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Ask HN: What under-the-radar technology are you excited about?

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Re: Ask HN: What under-the-radar technology are you excited about?

#291

Post by bb123 »

yomansat wrote: post #271
ahstilde wrote: post #202

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…

I understand that each person is different, but how long does the therapy go for until someone becomes "immune"? I see other comments mentioning 20-30 years, which sounds a lot more expensive than having to take the medieval equivalent for just as long. I hope I'm wrong!

Hey if someone said by the time I’m 40 I wouldn’t have to live in fear of peanuts anymore, I’d pay whatever they asked.

Re: Ask HN: What under-the-radar technology are you excited about?

#292

Post by pmarreck »

Elixir.

Yes, most of you have heard of it, but I think it is still very underrated.

Especially interesting is the ML libraries that have come out recently and OTP24 whose new JIT compiler gives a ~2x speed improvement to Elixir code, depending on the task.

Re: Ask HN: What under-the-radar technology are you excited about?

#293

Post by TeMPOraL »

jimhefferon wrote: post #285
TeMPOraL wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fiducials If you mean what I think you mean (tiny marks on everything that encode information to help computers figure out what they're looking at), I agree. In particular, I've long been waiting for someone in self-driving sphere to give up on trying to crack the problem with just imaging the world as it is. In a saner world, countries would already be standardizing machine-readable markers on roads and posts and…

Forgive me, genuine question. What happens when it snows?

Same thing that happens to humans. You see parts of the signage. Or none of it, and drive on memory (and follow the behavior of other cars).

The idea behind adding special markings for computers is that you can waste a lot of time and effort trying to perfect algorithms interpreting signage optimized for human consumption, or... you can spend much less time and effort, to much better effect, setting up additional signage that's easy for computers to consume and provides information relevant to computers (which is not necessarily the same as what humans need).

Note that roads are controlled, artificial environments. There's always someone responsible for maintaining a road and signage on it. The infrastructure to deploy additional markings dedicated to self-driving cars already exist.

Re: Ask HN: What under-the-radar technology are you excited about?

#295

Post by pmarreck »

Eduard wrote: post #287
lettergram wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fiducials are amazing and way under utilized. I’ve worked in the space and there’s a ton of innovation to be done. https://austingwalters.com/chromatags/ Imagine encoding virtual objects or NPCs into a fiducial without a database... basically a 3D model + actions into a piece of paper you can attach anywhere.

So I imagined it, and I came to the conclusion it's not more than a QR code.

Yes, I too thought this, how does a QR code not already accomplish this need?

Re: Ask HN: What under-the-radar technology are you excited about?

#296

Post by semi-extrinsic »

jimhefferon wrote: post #285
TeMPOraL wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fiducials If you mean what I think you mean (tiny marks on everything that encode information to help computers figure out what they're looking at), I agree. In particular, I've long been waiting for someone in self-driving sphere to give up on trying to crack the problem with just imaging the world as it is. In a saner world, countries would already be standardizing machine-readable markers on roads and posts and…

Forgive me, genuine question. What happens when it snows?

Forgive me, genuine question: even in the richest countries we apparently don't have enough budget to paint new yellow lines in the middle of the roads when they get worn away - how are we going to afford something like this?

The vision of self driving going much beyond driver assists like we have today is going to die a slow death as more and more people realize it just isn't worth the CAPEX and OPEX. Humans brains are cheap in comparison.

Re: Ask HN: What under-the-radar technology are you excited about?

#297

Post by Robotbeat »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #293
jimhefferon wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forgive me, genuine question. What happens when it snows?

Same thing that happens to humans. You see parts of the signage. Or none of it, and drive on memory (and follow the behavior of other cars). The idea behind adding special markings for computers is that you can waste a lot of time and effort trying to perfect algorithms interpreting signage optimized for human consumption, or... you can spend much less time and effort, to much better effect, setting up additional sig…

Yup. Or have signage at an angle that deflects snow. Or has a heater or wiper. Or as others have said, use non-visible-light fiducials.

Humans rely on road lines and signs as well and when those are covered, human capability is reduced and they have to drive slower.

Re: Ask HN: What under-the-radar technology are you excited about?

#298

Post by pmarreck »

ahstilde wrote: post #202

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…

Speaking as a very rational multiple-allergy sufferer (before 30? None. Then, like a dozen things!!) who has gotten allergy shots for years now...

Have any data to back up this substitute?

Also, Zyrtec and Claritin did nothing for me, I’m an Allegra guy

Re: Ask HN: What under-the-radar technology are you excited about?

#299

Post by theon144 »

SavantIdiot wrote: post #182
CyberRabbi wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could argue that the availability of Linux saved countless megacorporations from having to pay Microsoft, IBM, or Sun. Yet the availability of Linux has been a boon to people across the board. While I agree there is something not right about cutting into ARM’s profits for the benefit of megacorporations, I think that a royalty-free ISA might genuinely be good for civilization despite that in the same way Linux is…

I hear what you are saying, and that is a good point, and I do agree with the: "Why isn't there an open ISA?" I think the key difference with an OS like Linux and an ISA like RISC-V is that Linux helped literally millions of smart, curious kids get exposed to Unix and tinkering in a OS that wasn't a locked down behemoth: Windows. It changed lives. I don't think it is an exaggeration to overstate the democrization Lin…

I think you're underestimating the amount of curious kids who are more on the electrical engineering side of things. Who, sure, probably won't get to play with a CPU fab line, but then again that's somewhat like sending kernel contributions is to "tinkering with Linux".

It really is a just question of any level of hobbyist-accessibility (think photo-etching 2 PCBs of less sophistication vs. making a run of 100 perfect 3-layered PCBs in a factory) - and I've seen quite a lot of projects popping up around FPGAs lately that seem to indicate they're starting to approach the Arduino-ish level of approachability (though it's still obviously very far).

RISC-V just might be one of the things on the way to a whole "sillicon-tinkering" scene, so I'm pretty hopeful.

Re: Ask HN: What under-the-radar technology are you excited about?

#300

Post by mustacheemperor »

Eduard wrote: post #287
lettergram wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fiducials are amazing and way under utilized. I’ve worked in the space and there’s a ton of innovation to be done. https://austingwalters.com/chromatags/ Imagine encoding virtual objects or NPCs into a fiducial without a database... basically a 3D model + actions into a piece of paper you can attach anywhere.

So I imagined it, and I came to the conclusion it's not more than a QR code.

From what I understand (which is limited) a QR code can function as a fiducial but the cutting edge of fiducials far exceed QR codes in terms of recognition speed and can be understood in terms of their relative 3D orientation to the scanner much more accurately and efficiently than QR codes.

The docs page for AprilTag[0] makes for an explanatory example,

"AprilTags are conceptually similar to QR Codes, in that they are a type of two-dimensional bar code. However, they are designed to encode far smaller data payloads (between 4 and 12 bits), allowing them to be detected more robustly and from longer ranges. Further, they are designed for high localization accuracy— you can compute the precise 3D position of the AprilTag with respect to the camera."

[0]https://april.eecs.umich.edu/software/apriltag

Something with the recognition speed and 3D orientation understanding of an AprilTag and with the information density of a QR code seems like it could be quite a useful innovation.

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