Question: would VR be adopted en masse if it dropped permanently in price by 70% tomorrow?
If you gave me a VR headset for free, I wager after a week it would sit unused in a closet. Price isn't the problem.
Things that I think will be important in the next decade
91–100 of 368 posts
Re: Things that I think will be important in the next decade
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or just stop using Facebook and its products.
They're invaluable for democracy. Right now, there are a number of anti government, pro democracy protests taking place in my country. All of them are being organized and spread via Instagram and WhatsApp
They are disastrous for democracy.
Re: Things that I think will be important in the next decade
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
I honestly don't think privacy legislation would make much headway, simply for the reason that vast majority of people outside of the HackerNews crowd don't care about it. When people say they care about privacy, most of the time they mean they care about anonymity, as in privacy from people who knows them personally. They don't want their internet search history to be known by friends or family or coworkers, but the…
This, exactly this. I have been trying to convert a bunch of my non-tech social network to start using privacy respecting services (DDG/Signal/Tutanota primarily) and have seen more of apathy than pushback. People seem to have no qualms about their search history/messaging being analyzed/indexed/used for targeting as long as they can keep using those services free.
Honestly, until they experience first-hand a totalitarian government weaponizing their information they won't care. Even then, only that generation - well the survivors of that generation - will care. It's not enough to ponder about how much more deadly the Soviets could have been, or reading about what China is doing. For most people, if it's not happening to them immediately and directly, they just don't care.
Re: Things that I think will be important in the next decade
#94when did an industry decentralize historically? the tendency is towards centralization. The only thing that can counter centralization is ubiquitous encryption
Almost always: industries or activities which were once only viable in a single (or small number) of instances, but which, given increases in net total capabilities, but no inherent efficiencies of scale, require replicated instances rather than a centrally-controlled monopoly.
Even here, if there's a space for centralised control, it's possible that either some single entity will gain effective unitary control or impose a control overlay.
High-mass products, which ship poorly, products which are very highly localised (culture, custom), "high-touch" (1:1 or 1:(small-n) activities, on-site services, specifically-tailored activities, rapid spoilage, tend to be amongst these.
Examples which come to mind of each:
- High mass: concrete, dairy, and water. Shipping costs rapidly eat into profits, though water can move efficiently for hundreds, possibly as much as 1,000km, via aqueducts and pipelines.
- Localised: culture, including to an extent the film industry (at least at the national level), which contrasts with video's otherwise extreme ephemerality, and hence centralisation. Teaching is probably the ultimate, with the failures of ed-tech reinforcing this yet again. The gold-standard in teaching remains 1:1 tutoring, for complex reasons. Most personal-care services, ranging from medical to beauty, therapy, and training. Activities proscribed by widely-varying local regulation also tend toward geographical dispersion.
- Most of the trades -- plumbing, electrical, HVAC, landscaping, on-sight equipment maintenance, auto repair, and the like, all spawn from the fact that it's cheaper to provide local expertise and capability than to move the equipment to a centralised facility. The more specialised equipment is, the more likely service is to be centralised, and some transport equipment (aircraft, ships) sees centralised servicing based on both mobility and complexity.
- The degree to which spoilage is no longer a pressing concern is impressive: cold-chains and air freight mean that fresh fruits, vegetables, and flowers now move globally, though local produce remains viable. Freshly-cooked meals remain a holdout, with even in-city delivery limited to a few standbyes: pizza, Chinese takeaway, and the Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel. (https://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda_weehawken_burrito_...).
In most other cases, the supposed freedom from location afforded by technology and ephemeralisation actually strongly favours centralisation. Almost anything related to mass culture (film, music, video games, and some books, as well as clothing and fashion) tends extremely toward centralisation.
Look around you at the "small shops" in your neighbourhood, town, or suburb. Those are the serivces which have resisted centralisation, though almost all have some strongly centralised elements.
Re: Things that I think will be important in the next decade
#95The number of people in this thread that apparently know the secret, nefarious intentions that Zuckerberg truly has is...
Well, not surprising, given that this is the internet and Hacker News. :)
Re: Things that I think will be important in the next decade
#96I prefer this list of what's important: https://www.gatesfoundation.org . It has things like kids not dying from diarrhea.
Normative vs. positive.
Is the claim that Gates is sharing what he believes is most important and Zuckerberg is listing what he thinks will actually be important?
Re: Things that I think will be important in the next decade
#97I agree we need a new private social platform. But, I hope it isn't Facebook that wins that race. I've been working on a social network that I believe represents "generational change" - no ads, no clickbait news, no public profiles. It goes against the grain of what current social networks are doing. Check it out at https://get.thread-app.com . It's still early days, but I would appreciate any feedback!
This seems to be everything that commenters on HN claim to want, but the $20 a year thing seems to be fundamentally incompatible with how social networks grow.
Re: Things that I think will be important in the next decade
#98What a bunch of crock! It seems like it’d always remain too much to ask for Mark to understand things and look at the big picture for the good of everyone. IMO, this post yet again makes a good case for breaking up the company. Most of this post is about how Facebook is looking for new ways to make money, and just a few sentences about large problems like diseases or poverty. He carelessly uses words like “private” a…
Any future avatar based communication system (VR/AR) needs to be open source and auditable if it’s going to mediate a large portion of human affairs and interaction. It also needs to be actually decentralized, the way the web and Internet are. We are working on it at Mozilla: hubs.mozilla.com More info here: https://github.com/mozilla/hubs-cloud/wiki/The-Web-Emergent-...
> It also needs to be actually decentralized, the way the web and Internet are.
The more you look at the web/Internet, you’ll notice it’s not as decentralized as most people believe
Re: Things that I think will be important in the next decade
#99What a bunch of crock! It seems like it’d always remain too much to ask for Mark to understand things and look at the big picture for the good of everyone. IMO, this post yet again makes a good case for breaking up the company. Most of this post is about how Facebook is looking for new ways to make money, and just a few sentences about large problems like diseases or poverty. He carelessly uses words like “private” a…
I don't understand your attitude towards him. When I read his post, I didn't feel this way at all. It seems the problems you have with is rooted on the nature of big corporations. Basically all the big companies are doing those things, especially regulatory capture. How is replacing Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg with anybody else will give you a Utopia Facebook?
> How is replacing Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg with anybody else will give you a Utopia Facebook?
Not to speak for the OP but the idea is that you don’t replace them, you just remove them. And use decentralised, open source solutions instead.
Re: Things that I think will be important in the next decade
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or just stop using Facebook and its products.
They're invaluable for democracy. Right now, there are a number of anti government, pro democracy protests taking place in my country. All of them are being organized and spread via Instagram and WhatsApp
Why could those not be on Signal and be actually safe due to real end-to-end encryption and no spying from Facebook?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2018/09/27/facebook-...