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Ask HN: What projects are 20 years ahead of their time?

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61–70 of 121 posts

Re: Ask HN: What projects are 20 years ahead of their time?

#61
post #42

I'd say IE5.5. All those dHTML shit, like DirectX, MIDI, .htc (Javascript Components), for videos, a sane CSS box model, css and inter-page transformations, VML for vector graphics, VRML for VR (buzzword), XML islands (influenced e4x and later JSX), the original xhr object, native cryto APIs, etc. You can even program jscript on server side with asp, or execute standalone with ActiveScript, even control native GUI li…

Wow that all sounds awesome! Can you link to the Github repos with the code and spec?

     

Re: Ask HN: What projects are 20 years ahead of their time?

#62
post #15

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu I want to believe.

Funny how I encountered one of the problems this tries to solve. My smartphone died so I booted up my trusty Samsung Galaxy S (yea that's S without a number on it) and went about trying to flash a newer version of android to it, only to find about 90% of download links to the necessary programs to be dead. This is only 6-7 years ago. Imagine how much of the internet becomes useless so quickly.

Re: Ask HN: What projects are 20 years ahead of their time?

#63
post #53

FPV Drone Racing - While automated flight is making great progress, there are some amazing pilots out there. Something about a person standing in a field with goggles and a controller feels so future to me. 3D Printing - This is going to be the main way to manufacture things in the future. The lab that is 3D printing houses with concrete. That makes me terrified for home values going forward. It will likely shift all…

> The 1% are going to live a very long time and be practically disease free pretty soon.

FTFY

(I try very hard to have a more optimistic outlook on our midterm to longterm future, and I consistently fail.)

Re: Ask HN: What projects are 20 years ahead of their time?

#64
post #53

FPV Drone Racing - While automated flight is making great progress, there are some amazing pilots out there. Something about a person standing in a field with goggles and a controller feels so future to me. 3D Printing - This is going to be the main way to manufacture things in the future. The lab that is 3D printing houses with concrete. That makes me terrified for home values going forward. It will likely shift all…

> That makes me terrified for home values [...] The house will just become something you tear down and reprint every 10 years.

The idea of me moving all my shit out of my house every 10 years is terrifying enough on is own...

Re: Ask HN: What projects are 20 years ahead of their time?

#65
post #58
post #16

Nuclear fusion? I can see this thing in 20 years http://news.mit.edu/2015/small-modular-efficient-fusion-plan...

Fusion is not ahead of it's time... The future of energy has to be simple scalable and safe, fusion at terrestrial scales is extremely complex and very limited in fuel source, even if sustainable fusion is cracked that will always be true just like fission, it just has different complexities and different fuels.

> very limited in fuel source

You mean deuterium? Because plain hydrogen is quite easy to obtain.

> fusion at terrestrial scales is extremely complex

Lockheed Martin is allegedly working on a fusion reactor about the size of a truck payload: http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/products/compact-fusion.htm... - But of course, I cannot judge from such a webpage whether that is real in any way.

Re: Ask HN: What projects are 20 years ahead of their time?

#66

Netscape Enterprise Server and Server-Side JavaScript (SSJS) https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18350910/netscape-enterp...

Microsoft had ASP with JScript, and it was faster than VBScript. Never really popular from what I can tell.

Re: Ask HN: What projects are 20 years ahead of their time?

#67
post #29
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I very much doubt that. Tech people love it as a nice invention with a libertarian twist. But what is the incentive for my grand-mother to use it over regular cash?

Imagine the same thing with your grand-mother and the web 20 years ago, she would have no reason to visit it. But now, everyone is there and she can see pictures of grand-children via the web. I could imagine similar reason for your grand-mother to use crypto-currencies in 20 years.

Well, exactly. She can see the picture of her grand-children. But what's the equivalent of the grand-children incentive for using bitcoin over her credit card or cash?

"Because we won't give her the choice" isn't the way bitcoin is going to go mainstream.

Re: Ask HN: What projects are 20 years ahead of their time?

#68
post #53

FPV Drone Racing - While automated flight is making great progress, there are some amazing pilots out there. Something about a person standing in a field with goggles and a controller feels so future to me. 3D Printing - This is going to be the main way to manufacture things in the future. The lab that is 3D printing houses with concrete. That makes me terrified for home values going forward. It will likely shift all…

The question "who wants to live forever (when love must die)" always puzzled me. I think that living "forever" will take away much of the beauty of a life worth living - as I know it.

Re: Ask HN: What projects are 20 years ahead of their time?

#69
post #42

I'd say IE5.5. All those dHTML shit, like DirectX, MIDI, .htc (Javascript Components), for videos, a sane CSS box model, css and inter-page transformations, VML for vector graphics, VRML for VR (buzzword), XML islands (influenced e4x and later JSX), the original xhr object, native cryto APIs, etc. You can even program jscript on server side with asp, or execute standalone with ActiveScript, even control native GUI li…

Wow that all sounds awesome! Can you link to the Github repos with the code and spec?

Generally, reading MSDN docs is a much nicer experience than reading most OSS sources, or specs, not to mention collecting workarounds from the ocean of issue tracker comments.

However I do agree OSS is important and great, especially when times that you do need to debug & trace into source code.

Disclaimer: I have't developed around M$ platform for 10+ years now, not sure if the situation has changed

Re: Ask HN: What projects are 20 years ahead of their time?

#70
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lilium test flight: https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/20/15369850/lilium-jet-flyin...

it is fake. two observations: 1. they sent a pre-recorded video to the media instead of inviting the media to witness the test flight. those who are capable of building such flying cars don't make stupid mistakes in such scale. 2. it has 36 engines, good luck for the vibrational modes.

Also wondering what its radius of flight would be.
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