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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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.
Even basic stuff like operating systems (especially Windows and Android), chatting software, music playback software etc has gotten so terrible. Microsoft constantly adds unnecessary and intrusive features to Windows, Teams needs a supercomputer to perform decently, and every app is now a poorly optimized electron app that tracks everything you do.
This is it exactly. There are a lot of great use cases for software, but I’m uncomfortable relying on them, because i know once i start using an app or program in X area of my life or to manage Y problem, it may change or become less useful or start to exploit users in some way. Not everyone doez this, but unfortunately the way the market usually works makes me less and less likely to want to rely on or use software for most things. I want analog, private ways to do things that I control. It sucks, because there are still creative people like op who want to make neat projects. But i’ve really been burned.
For a Mint replacement (which I’m still angry about), might I suggest Simplifi by Quicken? For me it’s mostly been a one-to-one replacement, after getting over a few… eccentricities. I could never get into YNAB because it’s so manual. I want something automatic, and Simplifi scratches that itch.
The catch: it’s not free.
So I read your comment and did some research. Mint seemed like the best example that a small team could reasonably get started on.
Some of the original people behind Mint founded Monarch and the CEO put out a very reasonable article on why your best bet would be to replace it with a subscription based alternative. Essentially - since anything free is eventually going to become an ad company, the company will never have your best interests in mind.
I hate the subscription model, but I somewhat agree - unless we’re talking about offline software, there’s always maintenance involved, also further development. If your software is ad-supported, it’s on shakier ground.
I don’t think we’re likely to see another Mint. The more functionality you want, the more expensive it is to develop. BUT if what you’re looking for is just the core functionality then yes, that could reasonably be ad supported, or even free and open source.
It’s expensive but I like YNAB. All the functionality Mint had and more, no ads.
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.Actually helping people turns out to not be so great for shareholder value
Yeah that sucks. No business wants to help its own customers never need it again.
“Cosmo” syndrome
Realign monetary incentives by making users pay for the quality of the match. If you want more of the good, pay for what you rate as good in the previous matches. Pay more the longer you stay together with a match.
The matching system was already almost perfect at OkCupid around ten years ago - copy that, and the well-aligned incentive should keep it developing instead of degrading, which is what Match Group did to it with their monthly subscription that incentivizes preventing long-term relationships.
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.
An app that lets you set filters for diet and food types and then scrapes recipes from the internet that match your preferences.
…with AR making inedible foods invisible in the store.
That would be a stretch goal!
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.
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.
Socialization. I suck at socialization as I never know what to say in a conversation. So anything in that field is appreciated.
Open source net worth tracker
You mean to track all your assets and their worth?
Yep. Something that can pull info from your bank/brokerage.
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
Yikes
Those systems are often in-house so not always the best maintained tbh
oh definitely
though ironically my course is computer science, you’d think they’d be good at these things 😭
Ha maybe it was a student project
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.
