Interesting Tech Markets for 2019 • Hacker News Board

Re: Interesting Tech Markets for 2019

#71

Post by csomar » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 9:36 PM UTC

ivalm wrote: post #47

csomar wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10 years is enough for a newer generation to rise and make money. Those in the 15-25 right are quite adapt with Crypto. They'll be the next investors. Granted, if they are wise they won't put all of their liquid there. But if the 30-60 of the current world put a little in crypto; its' market value will fly out of the sky.

But why would they put money into crypto? There is some reason to use crypto as a currency (anonymous transactions), but there is no particular reason to use it as a store of value (hard to comply with anti-money-laundering regulation, hard to protect from fraud, hard to pass through audit, etc)

The same reason why you'd put money on Gold or the Stock market. Exposure. People are not putting money on crypto because they are not exposed to it. Ever wonder why the stock market bubbles out of fundamentals?

Re: Interesting Tech Markets for 2019

#72

Post by sdinsn » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 9:37 PM UTC

kazen44 wrote: post #65

avip wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing in history had prevented more bloodshed than restricted use of force [citation needed?]. In contrast, entities that refuse to use methods of violence (UN, I'm looking at you), consistently fail in peacemaking.

how would the UN use violence? it's not what the UN is for? the UN is basically a meeting room for world leaders to do diplomacy, otherwise we would end up with far more not needed conflict thanks to the severing of diplomatic relations. (just look at how world war 1 originally started for example).

The UN has peacekeeping forces deployed around the world, using soldiers taken from members' militaries. Mostly in Eastern Europe & Africa.

Re: Interesting Tech Markets for 2019

#73

Post by ethbro » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 9:47 PM UTC

tehjoker wrote: post #36

rndmize wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use of force is a separate problem from the development of weapons. I don't really have a problem with startups doing weapons development - someone is going to do it, and I have a hard time seeing how the world would be better if China or Russia took the lead on this.

I would point out that if the US is already spending more money on arms than the next several countries combined, I don't think this is the relevant issue. If another power was strong enough to threaten our defenses, that would be one thing but clearly there is something much bigger going on (I would say it is the US empire, at least according to a senior official in the Bush administration: https://en.m.wikipedia.or…

Because a world in which many parties have strategic nuclear defense AND sufficient non-nuclear forces is more stable and less conflict prone than a world in which major powers possess only nuclear weapons.

Such was the worry about Cold War Germany: had Russia attacked with conventional forces, the US would have been all but required to escalate quickly to nuclear weapons.

Similarly in Korea. If the Inchon landings hadn't been successful, it's a coin flip as to whether the US would have nuked North Korea, Russia, and/or China. Truman, LeMay, and MacArthur were all prepared to go to the mat for South Korea and Taiwan.

https://www.airspacemag.com/military-aviation/how-korean-war...

Re: Interesting Tech Markets for 2019

#74

Post by thatoneuser » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 9:48 PM UTC

alexgmcm wrote: post #11

fhood wrote: post #9

"5 core markets (Devsumer, Real Estate, AI hardware, Transportation and Logistics, Crypto) and 2 emerging ones (Legal, Defense)" Devsumer? For sure. Simplifying dev work seems like an area with pretty much eternal growth potential. But I find it hard to get excited about many of the others. Interacting with the government (defense) still seems to take buckets of money, and there are already large companies that do so…

>I kinda thought that the software+real-estate process had a whole lot of established players, but I could easily just be ignorant of some of the growth areas. In my city in Spain letting agents still charge 10% of the annual rent as a fee when they do little more than print out a pre-written contract and hand you the keys. Apparently it is common in Italy too. This seems like an area ripe for disruption.

In the US real estate agents do similar. You pay them many thousands of dollars to parade people through the home and pressure you to compromise on your listing price so they can close easier. In my experience, the agents usually can’t answer any basic questions about the home anyway.

I’ve believed this industry has some tech coming it’s way for a while now. Would have loved to jumped on it early but it’s also one of those industries where you’d need an established “in” to make headway (i assume).

Re: Interesting Tech Markets for 2019

#75

Post by dgudkov » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 9:52 PM UTC

tehjoker wrote: post #36

rndmize wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use of force is a separate problem from the development of weapons. I don't really have a problem with startups doing weapons development - someone is going to do it, and I have a hard time seeing how the world would be better if China or Russia took the lead on this.

I would point out that if the US is already spending more money on arms than the next several countries combined, I don't think this is the relevant issue. If another power was strong enough to threaten our defenses, that would be one thing but clearly there is something much bigger going on (I would say it is the US empire, at least according to a senior official in the Bush administration: https://en.m.wikipedia.or…

>but if we have nukes, why do we need new "defensive" weapons?

Nukes are neither purely offensive nor defensive weapon (except low-scale tactical ones). They solve the task of strategic deterrence [1]. There are many other tasks that nukes can't and don't solve.

It seems like your knowledge of the subject is somewhat shallow and hence the scorn. I highly recommend learning a bit more about defense -- its goals, problems, and ways to solve them.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction

Re: Interesting Tech Markets for 2019

#76

Post by wmf » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 9:53 PM UTC

ivalm wrote: post #69

wmf wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there's a chance it will go up 10x and no other asset will.

Sorry if I didnt understand sarcasm, but in case you are serious, "speculation" is not the same as "store of value." Whether crypto is a good speculation target is a difficult question, but most do not sell crypto as a "speculation target" as its primary attribute. It is also unlikely that something whose primary attribute is speculation can have a positive roi long term.

I'm not being sarcastic (this time). When crypto people say "store of value" I'm pretty sure they mean (long-term) speculation.

Also consider that people may be investing for a different reason than what they say.

Re: Interesting Tech Markets for 2019

#77

Post by tim333 » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 10:01 PM UTC

avip wrote: post #51

tehjoker wrote: post #29

Ah defense. It's just common sense that we should pour money into the military. We're just out to make money, there's definitely not an entire political viewpoint entangled in this "market opportunity". Those crazy radicals that are against killing pointlessly for imperial gains don't understand the real world. In the real world, we need the military to make the world safe for capital. WW1 was a smashing success, as…

Nothing in history had prevented more bloodshed than restricted use of force [citation needed?]. In contrast, entities that refuse to use methods of violence (UN, I'm looking at you), consistently fail in peacemaking.

There has been a pretty marked decline in violence and war since the UN was formed in 1945 https://medium.com/future-crunch/the-decline-of-war-8760f9a5...

Not all its fault perhaps but the general approach seems to be doing ok

Re: Interesting Tech Markets for 2019

#78

Post by themacguffinman » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 10:01 PM UTC

dgudkov wrote: post #45

tehjoker wrote: post #29

Ah defense. It's just common sense that we should pour money into the military. We're just out to make money, there's definitely not an entire political viewpoint entangled in this "market opportunity". Those crazy radicals that are against killing pointlessly for imperial gains don't understand the real world. In the real world, we need the military to make the world safe for capital. WW1 was a smashing success, as…

>the forces of greed Of course. Greed drives only those fishy defense corporations. Any other for-profit organization is driven purely by desire to change the world for the better. Like Facebook, you know... You can do defense right, you can do it wrong. But you can't do it at all. Like it or not.

I think you meant to say "but you can't not do it at all".

Re: Interesting Tech Markets for 2019

#79

Post by k9s9 » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 10:04 PM UTC

ABCLAW wrote: post #55

r00fus wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> someone is going to do it You could use that excuse for almost anything morally repugnant.

Sure, but when it comes to power, you can't wish away its existence. Someone will have it. So how do you best mitigate the bad effects it can have? Do you let an entity which does not align with your interests have it? Or do you maintain it and work to iteratively improve your exercise of it? The effect of wishing away power instead of grappling with it and bending it to justice is one of the central reason why many…

Agree. But I think global power dynamics have changed and with that military spending/militaristic posture will go down the way it did with the end of the British Empire or colonial powers of Europe.

If there is another triggering event like 9/11 (which kept the defense industry alive), it will be a real surprise to see the US muster a response the way they did in the past.

Re: Interesting Tech Markets for 2019

#80

Post by pxlpshr » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 10:07 PM UTC

strgrd wrote: post #3

"I am still quite bullish that a basked of cryptocurrencies will be worth in the trillions within the next 10 years. The primary short term driver for crypto value with be the generational replacement of gold as a store-of-value for a specific subset of the population. The longer term drivers of crypto value will be new forms of programable money and on-chain securities." What subset of the population is going to rep…

I don't even know that many people who "store value in gold". The ones that do are usually also the people screaming that the sky is falling, at which point I favor guns, ammunition, and food & water.