c/problems2solve

Digital IDs will be used to restrict your internet access.

They'll roll them out gradually. You won't need one at first. You'll still show your passport, driving license etc, until one day you give up because the digital version is convenient and you "might as well". What's your problem? Why do you care? Have you got something to hide?

Then they'll attack the easiest target: porn. We already have age-verification laws, implemented through dodgy third-party providers. But now everyone has digital government ID: we "might as well" unify things so all the porn sites check your age using the centralised government system. What's your problem? Why do you care? Won't you THINK OF THE CHILDREN??? You want to let CHILDREN watch PORN???

Then comes online retail. After all, the Southport killer bought his knife from Amazon — that was the front page headline on every paper, remember how organic and uncoordinated that was? It could all have been avoided with better age verification. And hey, we already have a way to verify age with our digital IDs. We "might as well". What's your problem? Why do you care? You want to let CHILDREN buy KNIVES?

And what about social media? Kids shouldn't use Facebook, it's bad for them. Australia already bans under 16s from social media. We already have age verification for other things. We "might as well". WHY DO YOU CARE????? THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!

Oh, that's handy, everyone's social media accounts are now tied to their real identities. That'll come in handy when people say nasty things that the government doesn't like. After all, those riots only happened because of "misinformation". Why do you need to stay anonymous anyway? What's the problem? Why do you care? Got something to hide? You're in favour of HATE SPEECH??

The slippery slope has never been more lubricated.

Man, the MongoDB documentation looks different. I was getting into it a couple years ago, and I was so frustrated with it, like it would explain that something returns an error but not what the values could be, or the prototype would show it returned something but the documentation wouldn't say what, or parameters would be left unexplained, etc. Looks like it's all new and different now, which is probably a good thing.

What's the big deal about Github? Too much hype.

Whenever you hear about the number of repos, most of them are just forks. In fact, I've created many by accident because Github changed their UI so clicking the icon instantly starts a fork instead of asking for confirmation first. I guess it's good for bumping the numbers up when getting private equity investors interested (cynical, I know).

Security wise, meh. Why would anybody pay to put their closed-source proprietary code onto Github? More holes than a sieve with their Rails setup.

Ok, you want somewhere to stash some private repos, nothing confidential. So why would you pay for Github when you can use Bitbucket for unlimited private repos? Plenty of other providers too.

Their enterprise product? Expensive meh. Atlassian's enterprise Stash is shared/open source when you get a license. You can also just install Gitlab, Gitorious, etc. for free on your own servers.

Github fanboys get excited whenever a big name dumps some code onto Github, like when Linus copied the kernel code over, but it was just a dumping ground while they sorted out server problems of their own. Ubuntu uses Bazaar and Trac, Linux Kernel development uses git on their own servers, KDE is over at Gitorious. Heck, there are some people still using Darcs and SVN.

Github is popular but it's not essential unless crave social karma points and your name/handle in lights.

Sorry for the rant like writing, lots of thoughts above, but I just never saw what the big deal about Github was. A good business and a slick offering but it's not going to suddenly transform your software projects or your abilities as a programmer.

Nobody wants to write Makefiles and recursive Makefiles are easier to write.

If it's truly the same information in multiple recursive Makefiles as it would be in one monolithic Makefile, then there should be a tool that converts recursive makefiles into monolithic makefiles. Humans should not have to reason about the entire project scope at once.

I love working on Linux, running Ubuntu 14.04 LTS on a Lenovo S540 (lightweight, 16gb ram,i7,ssd). The biggest pain point for me are mainly using tools that other parts of the business want to use like:

Slack -> No Linux support, Zoom (video conferencing) -> Early beta support, 1Password -> I use last pass instead.

Macs have really dominated some areas of the tech scene especially in the non engineering sections of the business, thus collaboration tools and such seem to be Mac orientated or Mac only.

In every other respect I'm far more comfortable and productive on Linux.

I have trouble finding the "Programming Pearls" of various topics. For example, I'd like to find a book of similar quality and style that deals with networking, or distributed systems, or even non-technical subjects.

The problem: Amazon reviews are gamed, Goodreads is a popularity contest, and Google returns SEO-optimized "Top 10 Best Books" listicles that all recommend the same generic titles.

What I want is a community-curated, quality-filtered recommendation engine. Not "most popular" — the most insightful, the hidden gems, the one book that practitioners actually reference.

I notice a pattern where I'll discover something amazing by accident (like the Graphics Programming Black Book). Would be nice to just have a curated list of "the definitive resource" for each topic, maintained by practitioners.

A portal where small companies could apply for bespoke enterprise technical projects, without the hassle of bribing officials or writing 50-page tenders.

I run a 4-person dev shop. We're great at building custom software. But finding projects is painful — you either need connections (which we don't have) or you write these massive RFP responses that take 40 hours and have a 5% win rate.

What if there was a marketplace where enterprises post their technical needs ("we need a custom inventory management system") and small shops can apply with a portfolio and a quick proposal? Think Upwork but for $50k-$500k enterprise projects, with proper vetting on both sides.

The procurement process in most organizations is designed for large vendors. Small teams get filtered out by arbitrary requirements like "must have 50+ employees" or "must have $10M in revenue."

I am always struggling to find good educational games for kids. Something engaging enough that they actually want to play, but educational enough that I don't feel guilty about screen time.

My kid is 8 and the options are: cheap math drill apps with ads (terrible UX, no engagement), expensive subscription services that are 90% video and 10% interaction, or Minecraft (great for creativity but not really "educational").

What I want: a game that teaches real skills (math, reading, logic, coding basics) through genuinely fun gameplay — not "answer 10 math problems to unlock a sticker." I mean game-first, learning-embedded. Think Kerbal Space Program for physics, but for elementary school subjects.

The market is huge (every parent I know has this problem) but the products are all mediocre.

Better automated webinar software. The existing solutions are good feature-wise but the UX is awful. This space needs serious innovation.

I've tried GoToWebinar, WebinarJam, EverWebinar, Demio — they all feel like they were designed in 2012 and never updated. The setup flow is 47 steps, the attendee experience is clunky, and the analytics dashboards look like they were built by someone who's never seen a modern SaaS product.

The worst part: automated/evergreen webinars (pre-recorded but delivered as if live) are the highest-converting sales tool for info products, but the tools to run them are so bad that people just use Zoom and record manually.

Someone who builds a clean, modern, Stripe-quality webinar platform would clean up.

I would pay for a way to manage my Google search results. I sometimes go to page 10, I make extra effort to avoid some websites, and I keep expanding my search words. If I search for something now and two minutes later refine the query, I don't want to see the results I already dismissed.

Either Google should have a way of not showing these results, or some kind of Chrome extension could remove/deprioritize them for me. Basically a "never show me this domain again" button that actually works across sessions.

The problem gets worse for niche technical queries where the same 5 SEO-optimized sites dominate every variation of the search.