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

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

#321

Post by avel »

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.

You might be missing the point. Some examples of realtime collaboration in the world of remote work can be: google docs / sheets, project boards (trello, miro), whiteboarding (jamboard, zoom), design/drawing, or even coding (VS code sharing).

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

#322

Post by Workaccount2 »

handelaar wrote: post #37

DC home electricity. If your future home has solar and local storage, and your domestic usage is mostly in appliances which convert back down to DC immediately behind the plug socket (most of us have this) then at some point we're going to start wanting to power our homes like houseboats or camper vans. Yes, this won't help for (eg) appliances with heating elements, I'm probably talking about a second discrete wiring…

This isn't going to happen because it's much cheaper to transmit higher voltages than higher currents.

Your PC running at ~500W only needs a conductor capable of transmitting 4.2A with conventional 120V.

If you switch to a 12V source, that same 500W now needs a 42A conductor.

It's just not practical.

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

#323

Post by AndrewDucker »

kurthr wrote: post #215
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…

Is there a reason you assume people won't simply charge at night with relatively standard 240V (or even 120V) chargers? Most cars don't average more than 60 miles a day, which is less than 20kWh. In much of the US you could install 10-15 solar panels to do that even in the winter. Now solar panels are mostly made in China (as are almost all consumer electronics), but that seems like a far more general problem to solv…

That's great for people living in houses with plenty of roofspace. Trickier for people living in cities with on-street parking.

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

#324

Post by spaetzleesser »

ratg13 wrote: post #311
Geee wrote: post #284

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 wil…

This is the one that scares me the most because the labor benefits are so big that the field will advance quickly, and it's only a matter of time before someone starts fitting them with rifles.

I always wonder what would have happened if the Bush administration had had such robots available in 2003. There were quite a few people in power who thought the US should just invade any country they don’t like and “fix” it. Turns out this was way more difficult than thought and cost soldiers’ lives but what if invading a country just costs money?

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

#326

Post by monodeldiablo »

tomxor wrote: post #282
maverick74 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 _…

One small nit: Nobody is advocating "throwing away 1 billion ICE vehicles".

If you have a car that works, the environmentally responsible decision is -- unless it's an absurdly inefficient vehicle -- to keep using that car instead of purchasing a newly-manufactured EV. Even EV advocates acknowledge and proclaim this.

The point of the EV transition is to provide a more environmentally responsible solution for those people who are already in the market for a new car, as an alternative to manufacturing another billion polluting ICE cars.

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

#327

Post by neon_electro »

Chris_Newton wrote: post #101

I wonder what the future holds for WebAssembly. If it doesn’t really catch on and just ends up being mostly (ab)used for nefarious purposes, I can imagine the major browsers dropping support in a few years. They did with technologies like Flash and Java applets before, and those had had much wider adoption previously. On the other hand, if someone comes up with a good programming language for modern Web-style applica…

What does securing a WebAssembly runtime look like? Have browser developers made good strides on that front yet?

Flash declined in part because of its poor security compared to the Web proper (HTML/CSS/JavaScript), so I'm curious where WebAssembly stands.

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

#328

Post by bnt »

StefanWestfal wrote: post #238
Normille wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's hope so!

Why would you hope for suffering of millions?

I feel OP is welcoming Germany’s demise as the Economic Powerhouse of Europe rather than suffering of people. Tho, both are linked because Germany is a net-importer of human capital and many will be forced to move back East, thus further pushing East Europe back into poverty.

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

#330

Post by personjerry »

trgn wrote: post #313
personjerry wrote: post #294

One thing I've been thinking about is, how do you scale tourism? Edit for clarification: For example, the destruction of local environment is a known problem for places such as Machu Picchu and Venice, to the point where you now need to reserve and pay for a visit to the city of Venice [0] As population gets higher more and more people want to visit the top destinations, and when a new one gets "found" it gets floode…

You don't have to. If the local environment becomes nicer (for americans, not a soul crushing schmear of strip malls and parking lots), people will do more things closer to home. The driving aspiration of the future will be that you live in a place worth visiting. Not a place you look forward to flee 2-3 times a year.

That's just not true, the top tourism destinations are more popular than ever since covid restrictions have laxed, and the destruction of local environment is a known problem for places such as Machu Picchu and Venice, to the point where you now need to reserve and pay for a visit to the city of Venice [0]

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/01/world/europe/venice-touri...

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