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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?

#771

Post by ptman »

O__________O wrote: post #627
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…

“Halving” vehicles has been possible for long time, also seen it mentioned numerous times over the years. Unless large & small vehicles never use the same roads, ever, it will never happen; imagine being in a small car and being hit by a large car, odd of person in small car dying are much higher. Basically, something like this will only have a chance in an authoritarian society. As for the RV, you still need parking…

Too true. It not possible to reach any sensible climate goals by replacing all gasoline cars with EVs. We need to rethink mobility. And we need smaller vehicles in order to optimize battery-weight/transported persons/goods. And we need new solutions to safety instead of adding bulkier safety devices, which drag down transportation efficiency. Limit top speed?

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

#772

Post by jon_adler »

bawolff wrote: post #739
avel wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be missing the point. Some examples of realtime collaboration in the world of remote work can be: google docs / sheets, project boards (trello, miro), whiteboarding (jamboard, zoom), design/drawing, or even coding (VS code sharing).

> even coding (VS code sharing). Damn that sounds terrible. I'll give points for google docs, but i am unconvinced by the rest.

Collaborative content creation in tools like Miro/Lucid can work well, especially when on an audio call at the same time. It’s the best execution of the whiteboard experience in a remote working environment that I have experienced so far.

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

#773

Post by Gatsky »

emehex wrote: post #347

I'm not sure enough people are talking about Demographics and population decline, especially with respect to China. Some experts [1] predict that China's population in 2050 will be HALF of what it is today! [1] https://www.barrons.com/articles/china-xi-jinping-economics-...

Definitely. Unprecedented in human history. Wide-ranging social, cultural and economic impacts.

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

#774

Post by esel2k »

mullen wrote: post #641
mikewarot wrote: post #94

Deglobalization -- In the US, we're about to be forced to rebuild all the manufacturing we outsourced since the 1970s. It's not going to go well for thos countries dependent on imported food or energy. It's possible a billion people will face famine in the next year or two as a result of the loss of grain from Russia and Ukraine, along with the loss of Fertilizers (or being priced out of them) Energy Blindness -- We'…

> Deglobalization -- In the US, we're about to be forced to rebuild all the manufacturing we outsourced since the 1970s. It's not going to go well for those countries dependent on imported food or energy Hogwash. Globalization is good, Globalization is here to stay. Whatever is the current location causing issues with Globalization will simply be routed around. There are plenty of countries that would love to be part…

You mention markets will adopt as response. To a degree yes and probably richer countries, but I don’t believe poorer countries will. Let’s take East Africa as example: If your boat full of corn doesn’t arrive it does not arrive, full stop. There is little to adjust. Same goes with medication. We often think in front of our doors, but if large, economically important countries start to struggle with food or medicine , there will be an impact on others as well.

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

#775

Post by Existenceblinks »

samwillis wrote: post #49

Tooling 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…

Sync work process is inefficient. 80% of the time I would define work process to be asynchronous e.g. with git branch, pull request, docs, backlogs. This is efficient collaboration.

Real-time collaborative tool is a thing but not going to be big.

Ideally, I would go 100% async work if possible.

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

#776

Post by ZeroGravitas »

unpopularopp wrote: post #20

Climate migration. What happens Europe now/since 2015 is nothing that will come in the next couple of years. And the individual countries and so as the EU is pretty much unprepared. I'd even say that will be one of the cause of downfall of the union.

Just to be contrary, I feel it's worth considering that as solar overtakes wind as the cheapest electrical source and keeps dropping, and everything electrifies, even fertiliser and methane production, the migration might go in the other direction.

Sun too hot for agriculture? Stick some PV over it as shade.

Not enough water, stick some PV over it for shade, use it to power trickle irrigation of desalinated water.

If carbon offsets are used to install PV in such nations, it's a win-win-win-win.

Another post talks about a new generation buying battery EV RVs to live in. If they did, where would they tend to go? Somewhere where the climate provides cheap solar power and low heating needs.

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

#777

Post by gregwebs »

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…

This is actually talked about on every HN energy thread and it’s now incorrect, particularly about batteries.

Solar has supply bottlenecks at the moment that are stopping further price declines- hopefully they will get solved.

But there’s a lithium shortage that is already showing up in the price of lithium going up 5x. Analysts predict that by around 2025 lithium will limit the battery market that is trying to grow 40x to meet electrification demands [1]. Note that opening a new lithium mine takes a minimum of 7 years. sodium based batteries are coming to help this situation, but they are a new technology that will take time to productionize and ramp up.

[1] https://youtu.be/5v-DTS-ibow

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

#778

Post by autoexec »

O__________O wrote: post #627
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…

“Halving” vehicles has been possible for long time, also seen it mentioned numerous times over the years. Unless large & small vehicles never use the same roads, ever, it will never happen; imagine being in a small car and being hit by a large car, odd of person in small car dying are much higher. Basically, something like this will only have a chance in an authoritarian society. As for the RV, you still need parking…

> Unless large & small vehicles never use the same roads, ever, it will never happen; imagine being in a small car and being hit by a large car, odd of person in small car dying are much higher. Basically, something like this will only have a chance in an authoritarian society.

Some people are already driving smaller cars than I imagined we'd be comfortable with, but I can see ways to ease more people into the idea of trading their safety for a smaller car. High gas prices help, but things like reducing lane sizes just enough to make driving smaller cars feel more comfortable, but not enough to be too dangerous for larger vehicles, increasing the amount of small car only parking spaces, and lots of advertising money would probably convince a lot of people small cars are what they want. If car manufactures start making more and more tiny cars (especially inexpensive cars) many people aren't going to have much of a choice. I'm pretty sure most of the American public could be sold on it eventually if someone were willing to spend the money.

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

#779

Post by esel2k »

Agricultural revolution. I believe things like food, health and safety will become things not taken for granted anymore. Prices of all of these things will go up and take a major part of the household budgets.

I believe one of the first is food, as every nation (rich or poor or sick) will need it and changes in climatic conditions have an impact already today. Next is health industry than defense (this one is scary) industry. In short: If you can’t guarantee food and health you will need some serious protection/go steal/trade it somewhere else.

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

#780

Post by alexhektor »

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…

Tesla RV for 70k? Can you teleport me into your alternate universe, please? ;) Different brand might make more sense, but even those will probably cost you at least doulbe that, unless you're maybe only talking about certain climate zones, bare minimum living standards and an abhorrent range together with some other bad tradeoff decisions regarding price vs. quality. Or maybe in a decade or two (at today's prices/without inflation).

Also, others made the point already about rent for the space to park on (most likely outcome would be high taxes and rent for RV parks (don't think they'd be much more efficient than regular housing on a sqft basis, especially if you're not putting them on top of each other, Ready Player One style).

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