FDA-approved closed loop artificial pancreas.
Ask HN: What tech that's right around the corner are you most excited about?
211–220 of 362 posts
Re: Ask HN: What tech that's right around the corner are you most excited about?
#212I am suprised applications of blockchain outside cryptocurrency is not higher on this list. For example: * Election fraud and recounts can become a thing of the past * Everything that requires a contract could become completely electronic (the mortgage industry alone is probably a multi-billion dollar opportunity)
I think it's a crypto-utopian view that election fraud can be fixed with a better record. Election fraud is a fairly small problem in countries like the US and the problems are around voters not voting in the right place, having a new address, losing their proof of identity, etc. The security community thinks a paper trail is essential - less computers, not more - not a public database. I'm not an expert, but I tend…
> I'm not an expert, but I tend to trust them.
and blockchain proponents want an infallible system audit-able by the public, instead of having to trust anyone. they haven't figured it out completely, they push towards it.
in any case blockchain networks can function without computers. very cumbersome though.
Re: Ask HN: What tech that's right around the corner are you most excited about?
#213That inflection point in a couple years where SSD is just cheaper than spinning HDDs. A whole class of problems kind of goes away, low end consumer performance goes way up, and archival platforms get faster "for free."
I'm also excited about NVMe and on-the-horizon, faster-than-flash solid state technologies like 3d xpoint, etc.
Re: Ask HN: What tech that's right around the corner are you most excited about?
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel the key AR advantage will be that we don't have to spend half our time glancing down on tiny rectangles anymore. The Oculus is already less than an order of magnitude away from competing with regular LCD panels. Google glass and maybe that magic leap thing give us hints that it will eventually happen for mobile. No more displays, now that's something I would pay for.
Problem is that not everyone will want to wear something over their eyes on a regular basis if they don't need to.
It'll be glasses then contacts.
Re: Ask HN: What tech that's right around the corner are you most excited about?
#215AR. Being able to superimpose software on top of real objects is amazing. It has so much economic potential that it hurts not being in the space already (working on that though). I feel AR will be the app craze 2.0.
> It has so much economic potential that it hurts not being in the space already (working on that though) As someone not familiar with the area, could you elaborate on some examples of what you think the economic potential is? To an outsider like me, being able to overlay virtual objects on a scene seems like a nice curiosity, not particularly an engine for commerce. Edit: specifically, I was curious about areas wher…
One of the financial uses for AR is the ability to show a user how a product will fit in their life before they've purchased it. This has a lot of potential for any large purchases that need to fit in your home (furniture, appliances, renovations, TVs, etc.), and once we have access to high quality full body tracking it could be applied to fashion as well. Lowe's innovation lab is doing a lot of this already on a variety of different devices for both at home and in store (https://blogs.windows.com/devices/2016/03/18/microsoft-holol...).
Beyond that, with AR you can make certain classes of digital goods and marketing "exist" in the real world. The margins for AR merchandise will be significantly higher than real physical merch, although I'm guessing the prices will be a lot lower. Selling virtual items that you can see in real life opens up a lot of cool and fantastic options as well as more mundane stuff or a mix between the two.
If AR becomes ubiquitous it gives big tech companies a lot of data that no one currently has. Specifically you would have a detailed, 3D map\point cloud of most of the real world at various points in time. You could build an awesome developer platform on this, use it for VR tourism, simulation, license it to film or games producers, etc.
There are already many use cases for industry and enterprise customers when it comes to training and data overlays for workers.
A boring, but lucrative use case happens when resolution and tracking get good enough and assuming the form factor gets to eye glass size. AR could potentially replaces all conventional screens and be more comfortable to use than smartphones.
Note I'm using AR more broadly and including Google Glass\HUD style stuff, ARKit\Vuforia SmartPhone AR, and Hololens or Magic Leap style MR or "holograms".
Re: Ask HN: What tech that's right around the corner are you most excited about?
#216Re: Ask HN: What tech that's right around the corner are you most excited about?
#217Mass adoption of electric vehicles. Battery prices are plummeting and the advantages of EV are so great that the moment they break that $20k barrier with zero subsidies (which should be within the next five years) the switch will be rapid. I suspect at least 1 in 3 personal vehicles in use in major metro areas will be an EV by 2025.
I think battery price and availability are the main bottlenecks right now, so improvements on that front are what's got me excited.
Re: Ask HN: What tech that's right around the corner are you most excited about?
#218New, exciting tech making its way in to boring, old industries. And I mean boring, old industries.
There's an unbelievable amount of backwards business process that's still out there. Unless you've experienced it first hand, I really don't think you can fully appreciate how manual the "business world" still is.
For the past year I've been working with an intermodal trucking company building an app for owner-operator truck drivers so they can accept/reject deliveries, turn in paperwork, and update delivery statuses via a mobile app. If that sounds dead simple, it's because it is. But the change it brings is amazing.
While deploying the app I'd often ask when so-and-so truck driver came in to the office. The answer was usually something like "every day at 5:00pm to drop off his paperwork". A week after they start using the app, the answer suddenly turns in to "Oh, he never comes in to the office. You'll have to call his cell."
Dispatchers that were tearing their hair out trying to get updates from their drivers so they can in turn update their customers now feel like they can manage double the trucks. They're asking if they can get a similar app on their phone so they can manage their drivers on the go. Managers are asking when they'll be able to ditch the office space they're renting and let everyone work from home.
When I tell people "It's like Uber for intermodal trucking", nobody cares. If they pretend to care, I have to explain what intermodal trucking is in the first place -- then they stop pretending. It doesn't sound "sexy". It's a boring industry.
I think there's a lot of boring industry out there that hasn't fully embraced technology, and I think when it finally does we'll see a cultural change in the way we view work.
Re: Ask HN: What tech that's right around the corner are you most excited about?
#219There are rumors of phones with batteries lasting longer than 5hrs. I'm still not sure if true or not but when it happens it will revolutionize what you use your phone for. It may even replace the watch completely some day. Obviously I insist they still need to be as thin as they are now. That is much much more important than batteries.
Why would it replace the watch?
Phones and watches are either two entirely separate things, or indeed, once miniaturization and battery tech improve sufficiently, the watch, being much more convenient to carry around and being instantly to-hand, glanceable etc, will replace the phone for everything except large-format display, just as with pocket-watches.
Re: Ask HN: What tech that's right around the corner are you most excited about?
#220GraalVM.