Ask HN: What's the next big thing that few people are talking about? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What's the next big thing that few people are talking about?

#281

Post by aaronax » Mon, Aug 08, 2022, 2:23 PM UTC

abetusk wrote: post #28

Energy? I feel like it's been talked about a lot but maybe not? Solar panels are dropping in cost at an exponential rate [0]. As of this writing, consumer "new" panels are $0.75/W and used are at around $0.30/W right now (I won't give a link as a Google search will do). Battery technology is also dropping at an exponential rate. I believe, with a little effort, one can purchase batteries at about $0.08/Wh. Taken toge…

Hopefully the other pieces get cheap enough to enable some revolution in the wiring side of it. Falling costs enable some acceptable loss of efficiency, so you can blow 100W on unnecessary power conversion and another 100W or whatever on losses due to smaller cabling.

It badly needs to be standardized in a consumer-friendly way...like power-over-ethernet in reverse. Field-installable, hot-pluggable, fool proof connectors. You can get 90W over some variations of network cabling...bump that up a couple sizes so you can handle 400W.

So you buy a bunch of solar panels and some patch cables, and plug those in to a one or more "power switches" on the roof top. Then run a QSFP+ equivalent "power backhaul" down into utility room where you have your "power aggregation switch" which has a bunch of (power)QSFP+ ports and plug batteries in to a few of those. And of course a couple big QSFP28 ports to an inverter to power legacy 120V loads, which maybe someday you don't need any more as household things move to using PoLE (power over large ethernet).

Re: Ask HN: What's the next big thing that few people are talking about?

#282

Post by tomxor » Mon, Aug 08, 2022, 2:23 PM UTC

maverick74 wrote: post #237

throwaway787544 wrote: post #163

The stumble over abandonment of ICE vehicles. By 2030 (8 years from now) at least six manufacturers will have stopped making ICE vehicles entirely, and India claims it will ban the sale of ICE-only vehicles. By 2040 (18 years from now) over half of all new cars sold will be electric, and the UK and France claim they will ban the sale of ICE-only vehicles. However, there's still not a plan that makes all that sustaina…

What amazes me is how little we talk about hydrogen (H2) fuel cell vehicles. Because, unless we get a tremendous breakthrough in the next 5 years, electric battery vehicles will be a very big pain. -Batteries are terribly expensive (and prices are not going down as fast as expected) -Batteries degrade too fast -Batteries take too long to charge -Electricity prices are already going up terribly fast to take advantage…

I think this has been discussed to death, the TL;DR is that H2 is fundamentally really difficult to store safely and efficiently at reasonable densities and temperatures. This is not something that is likely to improve with technology or scale (it's not like it's an underfunded area), they literally squeeze past other atoms and nothing is smaller than hydrogen.

I do however agree that existing battery technology is _still_ severely disadvantaged, not only in terms of efficiency and density but the rare materials they need to manufacture (same for H2 solutions).

It's annoying because ICE engines are not great (big, heavy, complicated with related reliability issues), yet they consume an easy to transfer high density liquid fuel; Electric engines are fantastic (small, light, simple, highly efficient, powerful, great torque), but they consume electricity which is hard to efficiently transfer with no where near the energy density per unit weight or space storage solutions.

However! ICE exists, all of it's issues are mitigated by mass adoption, and in the short term it's not environmentally responsible to ditch 1 billion cars. I think the best plan I've seen so far is to scale up synthesising hydrocarbons from solar... electric cars can continue to be developed and we can find more reasonable electric storage solutions without undermining the purpose of switching to electric by forcing the world into an immature solution and throwing away 1 billion ICE vehicles and all related infrastructure (manufacturing EVEs has an environmental cost).

We like simple to understand solutions, but the solution that minimises environmental impact must not underscope itself - the whole picture has to be considered, costs of manufacturing and switching are not external to planet Earth, which means there is some ideal conversion rate that must be determined.

Re: Ask HN: What's the next big thing that few people are talking about?

#283

Post by ericmay » Mon, Aug 08, 2022, 2:24 PM UTC

elmomle wrote: post #224

blinkingled wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing to me how little talk there is about reduce and recycle - with remote work, better city and public transport planning etc if we could completely eliminate the use of cars for the vast majority of the populace we would not need to mine more for batteries, wonder where and how our electricity is going to come from and how we are going to offset carbon. We literally have no vision for optimization, we just…

The problem is that it's a classic large-scale prisoner's dilemma. Living in a walking city is nicer than living in a driving city. But living in a walking city with a car is even nicer! The only way to fix it is by passing taxes or other restrictive legislation, which has so far been extremely difficult because most voters choose "let's make things a bit easier for you today" over "we should all sacrifice now to mak…

> But living in a walking city with a car is even nicer!

I think that's fine. Most over time will realize they don't need 2 or more cars if they're living in a true walking city because driving will be more inconvenient than walking, and eventually either paying for or building a garage (or having it used up by 2 cars that are seldom used) or paying for street parking or other things will cause people to change habits. It just takes time if you have a walkable city.

Personally I think the sweet spot is one crossover SUV, highly walkable and bikeable city, and probably street cars that run up and down main commerce arteries. At that point you really do cover almost every conceivable local transit need or chore that you might have to undertake.

Re: Ask HN: What's the next big thing that few people are talking about?

#284

Post by Geee » Mon, Aug 08, 2022, 2:24 PM UTC

General purpose humanoid robots. They're kind of mainstream idea, but very few people talk about them or take them seriously.

Humanoid robots will have an absolutely massive impact in very near future.

Most people don't realize that with general purpose humanoid robots, labor becomes software. Labor becomes repeateable, testable, simulatable, modular, extensible, verifiable, etc. All things that apply to software will apply to labor.

Imagine pulling an open-source repo from Github for a log house. If you want, make changes and simulate the output beforehand. Put your robot in a forest with a few tools and soon you'll have a log house - built perfectly to the spec.

Labor also becomes abundant. There's no more need for humans for economic growth.

Tesla is showing their first humanoid robot prototype in September. I predict that Apple will soon follow.

Re: Ask HN: What's the next big thing that few people are talking about?

#285

Post by mcv » Mon, Aug 08, 2022, 2:24 PM UTC

collyw wrote: post #254

gmuslera wrote: post #109

If the next big things doesn't include how we generate and use energy, probably the really big next thing may be runaway climate change.

how can people actually believe this pseudoscience. What models have been accurate for a number of year? The IPCC one just averages others, so that is cheating.

What do you mean by "this pseudoscience"? Climate change? Runaway climate change? Climate change is already happening. At what point it becomes runaway climate change is a matter of definition and debate, but there are definitely some processes that reinforce climate change.

Re: Ask HN: What's the next big thing that few people are talking about?

#286

Post by collegeburner » Mon, Aug 08, 2022, 2:24 PM UTC

656565656565 wrote: post #246

collegeburner wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uhh fuck that (pun not intended). We are not the problem, America has plenty of space, there is no need. SE Asia is stabilizing. Africa has a lot of birth but also a lot of space left. There will probably be some places with "natural" population control from lack of food or from disease bht that doesn't mean "we" have to do anything. You def can't be pro-choice or anti-fascist then support population control.

I never mentioned pro-choice or my stance on it or population control. For the record I support choice. I added the topic purely in response to the OP ask.

I mean fair but when you say "we will have no choice" that sounds like you support it. If not apologies and my comment wouldn't really apply.

Re: Ask HN: What's the next big thing that few people are talking about?

#287

Post by motohagiography » Mon, Aug 08, 2022, 2:24 PM UTC

Reasoning it through, what don't people politely talk about? Sex, money, politics, and religion. Sex: the impact of the normalization of casual sex work on sustainable families, and how specific tech and financial services for managing single motherhood will be huge. Money: financial alternatives to emerging social credit based systems, grey markets, working class capital/savings flight, cyberpunk dystopia. Politics: polarization becomes relative isolation, increasing demand for parallel tribe-based economic and information services. Religion: pendulum swinging back from civic secularism among those disenfranchised by said secularists. Reconciliation of old time religions with current tech and science. The christianization of fringe ideas like "ancient astronaut theorists," conspiracy theories, simulation theory.

True or not, they're big and not talked about in polite company.

Re: Ask HN: What's the next big thing that few people are talking about?

#288

Post by ChadNauseam » Mon, Aug 08, 2022, 2:25 PM UTC

colinmhayes wrote: post #251

ChadNauseam wrote: post #247

Preimplantation polygenetic testing. The idea is that, when doing IVF, you sequence the genome of all the embryos and implant the ones that you predict will have properties that you like. This already exists for monogenetic screening (for parents who don't want to pass on heritable diseases for their children, where those diseases are localized to one gene). But the idea here is that, by checking thousands of genes,…

Rich people already have children that are more attractive than average. Being attractive is the biggest signal for generational wealth which reinforces the need for trophy spouses which reinforces the signal and so on.

They're also probably smarter than average, because people who are smart are more likely to become rich. But I'm worried this will accelerate the effect. On the other hand, if you make the technology available to everyone, the effect would be mitigated

Re: Ask HN: What's the next big thing that few people are talking about?

#289

Post by rcarr » Mon, Aug 08, 2022, 2:25 PM UTC

Don't know much about it but from what I gather quantum computing leaves anything that is only protected by a password very vulnerable to hacking.

Re: Ask HN: What's the next big thing that few people are talking about?

#290

Post by clavalle » Mon, Aug 08, 2022, 2:25 PM UTC

b20000 wrote: post #116

samwillis wrote: post #49

Tooling for developing real-time collaborative remote working environments is about to take of dramatically. CRDTs [0], while complex to work with untill recently, are now so much easer for developers to use with toolkits such as Yjs[1] and AutoMerge[2]. SAAS and PAAS companies proving tooling around these, enabling developers to easily build collaborative tools for specific niches and verticals are going to explode…

i don’t want to realtime collab. i want to concentrate and get my shit done. slack is a nightmare for example. there is always a fool constantly interrupting your flow.

Agreed. I chunk slack messaging the same way I do email. I have two channels that I'll take realtime notifications on, but if someone raises those flags without very.good.reason, they'll hear about it. I generally won't see anything on those channels more than once a month.

For special 'war room' projects I'll set up a special channel that I'll pay attention to for real time colab, but those are very unusual situations with a well defined end date.