Here’s a more technical one: health information
It’s a huge pain trying to transfer health information, between patients, doctors, different clinics, hospitals, etc. If you try and move far enough, your records might get transferred as a bunch of PDFs or scanned images on a CD.
There is no good standard that ticks all the boxes, so it’s not just a matter of getting everyone to agree. A solid standard that addresses all the needs would be amazing, and it would help improve healthcare so much.
People would get control over their own health information (as much as appropriate without causing unnecessary harm), and we could properly use health tracking data from biometrics devices for personalized care. We could do large scale studies using properly anonymized data, and we wouldn’t have proprietary systems to try and work around.
Best of all, you could go to a new clinic/hospital/ER and you wouldn’t need to enter the same information all over again (likely missing clinically relevant data along the way).
FHIR is an excellent standard.
CEO compensation vs employee compensation.
CEO pay has skyrocketed in comparison to the pay of the employees, this needs to change.
Why is that an issue? If they are the founder of the company I think they deserve it, and if not, there must be some logical reason why they pay that person so much…
I’d bet most people can get behind the idea that those in leadership positions or saddled with greater responsibility should be compensated more. The issue for me is the magnitude of that compensation.
If they are the founder, they are likely not a public company yet and can grant themselves stock at great rates. Most do-ers aren’t CEOs, they are busy doing.
Pants sizes. For women, drop the even/odd numbering for women and juniors and move to waist and inseam like men. For everyone, implement some sort of standard policy where the actual measured size can’t be more than an inch off the stated size (to account for variability in manufacturing and such).
Yes, great answer! Not just pants though, we need a standard size for all women’s clothing.
standard policy where the actual measured size can’t be more than an inch off the stated size
Yes please, I’m so tired trying to guess if this 33 is a 34, 35, or 36.
sometimes the clothes measurements are body measurements, and sometimes it’s the exact measurement of the cloth itself, and sometimes it’s the circumference of the relaxed waistband.
In the USA, it would be to metric. Pretty much everywhere else in the US, NASA, military, science, it’s all metric.
It’s not even a case of ‘everywhere else’, it’s actually ‘everywhere’.
It’s just that some sections of that ‘everywhere’ take the metric system and add an abstraction on top of it.
The imperial system literally defines itself by the metric system.
Camera lens mounts, increased competition within systems would be great.
I thought everyone bought Canon adapters and called it a day lol
Micro Four Thirds was an attempt to do that. It didn’t work out so well.
Interoperability between social networks, including messengers and the like, so you can choose what software you want to use, including your own.
fediverse!
Are you aware that’s literally what the fediverse is?
Yes but it isn’t exactly standardized in the sense that it has interop with popular software such as WhatsApp.
Ah, so get more stuff on the fediverse. Good choice.
I think this abides by the idea of this post, but I would standardize language across the world. Whether it is an existing language or a new language doesn’t really matter or maybe a mix of the biggest existing languages.
I remember reading a book where in the future everyone spoke a combination of English and Chinese. They seem pretty incompatible though.
It’s such an interesting idea, isn’t it? Theres a lot to gain but also, a language can mean a lot to people: identity, community, history. If we’re at A, I can look ahead and see the benefits of getting to Z, but I have no idea what all happens in between.
What a dystopian nightmare!
Is it? When migrant workers are able to speak the same language as the natives, they would be able to integrate faster and look out for one another better.
Right now, large corporations make use of migrant workers who are unaware of their rights in host countries to undermine the working rights of the host workers. A diverse workforce is much less likely to unionize, and large corporations know that.
Gonna have to disagree there.
Each language is a culture and each is special, different from every other, and removing or transforming them changes that.
Lens mounts
Good luck with that haha.
Social networks should be standardised on activity pub.
Networks are a winner takes it all situation. Standardise and allow competition within a network. Then innovation will happen much faster. We are like Romans not using the steam engine. Future historiens will wonder why we were stuck so long.
We’re getting there, with Threads implementing AP soon and any network that doesn’t do so will be locked into their own world (usually, for the worse).
The problem is that we might get a Google situation, where at first the company adheres and complies to the standard, but then they innovate so fast and confusingly, that they essentially define the standard, and all other networks have to keep up to remain part of the main flock.
In a winner takes all – that would be Google, and we will see much of the same dark patterns with AP protocols as we do with Browsers now.
Everyone has the same blood type.
United States specific: The naming system of hospital units or some other standardized indicator of what skill level is actually practiced on that unit.
An ICU should be an ICU, not “Intensive Care Unit” at this hospital, but “Critical Care Unit” at that other hospital and the"Stepdown Unit" here is called “Progressive Care Unit” there, but “Transitional Care Unit” at that other place.
It leads to so much confusion when trying to transfer patients between facilities and/or understand what kind of care they were receiving at a previous admission at a different facility.
Screw drives.
Front panel connectors on motherboards.
Our system of measurement. There can be only one!
There already is a standardized measurement system that is used allover the world.
Except for the USA, of course. But that sounds like an USA problem to me.
To rule them all!
While I agree in general, stuff like the nautical mile serve a purpose. I think units that are based on practicality should still be allowed. https://www.quora.com/Why-do-we-measure-roads-in-regular-miles-and-not-nautical-miles
If it is based on some kind of arbitrary definition and conversions between units of the same measuring system is hard we should do away with it.
Recently had a Stress strain chart which had lbs/inch² as a unit. Also measuring anything small in imperial is just cursed. 5/16 * 10^-2 inches. Wtf. Also mil and thou. Just adopt metric already.
I don’t understand the purpose of a nautical mile. It’s just a certain number of metres, right? Originally worked out as some percentage of the distance around the equator.
Why not use the standard measurement for distance?
Because maps for naval navigation are based on degrees latitude and longitude. So if you travel at sixty nautical miles per hour in latitudinal direction on this globe you will end up one degree further away from where you started. Angles are important in naval applications as well as aeronautical because ships and airplanes can and mostly do travel in straight lines.
One nautical mile is equal to 1.852 km good luck using that kind of number and converting it to meaningful information on the fly.
With digital systems it is of course not as important anymore (also they are using the metric definition and converting it to nautical miles internally) but courses are still plotted by hand on maps (eg. as a backup solution if your digital system goes belly up). Having a measuring system where one unit corresponds to something meaningful with little need to pronounce decimals all of the time seems like a good idea to me.
So for example you can travel 111.12km in latitudinal direction or 60 nautical miles which is equal to one degree latitudinal distance.
60 is properly divisible by 2, 3, 4, 6, 10, 12 and so on so it makes quick mental calculations easier.
The unit just makes sense for the application it is designed for.
I’m trying to understand what I’m missing.
I might be getting my latitude and longitude confused- but I think that one degree of latitudal (east-west, right?) travel would result in a different distance depending on how far north or south I am? I’m thinking of it like walking around the equator, as opposed to walking in a circle around Santa’s house, which is obviously directly on top of the north pole.
But if I travel one degree of longitude, no matter where I am the distance would be the same, right?
May seem like an obvious one considering where we are but standards for communication apps
If everything uses a standard like activitypub/matrix and becomes cross compatible I don’t need to have 6 different messaging apps
Provided the standard is completely backwards compatible of course I think it would be awesome to just let people have their messaging app of choice and be able to talk to everyone else (I think there might actually be an EU regulation coming that enforces this for larger messaging apps)