Ask HN: Tired of all the AI, what other cool tech is out there? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Tired of all the AI, what other cool tech is out there?

95 pointsMariefay44 comments

Lately, I feel like I’m drowning in AI news. Every newsletter I’m subscribed to (engineering, product, or just general tech news) is about the latest AI tool, model, wrapper, or integration. Don’t get me wrong, I use AI tools daily in my work as a tech lead and in my personal life, and I absolutely understand how revolutionary the last couple of years have been.

I just miss hearing about other kinds of innovation, new ideas in hardware, networking, devtools, robotics, programming languages, weird side projects. It feels like 90% of the conversation is now monopolised by AI. I see some in discussions here, but not much outside.

Am I just not looking hard enough, or in the wrong place? Is anyone here working on/with super cool tech that is not AI?

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There is sooooo much cool tech right now.

major advancements in hardware especially. Low cost FPGA's, amazing 3D printing tech, drones, its endless. There are some really interesting things happening in headsets for brainwave computer interfaces as well. Theres radar, microwave and ultrasonic. Open source investigations, tons of security advances, zero knowledge systems, Theres handheld raman spectrometers. Don't forget all the wild ways we can connect socially right now with VR, AR, etc... Theres home lab genetic engineering with high voltage electricity, theres all kinds of new monetary tech, We are on the verge of creating a feasible cure for HIV. If your looking for software based ideas some of my favorite github accounts are @sindresorhus and @mafintosh are always doing something interesting.

In my opinion its harder to decide what not to dive into.

Didn't even know what a raman spectrometer was and had to google it. Interesting stuff for sure, so thank you! Had a look at these github accounts as well and will definitely have a browse in their repos tonight.

Can you link to some low cost FPGA info? I have always been interested in FPGA as a way to improve run speed for certain code.

sure thing! https://a.co/d/hWkyPAw

search amazon for ICESugar-nano

Software Defined Radio (SDR) is amazingly cheap to dip your toes into. For about $40 you can get a little kit of a receiver, and a few antenna that can listen to almost all local transmissions, radio, aircraft, navigation, ham radio, etc. GNU Radio is the toolkit that can let you do almost anything with it, using a GUI front end.

With FreeCAD and a 3d printer, you can make almost anything, including gears, which I'm especially interested in.

With the Arduino IDE, you can program a huge swath of controllers to build almost any control system you need for projects using the above tools.

Gage Blocks are magical, you can spend $200ish, and have precision measured in microns.

All of the above can be leveraged to do almost anything thanks to youtube, and all the people sharing their hobbies. If you want to measure micrograms cheap, or make almost atomically flat surfaces, etc... there's likely more than a few tutorials on the subject.

Thanks to the internet, you could run your own forum, or use an existing one, to meet up with others interested in any given subject.

I've stuck to software all these years because I know hardware is be a dangerous hobby for me to start...I am going to end up with so much stuff because I'll want to try this and this and that but I guess it is worth it at this point! Seems to be so much on that front that I've never played with, and it'll probably push me to start new side projects which is good! Any specific fun tutorials or projects that you would recommend starting with?

Random links:

• Overview with lots of plugs to deep-tech: https://foresight.org

• Casey Handmer is doing cool things with Terraform: https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com https://terraformindustries.wordpress.com

• Third Law building atomically precise catalysts: https://thirdlawtx.com

• HOC doing whatever this is: https://higherorderco.com

For anyone else who is as confused as I was, the Terraform mentioned here isn't Hashicorp Terraform

Thanks for the heads up lol, I would have been really lost on that one

Hashicorp has now Terraform 2, which is planetary climate as code

Terraform does look cool. Too bad all I know how to do is schlep bits around :/

When I get gloomy about current tech stuff I like to read the latest on the "Vesuvius Challenge" - making progress on reading a library's worth of scrolls that literally burned to ashes in the Pompei eruption... who knows what treasures we might get to read in our lifetimes that were lost for 2000 years. Sure, there's some "AI" involved, but it's not just rub-more-AI-on-it dross.

https://scrollprize.org/

https://scrollprize.substack.com/p/april-progress-prizes-upd...

Wow, thanks for sharing this! I had no idea these scrolls even existed, and what a massive challenge it is. Technically and historically. Definitely one of the most interesting application of AI I've seen in a while. I was definitely on the negative side of my "conflicted" feelings about AI when making this post and this has actually made me feel better :)

If you are burned out on AI, web, and SaaS, there's never been a better or more exciting time to get into using 3D printing, other types of home manufacturing, and embedded electronics to build real, physical devices.

Hardware is no longer "scary" - it's almost as easy as web dev now. 3D CAD software like Autodesk Fusion is quick and relatively easy to learn. 3D printers have fully transitioned from crazy nerd toys to affordable, reliable, easy-to-use devices for building real products. Laser cutters, CNC machines, etc., have gotten more accessible than ever. Embedded electronics platforms like ESP32s make it cheap and easy to build real products with modern features even if you don't know any electronics.

You can literally go on Amazon, order a fully self-contained ESP32 dev board with an embedded screen, wifi, usb-c, etc, for $15, design and 3D print an enclosure for it, and use ChatGPT to write a skeleton application for it in seconds. Without pulling out a soldering iron, you can have a GUI-driven custom device for tens of dollars. And if you don't have a 3D printer already, you can get a great one now for sub-$300. All in for $350 and a weekend or two of learning, you can be building custom hardware.

If you are feeling tired of programming but have always thought of hardware as something too far outside of your comfort zone or too much work to mess with, it really has changed. It's a lot of fun. Check it out!

It's really funny how many of the comments here mention 3D printing, I guess there must really be something to it! Thanks for your explanations as well, I didn't realise it had become that cheap (relatively speaking, of course). Never had the money to play with it when it came out but will definitely give it a go. Are second-hand printers a bad idea in general or is it safe?

3D printers have made so much progress in the last 1-2 years that rarely are second-hand printers a good deal unless you just get really lucky finding someone unloading a new model they just didn't use. And even then, you probably won't save very much.

If you are on a budget, buy a brand new Bambu A1 Mini for <$250. You'll get industry-leading quality and ease of use and have a great time. Or if you have a little more tolerance for messing around but want the most possible printer for your money, you can get an Elegoo Centauri Carbon for $300 (it's a cheaper knock-off of the higher-end Bambu P1S and X1C models).

The used market is flooded with cheap old 3D printers right now because the new crop of printers is so much better that the old crop of printers are essentially paperweights. Bambu came along and totally disrupted the market. If someone offers you an old Ender 3 even for free, don't take it. It's a waste of time unless you just want to learn 3D printer mechanics instead of actually printing things. It would be like someone giving you a free horse cart because everyone has moved to cars and they don't want to have to figure out how to get rid of it.

I have a friend who has been given 5 (5!) free Ender 3 printers. It's ruining his life, taken over his house, and he spends all his time not printing things. Just spend $250+ and get something modern.

David Roberts' Volts podcast covers decarbonization technologies (and policies).

Thermal batteries, thermovoltaics, district heating, advanced geothermal, electrolizers, catalysts, etc.

Roberts interviews the doers. Great intros for anyone who wants to learn more.

https://volts.wtf

Its nods towards "AI" are practical, like machine learning (power grid optimization efficiency) and discovery (new molecules) vs vibes and AGI hype.

Thanks! I actually did work in the battery/energy field for a bit, and the automations and optimisations that could be made using AI were definitely interesting and inspiring, if only because of the scale of the impact they could have! Will have a listen to the podcast tonight

I think there is a ton of innovation, much of it taking advantage of the underlying hardware that has been getting more powerful and cheaper and therefore enabling things we didn’t previously dream of. Even little things like those car sensors that make the car shudder when you cross a lane line without indicating. Many of the YC companies seem to come up with things that in theory anybody else could have developed if only they had the imagination. I’ve developed a tool that writes complex reliable software - it wouldn’t be possible without other prior advances in hardware and software. And then there are the specialised businesses that piggyback on LLMs. There is no end of things you could do, and you can increasingly do them yourself.

In some ways, there hasn't been a _ton_ of truly novel and exciting developments in computer science for awhile now. From that perspective (and despite all the annoying hype) - deep learning _is_ super cool and exciting. I mean Alan Turing talked about ideas so similar to this all the way back in the 50's and it's finally coming to fruition!

I can understand why you're looking elsewhere - but I figured I'd reframe the context for those who are passionate about deep learning and have no control over the hype.

There have been even fewer truly novel and exciting developments in the commercial software world.

Anduril Unveils Roadrunner & Roadrunner-M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=al9ITeP4fUA

Just set the string "AI" as a filter and see what's left. That's what I do, yet for me the keyword is not AI.

World of 3d printing must be explored by everybody. I do see a world where we don’t have to order those plastic parts for almost anything. Creating them using 3d software and seeing them come to life gives the same feeling of launching a software product (at least for me)

Spending an evening in Fusion (or even just placing primitives in prusaslicer) and printing out some little plastic piece I need with a few iterations is a great experience. I love printing out the first prototype and immediately seeing some little tweaks that need to be done or optimizations to print it faster or better.

For a quick dive into some accessible CAD, check out https://www.tinkercad.com/

What is the learning curve? Never done any of it before but would like to try!

I would say it's pretty gentle. Most 3D printers these days perform very well out of the box, and there's tons of online stl files to print stuff and get a feel for your printer. After that designing your own things can be in any CAD tool or even a modeling tool like Blender. Fusion 360 is very approachable IMO. For prusa printers, prusaslicer is also serviceable for just putting some primitives together to make objects. After that it's just tweaking stuff as you see things that can be improved. Since smaller objects can be printed relatively fast, it's super quick to see what tweaks do in the real world.

Thanks so much, I'll give it a go!

There's still so much SaaS left to make.

Lots of jobs aren't going to be helped by AI, let's be honest.

Lots of industries, for thousands of years, have been run using pen and napkins.

I've personally worked at a multi billion dollar multinational corp that was basically run off post it notes and emails.

Search for robot humanoid. It’s very advanced nowadays, can dance, do parkour, martial arts, etc. There are several initiatives and easy to discover. Some even look like CG as it’s hard to believe.

Recommended reading: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44088623

I am tired of the headlines here. Is there any sort of a browser extension that would hide all the AI related news? I really don't care about the next LLM model being slightly better in some benchmarks nor do I care for the constant psychosis about AI being about to take away all our jobs or whatever. It's just the same stuff on repeat.

I am working on a platform for learning languages called Emurse. It has some neat features, like tools to help improve your pronunciation. You also have the ability to study content presented in courses in new ways.

We worked with Dogen, a YouTuber that does Japanese comedy videos and pronunciation lessons with a course on Japanese Phonetics and Pitch accent - you can find a link in my profile.

AI has its place, but I am also tired of all the AI slop. That's why we're partnering with creators who have already been producing excellent content to build courses on Emurse.

There's technological revolution going on related to space exploration.

Have you tried lithography

Existentially depressing thread

The post is altogether missing the point which is that AI can be used to vastly lower the barrier to make cool tech that interests you.

I used to blog Four Short Links for O’Reilly Media — every day, four interesting technical things around the net that caught my eye or seemed to be part of a bigger trend.

I have a Real Job now but still collect interesting links. Here’s my 2024 list, from before I got interested in AI. Perhaps some of that is interesting to you, and New To Me is almost as good as New To The World right?

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1S9pK6EYiJvRlBDdlIoNQCOkV...

I admit that I’m no longer trawling with a wide net. Interesting to me professionally and interesting to me based on what I already know are weighting that list heavily. They’re pretty “adjacent possible” is what I’m saying.

Beyond those, the trends I’d be watching are:

* Apple took chip design in house and the results are incredible. I’d be watching for other companies following suit, which industries/players does it make most sense for, are there any low hanging fruits in this world, what does it do for hiring, and then downstream for education?

* Quantum Computing is still in the physics phase of research. There are bullshit artists, claims and counter claims. I’d be trying to take a position on whether national security is the biggest driver or whether there’s commercial investment logic yet. Does NatSec tech even matter in an age of Doge? The technical advances themselves are still coming slowly. There was a Queensland U podcast that I followed for a while, and I’d dive in by looking for its spiritual successor.

* correctly implementing distributed systems seems like a rich company’s achievement because of the teams and systems required. I’m watching for systems that let teams of 8 build an “enterprise” product that can survive network and software outages without a massive ops team and platform engineers and and and

* AR/VR fizzled as virtual escapism and The Next Big Things. I’m interested in moving beyond physical monitors. Is it possible? Is it healthy? The VR advocates sneer at “just looking at monitors fixed in space”. That seems like low hanging fruit given I walk around offices full of monitors every day. I want to understand why we still have physical monitors and look for ways to replace them.

* privacy. Capitalism drove investment and development of ever more tracking and data exfiltration. I’d be looking for intermediaries like PiHole as ways civilians can limit tracking and exfiltration. Bit screwed for phones when every app is phoning home with fingerprints and metadata galore. Advances in this area excite me, as tech bandaids before the regulation that is the only way the big players will get reined in.

I don’t know enough about fab techniques to pay attention to nanometres news, but I do know the political topsy turvy will be interesting there in terms of who develops, protects, and houses advances in chip manufacturing.

Space tech doesn’t interest me. Med tech does but it’s very hard to separate press release hype from substance and then to understand the future based on that substance. No medical degree and too old to pack a PhD from ChatGPT U into my noggin.

I like my job but I miss being in a place where people would pitch me to get me excited by their tech and businesses and vision of the future. Tim O’Reilly’s “create more value than you capture” was my first filter, and it was good to have a source of excitement and optimism from what passed that. I reckon we all could do with a little more of that.

Thanks for sharing that list Nat! I'll have a proper read through it today, but I have already spotted a few entries that I want to dig into!!

> I want to understand why we still have physical monitors and look for ways to replace them. -> This is also a topic I have been interested in, but I have never had a chance to try the latest products myself, mostly due to the costs and the fact that I am not based in the US. Did you try any yourself?

I am in the same boat for space and med tech. I do have a degree in physics, in which I did some quantum physics and quantum computing basics. I really enjoyed it, back then, and have been keeping an eye on the latest advancements since then, but haven't dug in too much. Might be a good time to do so!

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