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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?

#451

Post by BronSteeDiam »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #321
CryoLogic wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snapchat. But than again if we look at their finances (and stock), they have always been in the red and are resorting to selling glasses and hotdog costumes now (huge losses). So maybe they aren't that successful after all.

Yes, that one totally got me as well... An app whose only novel idea is that the messages and photos you send delete themselves after some time, except for the fact that once they're in your friend's phone, they can of course take a screencap, or just have an app installed to store them... so the whole idea is based on cluelessness about basic security... and yet, there it is.

I was never about security. They use FOMO to create a daily habit. When you post, people see it and react quickly, which further strengthens the addiction.

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

#452

Post by andai »

Double_a_92 wrote: post #119
grumblestumble wrote: post #108

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.

Have you ever played gameboy as a kid?

Transflective LCDs are another tech that didn't go anywhere. It lets you use LCDs outdoors by reflecting the natural light, which solves the problems of color and video. There were even models with solar cells embedded, so not only you get longer battery life but recharge in the sun.

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

#453

Post by danmaz74 »

bantunes wrote: post #444
zerostar07 wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have english. Although not a technically great language, it s a savior in Europe. In fact, with the UK gone, i think EU should adopt it as primary lingua franca.

Still an official language in the EU because Ireland (and Cyprus and Malta, to an extent). Right?

Actually, Ireland chose Gaelic as their official language, and I think the same thing is true for Cyprus and Malta. So, when the UK leaves, there could be no member with English as its official language (the UK is still part of the EU until 2019).

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

#454

Post by captainmuon »

Peer-to-peer file sharing.

There was a time when Napster, Kazaa, eMule were king. The content industry fought against it, but developers came up with decentralized solutions like DHTs or supernodes.

I was convinced the next step would be friend-of-a-friend sharing. You only share files with your direct friends. But they can pass on these files automatically, so their friends can get the files, too. The friends of your friend don't know that the file is originally coming from you, it is completely transparent. The goal is to not let anybody you don't trust know what you are down- or uploading.

I would piggyback on the social graph of existing networks to get started. I actually had a prototype of the friend discovery code, based on XMPP (using custom stanzas). You login with your credentials, and it shows you all your friends that are using the same app. It worked with GTalk, Facebook Messenger, and Skype (via Skype API). One nice feature was that this worked without getting an API key from Facebook etc., or having a central server. I was so pissed when they all changed their APIs to make this impossible. It felt like a conspiracy to stop this use case.

I still think if somebody pulled this off, it might work, and it would be pretty distruptive (in the good and the bad sense of the word). It would be the last word in the debate between "data wants to be free, change society to enable what technology promises" and "data has to be a commodity, restrict technology because in capitalism we can't feed artists otherwise".

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

#455

Post by blattimwind »

IshKebab wrote: post #309
grahamburger wrote: post #134

3D printing. Turns out making little plastic shapes isn't all that useful. Seems obvious in hindsight.

That's just because plastic trinkets aren't what they are useful for. For useful applications, like prototyping, repairs, bespoke items and so on they are going strong and still getting cheaper and better. I'm hoping we'll have some affordable SLA printers fairly soon.

Whether or not folks in the shop find them useful seems to mainly depend on whether they want to put up with CAD packages in their hobby.

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

#456

Post by hobofan »

williamscales wrote: post #132
narrator wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with user supplied metadata is users lie. For example, the "keywords" meta field was mainly used for SEO spamming.

I dunno, I think as long as you do statistical analysis that's vulnerable to adverse inputs you're going to see the same problem. Meaning that you can infer the keywords and prevent obvious lies only until the users figure out how to trick your keyword machine into inferring the wrong keywords.

As someone who only briefly dipped their toes into the semantic web topic, I found Googles' Knowledge Vault[0] to be a very interesting approach to the problem of "everybody lies".

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Vault

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

#457

Post by zerostar07 »

bantunes wrote: post #444
zerostar07 wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have english. Although not a technically great language, it s a savior in Europe. In fact, with the UK gone, i think EU should adopt it as primary lingua franca.

Still an official language in the EU because Ireland (and Cyprus and Malta, to an extent). Right?

Yes, but with the UK gone there will be less nagging from the french :)

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

#459

Post by zerostar07 »

danmaz74 wrote: post #449
zerostar07 wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have english. Although not a technically great language, it s a savior in Europe. In fact, with the UK gone, i think EU should adopt it as primary lingua franca.

Agreed. If only we could fix the non-phonetic spelling...

there are 2 ways for that. I would go for changing the pronounciation rather than the writing
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