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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?

#941

Post by Bjartr »

jollyllama wrote: post #354
motohagiography wrote: post #287

Reasoning it through, what don't people politely talk about? Sex, money, politics, and religion. Sex: the impact of the normalization of casual sex work on sustainable families, and how specific tech and financial services for managing single motherhood will be huge. Money: financial alternatives to emerging social credit based systems, grey markets, working class capital/savings flight, cyberpunk dystopia. Politics:…

The grey markets are intersecting with the parallel economies which are intersecting with the religious fringes. I disagree with you on the sex one though, people are already having less sex. This is also intersecting with what you are saying about religion.

Where does the less sex statistic come from?

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

#942

Post by loandigger »

Electric RVs with level 5 self driving.

Everyone talks about Teslas for self driving, but for my self driving car, I want an RV with a shower, a desk, a full kitchen, a queen sized bed and a 50" flat panel.

Commuting then becomes a pleasure.

I can sleep, bathe, work, relax, all without having to concentrate on traffic or driving. The RV can drive in the slow lane at 30 miles an hour for all I care. My RV drives me to work, drops me off, drives itself somewhere else for several hours, picks me up, drives me home.

The high price of suburban housing becomes irrelevant to me. I can live hours outside of major urban areas with no effect on my stress level or lifestyle.

I don't have the hassles of an employee as my driver. My RV is ready to go 24 hours a day and never asks for a raise. If I want to go on vacation, my RV can drive me anywhere in the country, no more lines at the airport for me.

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

#943

Post by ortusdux »

purecoolnesss wrote: post #934
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…

I remember interviewing for shopping centre chain (mall). They had this in 2018 already. It had an accuracy of +/- 1m but they had ways to normalise it to the layout of the store. Didn't require them to even be on the network just have their wifi on. They not only used it to price their storefronts but also they also could tell their renters which parts of the store had higher traffic. Meaning they would know what se…

This specific tech - WLAN sensing - tracks the signal disruptions caused by the water in our bodies. This makes it quite different than all previous techs that require the target to have a broadcasting device or other ping-able tracker. Reportedly, even pets are easily identifiable.

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

#944

Post by purefrost »

I love how we got into this personal vehicle mindset. Cities are struggling with heat islands, a tremendous lack of biodiversity, and space for the most central animal in the city, the citizens. You see that all over the place in LA, SF, basically the whole West Coast, but the same holds true for the rest of the megacities in the US. The reliance on personal vehicles (and in some cities > 1 per head) will, in the end, bite us badly - and many city administrators already realize that. In Europe (I know, we’re all stupid and socialists), cities such as Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Berlin, and Vienna are reducing car-parking to reach an eventual 0 in the city.

I agree that EV will be the future, but I doubt that, especially with the rate of urbanization that we have, private vehicles is what we will be talking about 20 years down the line.

Cities will need to focus on the 15-minute concept (reach all your necessary socio-economic points of interest in 15 minutes, no matter where you live) as well as public transport (and it’s equal distribution !!).

So I think, what people are talking about little is the advances in public transportation and centralized city logistics. Sure, EV fleets all the way, but also answers of how to get people and goods from A-B in a car-free environment will be of increasing importance.

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

#945

Post by flemhans »

VogonPoetry wrote: post #781
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…

Half width vehicles ignores the following issues. - Busses. How do you make them half width? (or perhaps, uncharitably, do you think public transportation is worthless?). If busses stay the same width how do you write the driving regulations for mixed width vehicles and retrain the driving public so that fatalities do not skyrocket. - Bulk delivery vehicles. Same as above. - Half width means less vehicle stability at…

You just have the existing big lanes but limit them to buses, emergency vehicles, maintenance, and deliveries.

Or public transit becomes an enormous fleet of half-width on-demand driverless microcars

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

#946

Post by marssaxman »

laurentoget wrote: post #923
marssaxman wrote: post #839

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 There's no need to imagine what that that would be like, because the situation has existed for years already: what you describe is just everyday reality for motorcyclists.

Will there ever be more than a fringe of the population willing to be exposed to the mortality risks motorcyclists are exposed to? Last time i looked your chance of being killed is an order of magnitude higher on a motorcycle.

That's as it may be, and it varies by culture, but it is clear that there can be no requirement for an "authoritarian society" before there could be smaller/narrower vehicles sharing the roads with larger ones, as this is already commonplace in many different kinds of societies around the world. In some places motorcycles/mopeds/tuktuks are more common than full size cars.

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

#947

Post by arisAlexis »

huijzer wrote: post #76
YossarianFrPrez wrote: post #66

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…

> Much better voice interfaces. At some point in the next 10 years, it will be common to have primarily voice-controlled computer applications. There might be a huge role for this to play in hospitals. Doctor: "Quickly! Give patient 100 milligrams of epinephrine!" Computer: "Giving patient 400 milligrams of epinephrine. Say 'yes' to confirm" Doctor: "No. 100." Computer: "Patient received 400 milligrams"

I would take a bet on if the nurse is more accurate than the voice command in emergency situations especially if they are not both native speakers

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

#948

Post by arisAlexis »

somenameforme wrote: post #549
mlinksva wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was the answer, pre-Ukraine already. That war doesn't move the needle that much, as NATO/Russia escalation is far from the only nuclear war threat -- there's also mistakes by any party, India/Pakistan, North Korea, China, etc.

The China/Pakistan border clashes have resulted in fatalities on the order of several dozen in something where neither nation really wants to escalate. Ukraine would have long since lost this war if not for the US directing the funneling tens of billions of dollars worth of weapons, training, and so on to Ukraine. This support has been directly responsible for the excess deaths of Russians and Ukrainians alike number…

so your logic is when a powerful nation invades another weaker nobody should intervene because there will be lost lives. I am writing the comment in hope that at least nobody gets convinced about your well worded and deadly wrong argument.

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

#949

Post by mcovey »

loandigger wrote: post #942

Electric RVs with level 5 self driving. Everyone talks about Teslas for self driving, but for my self driving car, I want an RV with a shower, a desk, a full kitchen, a queen sized bed and a 50" flat panel. Commuting then becomes a pleasure. I can sleep, bathe, work, relax, all without having to concentrate on traffic or driving. The RV can drive in the slow lane at 30 miles an hour for all I care. My RV drives me to…

It's still going to be accelerating and decelerating frequently so there's a lot you couldn't do, or would just be unpleasant to do while it's moving. I'm imagining taking a shower and it comes to a sudden stop for a train crossing. Better have a grab bar so you don't fall out!

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

#950

Post by mcovey »

It's not a very big thing nor related to technology, but ravens are making a comeback here in New England. Very interesting birds. I have a couple with 2 young that still beg for food and at this point they are reluctant to feed them and instead peck them in the face and throw food at them - they clearly want them to start being independent. I leave them cut up pieces of suet and they stop by promptly about 45 minutes after daybreak, often all 4 of them together.

I had never seen (noticed) a raven before until this pair showed up in late 2021.

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