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

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861–870 of 1001 posts

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

#861

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/wit…

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

I can't speak for everyone but the way I would circumvent that would be to buy a piece of unrestricted or minimally restricted land that allows an RV as a primary dwelling. This requires some research on youtube among the existing RV nomads. Non-farmable land is very affordable. Some states are stricter on this than others and some counties within those states also vary a bit. Land is an investment vs dumping money into rental space. A few acres of land, some solar panels on the RV and some next to it should provide enough power to get by. The missing piece is water and one can plonk down a large water tank and have a truck come out to fill it every 3 to 6 months and/or do rain capture assuming one knows how to implement proper filtration. Some states promote rain capture and some ban it. Many RV's already support composting toilets and have grey/black water tanks. Some states will require installing a septic system, whereas some states have rules on the books but nobody to enforce it. I would suggest also having an EV motorcycle or street legal side-by-side for going into town for groceries. That requires some research as well as to which of those is supported by that state/county/province. For internet there are 4G/5G modems specifically designed for RV's and boats that have multiple external roof mounted antennas and can use multiple SIM cards.

Plenty of people/road-nomads already do this. They have a piece of land that is their legal domicile and sometimes they just stay put on that piece of land. My preference if I went this route would be to have a hybrid RV for times when solar is not cutting it.

The downside of all this would be finding people that can perform advanced maintenance on the RV and staying close enough that a towing job would not be crazy expensive. Some mechanics can bring a subset of their tools out to the remote location. I would suggest researching RV's that are based on common platforms. The upside is that one could research which states have the most conducive weather, taxes, laws, culture, etc... and if any of that changes, just buy land in a better state, pack up your solar panels and move there. When the market is right, sell the previous few acres of land and the old tank. Tanks are affordable and it's easier to just buy a new one than to clean and move the old one. Another potential downside to putting an RV in the middle of nowhere is that when dodgy people find out someone is alone and isolated, they become a target. One has to be ready to defend themselves. Try to find a piece of land that is not visible from any of the roads.

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

#862
post #267

I don't know about "big" in terms of a viral hit, but in terms of what will change in our day-to-day experience... Here are some wild guesses, mostly along the theme of a societal conversation about and re-thinking of "sustainability" on nearly all levels. * Robotic carts that follow you around when shopping in dense, pedestrian oriented areas and/or stores. Might go hand in hand with the rapid normalization of e-bik…

> Robotic carts that follow you around when shopping in dense, pedestrian oriented areas and/or stores. I'm now imagining these following you around like The Luggage follows Rincewind around.

And they are going to be as angry as luggage. This is how the rise of the machines begins.

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

#863
post #758

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Battery's DO NOT scale like you claim. A desiel semi is much lighter than an Electric Semi is. That's why Tesla Semi hasn't launched yet. They are currently trying to change the regulation for maximum allowances on US Roads from 10k to 14k. The Delta-V on an electric vehicle has the problem that the battery scales more proportionately to weight and range than a desiel equivelent. Desiel gas has a tremendous amount of…

That's why Tesla Semi hasn't launched yet. On the other hand Volvo (and Scania) launched electric trucks years ago and I see them driving around all the time. So whatever is preventing Tesla trucks from launching it is related to them and their design and goals, not a fundamental problem with the concept of electric trucks.

Are you in Europe? If you’re comparing Americas/Australian to European truck designs, it’s an apples/oranges comparison.

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

#864
post #5

Conscious realism and the cosmological polytope: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reYdQYZ9Rj4 https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.02813 According to Prof. Hoffman, this model of the universe is highly parsimonious in that it can model data from the Large Hadron Collider using a single parameter, while the best incumbent (Quantum Field Theory) needs millions. The implication is that everything we see and experience are not fund…

> The fundamental unit of reality is consciousness. > from neuroscience to philosophy > It's no exaggeration to say that if he's right (and he claims the math shows that he is) it may be the most important discovery in human history. The Buddha, and every other enlightened person since, only beat him by ~5000 years

Indeed! The difference this time is the weight of mathematical rigor.

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

#865
post #834

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should eat what requires the fewest resources (water, land), and is completely nutritious for all stages of life: plants, and plants only. It’s mind boggling how tight the Venn diagram is between People Who Are Fearful of Climate Crisis and People Who Refuse to Stop Eating Animals.

When you consider arability constraints and nutritional efficiency, meat is more efficient and less destructive than plants in many cases. Soy production, for example, sufficient to meet global demand requires destroying the Amazon; meat production is much less destructive to land, taking place either on non-arable scrubland or via consuming human-inedible surplus feedstock. (Or on land already depleted by plant farm…

The majority of that soy you’re worried about is grown to feed the animals…

You’re citing things which are actually making the case for eating only plants stronger, while thinking that you’re doing the opposite. It’s wild.

This isn’t even addressing the part of your argument where you fallaciously appeal to nature by saying you’re going to do what you evolved to do. What we evolved to do is irrelevant; what we have the ability to do is all that matters.

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

#866

Neuro-linguistic Programming et. al. It's currently considered a pseudo-science (which is technically false: it's pre-scientific . However, unfortunately, many practitioners and promoters do try to make it seem more scientific than it is.) It's actually fairly widespread, people teach it and use it all over the globe, and fairly stodgy organizations have used it (e.g. the US Army.) Yet the mainstream rarely mentions…

Interesting. Could you suggest some resources to learn NLP for increasing productivity and improving your mind? Would love to dig into that

Regretfully, I can't. I'm not "in the field", I don't run in NLP circles, and my interest in it waned after I had alleviated some personal problems I was dealing with.

However, as general advice, I could recommend reading "Get the Life You Want" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3803577-get-the-life-you... Try out the exercises in that book to get the idea and then maybe seek out a local study group?

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

#867
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tangentially related, there are a bunch of calculators out there for ROI on installing solar, but there doesn't seem to be one that will take into account the opportunity cost of installing solar now instead of waiting until it's cheaper. I would love to see one for that.

I've been thinking about this a lot with the current congressional action. I need a new roof ~now. But I have a lingering fear that huge product improvement will happen in the next 18 months due to added government money. I don't know enough about the industry to weight in that possibility.

Keep in mind, with the new law you are talking about, more money will be dumped into the market with no increase in supply.

That is what is called inflation. If people have an extra 7500 to buy solar, then solar becomes up to 7500 more expensive.

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

#868

Earlier quoted context omitted.

John Carmack mentioned that he's shocked by how little interest Big Capital has in nuclear fission (he's more into fission that fusion). He talks a lot about it in a recent Lex Fridman podcast, a good listen if you're into this. It's weird that this isn't the main focus of the whole energy industry.

I've been meaning to check that out. There are actually a couple dozen fission startups. Fission is definitely an easier technical problem, but more difficult in other ways. Nobody minds if you fuse atoms, but you can't fission them without doing lots of up-front design and spending years getting through regulators. Some regulators are friendlier to new technology than others. Canada does pretty well, and has at leas…

Here's the link to the snippet: https://youtu.be/I845O57ZSy4?t=14350

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

#869

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

this 'people are rich because they are smart' is not a take i expected to find on HN. Its not quite as damaging as 'people are rich because they work harder' but its really not far off

Let's work at this from reverse.

OF COURSE smart people are more likely than average to become rich! How could it be otherwise, unless the only way to become rich was luck?

Now, some people are born rich! But even if it's just the self-made rich that are smarter than average, and people born rich are exactly average (unlikely as intelligence/attractiveness/etc are at least partly inheritable), that means that rich people are ALSO smarter than average. ('above average' averaged with 'exactly average' is still 'above average')

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

#870

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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…

> Basically, something like this will only have a chance in an authoritarian society. In fact, you already have no right to drive whatever kind of vehicle you want on public roads. There's no part of daily life that's more regulated. And there's no interesting argument about freedom to be had here. We build the roads as a society, so we have every reason to make rules about what kinds of vehicles are allowed on those…

Driving in general is completely unnecessary and results in all sorts of less than desirable outcomes. If it was up to me, whole industry would disappear unless the vehicles were for industrial or military use only, no were near humans, autonomously driven, zero emissions, etc.

Largest issue is not even death and pollution, it’s that they literally enable culture division and isolation - which is toxic to real progress.

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