with revenue over 50 crores (500 million) can use Govt's E-Invoicing API and so this need-gap affects only small businesses and indies.

3 points posted by Abishek Muthian

Finding qualified tutor near home #education #tutorship

Tue, 28 Sep 2021 14:58:00 +0000

Last time, I've talked with another user about an idea of a free problem solver ( /problems/291 ) and it turned out that this idea would cause more harm than good for a lot of students. Instead, I focused on the need of providing better education for everyone (like students from all grades and also family members who want to educate their children but don't have time to do so).

There is a need for an app which can help people find a qualified tutor near their home and help them understand the topic easily and students will feel more confident and prepared before taking whatever exam they are going to take. Moreover, tutors can make extra money by helping students to understand topics better.

Feedback is appreciated!

3 points posted by rgm48

Simulating ventilation in the building #simulation #home

Mon, 27 Sep 2021 14:09:00 +0000

Improving ventilation can help curb SARS-CoV-2 and likely similar future airborne pathogens. Building planners have already taken this into account and are giving ventilation more attention than before.

But there seems to be a need-gap in consumer level ventilation simulation software for house and small-business. There are some great home, interior design tools which can help plan floor, furniture and appliances placements, decorations to WiFi access point placements.

I think ventilation planning is a necessary addition to these tools.

3 points posted by Abishek Muthian

How far away is Financial Independence? #personalfinance #analysis

Fri, 24 Sep 2021 16:15:00 +0000

Mint/YNAB do a good job of seeing where money went, Personal Capital/Wealthfront do a good job of seeing where to put your money. But what does it all mean in terms of how far away a person is from Financial Independence given their individual circumstances? Seems like most of the software out there today makes things more complicated, which makes it even harder to have confidence that you're on the right track.

Also frustrating that a given amount of money is hard to relate to what it will actually get you in terms of real-world benefit, given your own tastes and habits.

3 points posted by ben_miller

Palm OS like timesheet app for modern mobile OS #timesheet #productivity

Thu, 23 Sep 2021 13:15:00 +0000

It looks like some are still using the Timesheet app from their long discontinued Palm OS devices because some features from it are not found in the modern timesheet apps of android and iOS.

To quote what's missing,

Palm had a set of "rules" for programmers as to how the UI should work - and one was that nothing should take more than 3 clicks, IIRC. The needs I have for a time sheet app is to simply keep track whenever I change what I work on during the day. I may be working on project 1234, then someone wants me in a meeting on project 6566 work package 312, and my time app must keep track of that. The TimeSheet app does that in the simplest way possible - I do exactly one click, and it tracks the other project.
During the day I may have to work on a number of projects, for shorter or longer periods. I have a list of those projects and work packages in TimeSheet. When the time comes to input all of that into the corporate time system TimeSheet presents me with the total sum of all work packages for each day (and other ways, if I need them).

It's extremely simple. I just can't find anything with the same easy functionality on Android or elsewhere. They seem to have a different focus, and way too many clicks to go through.

3 points posted by Abishek Muthian

Creating professional PDF reports is too hard #pdf #reports

Mon, 20 Sep 2021 19:18:00 +0000

The current solutions for creating a PDF are either too bulky or if they’re simple don’t offer a way to create good looking PDFs. The bulky solutions include LaTeX which have a big storage footprint, complex syntax as well as a bit slow to render out. Other solutions such as PDFkit library for Python and many others offer a simple way but very basic looking reports. It seems a service that makes it simple to create PDF reports but also ones that looks professional is needed. 3 points posted by noddynarwhal

Machine learning is too complex to use #machinelearning #analysis

Sat, 18 Sep 2021 18:03:00 +0000

I work in the insurance industry as a software engineer, and I see that our underwriters and business analysts don't have machine learning tools they can readily use to investigate their own hypotheses related to factor analysis in particular.

Machine learning tools that can provide this kind of analysis are too complex for regular business people to use. As a result, they rely on analytics departments or outside agencies to do this analysis for them. Sometimes, they pay large amounts of money for analysis that they could do themselves if they had tools they understood.

I believe that underwriters, business analysts, small business owners and others should be empowered to use machine learning to do factor analysis, identify potential key performance indicators, and evaluate things like surveys to find relationships in their data.

3 points posted by dmsweetser

Topic classification of Hacker News stories #hackernews #classification

Sat, 18 Sep 2021 13:20:00 +0000

Topic classification is one of the most requested features of Hacker News, which is understandable as stories from wide range of categories are submitted on Hacker News and Users with different interests consume content from HN.

Classification of topics can help with filtering the content we are interested in and for bookmarking purposes.

3 points posted by Abishek Muthian

Small business's dependency on eCommerce giants #eCommerce #SelfReliance

Tue, 14 Sep 2021 05:10:00 +0000

Small businesses sell their product on large eCommerce websites for their discovery and ease of use but are subject to their monopolistic behavior and loose out when the algorithms of the giants decide that their product is not good enough for their profit margin.

The solution for this has been for the businesses to have their eCommerce platform and there have been plenty of hosted or self-hosted tools to enable that.

Yet vast majority of small business are yet to venture into having their own eCommerce platform for various reasons such as,

Awareness: Many just don't know that they can have their own eCommerce platform where they have better control over their sales.
Discovery: They feel their product wouldn't be discovered on their own platform and they could be right. So discovery for products from small business needs to be addressed.
Setup & Maintenance: Although the barriers to setup eCommerce platforms have come down drastically, It's still not accessible to someone who's not technically inclined. So they are forced to spend money on companies which would do it for them and often lock them to sub-par proprietary software and expensive life-long maintenance fees.

3 points posted by Abishek Muthian

Find statistical data quickly for writing blog #statistics #writing

Sat, 11 Sep 2021 16:58:00 +0000

I'm a freelance writer for several different clients. They all want me to add statistical data to my blog posts.

But it takes forever to find accurate ones that aren't from like 2002. I'm looking for a tool to help me quickly find statistical data for the content without wasting so much time.

The ideal tool would be a list of relevant stats and low-cost for my freelance budget.

HELP!!!!

3 points posted by bettyann7088

Investment in the startups by solo founders #investment #business

Thu, 09 Sep 2021 06:27:00 +0000

Retail investment in the startups by solo founders has several problems faced by both the founder and the investor.

Bus factor: /problems/294 .
Lack of standardized term sheets for solopreneur startups: Current standardized term sheets are made for startups with co-founder(s) and large teams.
Investment regulations: Regulations to invest in a startup varies according to the jurisdictions and are often made with large typical startups in mind.
Uncertainty over the scalability of the B2B startups run by solo founders: Lack of service level agreements ( /problems/153 ) make large businesses hesitant to employ services of smaller startups run by solopreneurs.
No investment train when investing in solopreneurs: Typical startups benefit from the investors trying to catch the investment train i.e. When a large name brand investment house invests in a startup, Every other investor tries to invest in that startup due to herd behavior. When unknown individual investors invest in solopreneurs, There's no such investment train to catch.

3 points posted by Abishek Muthian

Very high bus factor among solo founders #riskassesment #business

Thu, 09 Sep 2021 05:23:00 +0000

The "bus factor" is the minimum number of team members that have to suddenly disappear from a project before the project stalls due to lack of knowledgeable or competent personnel. -Wikipedia.

The bus factor is very high among solo founders, solopreneurs and indie hackers because they are often the only person working on the product and when they're unable to continue working due to any number of reasons the product is immediately dead. Investors rarely invest in the startups of solo founders due to this.

Even typical startups run by solo founders with employees, investors are always at the risk of high bus factor because they're often the sole decision maker of the startup, leading to various problems ( /problems/27 ) if they're suddenly incapacitated.

Straightforward solution to reduce the bus factor is to get co-founders(s), qualified team and hedge the risks. But being a solo founder has its benefits and there's need-gap in solutions to reduce the impact of high bus factor among those who have decided to be a solo founder.

3 points posted by Abishek Muthian

I don't read my articles from the read later app #reading #productivity

Wed, 08 Sep 2021 02:24:00 +0000

Some pain points:

Lack of dark patterns/workflow that motivates you to go through lists
Lack of visualisation of your progress and to be covered lists. Also once Peter Drucker noted you can't manage what you can't measure, so there's that.
Lack of features such as queues and intelligent sorting based on params like the time needed (smartly learned by your reading speeds), etc. Queues and lists as in music and podcast players
Lack of smart organisational ability and proper search implementation thus resulting in friction of finding the content in future. Bookmarking services don't help because even then you have to think and dig deep in the mess of tags and folders.
Inconsistencies in parsing articles and content

3 points posted by shermix

Alert the presense of powerful magnets nearby #health #notification

Mon, 06 Sep 2021 14:00:00 +0000

British Heart Rhythm Society has recently warned that the magnet in iPhone 12 series can suspend the Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator(ICD) a life saving implant used by patients with high risk cardiac conditions.

With growing number of electronic appliances using powerful magnets in our daily life a real-time alert system for magnetic field in the environment above certain threshold which could affect the implants is needed.

3 points posted by Carolyn

Calculating Purchasing Power Parity #pricing #calculator

Thu, 26 Aug 2021 16:31:00 +0000

Pricing the products in the local currency is one of the easiest way to increase the global sales, But just converting the currency and pricing it according to the exchange rates doesn't do justice as price of the product should be what the market is willing to pay for it.

The market would pay according to its purchasing power, Purchasing Power Parity provides the rates of conversion to equalize the purchasing power of source country and destination country by taking into account different economic factors.

But calculators which help with this conversion are outdated.

3 points posted by Abishek Muthian

Online fraud detection systems are broken #security #frauddetection

Tue, 24 Aug 2021 06:38:00 +0000

Online infrastructure service providers especially the cloud providers ban the customer accounts at whim often due to flawed, outdated fraud detection systems.

There are numerous horror stories[1][2][3] from customers on how their accounts were banned for no apparent reason without proper recourse.

There are genuine cases of fraudulent activities happening using the cloud infrastructure, but the current mechanisms used to identify those activities are inefficient and therefore genuine customers who haven't done anything wrong get caught up in it. I presume both the service providers and the customers would like to get this need-gap addressed.

3 points posted by Russel

Find why the customer didn't make the purchase #sales #analytics

Mon, 23 Aug 2021 13:47:00 +0000

Finding why the customer didn't make the purchase after visiting the buy page is hard, existing solutions are intrusive and inefficient.

Exit survey is one of the common methodologies applied to find why the customer didn't make the purchase but they are considered a nuisance and so we rarely get any valuable data from it.

3 points posted by Jason