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What are emerging/promising areas of tech to get into today?

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Re: What are emerging/promising areas of tech to get into today?

#31
I would look at areas of technology that can help with the societal shift towards having greater numbers of elderly people living longer and wanting to maintain a higher standard of living.

Most western societies have an age curve moving to the right. Lots of opportunities with AI and disrupting the user experience for the elderly. Have relatives who can't use a touch screen because of arthritis, bonus is the have money

Re: What are emerging/promising areas of tech to get into today?

#32
post #14

The Chips act is going to have a huge impact on soft-hardware interfaces going forward. Anyone who can work at the lowest levels of abstraction is going to see opportunities that most others will miss.

I don't know much about the Chips act and its implications. Could you ELI5?

One of, if not the, first applications of the transistor was in missile guidance. China developed enough vertical integration and global consolidation in the chip industry to become a national security threat. Congress responded by allocating $280 billion to bring the at-risk aspects of design and development back to domestic soil. There is more nuance but that’s the gist.

Re: What are emerging/promising areas of tech to get into today?

#33

Construction technology. Design software for horizontal construction is astonishingly bad. The PDF is still the "product" in am era where GPS and automated machine guidance are the norm. We're decades overdue on rethinking project delivery from first principles in the context of modern practices and The inefficiency costs billions. A single bill or FHWA policy memo on open data standards for digital project delivery…

I can't predict what the future will bring in this sector but I'm in the process of building a house and had to undergo through the architectural process and planning (by hiring professionals of course not going at it on my own). I am surprised of how advanced things are with building construction, eg with realtime rendering, unreal engine 5 integration into autodesk revit, actually making changes and being instantly visible with photorealism feels like science fiction. All quantities for materials are calculated automatically which makes cost estimations much more accurate and allows you to play with options and iterate designs in a way that wasn't possible before.

Of course construction is not only for buildings but for someone who had no experience in this sector I was caught off guard expecting to see old fashioned blue prints.

Re: What are emerging/promising areas of tech to get into today?

#34
Focus on the basics and seek what’s profound. For example, you might learn a ton from implementing your own computer algebra system, and the code is extremely valuable, but also extremely basic. The difference between 10x engineers and average ones is a tolerance for busy boring work like strict TDD (test driven development).

Learn about strength training and cardio. Taking care of your body pays dividends long term.

Re: What are emerging/promising areas of tech to get into today?

#35

If everyone is saying AI/LLM then that ship already sailed.

Tech works in cycles, including AI. What's hot today (this year) will be less hot tomorrow (next year) but be hot again in a week (N years). Invest in next week by spend your today/tomorrow learning about it.

Re: What are emerging/promising areas of tech to get into today?

#36

• Spacial Computing This is definitely an emerging field that is trying to develop market share. Unclear if the tech is really there in the long haul for comfortable spacial computing though. What you're seeing now is literally akin to something like the Apple I being released. We have a LONG road to go but there's very little doubt that the end goal is something powerful. • AI Duh? It's useful now, and likely will o…

Glassesless spatial computer you might not be familiar with:

Http://voxon.co (disclosure: founded the company )

Http://look.glass (disclosure: worked at company)

Http://lightfieldlabs.com

Http://leiainc.com

Re: What are emerging/promising areas of tech to get into today?

#37
Drones drones drones drones drones.

The war in Ukraine has transformed drone tech. Ukraine alone is burning 20k to 30k drones a month. The military applications are leading to huge investments; economies of scale are leading to rapid improvements in tech and reduction in costs.

Re: What are emerging/promising areas of tech to get into today?

#38
"Pessimists sound smart, but optimists make money," is an adage I believe, so I've been trying to mine pessimism into contrapositive opportunities based on who benefits from it, so take these with a giant bag of salt as they are trying to derive optimism from dystopian views, but:

- (enterprisey langages and platforms, identity management) I don't think consumer tech mints any new unicorns or platforms for a while, as a discretionary cost, I think there's a consumer tech winter starting.

- (graphs, GANNs, LLMs, forum tech, api aggregators) When I look anecdotally at where the money is (institutions, endowments, PACs), where it isn't (consumers), and where it is going (favored causes and mechanisms to secure political levers) - the upside goes to an emerging class who works in moderation / trust and safety, campaign management, PR, ad tech/surveiilance, gov tech consulting. Like marketing, but for shifting narrative alignment and "funding," instead of discovering customer desire. "Influence hacking," is a thing.

- (not comp.sci, but likely trend) I joke that the biggest bubble over the next decade will be weekend vacation property and renovations near government towns. All them comrades gonna need dachas.

- (identity management, AI model alignment, software attestation) The mood of money in the econoomy now is being applied to converting frothy QE cash to political influence instead of being invested in innovation. Model alignment, model authenticity, and ability to influence will be valuable.

- (next gen browser tech, virtualization, webasm, react, scripting frameworks) Social platforms are optimizing for hollowing out the value they provided instead of making new products people want, so there are unlimited dollars for anything that sustains their business model a bit longer. Social is the new legacy business model, and they will spend to sustain it the way banks and credit card companies spend to maintain their oligopolies. This means sustaining legacy tech features in browsers that enabled it.

- (PowerBI, python in Excel makes you a wizard) I'd bet on incentives for additional governance roles, where firms will get ESG and tax incentives to hire low tech-skill party affiliates, creating a public sector job consumer bubble. Those jobs are ongoing conversations about higher level metrics that come from these tools.

- (no tech, just a bet) A lot of those jobs will go to childless people without a lot of responsibility, and many will just drink/amuse themselves to death, so get long boxed white wine and short pampers. Luxury goods/bags do well, as they will need new ways to signal status.

- (piecework gig platforms, make google glass shared/augmented reality for toddlers and parents) Reproductive tech and services set for a boom, single parent family management tech could become its own category.

- (LLMs for teaching and testing/exams, higher level abstractions like category theory, graphs, domain specific language design) Premium edu tech to scrape out any tiny advantage in a now-globalized competition between students for university spots. Anything that communicates useful abstractions faster will win.

I'm going to go touch some grass now.

Re: What are emerging/promising areas of tech to get into today?

#40
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the usual problems that you see?

The systems aren’t build to handle the real world. The issue isn’t really technical though, at least not in my opinion. We manage a lot of companies in a lot of different countries and the best fit for us was Microsoft’s BC365, which is frankly still a horrible fit. The issues are mainly related to legislation though, and I’m not sure how you could really plan on disrupting that part of company management even if you…

Is it because the systems are mostly designed on the 80/90 and are just outdated?

I guess you’d have to provide a solid reason for mgmt to invest into something new. So increased UX won’t cut it. AI/automation might, given that we potentially face massive shortages of admin people, looking at western societies. But it’s hard to see a path into companies to even start with this.

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