Ask HN: What is technologically possible today that wasn't possible 3 years ago? - fargo
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nunobrito
Moving an airplane on its own without moving parts.

[https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/nov/21/first-
ever-p...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/nov/21/first-ever-plane-
with-no-moving-parts-takes-flight)

That is the future of aerospace right there.

~~~
ralusek
Turbulence on a bad boy that light would not be fun.

~~~
nunobrito
Indeed. Still it is the beginning in either case.

With this propulsion technique you potentially break free from the traditional
designs and can fly into any given direction.

~~~
world32
what?

today's planes can fly in any direction?

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gitgud
Technology is incremental these days, even with the flood of news and
development it's hard to see actual _technological_ changes in the past few
years.

For everything you can suggest, someone will have an example of how it was
_technologically_ possible 3 years ago...

I guess it's obvious but from 3 years ago; hardware is faster, cheaper, and
software is easier to develop...

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petercooper
Using optics to detect radio signals, perhaps?
[https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611977/get-ready-for-
atom...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611977/get-ready-for-atomic-
radio/)

Also, a tongue in cheek answer, being able to get a company into big trouble
for mishandling data via the GDPR ;-)

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romanovcode
Real time raytracing? [https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/graphics-
cards/rtx-2080...](https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/graphics-
cards/rtx-2080-ti/)

------
implying
Getting scammed by an "ICO", perhaps?

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toomuchtodo
The use of the immune system to target cancer for clinical use.

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robbyt
Buying a mobile phone with a large notch at the top of the screen?

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richardxlin
\- Crispr gene editing. \- responsive computer brain interface \- building a
value layer in top of tcp/ip \- AR/VR taking off \- today.

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DrNuke
Deep learning for the masses, thanks to cheap GPUs?

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bsvalley
What would technologically be possible in 3 years from now? :) Sounds more
like a million dollar question.

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ainiriand
Fully mobile banking solutions? Revolut, N26, Monzo...

~~~
Rjevski
Technologically this was possible a decade ago or more.

This was an issue with mindset (the old banks don’t want to invest in user
experience) and the huge barrier to enter the banking market.

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halis
Presidents can tweet about grabbing pussies.

~~~
farseer
No they can't! That alleged incident was over a private chat, not a public
tweet.

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egberts1
Malicious Attacks by JavaScript

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znpy
quantum computing, maybe?

~~~
swyea
I still haven't seen any applications of qc, one day...

~~~
brador
Breaking common encryption is the usually cited use case.

~~~
earenndil
Maybe, but it doesn't look like quantum computers are yet able to break any
form of encryption.

