Ask HN: What’s a big trend we should all be following? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What’s a big trend we should all be following?

#231

Post by nine_zeros » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 5:15 PM UTC

rmrfstar wrote: post #185

panarky wrote: post #74

Doing nothing. We've been indoctrinated from an early age to be productive, to schedule every moment, to sacrifice sleep, to always be learning, building, networking, searching and improving. The covid19 lockdown is showing many people the benefits of disconnecting, de-scheduling, refusing or ignoring invitations, and being still with our thoughts for hours or days at a time, producing nothing of tangible economic va…

> producing nothing of tangible economic value Just because something has a low/zero market price does not mean it has no economic value. It just means it is not valued by people with lots of money and their pals in government. Similarly, just because something has a high market price does not mean it has real economic value. See, e.g. LBO funds and their ridiculous fees. Market prices are determined as much by marke…

This is a very good point. If we extend this to the extreme, lets say only 1 person has 99% of the wealth. The whole economic system will only produce goods that are required by that 1 person and their close associates.

Historically, that was a monarch and that led to things like French revolution. I think the US needs one now.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a big trend we should all be following?

#232

Post by nine_zeros » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 5:21 PM UTC

azhu wrote: post #66

starpilot wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you aware that the Golden Age fallacy is thousands of years old?

Personally, this feels different. The Golden Age fallacy is where one person goes "hey I dislike this because it's different". This is speedily increasing amounts of young people suffering mental illness. https://www.cdc.gov/childrensmentalhealth/data.html#:~:text=... .

I agree. This is probably more akin to what the Japanese youth felt after the bubble burst in the 90s there. We didn't hear personal anecdotes about it then because no internet and language barriers.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a big trend we should all be following?

#233

Post by nine_zeros » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 5:22 PM UTC

hwbehrens wrote: post #54

Digitization of national currencies [0] -- don't think cryptocurrencies, but rather a harmonized API for financial transactions. In particular, I expect this to drastically affect cross-border transactions by substantially lowering the bar to implementing them (as compared to SWIFT, for example) by whatever country gets there first, in the hope that their digital currency might replace the USD as de facto internation…

Can you summarize what the real advantage of digital currencies are? What does it enable that the current system doesn't?

Re: Ask HN: What’s a big trend we should all be following?

#234

Post by Sloppy » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 5:40 PM UTC

Lordarminius wrote: post #222

anilgulecha wrote: post #111

Decentrailzed, encrypted data store. This will be the base on which next generation of applications will be written on - users want privacy and the ability to own their data.

Any companies or organisations working on this ?

IPFS https://ipfs.io/

Re: Ask HN: What’s a big trend we should all be following?

#235

Post by perfmode » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 5:44 PM UTC

bitcurious wrote: post #207

perfmode wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amen. For much of U.S. history, law enforcement meant implementing laws that were explicitly designed to subjugate Black people and enforce white supremacy. That’s why Black people, along with hundreds of thousands of others, are calling for city, state, and federal governments to abolish policing as we currently understand it. We must divest from excessive, brutal, and discriminatory policing and invest in a vision…

> We know the safest communities in America are places that don’t center the police. Worth thinking about: https://www.wsj.com/articles/good-policing-saves-black-lives...

This disregards broader system dynamics. We are not simply looking to cut back on policing and stop there. The objective is to invest in people and attend to their fundamental needs in a way which produces lasting change. This goes beyond the particular short-term reactions to parameter changes in the system.

Through the lens of Donella Meadow's work in complex systems, we can we policing pulling back and homicides increasing as:

9. Constants, parameters, numbers (subsidies, taxes, standards).

8. Regulating negative feedback loops.

7. Driving positive feedback loops.

Yet, this movement seeks to operate at a greater leverage point of:

2. The goals of the system.

1. The mindset or paradigm out of which the system — its goals, power structure, rules, its culture — arises.

--- Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System

http://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to...

Re: Ask HN: What’s a big trend we should all be following?

#236

Post by digital_voodoo » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 5:57 PM UTC

vestrigi wrote: post #167

erulabs wrote: post #29

- Grime music. A UK hybrid of hip-hop and punk, with a focus on showing poverty as a cold reality rather than a hardened persona - removing the "gang" in favor of the "pang". Honesty and sadness in mainstream music is on its way back. - Self-hosting. A hugely growing movement to host server-side software yourself (on a cloud provider or at home). De-platforming is not possible unless ordinary citizens can host applic…

I think self-hosting should be even more "plug and play" to be appealing to more users. During the lockdown I was looking for simple board-like games that could be played over the internet. There were a few promising ones that were only playable on a single hosted domain that hat a capacity of 100 parties. I thought that it couldn't be too asking for the most basic cloud server hardware to serve this game for a few p…

Thank you for this. I feel relieved to read two opinions like this in a 15-minute span, the first one being on Reddit.

Since the WFH, I've been getting more and more meeting requests, often in the form of a calendar invite coming by mail. That gave me the idea of self-hosting my calendar (email is already de-googled, I have my domain + a hosting plan, etc.). I've literally spent a whole day looking at all the existing options, trying a few of them on my VPS and my Pi, etc. Incomplete documentation, abandonware, half-baked tutorials. No one seem to come close to Google calendar (the most common for the layman).

And I'm saddened that every time I want to make such a move, it's like everything is telling me to learn a skill (Python, Docker, code, etc.) before achieving my goals. This is appealing to the average user. I have a day job (that is nowhere close to tech and programming) and if something has to require not only involvement but also learning new skills before being done, it's barely worth the cost. That's, for example, why GUI took over the console for the general public.

Back to my issue, I've decided to create a Google account (without Gmail) for the sake of Calendar, Drive, etc. Unfortunately. If someone like Mozilla offered an alternative productivity suite, I'd pay for it in a heartbeat. In the mean time, I'll have to go back to big-G. Unfortunately.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a big trend we should all be following?

#237

Post by 488643689 » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 6:06 PM UTC

488643689 wrote: post #229

fyfy18 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife has recently cut out a lot of dairy products and tried to replace them with vegan alternatives. The problem is most of the alternatives you can buy from the supermarket are made from coconut oil, soybeans, or some kind of exotic nut - which typically aren't grown here in Europe. I'm not sure if these are any better than dairy products, especially if you take into account conversion of rain forests (in places…

This "argument" gets repeated over and over... Every plant based product is better than their equivalent animal (warm-blooded mamals) product. Animals radiate away about 3/4 of the energy they consume. This means generally speaking land use for every x amount of animal produce, you'd only need 1/4 of the land to feed humans on plant produce. Of course some plant are worse than others nutritionally, but I think the ov…

Oh look it's even worse: only about 10% of intake energy is fixated (plant matter -> meat) in the next trophic level.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_efficiency

Wikipedia says ATP generation alone loses 60% of energy regardless if ecto- or endothermal organism. ATP is the energy curency of life. So 60% of energy lost, before any synthesis, signaling, membrane transport, ... even happened.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a big trend we should all be following?

#238

Post by sunstone » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 6:19 PM UTC

jodrellblank wrote: post #143

sunstone wrote: post #92

Electric bicycles (and other light electrics) are going to remake the world's cities in the next 30 years. The signs are already in place. The biggest transformational factor is the lack of exhaust allowing a lot of personal transport to be moved indoors.

Why is that useful? Who is clamouring to rebuild all the existing roads - which bikes already work on? Who is hoping to ride miles and miles in underground tunnels and pay to build them? Underground tunnels for fast no-traffic movement of people already exist as subways, and move orders of magnitude more people, many times faster.

Existing roads will slowly become populated with light electrics and covered (perhaps seasonally) with no need to deal with exhaust gases. Some businesses will begin to provide indoor parking for the electrics. Some parking garages will be turned over to electrics exclusively. There will be almost no new roads or tunnels. It will be a very inexpensive, organic and practical transition.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a big trend we should all be following?

#239

Post by hckr_news » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 6:23 PM UTC

larrykubin wrote: post #225

Automated Trading and commission free trading API's. Shameless plug: I have started a YouTube channel on this topic: https://youtube.com/parttimelarry The interest has been huge, lots of Robinhood traders and beginning Python programmers want to make trading bots and learn how to apply technical analysis and indicators. With trades being commission free and documented API's like Alpaca, it is very easy to get up and…

Oh dude love your content :)

Re: Ask HN: What’s a big trend we should all be following?

#240

Post by AlchemistCamp » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 6:40 PM UTC

noxer wrote: post #113

TwoNineFive wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which brings us to what I think is a bigger issue: Space is a finite quantity, similar to land and EM spectrum. It's a land race for space. SpaceX and similar are racing to put their junk up their in orbit as soon as possible so they can squat. So who is going to regulate space? Will China Russia and North Korea respect ownership at 10KM up? What happens when GPS and GLONAS go out because of debris and some stupid wa…

There is plenty of space in "space" or more like in the earth orbit. Trash is a problem because it may be hard to track or even have unknown trajectory, space isn't. It need global coordination ofc but its not like with planes where everything can changes within minutes due to whether or some kind of emergency. and there is no need for high vehicle density like around an airport.

> There is plenty of space in "space"

To quote Benjamin Sisko from DS9, "It just doesn't work that way".