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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?

#741

Post by euroderf »

freedomben wrote: post #372
gwbas1c wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Most of these appliances use low voltage which travels poorly over long distances. Your car, camper van, and boat all use ultra-thick cables to move 12 volts. This is quite uneconomic…

My thoughts exactly. A/C has some important electromagnetic characteristics that make it a lot easier to transport. Particularly for long distance lines, high voltage is critical and transformers make it trivial to modify voltage levels, such as to get to 120V for the house. it's also a lot easier to convert AC to DC than the other way around. If we start transporting with DC, we take on a number of problems/challeng…

Would it make sense to think about upping the line frequency ? IIRC Engineering 101 said that 50~60 Hz are frequencies most dangerous to humans; choosing a higher line frequency would be safer to work with and would (natch!) permit the use of thinner conductors.

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

#742

Post by euroderf »

billfruit wrote: post #138
YossarianFrPrez wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ooh, fascinating. AC is better for long distance transmission, which solar + local storage obviates. Do you happen to know of the efficiency we might stand to gain from switching appliances to DC?

I thought even long distance transmission now use HVDC(High Voltage DC) lines, for various advantages, for example not having lines for 3 phases.

LDx HVDC has a small set of use cases where it is more efficient than HVAC. But yes, in some cases it can work better over distances of hundreds of km.

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

#743

Post by [deleted] »

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?

[deleted]

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

#744

Post by euroderf »

keenboy wrote: post #123

Can I say what I hope/wish were on the horizon? 1. Approval voting becoming widely adopted. This would go a long way toward mitigating the hyper polarization in politics in America (and likely elsewhere as well). Electing politicians with broader approval means legislation would likely move more quickly. 2. Moving to a Land Value Tax system in America. This would organically help us transition to a culture that build…

In practice, first-past-the-post voting is dysfunctional bordering on evil, especially when combined with gerrymandering wherein politicians select their voters rather than vice-versa. The entire result set of this mess - two parties and their primaries - is deeply screwed up. The practical challenge (imo) is to explain alternatives concisely to voters who might want to modify how their voting system works. But there are now experiments going on here and there.

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

#745

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

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…

Electric RVs require: parking, charging facilities, sanitary facilities, and maintenance.

A few people with "camp mode" is a complete different proposition to millions of people with mobile homes. Not to say it couldn't be done, but cities would have to become mobile labour camps and the infrastructure costs would be significant - mostly the cost of space formerly used by brick and mortar real estate.

And owners would be charged rent for use of facilities. So that $70k is not going to be rent free.

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

#746

Post by euroderf »

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…

How about an AI toaster that can act as therapist and converse with you in the morning, over breakfast, when you are most open/vulnerable ? Naturally it will have zero web access.

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

#747

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

fuzzzerd wrote: post #711
salmo wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freight trains are also electric, just with diesel generators. I'll completely speculate 2 things that stand in the way of them going fully electric: 1. Trains derail, crash, etc. I live in a city that's a rail hub. We probably have a derailment every couple years even with annual rail/rail bed maintenance. They will fix the rail, the roads around it, and have everything back up and running in less than 2 days. You s…

Trains would not be battery operated and have no risk of spilling the toxic battery components. They'd be powered by third rail or overhead wires. That is how most pure electric trains are powered today already.

It's also how cars could be operated - either by overhead or (more likely) inductive pick-up.

The battery concept is kind of dumb and a relic of IC engine thinking. For local urban journeys you could half-size the cars, provide common power, and add automated navigation to optimise density and efficiency.

Getting rid of batteries would hugely lower cost and weight.

Cross-country is a different problem, of course.

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

#748

Post by euroderf »

vivegi wrote: post #575

1. Passive radiative heating/cooling (paints, coatings, etc.,) 2. Low power electronics and energy harvesters (thermal/clothing, kinetic energy, rf energy harvesters etc.,) 3. Physical logistics networks (similar to Internet Protocol with standard physical containers and transfer networks - land, sea, rail, air) 4. Ubiquitous drone delivery (last mile & long haul) 5. Fiat digital currency/payment networks

About #3 - I would like to see a city try this. Standard containers and cheap/free mobility platforms for them. Grannies with groceries ? Check. Exhausted mothers with kids ? Check. Food/grocery/purchases delivery ? Check. Moving day ? Check -from living room to elevator to truck.

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

#749

Post by krageon »

imiric wrote: post #712
norwalkbear wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who don't benefit from good genes are already the underclass today

Not in the way commercial gene selection would enable. It would give more power to the rich to breed genetically superior humans, something that was previously up to chance, and a level playing field for everyone, regardless of social status. In a few generations, rich families would be untouchable genetically, producing a superior lineage and widening the social gap. This is why it's critical that access to this tec…

Genetically superior humans are a net benefit to all of humanity. Inevitably they will interbreed with arbitrary other people occasionally and the technological advances also benefit everyone. Yes, it will stratify society - all of society is and has always been stratified. It is not a good indicator to inform whether or not you should do something.

> It's crazy to me that we're already approaching Gattaca, and the discussion does not revolve entirely on how to prevent it.

Because the movie has been engineered specifically to make you feel vindicated: Someone is said to be limited, they then overcome this limitation. It is the "american dream" in movie form. Another poster has said it higher up: If genetic determinism is real, the main character is a fraud. Viewed through that lens, it becomes an entirely different movie.

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

#750

Post by krageon »

sterlind wrote: post #740
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,…

So Gattaca, basically. I don't want to live in Gattaca! Society would start pressing people to conform at the genetic level, like a micro-targeted kind of racism - not (just) directed at cosmetic traits like melanin or epicanthal folds, but weeding out traits like ADHD, autism, or even non-conformity in general (as much as you can genetically, at least.) Though, scientists haven't yet found the gene(s) responsible fo…

It's not racism, micro-targeted or not: It's meritocracy.
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