Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

821–830 of 1001 posts

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

#821

Post by leggomylibro »

swyx wrote: post #176
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.

100% agree. imagine my shock when as a young technology analyst I discovered that E-Ink was a smallcap tech company in Taiwan and basically produced kindle displays, store price tags and that cool double sided phone that one time. I thought it was a huge deal when they managed to do color E-Ink. but no one cared.

You can buy 3-color (white, black, and read all over) ones for ... I want to say about 20 yuan which is like $3?

I haven't looked into driving them yet; that's step 3 and I'm still on step 1 (monochrome OLEDs) but I think you might have to do some funky temperature adjustment stuff to get good results out of them...maybe that hasn't quite been integrated into the display controller chips yet?

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

#822

Post by lastofus »

RyanZAG wrote: post #739
MichaelGG wrote: post #664

F#. Back in 2006 I first stumbled upon it and was amazed. It had so much potential. Everything C# did, and more, better. I was sure we'd see 20% of MS devs moving to it. I underestimated the momentum of MS, the power of embarrassment of hiring a high-profile figure to be shown up by a researcher, the incredible anti-FP and even anti-generics...resentment(?) that MS kept towards them. Plus the insane comments from act…

I feel it's more a case of functional programming trying to target the wrong segment - albeit out of necessity. There's two kinds of programs being made. First most common one is the kind you're talking about here: grunt work. It's not about the code, but more about having the code do a straight forward task with very flexible constraints. A web app that talks to a database and does a few simple transformations -- li…

I think there is a third segment where FP fits well: large difficult problems that can afford a 10-20% performance hit.

The examples you gave of difficult problems are mostly soft realtime, which not everything needs to be.

Granted this is a relatively small subset of problems.

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

#823

Post by abakker »

philipodonnell wrote: post #814
malyk wrote: post #802

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mastercard had the same feature sometime along the way that they advertised strongly to me on the website. I think I might have used it once, but it was too much of a hassle to log in to my account, generate the number, go back to the website that I was purchasing from, etc. Hell, i just looked it up and they still have it: https://www.cardbenefits.citi.com/Products/Virtual-Account-N...

Ha, I didn't know that either and I have an eligible card!

my BofA visa has this as well.

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

#824

Post by maxscam »

arfrank wrote: post #758
turc1656 wrote: post #694

Paypal used to have this feature that allowed you to install a browser add-on and you could generate a CC number on the fly that was good for either one time use or recurring use (for subscription services). This feature served two primary purposes: 1) to be able to pay using PayPal on sites that didn't support it 2) to help prevent against fraud which was becoming a massive problem at the time. If the number was sto…

I’d suggest you look at what we built at Final. Getfinal.com We took a hard deep look at a massive stagnant industry (credit cards) and use experience and features as differentiators

I interviewed with you guys (didnt get hired but that's ok) and this was the first,thing that came to mind. Good luck

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

#825

Post by wils1245 »

Jaruzel wrote: post #818
Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #363

I don't know if this has a name, but... ICQ-like "searchable" instant messaging. Let me explain myself. In the late 90s, there was an IM client called ICQ. For starters, its UI was leaps and bounds ahead of anything to be seen in the next decade, and it had functionality like bots or groups, that has again become widespread a few years ago. But what I'm talking about is the fact that I could look for "female, age bet…

I mainly blame Facebook for this, but these days it's now viewed as seedy and odd to try and be friends with strangers across the internet. Each new 'social service' that now appears is not only silo-ed by it's own protocol, but also promotes the continued siloing of users into their own (existing) friendship groups. Back in the day (yeah, I'm old), you could drop into an IRC channel of strangers and be having a good…

Definitely agree with your point about it being odd to get in touch with perfect strangers, but it's a great tool for promoting acquaintances to friends. I recently had a small house party and organized a ski trip, and Facebook allowed me to very easily invite people I didn't very well. It can be a great low pressure, non-intrusive, but genuine way to try and bring people into something.

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

#826

Post by hallalex831 »

turc1656 wrote: post #694

Paypal used to have this feature that allowed you to install a browser add-on and you could generate a CC number on the fly that was good for either one time use or recurring use (for subscription services). This feature served two primary purposes: 1) to be able to pay using PayPal on sites that didn't support it 2) to help prevent against fraud which was becoming a massive problem at the time. If the number was sto…

Both Bank of America and Citi credit cards do it. They have it available right on their websites, and Citi even has an optional desktop application to quickly generate temporary use cards. I use it all the time for shady subscription services, and also to sign up for "New User" promos multiple times :)

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

#827

Post by okreallywtf »

Jaruzel wrote: post #818
Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #363

I don't know if this has a name, but... ICQ-like "searchable" instant messaging. Let me explain myself. In the late 90s, there was an IM client called ICQ. For starters, its UI was leaps and bounds ahead of anything to be seen in the next decade, and it had functionality like bots or groups, that has again become widespread a few years ago. But what I'm talking about is the fact that I could look for "female, age bet…

I mainly blame Facebook for this, but these days it's now viewed as seedy and odd to try and be friends with strangers across the internet. Each new 'social service' that now appears is not only silo-ed by it's own protocol, but also promotes the continued siloing of users into their own (existing) friendship groups. Back in the day (yeah, I'm old), you could drop into an IRC channel of strangers and be having a good…

You make a good point that I haven't really thought of (in quite that way). Anonymity used to be really fun on the internet in the early days for me, meeting strangers, playing games or whatever. Now so much is tied to us directly and to real-life that the thrill of exploration is kind of gone from the internet to me.

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

#828

Post by abakker »

evan_ wrote: post #756
snug wrote: post #738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this what Apple pay basically does?

Sort of, you just have a single number but it’s different from your regular cc#

Doesn't apple pay change the number every transaction?

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

#829

Post by JustSomeNobody »

Mesh networking.

I figured by now the cost of nodes would be so low and the technology so far more advanced that everyone could just stick a few nodes around and we'd have a completely free, open and decentralized internet.

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

#830

Post by bpicolo »

leephillips wrote: post #811
adrianmsmith wrote: post #494

GWT. To create client-side web apps, rather than writing Javascript, write Java and have it transpiled to Javascript. Java has IDEs, isn't a new language to learn (like Dart), has static type checking, support for refactoring in the IDEs, etc. GWT could do tree shaking, obfuscation, etc. You could write your server code in Java, and "call" remote server methods from your client code, "passing" Java objects transparen…

Doesn't clojurescript use GWT? If it does, then GWT has certainly lived on. If I'm confused, sorry.

They generated a Closure compiler implemented in js by running the closure compiler through GWT, but it's worse than the java equivalent (fewer features, slower)
Post reply on HN