Ask HN: What non-obvious tech/market may take off in the next few years? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What non-obvious tech/market may take off in the next few years?

#81

Post by SahAssar » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 4:20 PM UTC

wtracy wrote: post #71

SahAssar wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might be wrong but this seems like a very US-centric idea. For most of the developed world trains fill this need very well, while the US has had problems with their rail network for reasons partially based on geography, partially based on population density, and partially based on their own fault. I think this explains it pretty well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbEfzuCLoAQ The solution is not aircraft, the sol…

IDK, high-speed rail doesn't seem to be taking off outside of Europe and a handful of Asian countries. That leaves most of Asia outside India/China/Korea/Japan, and pretty much all of Australia/Oceania, Africa, the Middle East, and the entire New World. I would love to see high-speed rail take over the world, but there's a lot of sparsely-populated places out there, and it makes sense to investigate technologies to s…

Sparsely-populated places are the cheapest places to build rail, both because of land prices and also the cost of labour. I think that for any volume of passengers over shorter distances that would be large enough to mandate a regular airway it would be cheaper to build high-speed rail. At least over the long term the economics of scale should take over and besides that a rail network is more useful for shipping of goods than a airport would be.

In the US it'd require similar effort/cost as the Interstate Highway System did, but would probably yield equal economic benefit.

Re: Ask HN: What non-obvious tech/market may take off in the next few years?

#82

Post by nafix » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 4:21 PM UTC

ahelwer wrote: post #5

One idea I've had (heavily influenced by The Diamond Age, I must admit) - a premium video game experience where NPCs you meet are sometimes voiced/acted by actors hired real-time on-demand with face or even body mocap. The NPCs revert back to regular AI versions if an actor is unable to be hired at that time. The player could interact by speaking with their own voice, naturally role-playing the scene. This would of c…

That's a really cool idea. You should pursue it.

Re: Ask HN: What non-obvious tech/market may take off in the next few years?

#83

Post by lubujackson » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 4:21 PM UTC

searchableguy wrote: post #11

No code/low code. People here underestimate the work it requires to craft a production CRUD app and keep it working. The problem these tools solve are more related to infrastructure rather than one's ability to code. Learning to code might be the easiest part but deploying it, maintaining it, scaling it, securing it and integrating it with thousands of other services remains a huge task even for experienced folks. It…

I think the real shift will be in "no code experts" who get paid more than actual programmers because they learn how to deal with the limitations and extend them for businesses who already have sunk costs in them. A perfect example is Excel experts who can do very well because Excel has symbiotically intertwined with how many businesses operate. Or COBOL experts who get paid because nobody learns COBOL but places refused to upgrade.

Servicing software debt is an industry in itself.

Re: Ask HN: What non-obvious tech/market may take off in the next few years?

#84

Post by cryptica » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 4:22 PM UTC

cryptica wrote: post #46

Existing technology business models will be adapted and re-launched as services which are coupled to cryptocurrency tokens. Also, we may see the rise of cryptocurrency communities which attempt to manipulate company insiders and governments to gain control of the proceeds of production to drive the value of their cryptocurrencies. Private property rights will be eroded (due to lack of enforcement and increasing syste…

If you're downvoting this, you are probably missing the fact that this already started. Ethereum has already managed to infiltrate many companies and these companies already started diverting some of their profits to buying up Ethereum. Even Reddit is getting into Ethereum. This is just the beginning.

Re: Ask HN: What non-obvious tech/market may take off in the next few years?

#85

Post by shireboy » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 4:22 PM UTC

NathanFlurry wrote: post #57

Web 3/Dweb minus the crypto built on IPFS (or something similar). I believe many developers will soon come to realize that you don't need a blockchain to build most decentralized applications. Products like like Google Docs, social networks, messaging app, etc don't depend on a proof of stake, and we shouldn't be running miners to power such simple operations. All these applications need isa decentralized form of mes…

Without blockchain, what do you see being the incentive for people to host nodes?

Re: Ask HN: What non-obvious tech/market may take off in the next few years?

#86

Post by pydry » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 4:26 PM UTC

jppope wrote: post #49

searchableguy wrote: post #11

No code/low code. People here underestimate the work it requires to craft a production CRUD app and keep it working. The problem these tools solve are more related to infrastructure rather than one's ability to code. Learning to code might be the easiest part but deploying it, maintaining it, scaling it, securing it and integrating it with thousands of other services remains a huge task even for experienced folks. It…

Every VC in the world right now is betting on this becoming a thing... problem is that No Code/ Low Code as a product doesn't actually solve the problem that they are trying to solve. The overarching concept of No Code/ Low Code is that "code" is the hard part of building software, ergo if we can make it so "normal" people don't have to code the problem is solved. Of course we all know that code isn't the hard part o…

It's also been something a lot of investors have put their hopes in before and had them dashed (probably starting from the early 80s).

It might be that This Time Is Different, but there were a lot of times in the past when "This Time Was Different" too.

Re: Ask HN: What non-obvious tech/market may take off in the next few years?

#87

Post by tmaly » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 4:30 PM UTC

searchableguy wrote: post #11

No code/low code. People here underestimate the work it requires to craft a production CRUD app and keep it working. The problem these tools solve are more related to infrastructure rather than one's ability to code. Learning to code might be the easiest part but deploying it, maintaining it, scaling it, securing it and integrating it with thousands of other services remains a huge task even for experienced folks. It…

I think low code/no code could really change thing if they can figure out how to make declarative code fast.

Think Prolog etc

Re: Ask HN: What non-obvious tech/market may take off in the next few years?

#88

Post by tmaly » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 4:33 PM UTC

There is some potential for commodity hardware with AI to spawn some innovation in the maker space.

Re: Ask HN: What non-obvious tech/market may take off in the next few years?

#89

Post by artemisyna » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 4:33 PM UTC

Threads like this is cause 2/3rds of it will end up being “what’s something that folks have heard about in the news but hasn’t gotten big (enough for more press) yet”.

Rephrased, this question is also more of a product-market fit one (“which market exists/will exist but doesn’t have its demand satisfied yet”), whereas a lot of answers are focused on the tech.

Re: Ask HN: What non-obvious tech/market may take off in the next few years?

#90

Post by tyingq » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 4:40 PM UTC

jppope wrote: post #49

searchableguy wrote: post #11

No code/low code. People here underestimate the work it requires to craft a production CRUD app and keep it working. The problem these tools solve are more related to infrastructure rather than one's ability to code. Learning to code might be the easiest part but deploying it, maintaining it, scaling it, securing it and integrating it with thousands of other services remains a huge task even for experienced folks. It…

Every VC in the world right now is betting on this becoming a thing... problem is that No Code/ Low Code as a product doesn't actually solve the problem that they are trying to solve. The overarching concept of No Code/ Low Code is that "code" is the hard part of building software, ergo if we can make it so "normal" people don't have to code the problem is solved. Of course we all know that code isn't the hard part o…

Some of these tools are successful in larger companies, basically to handle demand for crud apps for somewhat technical business groups. Quickbase is doing quite well, for example.