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Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

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Re: Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

#221

Post by 88e282102ae2e5b »

kumarski wrote: post #171

CRISPR. My naivete surrounded me. I didn't realize that even though there was a high output of genetic marker tests that very few if of them would result in viable CRISPR targets. There's 60K genetic marker tests on the market. 8 to 10 new ones come out each day. Humanity has little hope of figuring out the sort of "druggable targets." Genome Wide Association Studies aren't like websites or apps waiting to be optimiz…

It's not like CRISPR didn't pan out - it's just that biology takes a long time to understand. Cas9 was only characterized 5 years ago. It's now routinely used in all sorts of research applications and clinical trials for therapeutic uses are starting up - I can't imagine a faster timeline.

Re: Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

#222

Post by blowski »

sigi45 wrote: post #211
blowski wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t Apple Pay and Android Pay already use NFC?

Thats what i meant with Apple. Android pay exists? Is it useable? Haven't seen that anywhere.

I live in London, and both Apple Pay and Android Pay are almost ubiquitous here. I recently hired a rowboat from a guy at renting them at the side of a river in the countryside - and paid with Apple Pay.

Admittedly, I’ve no idea how much either are used, and how widespread they are outside London.

Re: Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

#223

Post by swyx »

aspett wrote: post #22
tlrobinson wrote: post #2

The converse is possibly even more interesting: what tech were you convinced would fail but took the world by storm?

React. Who would've known people would come to like JSX? I used to think it was an abomination.. now it's great.

i mean.. also Javascript. people learned to live with it, and it evolved to be more tolerable through a messy mishmash of tooling and language evolution.

Re: Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

#224

Post by throwaway613834 »

Jtsummers wrote: post #17

I'm not sure I expected it to take the world "by storm", but I expected more from Google Wave. It was a great concept, by a major company, but it was too slow on release and the rollout killed it. In retrospect, it probably wouldn't have lasted anyways. Google was in the process of minimizing their federated communication services by that point, and that was another major selling point of Google Wave's initial propos…

I liked Google Buzz! and was sad to see it go away.

Re: Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

#225

Post by thatgerhard »

vortico wrote: post #183
thatgerhard wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

drones

I can definitely understand why these have grown in popularity. Why is it a surprise?

I don't really know, I just kinda got blindsided.. i saw 1 or 2 people playing with drones and i was like "this is a specific group of people like the model aircraft folk" and then the next day it was everywhere.

Now I can totally understand that it's an important evolution in tech and will probably solve the last mile problem (at least some of it) in the near future.

Re: Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

#226

Post by vortico »

theshrike79 wrote: post #163
vortico wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm out of date. Does E-ink still have ~500ms latency of refreshing the screen? If so, that's the #1 reason I believed it wouldn't be successful when I used them 6 years ago.

But they're still amazing for status displays, e-readers and stuff that don't need low latencies. What's keeping them from being more popular is the price, anything over a 1" e-ink display costs a literal arm and a leg.

I would argue that e-readers actually do need reasonably low latencies. The reason I still read books is because I can flip through pages quickly and glance over 20 pages a second as I look for the page with a certain pattern of text or an image.

Re: Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

#227

Post by donpdonp »

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #26

Fuel Cells.

Yes Hydrogen Fuel Cells! Toshiba was claiming in 2006 that they were coming for laptop batteries. I still think the future of energy is solar cells, using water+electrolysis to get hydrogen for storage, and a fuel cell for conversion back to electricity.

Re: Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

#228

Post by swyx »

farseer wrote: post #128

I would have thought, by now Anti Ageing related research and products would be mainstream but most of that area is still fringe research and the products seem like snake oil.

Anti Ageing seems too broad a category to be useful. were there any specific vectors or products you had particular hopes for?

Re: Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

#229

Post by akkartik »

vortico wrote: post #188
akkartik wrote: post #5

RSS and Google Reader. What can I say, I was young and foolish.

The fundamental question for the users here is "should I read an article on a website, which is designed exactly as the users should read and explore it and has 100% support for all typographical element, or on a third party reader which displays a processed copy of the article and requires effort to set up?" RSS hasn't died , but it is definitely not growing, as those who prefer to use it are already using it.

That's one question, sure, but there's nothing fundamental about it. Here's a second question: should I have to go to the frontpage of a website to find out what's new on it, or get notifications automatically when there's something new?

Here's a completely unprocessed feedreader that I built as a Firefox extension until #$%# Mozilla killed it: https://github.com/akkartik/spew. It answered your question with, "why yes, read each article precisely as it was intended to be read on its own website," but still used RSS feeds for push notifications. Best of both worlds.

---

Here's a third question: should I prioritize articles based on how their website shows them to me, based on when they're posted, or by some other prioritization? This may be what stunted RSS: people chose with their feet to prioritize socially (reading what their friends shared: Facebook, Twitter, etc.) or by collaborative filtering (reading what people like them read: Reddit, HN, Lobsters, etc.)

---

Here's a fourth question: do I want to be notified of every single post from a source? And this may be RSS's remaining niche. I no longer use it for high-volume sites like CNN or Buzzfeed. Those need prioritization. I do use it for ~250 extremely low-volume sources (that cumulatively yield a dozen or so stories a week) from whom I want to see everything: http://akkartik.name/feeds.xml.

Re: Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

#230

Post by mslate »

narrator wrote: post #71
School-Cotton wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin.

I knew about Bitcoin quite early, but I was convinced the government would shut it down. I am mystified as to why they didn't.

They cannot--coordinating enforcement is impossible for nation state actors, at least not yet.
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