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Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

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Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#131

Post by Nextgrid »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #102

Designs for residential houses and appliances that ensure waste heat goes outdoors in the summer, and stays indoors in the winter. (And vice versa: refrigerators and freezers that take advantage of cold outdoor air in the winter, rather than using electricity to run compressors.)

Regarding refrigeration appliances, this is a solved problem. Most commercial refrigerators and ACs have a separate condensing unit placed outdoors (which also houses the compressor so its own heat doesn't affect the indoor location which is a problem when cooling).

The problem is that most homes aren't build with this in mind and don't provide a place to run the refrigerant lines (nor comes with the lines built-in) especially for the fridge.

Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#132

Post by canofbars »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #102

Designs for residential houses and appliances that ensure waste heat goes outdoors in the summer, and stays indoors in the winter. (And vice versa: refrigerators and freezers that take advantage of cold outdoor air in the winter, rather than using electricity to run compressors.)

When you think about how complex it would be, it makes very little sense to bother putting so much work and money in to such a little savings which also means you can no longer move your stuff around or easily replace your fridge with a different model.

Your time and money would be better spent on buying solar panels and batteries. And once you have those it would be better spent on investing in solar farms.

Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#133

Post by istorical »

willis936 wrote: post #110
mdorazio wrote: post #34

Actual, practical human longevity improvement. It seems ridiculous how small of a healthcare tech niche this is given the potential impact.

I searched the internet for “telomere therapy” earlier today. I was curious if there had been any interesting advancements in the past year. Almost all hits were holistic healing sites.

There was a study in the last month showing telomere lengthening in humans via hyperbaric oxygen chamber. Still waiting for more reproductions of the study but quite promising.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/science/can-breathing-pure-o...

Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#136

Post by poulsbohemian »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #102

Designs for residential houses and appliances that ensure waste heat goes outdoors in the summer, and stays indoors in the winter. (And vice versa: refrigerators and freezers that take advantage of cold outdoor air in the winter, rather than using electricity to run compressors.)

Real estate agent here... so I see a lot of houses and get asked a lot of questions about houses... at the root of your inquiry, I see a couple things going on:

1) Builders at scale aren't willing to make these kinds of investments. They want standard designs that they can throw up as cheaply and quickly as possible. Frankly some of the developments I've seen in my area are just hideous - like if they had just run the streets the other direction people would have had view lots, but they were too effing cheap and lazy to even do that, let alone hire an actual architect.

2) Distribution networks of building supplies are ineffective and feels like a market ripe for disruption. Just because there exists some cool new material or energy-saving option out there in the world doesn't mean that one's local builders have access. So, whatever is available to them is what's going into local houses.

3) Consumer tastes. Human beings have notions about houses. Lots of humans like house designs that are conforming to local norms and traditions. So thermally efficient designs like below-ground homes often end up as outliers that don't sell particularly well to buyers who don't understand the benefits.

Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#137

Post by newman555 »

Fusion energy and regenerative agriculture. Maybe I’m naive, but I see those 2 being unbelievable transformative for the world, significantly improving quality of life and preventing all those really bad climate change scenarios that seem almost inevitable at this point.

Re: Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?

#140

Post by ncmncm »

willis936 wrote: post #110
mdorazio wrote: post #34

Actual, practical human longevity improvement. It seems ridiculous how small of a healthcare tech niche this is given the potential impact.

I searched the internet for “telomere therapy” earlier today. I was curious if there had been any interesting advancements in the past year. Almost all hits were holistic healing sites.

There was a big splash about this just a couple of weeks ago: hyperbaric oxygen treatment triggering telomere restoration.

Don't know if anybody has shown any actual benefit from having the telomeres boosted. Some of what had seemed like a good idea (antioxidants!) have turned out to interfere in essential signaling pathways, and be therefore harmful in excess.

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