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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?

#61

Post by notpushkin »

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…

There's a problem though: either you have to ban transferring NFTs (or other tokens), which makes those a lot less useful, or you need something to prevent double spend attacks (something that blockchain solves).

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

#66

Post by denton-scratch »

When I was at school (a long time ago), they tried to explain computers to us by making an adder using beads and matchboxes. We didn't have classroom computers back then. I'd like to know how that worked.

I've always wanted to build a digital clock entirely running on fluids. It would use fluid gates, and present a digital display by pushing blobs of coloured immiscible liquids back and forth through glass tubes (perhaps arranged as a seven-segment display). The counter itself would be made using fluid gates (which I don't know how to make). It would be slow; but for a wallclock with minute precision, you hardly need nanosecond gates.

So I wish "fluidonics" were popular.

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

#68

Post by lrobinovitch »

kaycebasques wrote: post #59

Sphinx [1] gets my vote. It's the docs system that powers most sites in the Python ecosystem so it probably looks familiar to you. I call it a docs system rather than static site generator because the web is just one of many output targets it supports. To tap into its full power you need to author in a markup that predates Markdown called reStructuredText (reST). It's very similar to Markdown (MD) so it's never bothe…

A Sphinx plugin[0] allows for writing in markdown, and I'd heavily encourage using it if you're looking to get widespread adoption of sphinx on a project or at a workplace. Rst is fine once you learn it but removing barriers to entry is useful.

[0] https://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/master/usage/markdown.html

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

#70

Post by layer8 »

edw519 wrote: post #12

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pick_operating_system This has accounted for about 90% of everything I've built since 1985. Pick code generates my side project: https://eddiots.com/1

Collection of books about Pick: https://jes.com/downloads
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