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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?

#451

Post by moistly »

clavalle wrote: post #296

The US codifying privacy as a Right. Too many parties interested in exploiting the lack of privacy are making the lack of privacy laws painfully apparent. When it changes, its going to be all at once.

Codifying privacy as a right is not in the interest of corporations. I am extremely sceptical that the US government will harm corporations for something most people obviously don’t care about. The success of Facebook, Tictoc, Nest, etc are definitive proof that most people do not care about their privacy at all.

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

#452

Post by sinenomine »

philwelch wrote: post #319
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 who are more intelligent and attractive than average. They do this via mechanisms like “being intelligent enough to get rich, or at least not being stupid enough to go broke” and “being rich enough to marry hot people and have kids with them”. I don’t know if polygenetic testing is going to have a significant effect, but if it does, there is going to be a significant generation gap i…

> there is going to be a significant generation gap in intelligence

Have you thought about the obvious implication that embryo selection with polygenic scoring could be used to lower the gap between genetically privileged types of people you describe and the average couple deciding to apply to procedure?

What's needed: an egalitarian policy & infrastructure allowing any couple to improve the genetic basis of their progeny, perhaps with more of it being provided to genetically disprivileged.

We have an obligation to provide our children and the whole society with an opportunity to live a better life.

> and that will have unpredictable consequences in education and the labor market

The "gap" of single digit amount of IQ points added won't have such effect, but over generations it can compound into a more thoughtful, creative, capable and lively humanity.

Should we deprive ourselves of such possibility due to a generic NIMBY-like market anxiety?

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

#453

Post by walleeee »

kickout wrote: post #208

Autonomous machines operating in farm land in the USA. Several billion dollar companies could be spun up. Ripe for the taking right now/

I doubt these will take off unless climate- or politically driven migration slows, which seems unlikely in either case, or we stumble across a fountain of cheap energy. A lot of farm work in the US is performed by undocumented immigrants paid incredibly low wages and too often treated incredibly badly. I don't see the cost of robots coming down much if supply chain instability and energy scarcity continue. (This is not to say it wouldn't be better to use robots, or pay people a good wage and provide good working conditions.)

Plus, a lot of work in precision agriculture is overhyped and oversold. I worked in the space for a couple years and things like automated, AI/ML-powered high-throughput phenotyping are described as breakthrough technologies which will revolutionize agriculture and synthetic biology. More accurately they are relatively narrow-scoped tools which, while useful in many cases, are more often bandwagons people jump on for career progression.

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

#454

Post by rrwo »

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,…

I think a lot of wealthy people will throw money at genetic snake oil.

Traits are determined by multiple genes (e.g. eye or hair colour), and single genes control multiple traits (e.g. EDAR gene which is associated with thick hair, small breasts, and shovel-shaped incisors).

Sometimes genes for less desirable traits (e.g. mental illness, sickle cell anemia) may be associated with desirable traits (higher intelligence, resistence to malaria).

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

#455

Post by nokya »

ikurei wrote: post #252
snidane wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europeans would rather go Japan - ie. keep their national identity and downsize, than America - healthy demographics, but constant cultural clashes and crime waves.

Do you think then that those crime waves in America are mainly caused by immigration, or by racial/cultural diversity? Care to elaborate?

In full honesty, I fail to see how crime waves in the USA could be explained by immigration or racial/cultural diversity. From what I understand, it is mostly a consequence of families living through precarious jobs (and poverty), limited access to good education and a general lack of trust in the government, which they either perceive as powerless, or extremely unfair/brutal.

If I acknowledge that some communities are more likely to live their daily lives under these three factors altogether, it could explain why these communities may be more vulnerable to daily life challenges, and more easily resort to violence. Still, that doesn't give me a causal link between racial/cultural diversity and violence, far from it, but I can understand why those who prefer taking shortcuts may end up reaching this conclusion.

This shortcut is also very comfortable for the peace of mind: once I attribute violence to racial/cultural diversity, I can also safely conclude that I will never be part of the problem (if I consider myself as being part of the "good" racial/cultural group)...

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

#456

Post by jmole »

aaronax wrote: post #281
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 connec…

This is basically the idea behind microinverters

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

#457

Post by mdp2021 »

trgn wrote: post #300
irthomasthomas wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

ICE cars pollute the local environment, which is worse imho than their contribution to global warming. ICE cars are noisy, stink, and have unhealthy exhaust. For those reasons alone, an electric car is better.

> noisy

Now for reality instead: since people have developed the direst situation of being "brainless", I have been near vehicles you would praise, and the noise they make is _unbearable_. That is because some satanic critters, which unfortunately constitute empowered components in management, marketing and public, believe it a "good idea" to replace traditional engine noise with synths of '90s operating system boot samples.

This happens because people have lost their nature, of feedback-based machines, and can go on living after being shot (they will not know about it).

--

Edit: an hybrid in electric mode just parked near me, in real time, and the noise was not the most particularly annoying - it's a Hyundai - but it was definitely upsetting and irritating (though much better than other hellish nightmares I have heard driving near me). I assess that normal individuals would probably be not that bothered when they pass on the streets many yards distant - but I am not sure, it really depends which audio bands will reach you. I am pretty sure that others I have experienced will be fully unbearable at a much longer distance.

Edit2: they just left now, and the noise at the start was quite acceptable now - just a mildly loud fan, nothing perverse. It seems Hyundai has guessed a few effects properly. (Issue is, others have not - and this logically opens for more.)

Those evidences of hell on earth are driving by clearly unregulated - and it is doubtful that given the mental state of nowadays earth crawlers they will ever be regulated (you need a clean humanity still capable of being bothered by noise for that).

And for what the single sniper that hit this post is concerned - likewise for silence, let us refrain to spend much verbal judgement.

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

#458

Post by phpisthebest »

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…

>> 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!

You know what is even nicer than that, Living in a Rural area with a population density of less than 500 people per sq mile (310 people per sq km)

>The only way to fix it is by passing taxes or other restrictive legislation

That is far from the only way to fix it, and it is very regressive, making the burden fall upon poor people, and often the elderly.

Using tax code to affect behavior is one of the most unethical things government does, and I always find it odd that the same people that complain about the rich, and how we should do more for the poor are the ones that also want to impose these heavily regressive tax schemes because "they know best"

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

#459

Post by [deleted] »

philwelch wrote: post #319
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 who are more intelligent and attractive than average. They do this via mechanisms like “being intelligent enough to get rich, or at least not being stupid enough to go broke” and “being rich enough to marry hot people and have kids with them”. I don’t know if polygenetic testing is going to have a significant effect, but if it does, there is going to be a significant generation gap i…

[deleted]
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