Casual Conversation

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.

There's a lot of things where there used to be good software, but it has been ruined by megacorps.

Mint, for example. It started as a fantastic website to track your different financial accounts. It was simple and intuitive. Ad-supported, but not egregiously so. Then it got bought by Intuit. "Updates" removed features and previously available chart options to review your transactions. The ads got worse. I can't remember if the app released before or after the Intuit buyout, but it started off with less features than the website and slowly became the better option as the website got worse. Then the app started getting worse with updates too. Finally it was shutdown this year, with Intuit recommending people use their other, similar, subscription-based software. I still haven't found a proper replacement.

Sonos is a great concept with a few fundamental flaws. I received a couple of units several years ago as a gift from the in-laws. The biggest issue is that if I want to have TV audio (from videogames or video streaming services), the only way to do that is to use a physical cable, but not all of the units have an auxiliary input. The system was always buggy, with delay and a not particularly responsive app. They famously rolled out a new version of their app earlier this year that... Had a ton of bugs and removed a lot of features, leading to the CEO apologizing (but not rolling anything back, lol).

I remember when Adobe products used to be one-time purchases. There are of course alternatives today, but none of them are ever quite as good to actually use. Same thing with the Microsoft Office suite- I use it for work all the time, but for personal use I use LibreOffice. It gets the job done, but it's way clunkier that Microsoft's offering.

Music Production is similar. Luckily I still have some Cakewalk software from before they went bankrupt that works, but the servers to verify the product activation code are down so that will only last as long as my current desktop does. I've tried using other software like Reaper, but it's a big step down. I bought CakeWalk Sonar around 2013-2014-ish for ~$150 (which includes a large sample library). Pro-tools is a similarly featured program that does not seem to have an option to purchase, but instead has a $300/year annual subscription.

I used to have Duolingo, but uninstalled when they got caught harvesting data they said they weren't a few years ago.

I used to use LoseIt to track my meals and exercise, and it helped me lost weight. I got out of the habit and went a while without using it, only to find out it had been enshittified too. The name changed to "Calorie Counter by LoseIt", and the app has moved from a straightforward resource to trying to be a personal trainer. It wants to ask me questions about my emotional relationships with food and exercise. It's trying to gather as much data as possible from me and then tell me what to do, when all I want is to be able to scan some barcodes and keep track of my calories and macros for the day. The last time I logged in I think it wanted me to upgrade to premium to track macros.

Dark Skye was by far the best weather app. Until it got purchased by Apple so now I can't use it.

The UrbanSpoon was a fantastic app for finding nearby restaurants. Perhaps over time it would have faced the same issues that any other business-finding service faces: businesses are willing to pay for promotion, users leaving reviews for free is sketchy, bots and paid reviews exist, etc. Still, it was pretty good up until Zomayo bought it and shut it down.

Maybe not software, but StumbleUpon was one of my favorite websites back when it existed. Once again, got bought by a corporation who shut it down when they couldn't figure out how to monetize it properly. It feels like we just can't have nice things- everything needs to be lining the pockets of a billionaire or it isn't allowed to exist at all.

Coordinating RGB components from different manufacturers and across different devices sucks. Coordinating smart devices without some dedicated piece of hardware spying on your whole house like Alexa sucks. I think I've seen some open-source attempts at unification, but the last time I looked into it that was still janky and annoying to deal with.

Also why does every single business need its own app? I know the answer- it's to harvest data, push notifications to encourage spending, and push loyalty rewards programs. But if everyone is harvesting my same data, isn't that going to result in oversupply and devalue that in the market? Are these companies selling this data actually profitable? Apps, especially good ones, are expensive to make and maintain. Maybe that's why the my seem to have gotten so much worse. I have wondered if maybe the answer is for businesses to join together with joint apps. Especially brands that are already owned by one company, like KFC and Taco Bell. Slice is an interesting app for local pizza places, and I could see that model taking off.

It's really hard for me to think of new software I would want when there's so much old software that used to exist but has gotten ruined. I don't want to become an old man yelling at a cloud, but I feel like everything has just gone straight downhill for around a decade. I even remember back around 2013 being in college and talking with friends about how Google search results seemed to be getting worse, and that's gone downhill. Even the ideas I have, I am guessing probably already exist and have probably already been ruined.

Most of those ideas are similar to a lot of the above apps: make it easy to do data entry on a regular basis, maybe pull in some additional information from publicly available datasets, and maybe send a reminder. Homeowner stuff like cleaning out the bathroom sink trap, keeping track of when/where appliances were purchased/serviced, keeping PDF's of manuals together, looking out for recalls. Home inventory for tracking cleaning supplies,groceries, etc (although that might be too much data entry for me to ever want to do properly). I have a notebook where I keep track of the strings on our guitars that I would prefer to be digitized. A lot of stuff that could be handled with a generic calendar and/or spreadsheet, but could benefit from a dedicated application.

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.

Dating.
it's unfortunate that all the current solutions are absolute garbage.

An app that lets you set filters for diet and food types and then scrapes recipes from the internet that match your preferences.

I had this idea for a browser extension when I'm doing research.

Basically, its like a panel on the side for writing notes but also has a button to screenshot the current open page, then maybe a button to copy the contents so I can paste it elsewhere to a document.

It sounds super basic, but I just want something so that when I'm researching I don't have to keep jumping between windows when researching.

Open source net worth tracker

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.

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.

A good selfhosting solution that does all the cloud / communication / storage for the average person. With collaboration features, easy install, foolproof and will run for 10 years without maintenance.

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:

1. Libre/open source
2. Decentralized, self-hostable
3. Open schematic (if hardware)

Anything mobile is a total lost cause. I have ZERO interest in "smart" phones. Fuck that noise.

Socialization. I suck at socialization as I never know what to say in a conversation. So anything in that field is appreciated.

Apart from health related things, anything else are just gadgets that don't really improve life IMHO.

university

I missed opening week and was assigned to the wrong year of courses for 3 fucking months because they fucked up their systems AND one character in my password somehow completely fucking broke their system which makes me think they store them in plaintext.

paying 9 grand a year for a shit show atm

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.

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.

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.