Ask HN: What new technology is about to become big? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What new technology is about to become big?

15 pointsFridayoLeary18 comments

I wonder, what will replace traditional devices. If sci fi movies are right, the future will be holographic displays. Meta seems to think it's the metaverse, which sounds to me like it could be VR (They couldn't possibly be so pathetic as to imagine a simple super app could pass as a "metaverse"). The 1970's vision of a space age and major advancements in biology and nuclear tech, while computer tech seems to stagnate doesn't seem to be happening. So what particular area(s) do you think will see major breakthroughs over the next few decades?

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I think that various methods for decreasing water usage has a chance of becoming very popular.

Examples:

Do we really have to use toilets that flush with potable water? Can we either use gray water for this, or come up with alternative solutions that require less water?

Do we have to shower using potable water? For example, I’ve seen technology for reusing shower water. See e.g. https://orbital-systems.com/ for one possible solution in this space.

There are probably lots of other examples where the use of (potable) water could be reduced.

I want to throw a bunch of micro-robots on the top of my head and let them cut my hair exactly the way I want. I don't want to brush my teeth at night: I just put a bunch of micro-robots, let them to their job and spit them out at the end. Cutting my nails? Micro-robots can do that. Showering? A thing of the past; micro-robots will keep me clean 24/7. Like, can you imagine the humans of the year 2200 doing all these little things by themselves?

It just seems to be so unreal that we are so excited about AR/VR, but we can't even make technology that gets us a decent haircut.

There's a lot of documentaries about how damn hard it is to animate hair. It seems like one of those things that's incredibly complex, but we take for granted because it's everywhere.

But if you look back 200 years ago, things like ice and communication aren't nearly as available as they are now. The micro-robots thing isn't so insane. 2 years ago, I thought robot vacuums were ridiculous, now most of my middle class friends have one.

Electrification of our world. Instead of gas/oil, electricity will be the primary method for us to heat, cook, drive and play.

An old technology is about to take over, cabsec - capability based security. It's been around since IBM's MVT (1967) in one for or another. Multics, CapROS, KeyKOS, etc.

The key feature is that the default access isn't that of the user account, but no access to any given resource, unless supplied as a capability by the user. It is not the checkbox access right bits found in smartphones and tablets.

We need to be able to run mobile code without having to trust it. Capabilities allow this to happen. If implemented correctly, we should be able to get rid of virus scanners and that layer of band-aids when it gets implemented.

I'd guestimate we're still 5-10 years out.

Funny enough, I think the SteamDeck is going to open up a lot of opportunities that have never been adequately addressed in the gaming world.

What the iPhone did for apps, the SteamDeck will likely do for video games.

Good answer

It’s possible that Linux gaming is about to become huge

There’s an old (7 years?) Q&A interview with Linus Torvalds where someone asks him about "linux on the desktop". After ranting about the craziness of packaging apps for all the different distros he specifically says Valve could be the company that drives standardization for that.

Thought it was interesting that he forsaw valve getting so involved in Linux back then.

Excited to see the effect of SteamOS/SteamDeck on the Linux ecosystem in general

Me too.

I think the consequences are actually rather deep, especially in the competitive gaming space, which for the most part, pales in comparison to the NBA, NFL, etc.

I believe most games have been held back by developers constantly patching games.

And occasionally from companies like Nintendo that restrict nearly everything that can be done on their platform.

I'm not big on open source as being a solution for most problems. Copyright and capturing value are fantastic business models.

But I think competitive video games are one of the spaces that can take advantage of open-source very well.

Because the best games mature organically, bottom up, from trial and error.

Take for example a game like chess. The rules are stable, well-known, and the meta continued to evolve for centuries. A similar phenomena happened in Starcraft when Blizzard didn't do any major patches for years.

Historically developers have prevented games from flourishing and restricted their potential, marred by bad incentives.

It's much easier to design for a platform where the specs don't consistently change. With a greater pool of developers, there's more incentive to create on this platform.

I personally believe a generic video game creator would do very well. Something for an FPS game, a Super Smash Melee-like game, where you can edit the rules, speed, design levels, etc.

The major reason this didn't happen on the iPhone is because of the lack of controls. Touchscreen just isn't as good.

Valve was big on Linux at least since 2012 (9 years ago)

Personally, I like the idea of gaming on my personal time and working on my PC. Work from home means I have to set aside more boundaries, so now I have over 300 steam games I'm never going to touch.

Mobile games have been horrid. I've bought all the good ones I could find, and they're still pretty dumb. There's nothing to the level of Factorio or Cities Skylines. There's a Conquest of Elysium 3 port for Android, which is painful to squint on, but PC has Conquest of Elysium 5.

The Switch looks nice, but it's still limited to games I don't really play. And if I do play them I'd have to buy them a second time.

I've always thought it was a big sign that Sam Altman quit his job as president of YC to be CEO of OpenAI. He's a damn smart dude. He can work on literally anything in the world at this point and chose to focus on AGI instead of say, nuclear fusion, though he expects both to be more accessible by 2025. [1]

[1] https://twitter.com/sama/status/1081584255510155264

Anything with a better user interface will replace traditional devices. Computers are still too difficult to use. It seems like VR/AR is primarily a computer interface that is easier to use because everyone already knows how to navigate reality. It still seems a long way from being able to emulate reality well enough to be a good computer user interface however. My guess is that some kind of general AI is needed to make computers truly easy to use.

> I wonder, what will replace traditional devices.

Looking back through history you can see that the average home has slowly become automated via; washing machines, dish washers, and more recently robotic vacuum cleaners.

Using this trend I believe there will be more home automation devices which will be affordable. Trash robots (deal with taking out the trash), gardening robots (tend to the garden), delivery robots (fetch deliveries from the front door).

The future is unknowable, but we do know that robotic devices are becoming much cheaper and applications of them within the home are limitless.

XR. Better Blockchain technologies with actual functions, and not as scammy. Advanced molecular physics for new materials, medicine, quantum physics and research in general.

AR.

As soon as we have a non terrible, hip, commercial AR product by a company like Apple, expect it to blow up like crazy.

The use cases for AR are actually realistic and practical. Education, construction, healthcare, natural resources extraction, and so many other industries will benefit from it.

Just beat the ad tech companies to it, so when the hardware is finally viable you can flood the ecosystem with new water.

Ephemeral cloud based software development environments.

"Every time you npm install rando software from the internet you are essentially playing Russian roulette that your workstation isn't gonna get pwned"

See https://ghuntley.com/anywhere

Miniature nuclear reactors for long deep space missions.

As soon as new type of battery will have been invented, flying taxi would became a huge thing.

After cold fusion - all other power tech including most “green” one would die.

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