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?

#91

Post by psadri » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 4:42 PM UTC

SahAssar wrote: post #81

wtracy wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 g…

The problem is that train routes are fixed So it only makes sense to connect regions with high populations. Aircraft can go anywhere, including places with small populations.

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

#92

Post by jnwatson » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 4:42 PM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #90

jppope wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Essentially the Microsoft Access market of old.

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

#93

Post by projectileboy » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 4:43 PM UTC

SahAssar wrote: post #51

barnabee wrote: post #31

Electric aircraft for shorter trips instead of trains. The battery energy density still needs to improve somewhat but that is happening. They’d allow for serving more direct (point to point) routes than trains as the infrastructure cost is so much lower than laying and maintaining tracks. Rail serving high volume routes still makes sense, especially while electric plans remain relatively small.

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…

Tough to say how the pandemic will affect this, but EasyJet and the like were absolutely changing the game in Europe up to this spring for medium-length trips. Flying from Nice to Rome is way faster and way cheaper than any of the train options.

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

#94

Post by xchaotic » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 4:44 PM UTC

SahAssar wrote: post #70

wtracy wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my mind, "the cloud" came into existence when it became practical to rent servers (virtual or physical) by the hour, rather than by the month. It's one of those things where a difference in degree in implementation terms (leasing in smaller time increments) allowed a difference in kind in usage terms (on-demand server allocation over advance provisioning).

Isn't that what I wrote? Or do you disagree with something I wrote?

I think you are both right but it’s funny because most customers have this stuff up and running 365 days a year anyway

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

#95

Post by barnabee » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 4:49 PM UTC

SahAssar wrote: post #51

barnabee wrote: post #31

Electric aircraft for shorter trips instead of trains. The battery energy density still needs to improve somewhat but that is happening. They’d allow for serving more direct (point to point) routes than trains as the infrastructure cost is so much lower than laying and maintaining tracks. Rail serving high volume routes still makes sense, especially while electric plans remain relatively small.

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…

I'm not from the US, and I think this is valid basically anywhere, although the lack of rail infrastructure in the states makes this perhaps particularly appealing.

The basic logic is two-fold:

First, it's much faster, cheaper, and less contentious to create new routes, and capacity can quickly be switched (even seasonally or in response to events) thanks to neither needing to pay for nor lay tracks.

Secondly, it shortens a lot of journeys. Even in countries with pretty extensive rail infrastructure it is common to combine two or more trips via "hub" cities in order to complete a journey. This adds time because you travel further and have to change trains and wait around. The difference could be particularly extreme given that only longer distance intercity trains tend to be high speed, and electric planes will eventually be faster even than high speed rail.

A similar change happened with long haul air travel: as twin engine planes have been able to fly further over water due to safety improvements, the traiditional hub model has lost out as many more point-to-point international routes were created.

While I think they might re-shape regional transport in some pretty important ways, electric planes won't replace high speed rail (and kerosene burning jets) on more popular routes, at least not for a while (and perhaps, debatably, never). Trains are incredibly efficient and hard to beat when you need to regularly move a lot of people, and electric aircraft, while they're about to become useful, are going to remain relatively small and range limited for quite a while.

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

#96

Post by SahAssar » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 4:52 PM UTC

psadri wrote: post #91

SahAssar wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 g…

The problem is that train routes are fixed So it only makes sense to connect regions with high populations. Aircraft can go anywhere, including places with small populations.

Sure, they could, but they don't. Aircraft require airports, ATC, large land areas for landing/takeoff and so on.

In general aircraft for passenger or cargo routes take a few routes and don't shift much.

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

#97

Post by chansiky » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 4:53 PM UTC

grahoho wrote: post #4

Augmented Reality. Apple seems poised to release some AR Glasses based on the patents they've been registering and the investment they've made in the ARKit framework. This will probably become another iPhone-like platform for developing apps on, and will likely present opportunities like the early days of the App Store. There's a cool project trending on Github right now showing how magic-like some of the technology…

The cut and paste example is really cool. Its the idea of seamless physical and digital spaces merging that make it compelling. Obviously its a one way street in the phone example, but with AR glasses then it goes in two directions.

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

#98

Post by frabcus » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 4:54 PM UTC

It's worth understanding the kind of disruption you mean - product to product, or product to commodity. Simon Wardley has a blog with lots of posts about this.

Also his free book about Wardley Mapping is useful for understanding the phase changes of bespoke to warring products to commodity.

For specific ideas, see "Figure 2 - Wars" in this Simon Wardley blog post (written five years ago, diagram is I think ten years old so you can validate early parts of it): https://blog.gardeviance.org/2015/02/on-two-forms-of-disrupt...

We're currently just come through war phase (when there's fierce competition to own commodity versions and lots of new innovation gets built on top) of Big Data.

From the diagram, the next wars Simon reckons should happen about now (and I can't find a post where he explains how he made that diagram) are:

  * Sensor as a Service (think radically better health or environment sensors, detecting important trace molecules cheaply)
  * Robotics (I guess think Ocado warehouses, or Shenzhen factories)
  * Currency (digital can change this in ways other than Bitcoin, depending on your politics too)

Then the phase after that in 5-10 years time are:

  * Internet of Things (I'm guessing by then the microcomputers might be *so* cheap and network *so* easy they literally go in everything)
  * Immersive (VR/AR I think)
  * 3D printing (it's not very good or cheap yet, it will be)
  * Genetic Engineering, GMO
  * Social Change (not clear what this means, but certainly you can look around the world and see the demand)

You can look for yourself for more.

For slightly longer term, worth knowing the word "spime" as something to head for as well.

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

#99

Post by cajazzer » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 4:55 PM UTC

nbawal wrote: post #42

grahoho wrote: post #4

Augmented Reality. Apple seems poised to release some AR Glasses based on the patents they've been registering and the investment they've made in the ARKit framework. This will probably become another iPhone-like platform for developing apps on, and will likely present opportunities like the early days of the App Store. There's a cool project trending on Github right now showing how magic-like some of the technology…

I think it has been tried unsuccessfully many times. There is even a Silicon Valley episode about it. Certainly it does not fit the "non-obvious" criterion. Apart from gamers, people just don't want it.

I thought that too(just for gamers) except I think Apple has some early examples of AR up its sleeve that have convinced it that it is the next big thing. Should be fun to see.

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

#100

Post by ahelwer » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 4:56 PM UTC

nafix wrote: post #82

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.

Sadly my specialty is in formal methods and distributed systems and I don't think I have any domain expertise:

* No knowledge of acting or actors; never even been to LA

* Never worked with mocap technology

* Never worked with video game development

* Never worked with voice or streaming services

Maybe I can pick up some of this as a hobby. Anyway it's not really a novel idea (like I said, you can read this exact concept in The Diamond Age, a very popular novel among the tech crowd) so I'm sure someone is trying it. Who knows, we'll see in a few years!