251–260 of 553 posts
Old tech. New software development is 99% aimless churn. We don’t need more new tech. We need better applications of old tech. There is so much software that works perfectly fine already. What’s missing is connecting it to real world problems.
Heat pumps and better insulation. It's magic how heat pumps pull heat out of thin air. I honestly think part of the reason they are not adopted as much is people can't understand them and don't trust them because of their ignorance. Insulation seems pretty boring until you start to realize how much energy can be saved by modern insulation.
Old tech. New software development is 99% aimless churn. We don’t need more new tech. We need better applications of old tech. There is so much software that works perfectly fine already. What’s missing is connecting it to real world problems.
"The best under-the-radar car? It's a horse and buggy I tells ya!" Every one of these posts on HN has to have a hot take that's contrarian.
2) Custom silicon. Open source tools & decentralization of fab tech (by countries not wanting to be subject to international trade problems... as well as Moore’s Law slowing) are gonna make this like making a PCB.
3) Electric airplanes. With wings. “Drones” as VTVL electric helicopters have been big for a decade, but there are physical limitations to that approach. if you want to see the future, look at drone delivery in Rwanda by Zipline. But also, I think we’ll see passenger electric flight start small and from underserved regional airports sooner than you think, doing routes and speeds comparable to High Speed Rail (and with comparable efficiency) but much more granular and without massive infrastructure.
4) Small tunnels by The Boring Company and probably competitor companies with similar ideas. When you can build tunnels for one or two orders of magnitude cheaper than today, cheaper than an urban surface lane, then why NOT put it underground? And they’ll be for pedestrians, bikes, and small subways like the London Underground uses. Gets lot of hate from the Twitter Urbanist crowd, but what TBC has done for tunneling cost (on the order of $10 million per mile) is insanely important for how we think about infrastructure in the US.
5) Reusable launch technology. The world still doesn’t grok this. They will. It (long term) enables access to orbit comparable to really long distance airfare or air freight.
6) Geoengineering. I’m not happy about it, but it’s insanely cheap so... it’ll probably happen.
https://ipfs.io/ seems pretty cool. I've been meaning to check it out, but not seen any uptake yet.
I can't believe nobody mentioned new natural teeth growth. No more ceramic implants, no more root canals. Grow new shiny and healthy teeth.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As I've gotten more experience in tech, I came up with a saying - "Everything great was created in the '80s, and we've been rediscovering those things every ten years since." I'm not firm on "the '80s" - maybe this stuff is older than I think - but I think the principle still holds. If it's a problem today, somebody probably thought about it before, and then others came around and wrapped things differently. It's not…
Yup. Its so shocking when something "new" or at least that feels new is actually created. I don't care about the countless companies that will make it slightly easier for me to get something from point a to point b. I care a lot about companies that actually make something new or popularize something that already existed but didnt have widespread appeal.
Heat pumps and better insulation. It's magic how heat pumps pull heat out of thin air. I honestly think part of the reason they are not adopted as much is people can't understand them and don't trust them because of their ignorance. Insulation seems pretty boring until you start to realize how much energy can be saved by modern insulation.
For new homes absolutely. In the UK gas boilers are the norm and every new home should have a heat pump instead. But retrofitting requires a lot of work - replacing radiators with much larger ones, maybe ripping out pipes, and for ground source digging up the garden / street.
This is already happening. Redrow for example are focusing on new heating technology for new homes in preparation for the boiler ban
Allergy immunotherapy. I started a company on the backs of this treatment. The way we treat allergies today, with Zyrtec and Claritin, is medieval medicine. It doesn't solve the underlying problem; it just tries to cover it up. Allergy immunotherapy is the future. Most people don't realize that allergies are now a curable disease. In the future, taking Claritin for allergies is going to seem like taking Tylenol for a…