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Ask HN: What are some unpopular technologies you wish people knew more about?

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Re: Ask HN: What are some unpopular technologies you wish people knew more about?

#401

Post by 8bitsrule »

calamari4065 wrote: post #299
8bitsrule wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nature, almost completely analog, has been around a thousand times longer than humans. How many times has 'evolution' used digital methods to accomplish something? Perhaps we've chosen to switch to digital because we're in a hurry and its easier ... in hopes of, some day, asymptotically approaching the advantages of analog.

The main reason is that digital computers are so incredibly, overwhelmingly more flexible than analog. Analog computers are (generally) bespoke single-purpose devices. It really isn't too far off to imagine analog computers as code made physical, with all that entails. Imagine writing a program if every time you wanted to change something you had to cut a new gear, or design a new mechanism, or build a new circuit. I…

>overwhelmingly more flexible than analog.

Perhaps that's only because we haven't begun to understand analog yet. And our crude original perceptions have long suffered for being ignored. For example, I have yet to actually hear any digital music yet ... that didn't have to pass through a DtoA converter. Hell, we may even learn that braining is not really the product of individual neurons at all, but a coordinated ballet oscillating like seaweed. I'll go bigger: is consciousness analog?

Re: Ask HN: What are some unpopular technologies you wish people knew more about?

#402

Post by 8bitsrule »

garaetjjte wrote: post #344
8bitsrule wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nature, almost completely analog, has been around a thousand times longer than humans. How many times has 'evolution' used digital methods to accomplish something? Perhaps we've chosen to switch to digital because we're in a hurry and its easier ... in hopes of, some day, asymptotically approaching the advantages of analog.

DNA is digital. I think crucial digital feature is ability to have exact result from imperfect components, especially important for self-replicating systems. Instead of having calculation that is always off by 1%, you can have perfect result 99% of the time. And you can improve MTBF by stacking error correction on top of it, without necessarily having to improve manufacturing tolerances.

You may conceptualize it as digital, as most of our modern mythology does with appearances these days. But does that really correspond with the ding-an-sich? Or, again, how much analog developent happened before our rush to commoditize everything as quickly as possible?

'Imperfect components' is a value judgement. Apparently an analog world was a necessary part of self-replicating 'mechanisms' arising while floating in the analog seas.

Re: Ask HN: What are some unpopular technologies you wish people knew more about?

#403

Post by JoeyJoJoJr »

koonsolo wrote: post #383
JoeyJoJoJr wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow that is really impressive! What other libraries are you using. And do you have you have much experience with using the non-web targets?

I'm also using box2d for collisions and simple physics. And the rest is custom written. No experience with other platforms yet. Probably iOS will follow at some point, but I want it to be more feature complete first.

Nice. Zui is a library worth checking out if you haven’t already :)

Re: Ask HN: What are some unpopular technologies you wish people knew more about?

#404

Post by staticBr »

mmillin wrote: post #24

GnuPG/PGP and the web of trust[0]. A lot of things I see blockchain being used for today (e.g. NFTs) seems like it would be better solved using standard OpenPGP signatures with no backing chain. Additionally, as machine-generated content proliferates, I think having services use something like the web of trust concept for membership would be super powerful. The problem is, of course, the terrible UX of cryptographic…

Well thank you! I think that so often ...

Re: Ask HN: What are some unpopular technologies you wish people knew more about?

#406

Post by Shadowed_ »

mirthturtle wrote: post #62

Unpopular, at least compared to cars: e-bikes. - costs next to nothing to charge - fast and fun to get around - never pay for parking - cheap maintenance - hauls groceries easily - good exercise

All of this applies to regular bikes even more :) Specially the last one.

Re: Ask HN: What are some unpopular technologies you wish people knew more about?

#407

Post by silentguy »

calamari4065 wrote: post #299
8bitsrule wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nature, almost completely analog, has been around a thousand times longer than humans. How many times has 'evolution' used digital methods to accomplish something? Perhaps we've chosen to switch to digital because we're in a hurry and its easier ... in hopes of, some day, asymptotically approaching the advantages of analog.

The main reason is that digital computers are so incredibly, overwhelmingly more flexible than analog. Analog computers are (generally) bespoke single-purpose devices. It really isn't too far off to imagine analog computers as code made physical, with all that entails. Imagine writing a program if every time you wanted to change something you had to cut a new gear, or design a new mechanism, or build a new circuit. I…

Configurability needs branching, and branching is inherently digital. Maybe that's why digital is more configurable than analog.

Re: Ask HN: What are some unpopular technologies you wish people knew more about?

#408

Post by calamari4065 »

8bitsrule wrote: post #401
calamari4065 wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main reason is that digital computers are so incredibly, overwhelmingly more flexible than analog. Analog computers are (generally) bespoke single-purpose devices. It really isn't too far off to imagine analog computers as code made physical, with all that entails. Imagine writing a program if every time you wanted to change something you had to cut a new gear, or design a new mechanism, or build a new circuit. I…

>overwhelmingly more flexible than analog. Perhaps that's only because we haven't begun to understand analog yet. And our crude original perceptions have long suffered for being ignored. For example, I have yet to actually hear any digital music yet ... that didn't have to pass through a DtoA converter. Hell, we may even learn that braining is not really the product of individual neurons at all, but a coordinated bal…

I'm not sure you understand what we're talking about. You seem to be talking about analog electronics, where I'm talking about computation with mechanical or electrical analogs of physical systems.

Both domains are extremely well understood. Analog electronics is an incredibly deep field, and forms the foundations of basically all of our electronic infrastructure. For instance, the transceivers that power cell stations are all analog and are incredibly complex. This stuff would seem like alien magic to anyone from even 30 years ago. The sheer magnitude of complexity in modern analog circuits cannot be overstated.

As for analog computing, well, it's just math. We can design analog computers as complex as our understanding of the physics of the system we want to model. There's not really any magic here. If we can express a physical system in equations, we can "simply" build a machine that computes that equation.

> I have yet to actually hear any digital music yet ... that didn't have to pass through a DtoA converter.

This is simply not true. There are plenty of ways to turn a digital signal into sound without an intermediate analog stage. See PC speakers, piezo buzzers, the floppotron. You can also just pump a square wave directly into a speaker and get different tones by modulating the pulse width.

The reason we use an intermediate analog stage for audio is because direct digital drive sounds like total trash. I won't go too much into it, but physics means that you can't reproduce a large range of frequencies, and you will always get high frequency noise that sounds like static.

Edit: I didn't notice your username before. All 8 bit systems make heavy use of the square wave voice, which is a digital signal. But it's typically passed through an analog filter to make it sound less bad. Music on e.g., the first IBM PCs was purely digital, played through a piezo beeper on the motherboard.

Re: Ask HN: What are some unpopular technologies you wish people knew more about?

#409

Post by calamari4065 »

pyinstallwoes wrote: post #379
calamari4065 wrote: post #235

Analog computation. I don't mean just vacuum tubes or even electronics at all. Mechanical analog computing is insane when you get down to it. You have special shapes that move against each other and do calculus . We make these mechanical models as analogs of more complex physical systems. We can turn huge calculations into relatively simple machines. That we can roll two weirdly shaped gears together and get an integ…

What are some... surprising and relatively easy ways to feel the magic of analog computation?

Slide rules, for a start. This Wikipedia page contains a lot of magic as well: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_analyser

As for something you can easily get your hands on, micrometers are incredible. A simple screw and graduated markings on the shaft and nut give you incredibly precise measurements. You can also find mechanical calculators (adding machines) on eBay. But those really aren't very sexy examples of the concepts.

Analog computers aren't very common anymore. Your best bet is visiting one of the computer museums that house antique machines. Or watching YouTube videos of people showing them off. There's plenty of mechanical flight computers in particular on YouTube.

If you have access to a 3D printer, there's plenty of mechanisms one can print. The antikythera mechanism is a very interesting celestial computer from ancient times, and 3D models exist online.

Re: Ask HN: What are some unpopular technologies you wish people knew more about?

#410

Post by calamari4065 »

silentguy wrote: post #407
calamari4065 wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main reason is that digital computers are so incredibly, overwhelmingly more flexible than analog. Analog computers are (generally) bespoke single-purpose devices. It really isn't too far off to imagine analog computers as code made physical, with all that entails. Imagine writing a program if every time you wanted to change something you had to cut a new gear, or design a new mechanism, or build a new circuit. I…

Configurability needs branching, and branching is inherently digital. Maybe that's why digital is more configurable than analog.

No, that's not really the problem. You can implement branching of a sorts in analog, but branching isn't a very useful concept here.

The strength of digital is that your logic is implemented as information instead of physical pieces. Your CPU contains all the hardware to perform any operation, and your code is what directs the flow of information. When you get down to bare basics, the CPU is a pretty simple machine without much more complexity than a clockwork mechanism. It's an extremely fascinating subject and I very highly recommend Ben Eater's breadboard CPU videos on YouTube. But I digress.

The real trick is that digital computers are general purpose. They can compute any problem that is computable, with no physical changes. It's purely information that drives the system. An analog computer is a single-purpose device[0] designed to compute a very specific set of equations which directly model a physical system. Any changes to that set of equations requires physical changes to the machine.

[0] general purpose analog computers do exist, but generally they're actually performing digital logic. There have only been a few general purpose true-analog computers ever designed AFAIK. See Babbage's difference engine.

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