IEEE Spectrum is still fairly decent. MIT Technology Review is ok, it never grabs me and makes me want to read it frequently though.
Video Friday is cool
Ask HN: Where do you find weird and wonderful future tech nowadays?
31–40 of 56 posts
Re: Ask HN: Where do you find weird and wonderful future tech nowadays?
#32HN has really embraced our current techno-pessimistic culture, so all the things that get on trashed here are definitely worth looking into. And no, I'm not joking. In the old days, HN had split brain, so things would both get trashed and celebrated - the famous Dropbox thread ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 )? The top comment is gently dismissive, but overall the thread is also quite encouraging. Twitter…
Self-driving cars are a bad example for your argument because self-driving cars really are very restricted in their regions of operation. Yes, self-driving cars can work in Arizona where everything is flat, dry, and unobscured. But they just don't work in most parts of the country for half the year because of snow covering markings, emergent lane flocking that has nothing to do with actual lanes, and other winter driving fun. Autonomous cars won't work in these vast regions of the world until they can do the wrong thing the same way humans do.
The hype surrounding them is, and always has been, hype. No substance.
Re: Ask HN: Where do you find weird and wonderful future tech nowadays?
#33Tech has gone mainstream so these stories are everywhere now. The Nytimes, WSJ, Washington Post all have tech sections and if you don’t read large national “papers”, you read about them at whatever news aggregator you have. This is no longer niche news but part of everybody’s daily information diet.
I don’t read the NYTimes technology section frequently, but whenever I have it’s always seemed more like a “Silicon Valley-themed politics” section to me. Not at all like any of the technology magazines/websites mentioned by the OP.
Re: Ask HN: Where do you find weird and wonderful future tech nowadays?
#34Tech has gone mainstream so these stories are everywhere now. The Nytimes, WSJ, Washington Post all have tech sections and if you don’t read large national “papers”, you read about them at whatever news aggregator you have. This is no longer niche news but part of everybody’s daily information diet.
I don’t read the NYTimes technology section frequently, but whenever I have it’s always seemed more like a “Silicon Valley-themed politics” section to me. Not at all like any of the technology magazines/websites mentioned by the OP.
Just a smattering of articles from the last week:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/07/science/robots-pancake-ju...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/07/travel/biometrics-airport...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/06/technology/tesla-autopilo...
Which is the sort of thing they had in Wired and Omni. (We should be careful not to romanticize the omni/wired days. They weren't deep technical articles like HN has, but still interesting new tech that was somewhat hyped up.)
Re: Ask HN: Where do you find weird and wonderful future tech nowadays?
#35My theory is that it has basically gone underground (private groups on Slack, Signal, Discord, etc and maybe some public-yet-opaque activity on Twitter) along with much of the rest of the internet. Weird and wonderful tech is by definition something that threatens the status quo, and having a public presence could attract unwanted attention by hostile journalists or even law enforcement. This has been called the dark…
This is correct. They keep a low profile.
Re: Ask HN: Where do you find weird and wonderful future tech nowadays?
#36You don't. There isn't any. The reason why is explained here: https://thebaffler.com/salvos/of-flying-cars-and-the-declini...
Thank you. That was one of the most interesting article I've ever read from HN
Re: Ask HN: Where do you find weird and wonderful future tech nowadays?
#37My theory is that it has basically gone underground (private groups on Slack, Signal, Discord, etc and maybe some public-yet-opaque activity on Twitter) along with much of the rest of the internet. Weird and wonderful tech is by definition something that threatens the status quo, and having a public presence could attract unwanted attention by hostile journalists or even law enforcement. This has been called the dark…
Discord is where I go to get help with any technology. It's not much different than being on IRC when I was younger though -- same sort of scenario.
My Discord is half a decade old now, hard to believe:
> Created: , XX Oct 2016
Re: Ask HN: Where do you find weird and wonderful future tech nowadays?
#38Lately, I've taken a liking to low energy tech, permacomputing, solarpunk, etc. Writing on those topics is scattered among subreddits, certain blogs (e.g., 100 Rabbits) and forums, and various Medium and Substack posts.
Care to toss out names of subreddits?
Re: Ask HN: Where do you find weird and wonderful future tech nowadays?
#39[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Where do you find weird and wonderful future tech nowadays?
#40Sounds lame I know, but really (for when I want an overview or maybe to pass time): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerging_technologies and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerging_technologies#See_also ?