When asking this question it's worth considering that historically, the hit rate of such predictions is quite low - even when made by experts based on reasonable-seeming extrapolations. Prior experience indicates predictions more than a decade out should be heavily discounted.
Ask HN: What's the next big thing that few people are talking about?
41–50 of 1001 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's the next big thing that few people are talking about?
#42Clean Energy, Water Desalination, Nigeria's crackdown on anonymous SIM cards, Monkeypox, Separation of Church & State in a post-Roe world, Computer chips made out of light, The managed decline of Britain, Crackdowns on E2E encrypted messaging apps, Quantum-resistant cryptography, Tesla cars charged by burning coal.
>...Nigeria's crackdown on anonymous SIM cards
Nigerian here, also an opponent of the present government, but why would a crackdown on anonymous SIM cards be an issue for debate ?
Re: Ask HN: What's the next big thing that few people are talking about?
#43The likely shutdown of all Russian gas to Germany this winter, resulting in a) 5-10X rise in home heating costs, and b) complete shutdown of many industries, resulting in a c) depression in the German (and thus European) economy
Re: Ask HN: What's the next big thing that few people are talking about?
#44DC 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…
But wouldn't this cause more issues?
Sure, all my things may work with 12DC internally, but they expect 120AC (or w/e depending on country) at the plug, so I wouldn't be able to use them if I switch.
Re: Ask HN: What's the next big thing that few people are talking about?
#45The rough polygon of Idaho - California - Arizona becoming less habitable every year. Mass migration to the east, water wars between wealthy landowners using most of dwindling water supply for agriculture and the rest of the population for drinking.
I'm not expecting some doomer apocalyptic scenario. But every year, it'll get 1% worse. People will struggle 1%, there will be 1% more resentment between race/class/demographics, 1% more people leaving, and so on. It'll just get worse.
Re: Ask HN: What's the next big thing that few people are talking about?
#46TIL: Just mix two big trends and see what you can come up with. Like: - Quantum Computing and WFH - Crypto and Micronuclear Power - Metaverse and Biohacking Have fun!
Don't know why this was down voted, this is genuinely a simple and reliable framework to come up with promising ideas that utilise existing trends.
Re: Ask HN: What's the next big thing that few people are talking about?
#47[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: What's the next big thing that few people are talking about?
#48DC 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…
But wouldn't this cause more issues? Sure, all my things may work with 12DC internally, but they expect 120AC (or w/e depending on country) at the plug, so I wouldn't be able to use them if I switch.
Yes, it causes issues today. But tomorrow, I'm expecting that the transformer will be outside the device (as now with wall warts and most laptops) rather than inside (as with your TV). And that minority who are handy enough with tools can patch past the internal transformer with a soldering iron and a screwdriver in the meantime.
Re: Ask HN: What's the next big thing that few people are talking about?
#49Tooling 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 into the market.
Every 5-ish years there is a big “new” database tech that receives massive investment for both enterprise and small business. Real time CRDT based data stores are the “next big thing” - in my view.
CRDTs are often only talked about in relation to rich text editing, but “generic” CRDTs that represent “standard” data types (think JSON), and basic operations to them (inset, edit, remove) are able to represent so much more. You can use them for building so many CRUD type business apps, and by using a CRDT as your base data representation you get conflict free collaborative (and offline) editing for free.
The nice thing about both Yjs and AutoMerge is that they provide both Rich Text and JSON-like data types, covering 95% of what people would need for building business apps.
0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict-free_replicated_dat...
Re: Ask HN: What's the next big thing that few people are talking about?
#50DC 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…
But wouldn't this cause more issues? Sure, all my things may work with 12DC internally, but they expect 120AC (or w/e depending on country) at the plug, so I wouldn't be able to use them if I switch.
The idea being that consumer items will, more and more, be able to take DC directly instead of expecting AC.
For example, any device that takes in USB power with a 120VAC "wall wart" plug can just be used with a buck convert plug instead or being powered directly from the DC current.
LED lighting is taking in AC then converting to DC to power the LEDs. Your phone is taking in AC then converting to DC to power it. Your laptop is taking in AC then converting to DC to power it.
There are some household machines which will require some heavy duty power draw but much of the consumer products we use is powered off of DC to begin with. Powering directly off of DC would be cutting out the "middle man" of AC.