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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?

#951

Post by Johnythree »

pibechorro wrote: post #140
e_joules wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something about this cannot be right, surely? You are saying one can invest in a solar setup and have 7+ years of free electricity, and all that starting after 3.5 years?

I have been living fully off solar (and some wind here and there) for 10 years. Its amazing. Never do I stress powerlines going down, brownouts, etc. You can run a fridge, lights and a laptop 24.7 on about $300 of solar. You can add panels as your needs and budget increases. The biggest cost is the battery.

Likewise, I have been living off-grid with solar for well over 20 years.

My batteries have always been lead-acid, simply because L.A. is still much cheaper than Lithium and alternatives.

I've recently taken my first set of Lead-Acid batteries out of service. They powered a small fridge, etc, via 200W of solar panels for over 20 years with essentially zero maintenance, except for occasional top-up of distilled water.

Inverters were a problem at first. I had a series of Inverters die over the years, until I started buying Victron products. Have had zero problems since. Rule one, is "don't buy cheap inverters".

The best part is that secondhand solar panels are now very cheap. The reason is that Gov regulations for grid-tie prohibits the use of second-hand panels, so people doing upgrades will basically throw away their old panels.

My setup runs a conventional fridge/freezer, and a large computer which is on-line for most of the day, as well as my workshop full of electrical tools. I do have a large generator, but the only time it gets run is when I have some welding to do. I don't even gave a battery charger hooked to it.

There are so many myths about solar: Lead-Acid batteries don't last as they are destroyed by deep-cycles. Yes, but when you size the system, you should aim for a deep discharge maybe once a month. This still should result in twenty years life or so. I live in a wet and cloudy part of Australia, and this winter my batteries have never been as low as 80% capacity, and it is rare if the batteries haven't returned to 100% charge by 10:00am each day.

Probably the main problem with solar is that people are stupid. One of my neighbours installed a modest solar system, only to have it regularly fail due to low battery voltage. Long story short: The supplier fitted a Watt meter which tracked the consumption at each outlet. It showed that that the problem was in his daughter's bedroom. A quick search revealed a huge radiator under her bed that she was running each night. Problem solved.

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

#952

Post by Johnythree »

Bombthecat wrote: post #769
pibechorro wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been living fully off solar (and some wind here and there) for 10 years. Its amazing. Never do I stress powerlines going down, brownouts, etc. You can run a fridge, lights and a laptop 24.7 on about $300 of solar. You can add panels as your needs and budget increases. The biggest cost is the battery.

300 dollar was like 10 years ago, now it's more like 3000.

Sorry, but no. If anything solar gear has got cheaper in recent times. Secondhand Solar Panels are almost free at present. And the price of batteries is dropping fast.

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

#953

Post by viggity »

alexpotato wrote: post #338
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…

> On the other hand, it's just creepy. How do you prevent the next apartment over from spying through your walls? Is the hotel wifi going to recognize and catalog physical activity between two people? I would imagine you just take the "country/private club" model and extend it out. e.g. a private club enforces limits on who can access the club and you get more "privacy" since the other people in the club also had to…

I can't imagine most people are going to put up with their cellphones not working in exchange for the privacy

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

#954

Post by mountainriver »

verdverm wrote: post #26
mountainriver wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve used CUE a bit and I’m underwhelmed by it. In most cases it’s just another unneeded level of abstraction, it also doesn’t go far enough, most API based tools need to support imperative methods

You don't want computability in your config, and CUE is useful beyond APIs. You can already use CUE within other programs when you need imperative, there is also the scripting layer where this is possible. There is also a plan to support a WASM runtime so you can have imperative subroutines in the scripting layer, written in any other language.

My problem is generally the config is a part of a larger data model, which often needs to define imperative methods on resources. Having stuff in Cue means yet another layer and language I have to learn and use for this part of my API, and then copy that into a full API language.

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

#955

Post by BWStearns »

contingencies wrote: post #181
CalRobert wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How will transport work? One of the big issues with homes built in distant areas is the expectation of roads (and car dependency in general)

Fixed wing drones are becoming super cheap , and are far simpler than their copter-classed counterparts. While handover needs smoothing out, delivery will thus be easy for items of daily use. Less so for furniture, appliances, etc. However, if you are willing to deal with foam furniture, earth building or felling a couple of trees on site, robotics could still have you covered.

I'm convinced that fixed wing drones will dominate the drone delivery market. The payload capacity difference for size and cost is just too large. Barring some truly revolutionary step change in power storage density, any battery improvements that benefit the multirotors will benefit fixed wings even more.

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

#956

Post by drewbeck »

kulikalov wrote: post #814
Vox_Leone wrote: post #271

Real holographic display : To create an aerial hologram [or a 3d image in space if you will], you need something that will emit light at precise locations throughout a given volume. I'm investigating the use of Moller electron scattering[0] to create voxels in a 3d coordinate system. Two electron beams crossing and colliding will emit photons [voxels]. If you can orchestrate collisions in a very fast fashion at vario…

I wonder what’s the use case would be for this technology?

the use case is patent squatting

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

#957

Post by gregable »

reylas wrote: post #867
DoingSomeThings wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This assumes supply is perfectly inelastic. Even assuming, it also ignores the fact that the money is only dumped in one nation.

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

#958

Post by contingencies »

BWStearns wrote: post #955
contingencies wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fixed wing drones are becoming super cheap , and are far simpler than their copter-classed counterparts. While handover needs smoothing out, delivery will thus be easy for items of daily use. Less so for furniture, appliances, etc. However, if you are willing to deal with foam furniture, earth building or felling a couple of trees on site, robotics could still have you covered.

I'm convinced that fixed wing drones will dominate the drone delivery market. The payload capacity difference for size and cost is just too large. Barring some truly revolutionary step change in power storage density, any battery improvements that benefit the multirotors will benefit fixed wings even more.

It's a tradeoff. The problems with fixed wing are difficulties maneuvering in crowded low-altitude urban airspace, energy and space required for takeoff, higher speed and mass thus force of impact, and at the point of delivery there's no easy way to hover without going hybrid and the alternative of simply dropping people's goods to the ground with parachutes doesn't result in an ideal delivery experience. This is often fudged with extra packaging, which is environmentally irresponsible as well as spatially constraining for payloads on already limited airframes. Copters are roughly superior in all these regards, but can't go very far due to energy inefficiency and tend to be noisier. I think copters will dominate urban/precision/high value or theft risk, and locally sourced retail such as food, whereas fixed wing will be suburban/semi-rural/rural/industrial/low precision/low value or theft risk, and further sources retail such as hardware, commercial and industrial supplies. It's been somewhat amusing to see the huge amount of money in the space and watch the strategic directions of Amazon Prime Air (hexacopter; 5lbs max payload; 'drop' strategy), Google Wing (hybrid + 'lower on a cord' strategy; numerous designs), Manna (quadcopter), Zipline (fixed wing + 'parachute' strategy; larger payload).

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

#959

Post by charwalker »

the_omegist wrote: post #939
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…

For your 1st point I had to google "Approval voting" : it's the Condorcet method, it seems... Why bother improving a method that is inherently flawed? You can chose 50 candidates but they are all stupid and corrupt that makes no difference. Why not make the system more robust and go with liquid democracy [1] ? (yes, I know, many technical/security challenges to overcome, first) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liqui…

Because Condorcet is still better than nearly all implementations of first past the post. But I think the commenter is getting at instant runoff voting methods: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting

There is a comparison between these three systems in the Condorcet wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method#Comparison_wi...

None are perfect but IRV is in use and effective. Tactical voting is still an option but at scale either obvious or difficult to organize without being obvious.

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

#960

Post by rewq4321 »

viggity wrote: post #953
alexpotato wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the other hand, it's just creepy. How do you prevent the next apartment over from spying through your walls? Is the hotel wifi going to recognize and catalog physical activity between two people? I would imagine you just take the "country/private club" model and extend it out. e.g. a private club enforces limits on who can access the club and you get more "privacy" since the other people in the club also had to…

I can't imagine most people are going to put up with their cellphones not working in exchange for the privacy

Not the person you're replying to, but if you're willing to do that to your walls, you're probably willing to pay for an external antenna and internal transmitter
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