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Ask HN: What startup/technology is on your 'to watch' list?

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Re: Ask HN: What startup/technology is on your 'to watch' list?

#491

Post by abainbridge »

GuB-42 wrote: post #463
fergie wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Self-driving cars. Now that the hype is over and the fake-it-til-you-make-it crowd has tanked, there's progress. Slowly, the LIDARs get cheaper, the radars get more resolution, and the software improves. Still don't see fully (fully automated) self driving cars happening any time soon: 1) Heavy steel boxes running at high speed in built up areas will be the very last thing that we trust to robots. There are so many…

> Its reasonable to assume that we will see fully automated trains before fully automated cars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_M%C3%A9tro_Line_14 Fully automated since 1998, and very successful.

There were automated railways 30 years before that too. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_train_operation

Re: Ask HN: What startup/technology is on your 'to watch' list?

#492

Post by mkl »

carapace wrote: post #356
avmich wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't think so. Geometry requires space, which has certain features which constrain its properties (sorry for a tautology). If you avoid such constraints, you can still have math, but it doesn't make sense to call it geometry. Looks a bit surprising math definition include concept of space. Geometry looks underappreciated, yes, but to replace the whole math...

Ah, but you can't encode math except for in some necessarily geometric form.

Are you referring to written notation? Calling that geometry is a bit of a stretch. There's also nothing geometric about maths encoded in computer code, or many types of mathematical thoughts, so I think you are just incorrect.

Re: Ask HN: What startup/technology is on your 'to watch' list?

#493

Post by mkl »

ianai wrote: post #439
kvz wrote: post #337

Nix—It takes buy-in, but very worth it for us. Builds are reliable, reproducible, can exist alongside one another. Plug an S3 powered CloudFront cache into it, and you’re never building the same thing more than once. Deno—Sandboxed by default seems a powerful way to offer our customers to run custom code. Native TypeScript, build single bins. I have still to play around with it but those all seem like compelling adva…

Crazy idea time. Is anyone piping randomly generated code into nix and selecting for AI in the output? (I’m pretty far out of my realm here so sorry in advance)

The search space of possible code is unfathomably enormous. I think you'd have better luck generating amazing art with random colours for each pixel (i.e. still none).

People have done more limited genetic programming for a long time now (essentially randomly mutating formulas, keeping ones that do better), but neural networks are doing the arbitrary function-fitting better at the moment.

What does it have to do with Nix, though?

Re: Ask HN: What startup/technology is on your 'to watch' list?

#494

Post by mwcampbell »

api wrote: post #154

The general trend toward returning computing to the edge, which is just starting and has been accelerated due to COVID forcing BeyondCorp type practices on us. Cognitive radio, ultra wide spread spectrum, and other radio tech that promises great range and license free or minimal licensing operation due to lack of interference with other stuff. Rust is the first serious C/C++ replacement contender IMHO. RISC-V and oth…

> The general trend toward returning computing to the edge

By "the edge", do you mean users' devices, or just more local data centers a la Cloudflare?

Re: Ask HN: What startup/technology is on your 'to watch' list?

#496

Post by CraigRood »

dane-pgp wrote: post #313
sosodev wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuinely curious, what’s wrong with the lightning network?

I don't know why the parent comment talked in such absolute terms, but these recent problems may be relevant: https://news.bitcoin.com/hidden-lightning-network-bug-allowe... https://news.bitcoin.com/mishap-sees-user-lose-30000-btc-on-...

Bitcoin.com isn't a neutral source on LN related material. The parent company (St Bitts LLC) directly invest in Bitcoin Cash startups that compete directly with Bitcoin itself.

The bug has already been patched, and had a limited userbase. The user who supposedly lost all his Bitcoin ended up not being true, vast majority was recovered. It's also worth noting that the user also deliberately went against various UI warnings that funds may be lost.

https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd/issues/2468

Re: Ask HN: What startup/technology is on your 'to watch' list?

#497

Post by jjoonathan »

sandov wrote: post #324
jjoonathan wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if they do it would be wise not to trust them, because dropping support for advertised features with hardware-fused irreversible software updates is SOP at this point. FFS, they even dropped support for my 4K screen in an update and I wound up playing the back half of Horizon Zero Dawn in 1080p as a result.

What? How and why did they drop support for your screen?

Yes, really. They up and dropped an entire HDMI mode used by "older" 4K displays.

A cynic would say they wanted to boost sales on newer displays, but it seems more likely that a bug of some kind came up in a driver (I was unaware of any problems, but that's hardly proof of anything) and they just decided it was easier to cut support of those displays than to fix the problem.

Support forums filled with complaints by the dozens of pages, but Sony didn't care, because why should they? I'm sure somebody did the calculation that said we weren't a big enough demographic to matter.

Re: Ask HN: What startup/technology is on your 'to watch' list?

#498

Post by specialist »

skmurphy wrote: post #45

Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) occupies a intermediate position in accuracy / skin depth for soft tissue between ultrasound and MRI Optically pumped magnetometers (OPM) approaches SQUID level accuracy without need for supercooled device, can be worn or used as a contact sensor like ultrasound. LoRA long range (10km +) low power sub-gigahertz radio frequency protocol useful for battery powered IoT devices transmit…

Neat list. Thanks.

I have chronic graft-versus host disease. Side effect of a bone marrow transplant. Mostly effects my skin, which changes color, gets thinner, and in advances stages hardens (aka marbleization).

GVHD is wicked hard to diagnose, monitor. Skin biopsies and normal digital photos.

I've asked my misc doctors (at FHCRC, SCCA, Univ of Wash) over the years about using UV to better diagnose skin conditions.

Now I'm wondering if OCT could also be helpful, perhaps for assessing the scarring.

Re: Ask HN: What startup/technology is on your 'to watch' list?

#499

Post by dahfizz »

peteforde wrote: post #462
fergie wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Self-driving cars. Now that the hype is over and the fake-it-til-you-make-it crowd has tanked, there's progress. Slowly, the LIDARs get cheaper, the radars get more resolution, and the software improves. Still don't see fully (fully automated) self driving cars happening any time soon: 1) Heavy steel boxes running at high speed in built up areas will be the very last thing that we trust to robots. There are so many…

You could be right. My alternative possible timeline interpretation is that two forces collide and make self-driving inevitable. The first force is the insurance industry. It's really hard to argue that humans are more fallible than even today's self-driving setups, and at some point the underwriters will take note and start premium-blasting human drivers into the history books. The second force is the power of numbe…

This reminds me that Tesla itself is starting to offer insurance, and it can do so at a much lower rate. I assume this is because:

1) Teslas crash much less often, mostly due to autopilot.

2) Tesla can harvest an incredible amount of data from one of their cars and so they can calculate risk better

Re: Ask HN: What startup/technology is on your 'to watch' list?

#500

Post by McTossOut »

mindvirus wrote: post #227

Subvocal recognition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvocal_recognition Imagine how much more people would use voice input if they could do it silently. Also neural interfaces like CTRL-labs was building before being acquired. Imagine if you could navigate and type at full speed while standing on the subway. I think that rich, high fidelity inputs like those are going to be key to ambient computing really taking off…

Google assistant circa 2012 felt a bit like this already... and then scope creep made things too dumb for me to even use.
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