What Will Happen in the 2020s • Hacker News Board

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#511

Post by yesenadam » Thu, Jan 02, 2020, 5:00 AM UTC

wincy wrote: post #396

gordaco wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are being downvoted, but I think that you are totally right. For an awful lot of people, eating meat is a matter of status; it's similar to why many people prefer having big cars even if they are less environmentally friendly. There is also the fact that plant based diets are still associated to certain ideologies and because of that they will keep being scoffed at by people from opposing ideologies. Sure, you do…

It doesn’t help that I get headaches when I eat my garden grown tomatoes. No such reaction to eating a ribeye. How tall will my children grow up to be on a plant based diet? I want my children to grow up to be stronger than those around them.

>How tall will my children grow up to be on a plant based diet? I want my children to grow up to be stronger than those around them.

Well, oxen manage to be strong as an ox on a 100% plant-based diet. Giraffes get pretty tall too.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#512

Post by redisman » Thu, Jan 02, 2020, 5:08 AM UTC

chefkoch wrote: post #200

amursft wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall seeing that they were experimenting with it. Yep, here's a story from August. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-12/china-s-p...

>Unlike decentralized blockchain-based offerings, the PBOC’s currency is intended to give Beijing more control over its financial system. So not what you are expecting from a crypto currency?

Wow sounds great can't wait to invest in this propaganda coin.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#513

Post by redisman » Thu, Jan 02, 2020, 5:10 AM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #486

Animats wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and it's funny.[1] The Impossible Burger was cool when it cost $20 at Jardiniere. Then the company scaled up and started supplying Burger King. This got some foodies upset. Wait until they get the price down to well below meat and start supplying McDonalds. [1] https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/10/7/20880318/meatle...

If that happens then we will stop seeing meat in any processed food because of extreme cost cutting even if people still want real meat.

Processed food often already has a huge portion of soy and/or wheat protein in addition to the grade F meat. HN's Whole Foods crowd seem to way over-estimate Your Average Persons diet and how much they care what's in the tasty meal.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#514

Post by redisman » Thu, Jan 02, 2020, 5:14 AM UTC

cesarb wrote: post #335

FreeHugs wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1 big data centre is cheaper than 1000 little ones There are billions of computers out there that are idle most of the time. Utilizing them might very well be cheaper then building and maintaining a new datacenter. everyone buys and sells through Amazon because thats where you find the most buyers and sellers Not everyone. Not even the majority. Even in the USA which is Amazons biggest market, their market share is l…

> There are billions of computers out there that are idle most of the time. Utilizing them That used to be popular (for instance, distributed.net) back when the processors used the same power whether they were idle or not. Nowadays, there is a huge difference in power usage and heat output between an idle or mostly idle processor, and a fully loaded one. (My first desktop had a processor without a fan or even a heat…

And most of these computers are running on batteries. Even on my desktop I'd have to get a decent return to share my CPU/GPU/storage. The computer cost me about $700 to build so I certainly wouldn't share it for pennies.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#515

Post by redisman » Thu, Jan 02, 2020, 5:18 AM UTC

rishirishi wrote: post #205

ken wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assumed that was covered by #8 ("The biggest consumer technology successes of this decade will be in the area of privacy"), somewhat by #9 ("Millennials and Gen-Z will be running many institutions"), and mostly the second half of #5 ("a killer decentralized consumer app"). Network effects of centralization explain why current big companies prefer to build centralized services -- but the next big idea never comes fr…

> All we need is the right software Who authors and maintains this software? And what is their incentive?

A cloud infrastructure startup I'd imagine?

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#516

Post by gfodor » Thu, Jan 02, 2020, 5:19 AM UTC

npo9 wrote: post #103

gfodor wrote: post #63

I predict the 2020's will turn out to be the most difficult-to-predict decade yet. The predictions of the OP in my mind fail to account for several yet-to-mature disruptive technologies that will potentially transform our society to the degree the Internet and web have. The only prediction I'll make is in the domain where I work: By the end of the decade, most people will be wearing some kind of immersive computing d…

Beaming in might be popular for some use cases, however physical presence will still be the gold standard. VR/AR will always represent a big drop in information density compared to reality. In human conversation even a 75ms lag would be noticeable compared to real-time. I highly doubt looking at a vr projections eyes can match the same intensity as looking at a real person’s. Also, VR completely removes items such as…

I think framing face-to-face vs remote copresence as a hierarchy is a poor mental model. Existing remote communication media can be equally effective as face to face in very narrow, specific contexts. My argument isn’t so much that remote embodied communication will be a panacea, but that it will radically shift the constraints around copresence for a wide variety of contexts. Ultimately, face to face will be vastly superior for some contexts, but I would not underestimate how far that set will drop proportionally over the next decade. And it certainly seems possible that new forms of communication may become only possible in a virtual context, much like the very one we are participating in right now.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#517

Post by thesquib » Thu, Jan 02, 2020, 5:20 AM UTC

LeftHandPath wrote: post #278

bransonf wrote: post #209

A few good takes, but China becoming the dominant global power? Not a good take. China is fairly good at a few things, namely lending money and manufacturing goods. What they aren’t good at is making people happy. See Hong Kong for the last 6 months. I don’t think the United States is becoming increasingly isolationist. I think we’ve seen a brief period of these attitudes, but it’s not indicative of the next decade i…

A lot of the article seems to be based on liberal ideals, which include a less prominent America, the promotion of Veganism, and embracing the fall of the West. For the most part, the author’s expectations about crypto are mistaken in that they assume financiers in the west trust China enough to buy into its digital currency. We are bordering on a Cold War; we aren’t about to trust them to keep their promises on cryp…

I think the article is based on current trends, not on US politics.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#518

Post by gfodor » Thu, Jan 02, 2020, 5:22 AM UTC

majewsky wrote: post #201

gfodor wrote: post #63

I predict the 2020's will turn out to be the most difficult-to-predict decade yet. The predictions of the OP in my mind fail to account for several yet-to-mature disruptive technologies that will potentially transform our society to the degree the Internet and web have. The only prediction I'll make is in the domain where I work: By the end of the decade, most people will be wearing some kind of immersive computing d…

> People will routinely 'beam in' each other (similar to FaceTime conceptually, but with no visual or auditory perceptual deficiency vs being together in person) in varying contexts for varying purposes. This made me laugh. We haven't even figured out how to do telephone conferences reliably. I'm still waiting for a telco that does not have the obligatory "You're breaking up" or "I cannot see the screenshare" or "Oh…

Teleconferencing has issues not due to technical issues typically. Though that was common up to relatively recent history, modern audio and video teleconferencing software seems reliable and robust. The main deficiency, which can not be mitigated through technology, is the low bandwidth for human communication it has, which yields a lot of the dynamics you mention. Simple things like turn taking and taking awareness of the emotional states of others is largely impossible to do well vs in person using these tools.

This is a well researched area, and embodied communication through VR/AR stands poised to solve many of these deficiencies by allowing the expression of non verbal cues, body language, spatial referencing, etc.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#519

Post by gfodor » Thu, Jan 02, 2020, 5:25 AM UTC

doc_gunthrop wrote: post #164

gfodor wrote: post #63

I predict the 2020's will turn out to be the most difficult-to-predict decade yet. The predictions of the OP in my mind fail to account for several yet-to-mature disruptive technologies that will potentially transform our society to the degree the Internet and web have. The only prediction I'll make is in the domain where I work: By the end of the decade, most people will be wearing some kind of immersive computing d…

> In 2030, you'll be able to hug anyone on Earth instantly, and that's something to be optimistic about. This sounds sad and absurd. Hugging someone in person is a much more visceral experience than via AR/VR.

It was metaphorical. In ten years, it will make more sense.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#520

Post by redisman » Thu, Jan 02, 2020, 5:26 AM UTC

jackcosgrove wrote: post #336

jaggirs wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Data Redundancy 2. Encryption

You need to decrypt the data somewhere, which requires holding the key in memory. What's to prevent a nefarious node in the distributed cloud from extracting your key? I could see a solution where every user has their own key, served by a securely hosted (non-distributed) server, and decrypting the data client side, but that doesn't cover all cases where you might need to aggregate or share data across users.

Only some workloads make sense to offload on such a network. For example I could see it working as a DYI render-farm. I guess the algorithm could be creative in which pixels to give each node so that they don't reveal the source data based on one corrupt node.