Ask HN: What tech that's right around the corner are you most excited about? - Kevin_S
======
nulagrithom
New, exciting tech making its way in to boring, old industries. And I mean
_boring_ , _old_ industries.

There's an unbelievable amount of backwards business process that's still out
there. Unless you've experienced it first hand, I really don't think you can
fully appreciate how manual the "business world" still is.

For the past year I've been working with an intermodal trucking company
building an app for owner-operator truck drivers so they can accept/reject
deliveries, turn in paperwork, and update delivery statuses via a mobile app.
If that sounds dead simple, it's because it is. But the change it brings is
amazing.

While deploying the app I'd often ask when so-and-so truck driver came in to
the office. The answer was usually something like "every day at 5:00pm to drop
off his paperwork". A week after they start using the app, the answer suddenly
turns in to "Oh, he _never_ comes in to the office. You'll have to call his
cell."

Dispatchers that were tearing their hair out trying to get updates from their
drivers so they can in turn update their customers now feel like they can
manage double the trucks. They're asking if they can get a similar app on
their phone so they can manage their drivers on the go. Managers are asking
when they'll be able to ditch the office space they're renting and let
everyone work from home.

When I tell people "It's like Uber for intermodal trucking", nobody cares. If
they pretend to care, I have to explain what intermodal trucking is in the
first place -- then they stop pretending. It doesn't sound "sexy". It's a
boring industry.

I think there's a lot of boring industry out there that hasn't fully embraced
technology, and I think when it finally does we'll see a cultural change in
the way we view work.

~~~
terminalcommand
I'm interning at a law firm, two days ago I spent 4+ hours searching through
public announcements on a government website. Me and a my colleague searched
through the announcements of 500+ companies in the last 3 years. We ctrl+f'ed
certain words, if they were present we noted the decision date, it was that
simple. But the government website had a flashy UI with Ajax that required
multiple clicks to get a list of announcements for a single year.

If the government had provided an API, the same task could be accomplished in
a matter of minutes.

Likewise, most law offices have FileStore's or DMS's (Document Management
System). These technologies are old and slow. If they used something like
Algolia or Apache Lucene on a beefy server, the productivity would increase
multiple-folds.

Another thing I want to mention is automated translation software. Most
contracts we write are in dual languages. People usually slightly modify terms
from earlier contracts. If there were a software that could identify
identical/similar blocks and find their translation, the productivity increase
would be substantial.

I wonder why these firms do not invest in IT. Being a corporate lawyer in 21st
century is not that far away from being a coder. You primarily work with your
computer, only instead of writing computer code, you write rules in natural
languages. Programmers have IDEs, Lawyers still use MS Office products with
lots of add-ons.

~~~
soulchild37
I remember someone posted a comment regarding why Lawyer doesnt want to
improve productivity before in HN. It's because lawyer usually charge client
per hour, the more hour the lawyer spend on work the more he/she get paid,
there's a negative incentive on reducing work hours this way.

~~~
terminalcommand
Lawyers bill by the hour, that's right. However there is almost always a race
against time. You can always do the work slower/write more hours. But you
can't speed up the work, if you don't have the tools.

In large offices, IMHO people get billed with their capacity to pay. It has
not much to do with the hours lawyers put in. If the client has the money,
lawyers put in more hours. Every piece of paper lawyers print gets billed to
you. Every cab fare, every x and y, you imagine. On top of all this lawyers
need to bill hours so they don't get fired. But I'd rather bill hours doing
serious research than manual labor.

------
allpratik
ARKit.

Apple has solved few real world AR problems, which were usually hard for an
average app developer to get started with. But with ARKit, apple, is "trying"
to do the heavy lifting in terms of plane and object recognition etc.

Another thing is the platform of distribution. People will use AR apps, which
will hit the app store after September like crazy. And these same people, will
be primary audience for Apple headset.

It's like, before releasing headset, Apple is proving people that you really
need a headset to overcome the pain of "continuously" moving your phone in the
space.

Also, other OS and vendors will follow the trend and release AR compatible
phones/hardware early. The only potential pitfall, I see is, battery usage. If
it's properly optimised, I think a large AR wave on smartphones is about to
hit.

Just my 2 cents!

~~~
amelius
Why do you think AR will become a "thing"?

Do people really want to run around wearing glasses/headsets all the time?

If you'd ask me, this idea could just as well end the same way as 3D TV.

~~~
jedberg
> Do people really want to run around wearing glasses/headsets all the time?

Absolutely! If I could wear some regular looking glasses that could identify
objects, give me directions, etc, I would totally wear them.

I'm really good with faces, in that I can see someone after a long time and
know that I know them, but I'm really bad with names, so I can never remember
their name. If I could have glasses that looked in my contacts or Facebook or
whatever and told me the name of the person I'm looking at, that would help me
be less awkward at social gatherings.

~~~
Jach
If the glasses can name people from your contacts, it's only one more step to
name and recognize everyone it can including strangers, including showing any
related info like reddit aliases (known and suspected), reputation in some
reputation tracker or even criminal history, favorite alcoholic beverages and
other interests to help with dating... enough people don't want that so
they'll ban AR devices and punch out people they catch wearing them. This
stuff is already going on to varying degrees, but mostly businesses watching
people. Getting people watching people and really kicking off AR needs,
besides the tech, more assurances that no one can tell you're watching. I
agree there wouldn't be much adoption barrier for having to wear hardware, so
many people wear glasses and sunglasses and hats all the time anyway, the
barrier is just being inconspicuous.

~~~
jedberg
At one point there was an Android app that could identify strangers. They
nerfed it so that it couldn't do that anymore. I'm sure they could do the same
for the glasses.

But yeah, that's why it would have to be real subtle.

~~~
valesco
Wasn't it an app by a Russian guy that looked on the social network for
people's name? I think it served as a brilliant demonstration of the current
state of privacy.

------
jostylr
Textblade: [https://waytools.com/](https://waytools.com/)

Single row keyboard that has minimal finger movement. It was to be delivered
March 2015 or so, but it has yet to be released. They have testers who rave
about it and it looks incredible, but it is perpetually around the corner.

Originally designed as an ultra-portable phone keyboard, those who have used
it tend to use it for all their machines. It has jump slots to quickly switch
from device to device.

~~~
tjbiddle
Not available? I didn't go through the full check-out process; but what
happens when you go to buy it? I don't see any reference that it's
unavailable.

~~~
evolve2k
I just tested it; eventually you get to the end of the shopping cart that asks
for credit card details. The submit button says "Pre-order Now".

~~~
jostylr
Yes, you can pre-order it. I have. They will charge you right away and then
you will probably wait months, maybe years, until they are ready to release
it.

Given how amazing it seems, it was worth it to me to take this gamble for
$100.

Unlike a kickstarter, they do offer a full refund if you ever get tired of
waiting. I went through that process once when I bought an iPad Pro with the
keyboard case; this was before people were testing the Textblade. They did
promptly refund my money. I then decided I really did not like the Apple
keyboard case, returned it to Apple, and re-pre-ordered the Textblade. That
was over a year ago.

The really annoying thing is that they do not do any push notifications, such
as emailing status updates. To get their randomly timed updates, one has to be
on their forums.

------
ProfessorLayton
Gene editing, particularly on living people. I'm looking forward to cancer
treatments being no more involved than an antibiotics regimen.

I don't know if its around the corner, but considering the human genome was
completed circa 2003, I'm pretty enthusiastic that it isn't too far away.

~~~
pmoriarty
It's a way's off, but I'm looking forward to the day genetic engineering lets
people see colors they aren't able to see today. Those and other sensory
enhancements could revolutionize art, culture, and society.

~~~
matt_wulfeck
You may be excited about a technology from the sixties called "acid" that
allows you to do just this. (Somebody had to say it)

------
baron816
Much of what people have mentioned here will be really great. I think self-
driving cars have the most potential to impact people lives day to day,
followed by AR. I guess infinite, cheap, clean energy could also spark another
industrial revolution.

But all these things aren't likely to impact the happiness and life
satisfaction of those living in the developed world. The internet has been
huge, but it really hasn't made us happier as a whole.

I would like to see someone create something that will make people's lives
happier. That probably means doing something that will foster good human
relationships and real world experiences.

I guess there's a lot of potential for driverless cars to help with that, but
they could do the opposite as well. I think we need better tools for
connecting with each other, understanding each other, forming social
organizations and communities, and maybe changing the geography of cities to
bring us closer together, rather than making it possible for us to be further
apart. It's likely that new technology isn't needed, we just need to use what
we already have in a new way.

~~~
Trundle
>but it really hasn't made us happier as a whole.

Serious question. Has any technology done this?

We don't appear to be happier than any other animal. Even in the developed
world plenty of people are downright miserable.

Unless primitive humans were just far sadder than the average animal, I can't
see how technological advancement has made us happier as a whole, because
we're not all that happy.

If antibiotics, electicity, and the steam engine didn't noticeably move the
needle, it seems absurd to expect phone tech to do the deed. Whatever
technology is solving "for the whole", it's not happiness.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Yes. Alcohol and various drugs, for example.

I jest, but only a little bit. The thing is, happiness is not really a good
goal for technology. Humans are good about noticing what is not OK to them and
focusing on that - while also growing resistant to persistent problems. So
they keep the baseline.

Things have changed a lot, however - we've been moving up on the Maslow's
hierarchy of needs. Thanks to technology, most Westerners no longer really
worry about food, shelter, personal security and forming relationships. We've
moved upwards - that's why we have time and will to bitch about abstract
topics on the Internet. The very controversies our society has is the evidence
just how far our technology has lifted us. Starving people don't fret about
identity politics and gender imbalances in hot industries.

This is a realistic goal for technology - lifting us up and solving the
problems we identify. Feeling happy is something we either need to learn
individually, or brainwash (or engineer) ourselves into.

~~~
petra
>> The thing is, happiness is not really a good goal for technology.

>> Thanks to technology, most Westerners no longer really worry about food,
shelter, personal security and forming relationships.

In the buddhist tradition, one dedicated to happiness, one barrier to
happiness(or happiness training), was the need to take care of all those
things. So happiness seems like a decent goal for technology, but maybe not
the best ideology to win in the tech dev market.

------
subhrm
I am excited about both WebGL & Web assembly.

Although both of these have been around for a few years, we are yet to see a
general adaptation of these. (might be due to inconsistent browser support).

Now with the rise of VR, 3d Printing, powerful GPUs these two technologies are
bound to open new avenues of an immersive browsing experience. I imagine that
in next few years we would have 1- Webs stores, that show a virtual 3d
shopping mall, 2- 3-d virtual try out of garments, 3- VR coaching of physical
activities like a- Playing Tennis, b- Judo, c-Taecondo, d- Dance

~~~
gaius
We were excited about VRML in the 90s...

~~~
erikpukinskis
Two things have changed since the 90s:

\- hardware acceleration is everywhere, we all have an SGI Onyx in our pocket

\- good positional tracking give us a natural 3D input technique

Without those, the tech doesn't work.

~~~
contingencies
Don't forget:

\- always connected

\- population increase

\- boredom increase

\- social networking (ie. highly targeted ads)

\- mobile payment

\- global map / elevation / city map / traffic data free online

------
bmcusick
Fully & Quickly Reusable Rockets (refuel & refly, like jets)

Obviously both SpaceX and Blue Origin are the leaders here, but once they do
it the other majors will either have to build the same thing or drop out of
the industry.

There are so many things about space that we just assume are true, but are
actually only true because access to orbit has always been so expensive. If we
can get the cost to reach orbit down to a multiple of the fuel cost, then so
many more things are possible.

We finally get large satellite constellations for low-latency Internet all
over Earth. We get space stations and O'Neil cylinders. Moon bases and fuel
depots on Titan.

At the same time, firms like Made In Space are working on in-space
construction so you can build radio telescopes in space with arbitrarily large
dishes (10 km, maybe?). Eventually we build mirrors that size too.

Basically just those two things are the only barriers between us and a solar-
system-wide civilization like in The Expanse.

~~~
bmcusick
Arguably the third thing is ISRU (In-Space Resource Utilization), aka, mining
asteroids for fuel and materials. But that's not immediately necessary and
doesn't count as "around the corner".

~~~
jholman
My understanding is that "ISRU" normally stands for "In Situ Resource
Utilization", which can include mining asteroids (if your locale is 'asteroid
belt'), but also includes using fuel that can be generated from resources
found on a planet or moon.

------
phkahler
RISC-V We should see the first hardware running a real Linux distro in 2018
and it should proliferate from there. RV32 should also start showing up in
micro controllers as well.

Still need an open GPU, but I think a bunch of risc-v cores with vector
extensions running LLVMpipe would be reasonable for running a Wayland desktop.

------
aphextron
Mass adoption of electric vehicles. Battery prices are plummeting and the
advantages of EV are so great that the moment they break that $20k barrier
with zero subsidies (which should be within the next five years) the switch
will be rapid. I suspect at least 1 in 3 personal vehicles in use in major
metro areas will be an EV by 2025.

~~~
auxym
I'd rather have adoption of high density urban areas, public transit and
walkable/cycle-able neighborhoods.

Traffic jammed highways will still be traffic jammed highways with EVs.

------
aakilfernandes
Ethereum's Casper

[https://github.com/ethereum/research/blob/master/casper4/pap...](https://github.com/ethereum/research/blob/master/casper4/papers/casper_economics_basic.pdf)

It aims for more economically secure public blockchains with shorter
confirmation times and less cost (electricity/hardware/inflation). I haven't
delved deep enough into it to be fully convinced, but what I've gotten through
so far is promising. AFAIK its the only proof of stake algorithm thats been
formally documented.

~~~
splintercell
For me it is Raiden, I believe Ethereum should be able to beat Bitcoin in
their lightening network implementation, and for the cryptocurrency of future,
Raiden is very important for Ethereum.

PS: So you don't support Ethereum Classic anymore?

~~~
ringaroundthetx
Also more excited about Raiden. Sad there isn't much more information about
it.

From my understanding, the thing I like about payment channels is that the
capacity of the payment channel depends on how much of the cryptocurrency is
deposited/locked away under it.

So with everyone competing for a payment channel toll, they have taken large
amounts of crypto off the market, constricting the supply, while distributing
the marketing out for their own use case, some of which will be successful at
increasing the demand. Any limited supply commodity performs the same under
these circumstances, up, and that is exciting because the capacity can also
scale for the new attention, while the "centralized" payment channels stay
optional ways to transact on the network at all.

~~~
evanvanness
FYI you can go use working state channels right now at
[https://showcase.funfair.io/](https://showcase.funfair.io/)

------
miheermunjal
ARkit finally pushing AR to the masses. From a developer perspective, having
an SDK that simplifies "environment detection/reasoning" is huge. Previously
required pretty deep hardware requirements and now is turning into an
AI/ML/software problem.

[https://developer.apple.com/documentation/arkit/building_a_b...](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/arkit/building_a_basic_ar_experience)

~~~
lern_too_spel
A usable AR SDK has been available from Qualcomm/Vuforia for years on more
devices than ARKit supports. The only thing that came out of it was marketing
gimmicks.

~~~
Stanleyc23
I thought vuforia was mostly just a marker based AR, which never really took
off in the US market. ARKit is markerless and their VIO system is actually
pretty good.

------
goatlover
Crystal & Julia 1.0. Crystal because it's a blazing fast, compiled and
statically typed version of Ruby (or 80% anyway), and it's web server is
awesome. Now it just needs full concurrency.

Julia because it offers a nice, performant alternative to Python & R in data
science, while avoiding Java & C++. It has some really nice features like
multiple dispatch and the ability to run R, Python, Fortran and C code inside
of it, so you can use libraries like Numpy in Julia.

~~~
dnautics
I was choosing between Crystal and elixir for my personal edification and I
picked elixir.

~~~
goatlover
Elixir looks really interesting as well. I just hope it leaves some Rubyists
behind for Crystal. The reason I prefer Crystal is that I really like Ruby,
and Elixir is a much different language.

And then there is Ruby 3.0, which will have concurrency and (optional) static
types according to Matz. But that's slated for 2020.

------
lkrubner
If by "tech" you mean mostly computers and software, then WebAssembly is
exciting. We've had 5 or more years now of companies inventing languages that
compile back to Javascript, even though Javascript is a terrible target for
compilation. WebAssembly was designed to be a true compilation target, and
will allow an endless number of languages to be used on the browser.

WebAssembly helps create more space between the kind of languages that
developers want to use, and any particular GUI output, such as HTML. In a
different thread, I just wrote about what is wrong with HTML:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14926845](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14926845)

If by "tech" you don't mean computers/software, then CRSPR is clearly going to
be a huge thing going forward.

------
pryelluw
AR. Being able to superimpose software on top of real objects is amazing. It
has so much economic potential that it hurts not being in the space already
(working on that though). I feel AR will be the app craze 2.0.

~~~
mayank
> It has so much economic potential that it hurts not being in the space
> already (working on that though)

As someone not familiar with the area, could you elaborate on some examples of
what you think the economic potential is? To an outsider like me, being able
to overlay virtual objects on a scene seems like a nice curiosity, not
particularly an engine for commerce.

Edit: specifically, I was curious about areas where AR offers a (financially)
meaningful advantage over traditional HUDs (for example).

~~~
gpsx
To me the benefit of AR is not just overlaying virtual objects on the physical
world but specifically highlighting real objects in your field of view.
Granted, this does just come down to placing a virtual object on the physical
world. I can give a specific example that is perhaps of not so great financial
advantage, but I think this kind of thing will be useful - using AR to give
you directions to build IKEA furniture. You are sitting in front of a pile of
materials and the AR will tell you to put _this_ bolt (highlighted) in _this_
hole in _this_ piece of wood. You would not have directions on a piece of
paper but rather using the actual objects.

~~~
tinco
I feel the key AR advantage will be that we don't have to spend half our time
glancing down on tiny rectangles anymore.

The Oculus is already less than an order of magnitude away from competing with
regular LCD panels. Google glass and maybe that magic leap thing give us hints
that it will eventually happen for mobile.

No more displays, now that's something I would pay for.

~~~
goatlover
Problem is that not everyone will want to wear something over their eyes on a
regular basis if they don't need to.

~~~
sjg007
It'll be glasses then contacts.

------
egypturnash
Still waiting for the day when I can buy a computer wth a full color e-paper
display and sit out in the sunlight to work.

~~~
marcosdumay
So, fast refresh e-paper displays?

~~~
bch
I'd like a very large, performant-enough display for solely for editing in vi.
Even that is still just a dream, as far as I can tell.

~~~
lj3
Have you taken a look at the Dasung Paperlike yet?
[http://www.dasung.com/english/](http://www.dasung.com/english/)

~~~
Down_n_Out
This reminds me of reMarkable
([https://remarkable.com/](https://remarkable.com/)).

------
mlboss
Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN)

GAN is a type of Deep Learning Network which can generate data after training.

Applications

\- Text to image synthesis (Scripts to Movie ?)
([https://github.com/reedscot/icml2016](https://github.com/reedscot/icml2016))

\- Generation of Game Environments

\- Image to Image conversion
([https://github.com/junyanz/CycleGAN](https://github.com/junyanz/CycleGAN))

\- 2d to 3d conversion

I think in future we will have highly creative deep learning systems, which
will make ar/vr/movie/game creation faster and cheaper.

------
amirouche
Without doubt, GraphQL is the next technologo I will learn. The idea is so
brillant compared to REST. If you are convinced by SQL and in general by
Domain Specific Languages, I think you should give GraphQL a try.

~~~
tostitos1979
I'm intrigued ... can you elaborate on the wow factor beyond REST that you see
in GraphQL? When I looked at it in the past, it seems to make sense for things
that could be represented by graph (e.g. FB's social graph), and graphql
allowed you to run complex operations in the backend without fetching each
individual node on the client. I clearly missed something?

~~~
lolive
And if you can also elaborate on why SPARQL and RDF were a major failure, and
how GraphQL is different/better?

~~~
amirouche
> it seems to make sense for things that could be represented by graph

False, even if there is graph in its name it's not restricted to graph, and
that what is great about it compared to things like RDF and SPARQL. Backend
data can be stored in key/value store, document, files, RDBMS or whatever. And
you will still be able to make it work. AFAIK you write a "translation" layer
that interprets a pseudo-JSON file into your data.

AFAIK GraphQL is not good at querying recursive datastructure, it's better at
"neighborhood" kind of query, so you can traverse Foreign Keys, but not
"indefinitely".

> graphql allowed you to run complex operations in the backend without
> fetching each individual node on the client.

Yes.

> I clearly missed something?

IDK. For me, GraphQL basically it's an RPC interface particularly suited at
"reading" data.

> And if you can also elaborate on why SPARQL and RDF were a major failure,
> and how GraphQL is different/better?

GraphQL is not tied to particular data layout. I don't know much of SPARQL and
RDF actually and don't know why they failed. I am just guessing.

That said, GraphQL it "just" another query language, it's "just" another DSL
targeted at querying datastructures. As something that was thought a long
time, focused to solve a particular issue.

~~~
scottmf
> AFAIK GraphQL is not good at querying recursive datastructure, it's better
> at "neighborhood" kind of query, so you can traverse Foreign Keys, but not
> "indefinitely".

That isn't true. You can request data in any shape you want and could
theoretically traverse through child nodes indefinitely.

We have many queries which go 5-6 levels deep.

~~~
lolive
How do you deal with IDs misalignment between data sources?

~~~
scottmf
Could you clarify what you mean? Got an example?

~~~
lolive
Let's say you want to query Wikipedia for village descriptions, and get a map
of matched villages from openstreetmap. Would it be a use case where GraphQL
could help? Then it would need a "translation" layer for both systems. And
joins between datasets would be based (for example) on the couple
"country+postalCode". Is it a possible use case of GraphQL?

~~~
scottmf
Could you show me a quick example of what a request and response would look
like with REST? I'm still not quite sure what you mean.

------
chx
Lenovo ThinkPad Retro! That's certainly right around the corner: two months
and one day until pre-order opens.

~~~
soperj
Hadn't heard of this until now! Thanks!

~~~
chx
[https://xkcd.com/1053/](https://xkcd.com/1053/)

I am glad you have heard it now! I am typing this on a T420s because I refuse
to use anything but the old seven row keyboard and hope I can move to the
Retro in October :)

~~~
soperj
I'm on an x220. Didn't really know what I was going to do for my next
computer, but there might be hope yet...

------
Animats
Self-driving cars that really work and are safe. Google/Waymo is just about
there.

Automatic language translation everywhere.

Big Brother everywhere. (Excited about, yes; happy about, no.)

Batteries + solar as the predominant energy source.

Electric cars getting some real market share.

~~~
GigabyteCoin
I'm curious as to what exactly excites you about Big Brother being everywhere?

------
anotheryou
better search, always

Find me:

\- an aggregation of everything I have to know to run a porcelain store in my
country (taxes, suppliers, how to find staff or better yet: showing candidates
directly, best location in my town, etc.)

\- Fuzzy stuff like: the pic of that tree I took when I was on hollidays in XY
a few years ago; or the note I took a few days ago about that band with some
greek name

\- a ready to paste, non-ancient js-script for XY

\- a cafe where nobody cares about how long I sit with my laptop with a not
too modern ambiente

\- the lesser known types optical illusions

~~~
DarkTree
Honestly, it may not be at the level you are describing here now, but I have
been overwhelmed by the ability I've had to find small figments of memories
with Google search. For example, I had a faint memory of a movie I watched as
4 year old, and could only remember a few generic nouns describing it, and
after a few minutes of searching I was able to pinpoint. This wasn't possible
years ago, either because the search engine itself wasn't ready, or that the
information simply wasn't on the web. Now both of those are true, and only
becoming more so, so they are improving in tandem.

I'm pretty confident I can find something on the web by only knowing a few
keys words.

~~~
anotheryou
Indeed already amazing.

"Internet has become a wasteland of unfiltered data. […] I hunt for the date
of the Battle of Trafalgar. Hundreds of files show up, and it takes 15 minutes
to unravel them"

from 1995 [http://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-
nirva...](http://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-
nirvana-185306)

today google shows it right away:
[https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=date%20of%20the%...](https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=date%20of%20the%20Battle%20of%20Trafalgar)
(powered by the now slightly more semantic wikipedia I think)

------
ZenoArrow
Excited may be too strong a word, but I'm interested in seeing how the world
of decentralised apps evolve. I like the idea of decentralising the web using
plug and play home servers. There are a few projects in this space already
(such as Sandstorm) and there are some existing projects that aren't strictly
limited to dapps but could play a key role in the future (a few unikernel and
meshnet projects spring to mind).

~~~
aakilfernandes
IMHO the real bottle neck here is NAT, so I'd throw universal static ipv6
consumer adoption in with this.

~~~
amelius
Another bottleneck is the asymmetric up/download speed of most ISPs. Often
upload is more than 10x slower than download.

------
adventured
I'm looking for a company to successfully implement what I call on-behalf AI.
AI legally allowed to take actions on behalf of someone, in a large number of
ways in relation to daily life. This may be 5, 10, or 20 years out yet, hard
to say. It'll be very hard to pull off, and whichever company does it first at
a high function + comprehensive level will be another Airbnb or Uber, as the
legal/regulatory hurdles will be similarly challenging, and exactly as with
those cases it'll be ideal to move first and apologize later (which will cause
the typical uproar among people that find that approach appalling). This type
of AI is where you get deep into real time savings for consumers, by
significantly reducing dozens of mundane & routine tasks (most of which repeat
from person to person and can be modeled very accurately accordingly).

~~~
idlewords
Why do you think it's "ideal to move first and apologize later" when rolling
out a socially transformative technology in a democratic society?

~~~
adventured
Because I occasionally don't respect the restraints that tend to exist in
democratic societies when it comes to entrenched regulation & interests vs
innovation (or really anything new or different), which frequently
dramatically slow down progress (see: zoning law abuse, or the FDA's countless
abuses or otherwise slow & meandering approach (what I call backwards), or the
present US healthcare system (vast entrenched interests, fear of change,
etc)). That is, it's my opinion that that restraint is what always must be
pushed back against to generate any positive change in any culture or society
at any point in history. Failure to push in this regard, guarantees
stagnation.

The vast majority - in my opinion - overwhelmingly tend toward being either
aggressively anti-change, or they're at best very cautious about it. That has
been demonstrated non-stop throughout history with practically every step
forward in technology for example. It may even be a beneficial evolutionary
attribute for the survival of humanity. I don't belong to the dislikes change
group, my personality type is to push. That's the honest answer.

Am I biased because of my own world-view or personality type? No doubt to one
extent or another. I'm not advocating for chaos or anarchy though; rather, I'm
advocating for constantly testing assumed or entrenched notions/boundaries, as
a means to find out if there is new progress to be found there. My opinion is
that there's almost always progress to be found in challenging such, with some
areas blatantly worth focusing on more than others (due to favorable upside vs
downside risk ratio). If you ask permission first every time you attempt to
find progress at the edge of what a society presently finds comfortable,
you're not likely to get very far.

~~~
jaclaz
Maybe, just maybe, a reference to Chesterton's Fence is needed:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton's_fence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton's_fence)

------
akavel
For me personally, currently my absolute top reason I'm dying of excitement is
[http://www.luna-lang.org/](http://www.luna-lang.org/) Only I'm not sure if
they're gonna manage to get a release out of the door; I have an impression
that they understand that it's their top priority and main focus now, but I'm
not sure if they really realize how far they they need to go with sacrificing
features and cutting it down to absolute bare essentials, to avoid faltering
into endless development hell.

That said, I have some tiny glimmer of hope that even if they go vaporware,
maybe someone e.g. from around the _Lambda the Ultimate_ community might
possibly try to revive their ideas and ignite some F/OSS clone.

------
Entangled
The second coming of WebTV. I am sick of small devices, I want a huge 100"
display managed by a touch remote where I can play and work, watch videos,
movies, track my cryptos, even code my own apps from it, all from the comfort
of a fat-ass recliner.

------
devrandomguy
Fusion, of course. It actually is right around the corner now, this time.

~~~
davemp
Yeah. Fusion will happen in the year of the linux desktop.

~~~
zachrose
I wish I had a fusion reactor that worked as well as my desktop Linux
computer. Far from perfect, but it's still a net positive.

------
loeg
That inflection point in a couple years where SSD is just cheaper than
spinning HDDs. A whole class of problems kind of goes away, low end consumer
performance goes way up, and archival platforms get faster "for free."

I'm also excited about NVMe and on-the-horizon, faster-than-flash solid state
technologies like 3d xpoint, etc.

------
dabockster
Edge computing.

Basically shifting off of cloud onto separate peer-to-peer connections.
Faster, more secure, more distributed, and no middleman. Think 1990s/mid 2000s
but no servers, just client to client.

Soon everyone will want a home server.

~~~
amelius
How would we implement a search-engine using P2P?

~~~
zeeveener
MY_PC: "Who is hosting a webpage with the following information?" My 1000
connected peers: "Here are 500 more peers who say they do"

Proceed to witness extreme bandwidth usage every query.

~~~
amelius
That only works if the computer you're connecting to has an index of the
entire web.

It will probably be more like this:

\- So you're looking for "kitten videos"? Well, you can ask computer X for
words starting with "k", then ask computer Y for words starting with "v", and
then I'll perform a logical AND operation to get your final results.

But how we make this as fast as Google is beyond me.

And also don't forget that we have to factor in the problem of security (some
nodes may be sending in wrong results, e.g. spam).

------
timfrietas
I am suprised applications of blockchain outside cryptocurrency is not higher
on this list. For example:

* Election fraud and recounts can become a thing of the past * Everything that requires a contract could become completely electronic (the mortgage industry alone is probably a multi-billion dollar opportunity)

~~~
gdudeman
I think it's a crypto-utopian view that election fraud can be fixed with a
better record. Election fraud is a fairly small problem in countries like the
US and the problems are around voters not voting in the right place, having a
new address, losing their proof of identity, etc.

The security community thinks a paper trail is essential - less computers, not
more - not a public database. I'm not an expert, but I tend to trust them.

~~~
ringaroundthetx
> I'm not an expert, but I tend to trust them.

and blockchain proponents want an infallible system audit-able by the public,
instead of having to trust anyone. they haven't figured it out completely,
they push towards it.

in any case blockchain networks can function without computers. very
cumbersome though.

~~~
elihu
Voting systems are hard because most democracies expect ballots to be
confidential. Is there a blockchain-based voting system that allows a voter to
have high confidence that their vote was counted, but doesn't allow someone
else to be able to know how that voter voted?

~~~
pkalinowski
Aparrently, someone has it figured out:
[https://www.ted.com/talks/david_bismark_e_voting_without_fra...](https://www.ted.com/talks/david_bismark_e_voting_without_fraud)

~~~
gimagon
His solution doesn't seem to solve the hard problem of "stuffing the ballot
box." Any voter can verify their own vote is correct, but they can't verify
that each vote is cast by a real citizen.

------
econnors
VR Gaming. We're a few years away from some incredible experiences in the
space.

~~~
bradneuberg
Amazing VR gaming experiences have already arrived.

The last two months have seen a flood of incredible VR gaming experiences for
the Oculus Rift. I highly suggest you give the current generation of consumer
VR another try:

* Lone Echo - Amazing space story line, one of the highest ranked PC games on Metacritic right now: [http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/lone-echo](http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/lone-echo)

* Echo Arena - Basically the Enders Game zero-g arena in space, multiplayer. Really addictive: [http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/echo-arena](http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/echo-arena)

* The Unspoken - You're a wizard, with magic, and you use your hands in different combinations with the Oculus Touch controllers to battle other mages, including real people via multiplayer gaming: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVD1O853aSw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVD1O853aSw)

* Robo Recall - Battle robots, grab them with your hands, tear them apart, grab bullets from the air. Epic: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIK4D0kVlIs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIK4D0kVlIs)

* Star Trek Bridge Command - You are literally on the bridge of a Star Trek spaceship.

* Mages Tale - VR RPG from the creator of the classic Bards Tale, makes me feel like I'm embedded into a classic AD&D dungeon crawl.

Anyway, that's just a small selection! I picked up an Oculus Rift + Touch
Controllers the last two months and have been blown away at the developments
lately.

~~~
andybak
Agreed. Owned a Vive since last October and still have a "wow!" moment at
least once a week.

And that's even without the continual joy of demoing to people who've never
tried proper VR. It's genuinely rewarding every time you pop a headset on
someone new.

------
zimablue
For me, I'd like online IDEs to be standard (and therefore equally good) and
graph wikipedias for arguments (like Argumans but mainstream).

I can see the advantages of both of these and imagine (and have seen people)
build them so I assume someone will fully crack this in the next few years and
we'll all be using this.

What might be around the corner that I'd love: someone makes a mainstream
general purpose visual programming language (or tools in IDEs using languages
that are indistinguishable - revenge of smalltalk)

~~~
linuxlizard
I wonder if Apple will go to online iPhone development sometime soon. Write
code, test in emulators, push to Apple App Store, all through web browser. No
XCode, no Macbook required.

Would open up iPhone dev to a whole new class of people who can't afford the
pricey Apple desktop/laptop.

------
mjevans
USB-C being so common that it's cheep.

------
rl3
WebGPU. Granted, "right around the corner" is a bit of a stretch.

[https://webkit.org/blog/7380/next-generation-3d-graphics-
on-...](https://webkit.org/blog/7380/next-generation-3d-graphics-on-the-web/)

~~~
Yoric
Do you have a 15 seconds explanation on how that's going to be much better
than WebGL?

~~~
noiv
ELI7: WebGL crunches numbers fast to end up as pixels, WebGPU crunches numbers
fast to end up as numbers again.

~~~
Yoric
Got it, thanks for the clear explanation.

So this means that we'll soon have web ads mining bitcoins using our GPUs,
right? :)

~~~
noiv
Well, that's one thing. Google "Large Scale Distributed Deep Networks" for
another.

~~~
arnioxux
Already happening! This came up a few days ago: Tensorflow implemented with
webgl:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14894653](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14894653)

------
oconnore
IRV voting in Maine, automatic districting to prevent gerrymandering, and
reliable voting schemes like Scratch and Vote.

~~~
tgb
Last I heard, ranked choice voting had been ruled unconstitutional in Maine:
[http://www.pressherald.com/2017/05/23/maine-high-court-
says-...](http://www.pressherald.com/2017/05/23/maine-high-court-says-ranked-
choice-voting-is-unconstitutional/)

------
bhouser
Writing React apps in OCaml using Reason:
[https://reasonml.github.io/](https://reasonml.github.io/)

------
neilwilson
Allam cycle power plants. I love the idea of turbines that continue to burn in
the middle of a giant fire extinguisher.

------
elihu
Major applications and/or operating systems written in Rust, or languages that
offer a similar degree of type safety. We need to be ruthlessly eliminating
undefined behavior from our software stacks, especially the lower layers, so
that there are fewer places for security bugs to hide.

Electric car adoption.

Solar isn't new or particularly exciting, but it's become a good alternative
to burning fossil fuels and it isn't used widely yet.

I've been looking forward to real-time global illumination via ray tracing
with photon mapping or path tracing or some other good algorithm to become
mainstream. It doesn't seem like there's much enthusiasm for the idea from the
game industry, though.

Genome editing has already been mentioned, along with reusable rockets.

------
Havoc
Renewables in general. Many problems can be solved if you throw enough juice
at it.

e.g. Desal plants.

------
chaosbutters314
Affordable triple digit core desktop computers. The cloud is fine but until
I'm getting Google fiber in every city, this'll need to suffice. The
application is HTC applications in industry design

~~~
daxfohl
A core for every browser tab!

~~~
arca_vorago
With how bad most webpages are these days its almost not even hyperbolic. No
script really woke me up to how much bullshit most pages try to load.

------
tech2
Large-scale low-cost metal 3D printing. We're _very_ close and it could be a
game changer for a number of industries since the price for one unit is very
close to the mass-production per-unit cost. It could allow custom-fit
application or modification of a design on a per-customer level for things
that would in the past require significant outlay.

If I need a new part for something that's no longer supported, no problem. If
I want to test an idea, fine. etc.

~~~
l33tbro
Will be interesting for the manufacturing space when multiplied by torrents.

------
midhunsezhi
WebRTC for all real time communications/broadcast.

------
dtech
Self-driving cars, it will majorly change how we transport.

People in 100 years will look back to manually driven cars as we look back to
horse-drawn carriages

~~~
zpatel
And after say 200 yrs, what's your prediction?

~~~
sjg007
Teleporters

------
bobosha
The advent of AI-based search. I'm not sold on the siri/cortana et al
conversational agent approach. AFAIK it's mostly UI/UX layered atop the
"keyword->10 links" paradigm. Search is missing the key concept of iteration
and exploration and (hopefully) someone somewhere is working on it.

~~~
miguelrochefort
I'm working on it.

I believe the future of UI will be like Tinder or Akinator, where your browse
through results and apply constraints to the search space by answering simple
yes/no questions.

~~~
bobosha
Nice! can you share some details on your work? do you have a write up
somewhere? also is this academic research? or a commercial enterprise?

~~~
miguelrochefort
I'm trying to reduce suffering (the delta between the real and the ideal). For
that, we need to communicate better.

Today, we generally communicate through natural language ("Hi, can I get a
taxi at XYZ?") or software (Uber's "REQUEST UBERX" button).

I'm taking the best of natural language (ubiquity, flexibility, generality)
and software (unambiguity, conciseness, guidance, automation) to create a
better communication paradigm.

First, I'm getting rid of action verbs. Everything is the description of a
state. Instead of "I want to go to the park", think "I am at the park" or
better "me.location = park".

Second, I'm reversing the flow. Instead of manually requesting things, you get
things suggested to you. Most of communication is done by accepting or
rejecting suggestions, like with Akinator or Tinder.

Third, I'm making the real world interactive by allowing physical things to
act triggers for suggestions. With the press of a button, you can capture you
current location, a QR code, an RFID tag, a picture of a book, some Chinese
text, the song currently playing, etc. The captured entity will be processed,
meaning will be extracted, yes/no questions will be asked, and you'll be
offered ways to interact with it.

Basically, I want to be able to point at something, get information about it,
and act upon it.

This is neither academic research or commercial enterprise. I'm currently
doing this on my own, but anyone is free to join.

Next week, I will publish a blog post explaining the relationship between GTD
(Getting Things Done methodology) and the future of UI. This should cover some
of the ideas I have mentioned here.

------
zemo
volumetric displays are pretty fun. e.g.:

[https://voxon.co/](https://voxon.co/)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKTfP56rpDA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKTfP56rpDA)

------
tonyedgecombe
A replacement for Javascript in the browser, I'm sure it can't be far off.

------
BlakePetersen
FDA-approved closed loop artificial pancreas.

------
evanvanness
The decentralized web built on top of Ethereum/Swarm/Whisper

------
contingencies
Truly and honestly, the automated food preparation and retail systems we're
building at [http://infinite-food.com/](http://infinite-food.com/) ...
constantly available, broader choice of higher quality food for more people
with less supply chain waste and at a lower cost in time and money.

~~~
akaralar
this looks amazing, how many different meals can it provide? how many
different ingredients can it process and cook? will the ingredients need to be
bought from you or can we supply anything we have?

thanks for working on this, i have been dreaming this for a long while.

~~~
contingencies
Initially we are focused on a broad subset of popular foods in Asia. The
intended model is a wholly owned and operated network including the logistics
system for restock and servicing, in order to keep costs down. Ingredients
will be relatively numerous, with variety significantly upwards of the average
restaurant kitchen.

------
andrewstuart
Millisecond instance boot and teardown times on the major clouds - AWS,
Google, Microsoft and Digital Ocean.

Along with suitable pricing.

------
rhinoceraptor
Hopefully WebUSB will arrive sometime and be useful. I thought it would be
really cool to write a basic SDR web app/browser extension, but unfortunately
it's not really possible right now.

There was a project called Radio Receiver which used an RTL SDR, but it is a
chrome app and chrome apps are pretty much dead.

------
ntobto
Eye tracking - mouse and keyboard control using eyes. Microsoft has already
started working on this.

I read a novel published in 1999 which predicted how VR headsets would be
followed by eye tracking eye boards,etc. which would then be followed by
control directly via the brain using electrodes,etc.

------
goldensnit
I think voice controlled apps (google home, Siri, Alexa, etc will be the next
big thing)

~~~
continuational
Why?

I can imagine using voice when driving perhaps; but it's not really usable
when other people are around, since voice commands would disturb them.

------
goldensnit
I think voice controlled apps (on Alexa, Cortana, Siri, google home) will be
pretty big.

~~~
icc97
Certainly the voice recognition is impressive.

All the regular things I asked Google Assistant were recognised almost
perfectly. Andrew Ng talked about the difference between 95% accuracy and 97%
accuracy being the massive difference. Google Assistant is at 95% [2], but
feels very impressive already.

It felt like going back a decade when trying out the Firefox Voice Fill [0],
where trying repeatedly to say the word you want doesn't work (I was trying to
search for 'React Router Redirect', which it kept interpreting 'React' as
'Really').

However I think the personality of the assistants are lacking. It doesn't feel
like there is any real interaction. Google assistant feels like little more
than a better version of Voice Fill.

I'm waiting for things much along the lines of Ironman's JARVIS (or KITT). But
what I really really want is a full blown version of Jeeves voiced by Stephen
Fry. I'll have to settle for the TomTom Stephen Fry voice for now [1].

Is there a turing test for Butlers?

[0]: [https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/voice-
fill](https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/voice-fill)

[1]: [https://www.tomtom.com/en_us/drive/maps-
services/shop/naviga...](https://www.tomtom.com/en_us/drive/maps-
services/shop/navigation-voices/stephen-fry/)

[2]: [https://www.recode.net/2017/5/31/15720118/google-
understand-...](https://www.recode.net/2017/5/31/15720118/google-understand-
language-speech-equivalent-humans-code-conference-mary-meeker)

------
daxfohl
Global warming and this coming mass extinction thing are gonna be awesome. And
IPv6.

------
Ken_Adler
Secure Production Identity Framework For Everyone

[https://spiffe.io/](https://spiffe.io/)

------
dannygarcia
GPGPU in the browser. Some would say it's already here but not all browsers
have a standardized API that facilitates it.

------
thisisit
So I guess the responses on this thread begs another question - VR or AR?
Which is going to take off much better?

~~~
devrandomguy
AR, but with high enough quality to offer a superset of VR's features.

~~~
k__
I think AR will get usable and mainstream much sooner, because it can work
good on current smartphones.

VR will be cool later, when Oculus and others get more perf and fix more
current problems.

------
Jach
Smartdust. (And the opening of geospatial database tech that can support all
the data...)

~~~
egfx
What is smartdust?

------
taco_emoji
WebAssembly.

------
m3kw9
Teslas travel network involving Autonomous driving, Boring and hyperloop
network.

------
andrewstuart
Entangled pair quantum routers. Oh wait, that's 50 years away.

~~~
arca_vorago
Its how we break the increasingly centralized nature of the internet given
almost all countries are BBB becoming more authoritarian.

------
teilo
Racetrack Memory.

------
nunez
unikernels; single purpose operating systems for anything you want.

------
mgarfias
Hydrogen fusion power.

------
rajangdavis
GraalVM.

------
Numberwang
There are rumors of phones with batteries lasting longer than 5hrs. I'm still
not sure if true or not but when it happens it will revolutionize what you use
your phone for. It may even replace the watch completely some day.

Obviously I insist they still need to be as thin as they are now. That is much
much more important than batteries.

~~~
Jackalopiate
? I get at least 10 hours out of my Pixel on a daily basis, what rumor are you
talking about?

~~~
whiskeySix
can't tell if you're being serious or not...

~~~
devrandomguy
Are you guys for real? This is ridiculous! I've been on the old Nexus 5 for
ages. I think, if we aren't going to get Android 7, then maybe it will be time
for me to switch to one of the fringe mobile operating systems.

I get about 20 - 40 hours between charges, depending on whether or not I need
to use Google Maps that day, and I often stay in airplane mode when I am
working.

~~~
jdmichal
Airplane mode is cheating. My Nokia 920 lasted for a literal week during my
honeymoon. It sat in the room in airplane mode and zero usage other than an
alarm clock and a few dozen pictures. No one cares how long a smartphone lasts
when you're not doing smartphone things with it.

------
nether
Another javascript framework, of course.

~~~
andrewstuart
This may be facetious but in fact it's true.

JavaScript needs a fresh wave of tools and improvements in the JavaScript
language.

This time the priority has to be zero configuration and simplicity.

------
graycat
My own!

Should I ask HN to help with the beta test?

~~~
sjilo
Probably!

