Ask HN: What are you explicitly expecting from tech in 2022? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What are you explicitly expecting from tech in 2022?

11 pointsDrNuke19 comments

We are seeing so many tech announcements nowadays but rarely follow the actual deployment or even basic implementation. That said, what will actually come in 2022? Ancient life proof found in minerals from Mars, anti-cancer mRNA vaccine breakthrough, foldable/rollable smartphones, robotics hardware/software achieving singularity, etc. etc.? As DrNuke myself, I am eagerly looking forward to another nuclear fusion “revolutionary” announcement or two, you never know it might be the one!

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Considering the ongoing global warming, maybe advances in nuclear power would be welcome.

And also advances in solar and batteries of course!

I’m quite excited about what Northvolt, H2 Green Steel and SSAB are doing in northern Sweden.

Addendum: When it comes to “tech” (or IT as we used to call it) I’m hoping to see advances in authentication so that maybe one day one doesn’t need to keep track of 300 passwords.

Here's to hoping for:

Nuclear Fusion -> https://scitechdaily.com/fusion-breakthrough-at-the-brink-of...

New Battery Tech -> I swear I see battery breaktrhoughs every other week but it never seems to go anywhere https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltaylor/2021/05/13/ev-ran...

More and better VR -> I'm not talking about Metaverse although that will certainly boost it, I mean further incremental advancements in what we have now ( I love my Oculus despite requiring a FB login ).

I'm not looking for major breakthroughs in science and technology, though always welcome. I'd like some basic things: (1) desktop linux to be a thing, (2) AR/VR to be mainstream, (3) a unified app platform (web, mobiles) maybe Flutter.

(+) One thing I'd like to see in my lifetime but perhaps won't is undoing so many years of 'have humans think like machines' programming languages replaced by functional or declarative for the mainstream.

> (1) desktop linux to be a thing

Reads this from firefox on a linux desktop

I recently transitioned from macOS and yes it isn't as polished, but some areas are actually surprisingly better. And it feels nice knowing when I go try to fix a problem by making a PR or issues on something it's helping the ecosystem a little not just pissing away life and energy into the Apple forums or whatever.

>desktop linux to be a thing,

People at work joke that maybe "2022 will be the year of Linux on the desktops".

I use Popos linux distribution (if you're interested on a Thinkpad x1 carbon) and my desktop is mostly the same as theirs on MacOS (maybe not as pretty). i.e. (vscode/vim, terminal, firefox/chrome). Docker is not a pita as it is on the Mac. I've been a mac user for a long time, until about a few years back when I took the plunge.

I know people have this view that linux users spend endless amounts of time tweaking and getting simple things to work (like wifi/bluetooth). I certainly don't, maybe becz I'm using a Thinkpad.

Dunno why people don't give it a shot.

I still have a Linux desktop machine but it doesn't get used a whole lot. Last time I tried Xubuntu on a laptop it still had problems with HiDPI and battery life. What's holding me back now is that I've switched to using a custom keyboard mapping and only made macOS/Windows layouts for it. If I can source a hardware USB mapper that would work, otherwise I have to do it twice again for Linux console and graphical.

There's a lot of abstraction needed for a unified app platform, as a lot of it is communication with hardware layers.

It'll probably end up like Flutter at best. But there's a lot of code that people haven't wrote, and both mobile platforms are changing fast enough that there will continually be more code. To expect a solid unified platform is to expect no further changes on the native layers. Something like a new method for exif would still be quick to port over, but a change like scoped storage means older code would have to be rewritten. On top of that, there's a lot of undocumented behavior when you go deep enough, and the problem becomes squared with an abstraction layer.

It's not impossible, but it's a variation of low code, with all the ups and down.

I would like to see more declarative programming though. I think GPT-3's prompt engineering sets a good example of what could be. We're still thinking like machines, except machines will be thinking like children in the future.

One or two new JavaScript frameworks ;)

I expect a huge cyberattack that will take out power lines for a large portion of the USA for a prolonged period of time.

I honestly hope you're wrong but damn that and its development would be something interesting to see.

The US government discloses to the public that we are not alone in the universe and that advanced aerial technology is and has frequently been present in our airspace. Credible research is then carried out on the data collected my military sensors and the study of UAPs loses its academic stigma.

I'd love if this were true but I highly doubt it.

The only thing I expect in 2022 is a new iPhone and probably a new macbook air.

There are too many variables to say anything about what happens in a given year.

I'm very hyped for where AI will go. It's like the Internet in 1993. We're seeing a lot of toys out now and a few practical uses. In a decade we'll still see a lot of toys and more practical uses, but it might take a bit more time to really see lifechanging stuff. It's quite likely many will switch to working with AI by 2025, in the same way many switched to working on React now.

An iPhone with a hole punch cutout instead of a notch. I hope I'm not asking for too much

in 2022? Nothing much, its too near to the present timeline.

Less stupidity

universal flu vaccine?

That would be awesome.

Breakthroughs in virus elimination/treatment could really be useful for us humans.

Right now SARS‑CoV‑2 is in the limelight but caliciviruses, rhinoviruses and enteroviruses are no walk in the park either.

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