I think many of us have noticed the trend that modern tech just… Doesn’t make things better. There’s little to be excited about, because anything even remotely innovative is going to be filled with tracking, ads, etc.
Let’s say you had a bored software engineer or 2 at your disposal and the goal was to improve something you do often, by creating an application or website that isn’t owned and enshittified by a megacorp looking to extract maximum short term value - what would your project be? Is it something you’d be willing to pay for, maybe with a free tier available?
The reason I’m asking is that I’m a software engineer and in the current hard-ass market, while I’m lucky enough to have a stable job, I know that experience alone isn’t cutting it anymore in the recruitment process. You need to be able to show side projects too. Plus I have an unemployed software engineer friend who also has no interesting projects to show. So if we make any money out of it, that’s awesome. If we don’t, it’s just something for our github accounts. Probably the latter.
PS: Yes, I know this is not a tech community - I want ideas from regular, non-techy people too.
PPS: This doesn’t have to be something in your personal life, it could also be something that would help you at work if you had it.
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A lot of things that come with software that people despise would be fine if the software wasn’t designed to monetize the fuck out of you.
- Having a media center built into the TV and being able to control both with a single remote is nice. Having the media center push ads and tell me which applications it’s allowed to run sucks donkey balls.
- IoT devices that depend on someone else’s online service can go die in a fire. Programmable devices that work with my own home server are awfully convenient.
The common thread here is not that there’s a niche where software hasn’t been introduced yet, but that there’s a dearth of good software/firmware.
I absolutely agree on this one! Your examples are good too! Unfortunately they require more resources to pull off than I could realistically amass, but I hope someone else will.
Really, I’d like to see more IoT products that can run completely locally myself.
I don’t mind if an IoT device has the capability to use a SaaS service. But it shouldn’t depend on it.
Job hunting.
Standardize the application process so you don’t have to reformat what’s on your resume for some shitty website for each job application.
Standardize the details like pay and remote work and make it mandatory in the listing - no guessing or negotiating, no bullshit.
Auto-match jobs and candidates - if your qualifications match, you can schedule your interview via click calendar. No “wait and see”.
Notifications for jobs you’re qualified for, with the pay and details listed in plain sight, so even if you are already employed you always know what other opportunities there are at a glance.
My brother is an audiologist and hates doing a certain hearing test, because it’s boring. The way he describes it, he hands the patient a button and a pair of headphones, then goes into the next room.
He has a row of dials. He turns the first one until the patient pushes the button. He writes down how high the dial got, then turns it off and moves on to the next dial. Repeat for like 20 dials.
Then at the end, he has to draw a graph BY HAND, highlighting certain features.
There is precisely 0% chance that this requires a trained audiologist to do. Maybe to interpret, but not to collect data.
So that’s how that test goes from their side, I’ve always wondered. No doubt that could be automated!
An app that lets you set filters for diet and food types and then scrapes recipes from the internet that match your preferences.
A database for all my media data for movies, TV, social media, creators, etc. A central place for all my media data from every online source. I’d like to be able to import my subscriptions and playlists from youtube, yt music, Spotify, Netflix, etc.
Then I could organize, tag and export to services, mark things to watch or as watched.
I know online services exist for individual media types but I’d really love something local and all encompassing.
Closest thing I’ve seen is Plex, not sure if that’ll do it for you
Eh, I’m thinking less media player and more a “contacts” app to organize all the media I like on the internet.
A good selfhosting solution that does all the cloud / chat / storage for the average person. With collaboration features, easy install, foolproof and will run for 10 years without maintenance.
Essentially something like NextCloud without all the jank?
I think Owncloud Infinite Scale might be a solution. But if you want easy install and maintenance-free, I don’t think any self-hosted solution is viable.
Dating.
it’s unfortunate that all the current solutions are absolute garbage.An app for my android phone that can log in to various social media and allow me to mix and match feeds.
I’d love to have a curated omni-feed of my Lemmy or fedia.io combined with mastodon and bluesky, tumblr and threads, etc.
No idea of feasibility, privacy, implementation, etc.
Just a man with a dream.
It isn’t all social media, but you can use grayjay to combine youtube, twitch, patreon, nebula, etc other video streaming sites!
This is a good one.
My life could in general be improved by the removal of software, not by the addition of more.
That’s an absolutely valid stance in this day and age, but maybe your problem with software is not the abundance, but rather the intrusiveness?
Nah, it’s been reliability at the core of my distaste for it. Since the '80s.
“Perfection is only achieved when there is nothing left to take away.”
I have done okay at keeping unnecessary crapware from creeping into my life, but there is the occasional second hand smoke from the masses who will bend over for literally anything.
Same here. I’ve rolled back hard on most software. I use only the stuff I need for work, plus my web browser at home (and even that I carefully choose which web sites I go to because web software is terrible) plus a small handful of apps on my phone (document readers and a shopping app, mainly). Where most people do, say, solo RP with “wikis” and “structured editors” and whatnot, I patiently write with a fountain pen in a physical book.
And ever since I started this detechification of my life, I’ve found that I enjoy my life more. There just seems to be something in me that is in intrinsic opposition to computers.
For anything new that enters my life, I want 100% for it to not be anything at all to do with digital technology.
And if it absolutely must be digital technology it non-negotiably must be:
- Libre/open source
- Decentralized, self-hostable
- Open schematic (if hardware)
Anything mobile is a total lost cause. I have ZERO interest in “smart” phones. Fuck that noise.
I play boardgames where there are enough moving parts that replacing some with software improves them tremendously. Gloomhaven and Frosthaven have a bunch of tools for them to help setup, combat, track campaigns, etc., and they help tremendously.
There is nothing like that for Shadows of Brimstone. For a lot of things, there’s just too much data. I tried to make a script that automated the travel phase after missions which was pick the size of town, determine the number of hazards based on the number of characters and size of town, pick out the hazards, and display each in turn. The amount of text in it was just too much to be worth it. But even being able to replace the scavenge deck, loot deck, and exploration tokens would free up some table space and they’re less than a dozen possible outcomes each with only a small amount of text.
I’m sure there are other popular games that would be more conducive to having complexity automated. Finding one that won’t send a cease and desist might be a challenge, though.
Socialization. I suck at socialization as I never know what to say in a conversation. So anything in that field is appreciated.
software is not making things better because its designed not to. All sorts of things would be way better if it was designed around making our lives easier. For example sites give an option for sort by price kinda cause they have to for legacy reason. Getting a sort by unit count. nope. ads overatking an item from showing you the time, or your timer, or the weather at that moment.
Apart from health related things, anything else are just gadgets that don’t really improve life IMHO.
Hmm, I’m not sure I agree. There’s plenty of tech that improves our lives, but anything that does is usually subtle stuff we don’t think about. It’s the “loud” tech that sucks. Things you notice using.
Example, if ever a friend needs money quickly (or I need to borrow money from a friend), it takes like a minute to log into the bank app and post a SEPA instant transfer. Maybe less. It’s amazingly convenient and available for every bank in my country.
Search engines aren’t as good as Google used to be, but I still find information very fast compared to when I didn’t have Internet access.
GPS is great. Remember when you had to use a paper map book and buy an update every year to stay up to date? I do. GPS wasn’t that common in my country in my childhood because it was expensive to buy a device.
All of these examples are good only if you think that we need to have access to everything as soon as possible. It can definitely be convenient at times, but it also feels like most of the time it actually ends up being forced on you, when in truth, life shouldn’t require that we get money straight away, nor that we have to follow the best possible itineary. Being able to take our time to do things is to me the thing that we are actually missing nowadays.
Exercise and nutrition. I easily fall into a pattern of self neglect. Having a program I can be accountable to, telling me what physio I should do, what to cook and when would be invaluable.
