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Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

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Re: Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

#321

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

CryoLogic wrote: post #9
tlrobinson wrote: post #2

The converse is possibly even more interesting: what tech were you convinced would fail but took the world by storm?

Snapchat. But than again if we look at their finances (and stock), they have always been in the red and are resorting to selling glasses and hotdog costumes now (huge losses). So maybe they aren't that successful after all.

Yes, that one totally got me as well...

An app whose only novel idea is that the messages and photos you send delete themselves after some time, except for the fact that once they're in your friend's phone, they can of course take a screencap, or just have an app installed to store them... so the whole idea is based on cluelessness about basic security... and yet, there it is.

Re: Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

#323

Post by fsloth »

hvidgaard wrote: post #252
fsloth wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh oh, I think I'm about to rant. Scuse me. Given how cheap even powerful general purpose computers are I don't think they ever will be prized beyond availability. Aficionados, internet stores, arm, Linux, market forces, etc. To some part, good riddance. Software engineers and product designers are the reason the PC is effectively broken by design in UX. Because they are inexcusably slow. There is 0 reason anything I…

> My friggin circa 1984 Mac Plus felt faster on most stuff than the generic desktop PC You do have some merit to the argument, but your 1984 Mac didn't have half as "pretty" UI, and that matters to some people. It didn't do dynamic language processing to figure out if you've made a grammatical error. It did not have to continuously scan every data stream for malware. It did not have to use a significantly restricted…

You are repeating the same excuses the industry has pilfered to us for decades.

"It didn't do dynamic language processing "

Which could very well do it's stuff in a different thread and execution context given the actual payload such a system needs to transfer from a wordprocessor is trivially small. Then notify user. Don't rob the system of its low latency just because you want to run the analysis in the same thread because it's "simpler". It's simpler only if low latency is not a fundamental requirement.

"It did not have to continuously scan every data stream for malware"

Which can be considered a one more defect of the system which I forgot to lambast. Sandbox my wordprocessor, let me operate in realtime in unsafe environment and once I'm moving something out of the sandbox, then do the analysis.

"your 1984 Mac didn't have half as "pretty" UI,"

This argument is moot. Pretty UI:s are computationally a tenth or hundredth of the complexity of an AAA title. Unless one does it wrong. And if the system does not provide enough horsepower, provide a backup! Reduce the computational load! Cut the transparencies, freeze the animations, etc.

Re: Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

#324

Post by gozur88 »

grahamburger wrote: post #134

3D printing. Turns out making little plastic shapes isn't all that useful. Seems obvious in hindsight.

The jury is still out on this one. 3D printing is used for some pretty serious industrial items, like rocket engines. Ultimately I think it's going to replace milling in most applications because you can print shapes you can't mill.

Re: Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

#328

Post by fidrelity »

michaelchisari wrote: post #14

The blockchain. A strange thing to say when Bitcoin is nearing $8k each, but I'm not interested in cryptocurrencies as an abstract store of value based on the fever of the market. By now, however, I really thought someone would have found a use for the blockchain as the underpinning of some kind of new app or tech that would be able to create real value for bitcoin or whichever crypto they built it on. However, we ju…

What do you think about the Brave Browser?

While it's just a Chromium with an integrated ad blocker + no-track, I think their curated publisher model might change the online ad industry for the better!

Re: Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

#330

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

tlrobinson wrote: post #2

The converse is possibly even more interesting: what tech were you convinced would fail but took the world by storm?

Instagram.

Sharing pictures and comenting on them, like Fotolog.com in the early 2000s, but more closed (it didn't want you to browse photos on mobile without the app)... yeah, revolutionary.

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