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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?

#701

Post by paulywog »

jrussino wrote: post #578
entropicgravity wrote: post #566

Personal vehicles will be getting both bigger and smaller. What's different from the past is that electric motors scale much better than IC engines. Both the world's smallest vehicles (kid's toys) and the largest vehicles (huge mining trucks) are both electric. First the small. Cities will soon start to ban all but electric vehicles in their downtown cores (already happening in some Chinese cities). The primary reaso…

I think the recent electric scooter boom and subsequent pushback by communities shows that: - There is (IMHO huge ) pent-up demand for last-mile style electric transportation: scooters, bicycles, etc. - The electric drive technology is starting to reach a point where it can support a whole new space of designs that make this sort of transportation appealing to a wide variety of users (i.e. not just fit young adventur…

If you're ever in San Francisco, Miami, or NYC, check out what Revel is doing. Electric mopeds that rent for $0.50/min! They're such an excellent way to get around and see the city (at least in San Francisco where I ride them)

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

#702

Post by alar44 »

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…

That's not what power transmission is about. Transmitting AC is more efficient over long distances. What you use in your house is irrelevant.

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

#703

Post by _hcuq »

CraftingLinks wrote: post #588

Having gone through a lot of top posts in this thread, it's kind of disappointing how relatively boring these predictions for the future are. That's a sign were in a great wave of pessimism of what the future will bring. That pessimism may well be justified, but there's also an underlying 'hopelessness' emanating from the suggested unambitious 'next big thing'. Otoh, there's no shortage of CGI moonshot projects that…

Ok…. Just for you I’ll predict flying cars, interstellar travel and everyone wearing silver suits. ;

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

#704

Post by colechristensen »

blinkingled wrote: post #202
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…

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…

You can have my car over my dead body.

I live in a very walkable neighborhood near lots of public transit.

Yesterday someone was shot in the head two floors up. A month ago I watched a racially charged conflict that only didn't end with a stabbing because a dude couldn't find anything appropriate in the unoccupied security desk. A week ago I witnessed a charged situation with a couple of dozen people at a bus stop. Someone was murdered on a bus at 11pm two blocks away over who got a cigarette on the floor. A friend was visiting me and someone got stabbed at the bus stop she used 45 minutes after she passed through.

There are exactly 0 units available in my building appropriate for a family of 4 unless you really aspire to live packed in like sardines, the units you could do so which still don't have much space in them go for significantly more than a 6 bedroom house on a half acre within a few miles.

What will happen if left-wing idealists try to force city density and public transit on people is a hard right wing turn when the consequences of one party trying to take freedoms away for idealistic reasons becomes a bigger burden than the consequences of the freedoms the other party wants to take away.

I really don't care about my own safety, but when it comes time for a family I would never subject any of them to the safety nightmare which is high density public-transit heavy living.

When the same people fighting to abolish the car are fighting to abolish the police, I don't think there's going to be much hope for either happening.

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

#705

Post by soohamr »

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,…

Sooo GATTACA?

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

#706

Post by [deleted] »

woeirua wrote: post #273

Nuclear war. It has fallen out of favor to talk about this as a serious possibility, but the world is in many ways closer to nuclear armageddon right now than it has been at any point since the Cuban Missile Crisis. People seem to have gotten comfortable with the idea of Ukraine as a low-tempo conventional war, but it could very quickly turn into something much more significant.

[deleted]

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

#707

Post by throwayyy479087 »

david927 wrote: post #523

The end of the US/NATO hegemony / The rise of a BRICS equilibrium If this is true, what does it mean? China will invade Taiwan? What else?

Brazil is mired in government corruption and scandal and has failed to become even a regional power.

Russia is a pariah with a shrinking population and no real economy outside of petrochemicals

India is a more hopeful version if Brazil but still enormously corrupt. It’s also in conflict with Pakistan and China.

China is more likely to be the next Japan than the next USA. Huge debt from infra spending + population that will halve by 2050 is not a great foundation. They sabre rattle but have never in their history had a blue water navy - the minimum to be a credible military power.

My money is on places like Nigeria, Colombia, Namibia, Botswana. Places with relatively good governance and a functioning economic foundation, that are free of distractions from serious regional conflict.

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

#709

Post by throwayyy479087 »

1270018080 wrote: post #45

The 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/demog…

Buy land in Rustbelt cities. I’m convinced a warmer Buffalo with unlimited water is a very appealing option for people on water rations in a 128f Phoenix.

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

#710

Post by icco »

ortusdux wrote: post #89

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…

Most big retailers use this tech already to track how customers walk through their stores.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264822934_Mining_of... https://www.aislelabs.com/blog/2022/04/04/combining-camera-a...

There's lots of other examples, this was just a quick google search.

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