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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?

#331
post #213

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…

> By 2030 (8 years from now) at least six manufacturers will have stopped making ICE vehicles entirely. Do you believe this? I know its a stated goal, but is there anything to hold the company's accountable or is this just a promise? I can't imagine them giving up a cash cow and something they've been doing for decades. EV sales in the USU are 5.6% of the market. I just find the claim that these companies will just s…

All you have to do is look at press releases from 8 years ago and see how many of those plans actually happened. You should expect the plans from today to work out similarly.

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

#332

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,…

I think the underlying idea is spot on, if not the specifics. Biology, sequencing, health, bioinformatics etc. is going to be huge business. As of this writing, I believe whole genome sequencing is in the range of $400 with the cost (slowly) dropping exponentially. When the cost of whole genome sequencing gets to be within $100 or below, we'll see a huge influx of whole genome sequencing and all the side effects that…

That $400 isn’t de novo is it?

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

#333

Russia will collapse.

IMO Russia is just a pawn in this game with China. US is in two win-win scenarios with both Russia and China. Currently Russia has its hands tied and cannot interfere or support China if the Taiwan thing gets bigger. Also, irrespective of Russia winning or loosing, Europe will increase usage of American oil and gas. If China wins in a Taiwan takeover, the semiconductor industry will double up in America and if loses, then America will have military dominance in the region. Unless something really crazy happens, US will come out on top again and crush both Russia and China and also increase exports to Europe.

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

#334

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…

The quantity of CO2 needing to be dumped in to the atmosphere to manufacture new cars to meet this is going to be astronomical. The majority of the CO2 cost of a car is in the manufacturing. I don't understand why they are doing this?

Because the CO2 cost of manufacturing a new ICE car is comparable to that of a new EV, but the lifetime CO2 contribution of a new EV is far lower than that of an ICE car.

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

#335

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…

AirBnB?

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

#336

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…

> The stumble over abandonment of ICE vehicles.

> By 2030 (8 years from now) at least six manufacturers will have stopped making ICE vehicles entirely.

If those two seem out of step with one another then I propose that one of them will relent with regard to the other. (No one is making these six manufacturers stick to their forecasts.)

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

#337

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…

Hydrogen fuel cells are more expensive than batteries, because they either work at room-temperature and they need expensive catalysts using platinum-group metals, or they work at high temperatures and then they have a short lifetime, requiring frequent replacements of most components.

Also the efficiency of a cycle of storing energy into gaseous hydrogen and then recovering it is limited by fundamental reasons to low values.

For cars, it is likely that batteries will remain the best solution, due to the high efficiency of a charge-discharge cycle.

For long term storage of energy, further improvements of fuel cells might make them the best solution for recovering energy stored in chemical form, but not using gaseous hydrogen for storage, but other more appropriate substances, e.g. hydrocarbons, alcohols, ammonia or solid carbon.

There are fuel cells for the other fuels mentioned above and the only advantage of the hydrogen fuel cells is that they currently have the greatest power density, i.e. the speed of reaction of the hydrogen per area of electrode is for now the greatest (leading to the greatest electrical current density), but only either at high temperatures or when using expensive catalysts.

The mitochondria from all the cells of our body are a demonstration that it is possible to make a very high efficiency fuel cell using hydrocarbons as fuel and without using any rare or expensive materials for catalysts.

While the solar cells already exceed the efficiency of plants at capturing solar energy, the artificial fuel cells have a long way until becoming competitive with those used by the living beings.

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

#338

WLAN sensing. Off the shelf mesh wifi systems are capable of sensing people reliably. This includes qty, position, motion, & gestures. Here is the IEEE spec due for approval in a year or two: https://www.ieee802.org/11/Reports/tgbf_update.htm I have mixed feelings on the tech. The home security implications are amazing, and things like automatic fall detection for the elderly would be a literal lifesaver. Small busin…

> On the other hand, it's just creepy. How do you prevent the next apartment over from spying through your walls? Is the hotel wifi going to recognize and catalog physical activity between two people?

I would imagine you just take the "country/private club" model and extend it out.

e.g. a private club enforces limits on who can access the club and you get more "privacy" since the other people in the club also had to pass through those limits.

In this case, the club/hotel/builder of your house can say "the walls are all Faraday rated so that you get audio, visual and EM privacy when you stay here"

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

#339
post #303

Russia will collapse.

Some observations in support, by researchers at Yale: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4167193

Slides for the intellectually sloven https://yale.app.box.com/s/7f6agg5ezscj234kahx35lil04udqgeo

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

#340

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…

The quantity of CO2 needing to be dumped in to the atmosphere to manufacture new cars to meet this is going to be astronomical. The majority of the CO2 cost of a car is in the manufacturing. I don't understand why they are doing this?

> The majority of the CO2 cost of a car is in the manufacturing

Is this true over the life time of the car? Studies indicate this may be a widely believed myth.

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