271–280 of 1001 posts
Mobile/Micro payments. There is still no friction free solution, where I would be sure, my mother could use it.
i think venmo's done a great job of it in the US and in China the micropayments have done much better. I think its in progress, just definitely not a "revolution" maybe because it doesnt fix a real pain point for people
E-Ink. It is the "correct" choice for display technology, and with enough research money put into it, it could replace these abominable light-emitting displays. But what we already have is "good enough", despite all of the hidden costs, and so we're stuck with it.
The Kindle and it's e-reader kin are pretty successful? I think the problem is that a device with an e-ink display is necessarily single purpose. General purpose devices can't use e-ink, they need to support video playback and browsers with full colour.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The #1 most used file transfer tool seems to be Dropbox. I put stuff into mine, give you a link and everything magically works.
Yes, that's a nice workflow for non-technical users. However, if you're transfering 50GB files, this takes some time. UDP behind the scenes could fix that. I guess consumers just aren't punting 50GB of data around all that much, so there's not enough wait time pain to justify it.
The reason it's not used to much in file transfer is because you basically need to re-implement everything you get for free with TCP for reliable transfer. Secondly, one of the big things that made TCP slow for large file transfer was that the way most TCP congestion control algorithms worked meant that transfer rates would drop quickly as latency increased. Google have come up with an algorithm that drastically improves this [1], and contributed it to the Linux kernel. I expect their strategy will be adopted by most operating systems. I believe Google is already using it, and I read something on Netflix's tech blog that they are at least trialing it.
For small files, TCP slow-start is an issue but protocols like HTTP/2 can work around this by multiplexing multiple downloads through one connection.
So I don't think there will be much advantage to UDP based file transfer for things that you want reliability for.
The blockchain. A strange thing to say when Bitcoin is nearing $8k each, but I'm not interested in cryptocurrencies as an abstract store of value based on the fever of the market. By now, however, I really thought someone would have found a use for the blockchain as the underpinning of some kind of new app or tech that would be able to create real value for bitcoin or whichever crypto they built it on. However, we ju…
I have bought and sold items on open bazaar when it was working and it works flawlessly. The buying and selling experience is by far the best I've had. Since there are no fees (other than transaction fees charged by BTC/BCH) you can make more profit compared to selling on ebay/amazon.
Google Glass. I thought this would become standard, miniaturized, and used in all aspects of life. Perhaps I read Daemon too much, but I was sure Glass would fly
it died when the word "Glasshole" was coined.
It could have revolutionised journalism, and I still think we will eventually get something like it once the tech is really invisible, but the social aspect will take ages to sort out.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
yep. Haven't seen a single application that isn't primarily aimed at raising investment money. It's Ponzi's all the way down as far as I can tell. That may change, of course.
Golem seems interesting, rent out your cpu cycles to others. I think it currently works only with Blender, i.e. you could rent out rendering-farm.
Of course this is happening in some areas, but not nearly as much as it could happen.
Just one example: It's easy to imagine running a shop that works with little to no workers. The closest thing that exists are these self-checkout cashiers, but even these aren't that prevalent, the norm is still a human cashier.
E-Ink. It is the "correct" choice for display technology, and with enough research money put into it, it could replace these abominable light-emitting displays. But what we already have is "good enough", despite all of the hidden costs, and so we're stuck with it.
The Kindle and it's e-reader kin are pretty successful? I think the problem is that a device with an e-ink display is necessarily single purpose. General purpose devices can't use e-ink, they need to support video playback and browsers with full colour.
There are already E-Ink displays with much a faster update rate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsY3T1uzjAI
Who knows how much faster this could get with enough investment? Unless there's some fundamental physical limitation to the update rate that I'm not aware of.