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

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

#101

Post by marketgod »

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'd be interested in something for a desktop. Currently, I have 3 monitors and having an extra 2 at the market open would be perfect then put away the headset after 30 minutes and just watch the market. If anyone has a recommendation.

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

#102

Post by objectReason »

Neural input devices could become a thing in the next few years. I, for one, would love to have a wearable which could translate neural signals into text and directional input - in lieu of a keyboard and mouse. My inevitable carpal tunnel could stop advancing.

Thanks to newly available hardware like MyoWare, affordable neural sensors have become available to garage tinkerers. I think it's simply a matter of time before we're all interfacing with our computers and phones via wearables. http://www.advancertechnologies.com/p/myoware.html

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

#103

Post by tyingq »

jnwatson wrote: post #92
tyingq wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes good observation. Though nicer for the IT department because you can actually see what everyone is doing, what data is there, integrations, etc.

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

#104

Post by Guest19023892 »

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…

I don't think this makes sense for a number of reasons.

1. As you said, the costs involved. You'd probably need to charge people something like $10 per interaction with a voice actor, plus $2 per minute. This makes for a very limited market.

2. Actors need to be waiting for a request on a wide range of characters since there would not be enough demand for them to consistently play the same character all the time. So, when a player triggers an interaction, there's going to be a delay as the actor is brought up to speed on their role, the person they're interacting with, the world they're in, etc.

3. When players return to a NPC, they'll likely be assigned a different actor since the previous one is either in another call or not working. This kind of ruins the premium interactions since the player remembers the voice and small details of the last conversation, but now the NPC has suddenly changed.

4. You're in the business of matching up adult voice actors with children playing games. You'll need a record of every single conversation because it's only a matter of time before you get reports of inappropriate conversations unfolding.

5. This isn't a long term business. Technology gets better each day at speaking and understanding human voice. It will replace the voice actors and it also solves all of the above issues.

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

#105

Post by objectReason »

A potential game changer in the 3D printing space is Rapid Liquid Printing or (RLP). Why is it exciting? Normal 3D printers have to build from the ground up, one layer at a time. It wastes a lot of energy and time because the print head paths are restricted to one plane. In RLP, by contrast, prints are made in a bath of gelatin, the printer head is freely able to move in 3 dimensions allowing it to take the most direct path to form prints. No wasted movement = less time and more structurally sound parts.

RLP was developed by MIT a few years back and I haven't heard much from it since. Maybe that will change over the next few years. https://selfassemblylab.mit.edu/rapid-liquid-printing

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

#106

Post by ahelwer »

Guest19023892 wrote: post #104
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…

I don't think this makes sense for a number of reasons. 1. As you said, the costs involved. You'd probably need to charge people something like $10 per interaction with a voice actor, plus $2 per minute. This makes for a very limited market. 2. Actors need to be waiting for a request on a wide range of characters since there would not be enough demand for them to consistently play the same character all the time. So,…

Oh yeah, these are all great points for sure. (2) could probably be solved with game design (like how Mass Effect hides loading screens behind elevator rides and such). Actors are quite good at improv, but regardless they can restrict their availability to a certain number of characters they've learned. (3) is definitely an issue, could probably only be solved by having actors write notes after each interaction for the next ones to read. We have to remember that there are a lot of very, very talented actors out there and they can deal with all sorts of curveballs like that - benefits of having smart humans in the loop! Voices could possibly be postprocessed to all sound similar for a particular NPC. For (4) given the price I think the target market is mostly adults, but yes of course this would be a concern. For (5) I agree this enterprise is to some extent a bearish take on the near-term possibilities of AI.

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

#107

Post by NathanFlurry »

shireboy wrote: post #85
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?

Filecoin is a blockchain which Protocol Labs is using to (a) creating a decentralized way to pay miners to pin your file (i.e. store a permanent copy of your file) and (b) partially used as a funding source for the core project through its ICO.

Beyond that, [here](https://discuss.ipfs.io/t/ipfs-incentives/2456/2) is a good explanation.

To elaborate a bit more: When you set up a node using an unmodified version of their program at the moment, you tell it how much storage to allocate and it will automatically fill the remaining space that you're not using with cached chunks of other peoples' files, essentially "donating" your extra resources. When you fetch a file, your computer will purge the LRU chunks and replace it with that data you just fetched and store that in the cache. This way, the more people who access a file, the more widely distributed that file is cached.

For example, Cloudflare hosts an [IPFS gateway](https://blog.cloudflare.com/distributed-web-gateway/). Since it's in their interest to deliver these files as fast as possible, their nodes which fetched these files from the IPFS network will have them cached and available to anyone else who requests said files. While it's definitely not the same concept in terms of incentive/resource intensiveness/authority, my hope is that IPFS will work well for the same reason things like DNS works effectively. Time will tell on this one.

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

#110

Post by biolurker1 »

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…

This isn't non-obvious
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