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

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111–120 of 176 posts

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

#111

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.

HN crowd has a lot of crypto deniers. The funny thing is that HN leaders like literally PG, Googl Bosses, Zuck and Marc Andreasen are very bullish on it. So it doesn't take much to realize who is right

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

#112
Rapid tests you can do at home for a variety of viral illnesses, initially for COVID-19, but expanding to a wider variety of viruses and virus types. Being able to track viruses in real-time will become a priority to attempt to thwart future pandemics.

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

#113
X-as-a-service platforms that allow companies to perform segments of their oprations either with ease, or outsource it.

It's been the big thing for a while, but still continues to grow.

Basically, these are tools to make it faster and faster to spin up a business from scratch, by allowing those companies to focus more on the product itself rather than refactorable non-essentials. They may also offer value-added features such as "network effect" ability to optimize that packaged solutions, or a platform that allows them to provide quicker no code/low code Analytics to identify trends to be able to make business decisions accordingly.

Examples of companies that do this.

* AWS (infrastructure) * Salesforce * Azure * Pagerduty * Splunk * DevOps as a service companies * HR as a service

Also, I recommend not caring about what's new, hot, and shiny; it's best to really understand market fit, and market potential; and build something "useful"

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

#115

Social media retirement services.

Whole cottage industry of this following AA/NA model called Social Media Anonymous. You could have camps, meetings, therapy, etc

And you'd definitely want an app, where people could chat, share their stories... :)

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

#116

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.

> The battery energy density still needs to improve somewhat but that is happening.

"Somewhat"? The energy density needs to get better by a factor of like, an order of magnitude to be competitive.

And it's still going to require human pilots for at least 10 years even aside from that.

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

#118
Privacy - Duck Duck Go may overtake Google at some point.

Better Email management tools, use existing transport but allow you to manage 1,000 to 10,000 inbound messages in an hour of work. Note: this is not mean to offer encouragement for more to send 10,000 outbound messages or fall into Uncanny Valley of Email Automation (see https://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2015/03/25/the-uncanny-valley-...)

IoT / Mirror World / Smart City / Digital Twin / Cyberspace is everting Sensors are woven into more of the natural world and the built world. Opportunities for services and better management and governance of natural and built world. Implications for Privacy. See https://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2017/04/19/cyberspace-everts-i...

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

#119
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an example, the best and most successful no-code low-code product was and is Excel.

Excel is spreadsheet application. It is not related to the parent post, which discusses networked CRUD application, with various integration points, DB, caching, redundant deployments, etc..

I've experienced Excel being used with all of those in bigger non-tech companies.

Integration points: Everyone sends their version to Person A, and they integrate it, filter it, postprocess it, extracts parts into another sheet, etc.

Caching: Everyone has their own version of the excel sheet in their local inbox.

Redundant: There's typically plenty of shared directories on which you can find the same excel sheet in different versions.

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

#120
post #43

Honestly, why would anyone share a good idea here? I get it that ideas are cheap, but if someone actually thinks they have slam dunk they're not going to share it on HN.

Some folks--including many on HN--have many more insights or "good ideas" than they can execute on. If they want to see them come to fruition they are not harmed by giving away a substantial fraction of them that they don't plan to execute on but still see the possibility of and need for.

See http://blog.fogus.me/2015/11/04/the-100101-method-my-approac... or https://www.nickbentley.games/the-100-10-1-method-for-game-d... for two descriptions of a 100:10:1 model. There are other models.

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