
Ask HN: What are the most interesting things in tech lately? - throwawaygo
Second internet?  Bio-tech?  New cryptographies?<p>What are the most interesting things in tech you&#x27;ve seen lately?
======
chrisco255
Decentralized Finance on Ethereum. Blockchain always gets snarky comments on
HN, but it is a rapidly evolving space. Whereas the 2017 bubble was built on
token ICOs and hype, what I'm seeing now is advanced financial products
including decentralized money markets for car loans
([https://defimoneymarket.com/](https://defimoneymarket.com/)) and fractional
investments in tokenized real estate ([https://realt.co/](https://realt.co/)).
Stablecoins (tokens that trend towards the value of $1 USD) have also taken
off in a big way, with Dai being one of the biggest decentralized examples
([https://makerdao.com/en/](https://makerdao.com/en/)). Lending platforms such
as Aave ([https://aave.com/](https://aave.com/)) have created markets for
various tokens, including stable coins, paying out variable interest on
deposits.

User-friendly apps have cropped up that enable people to easily save and
invest their stable coins and earn interest, such as Argent
([https://www.argent.xyz/](https://www.argent.xyz/)). People are creating
Social investment strategies around tokens and pooling their funds together on
TokenSets ([https://www.tokensets.com/](https://www.tokensets.com/)), these
are basically social ETFs.

There are no-loss lotteries that simply invest the pool of funds to earn
interest and then one lucky staker wins the interest
([https://www.pooltogether.com/](https://www.pooltogether.com/)).
Decentralized funding of open-source Web3 projects
([https://gitcoin.co/](https://gitcoin.co/)).

I can really go on and on, I'm not even covering some of the developments with
Non-Fungible Tokens, gaming, governance, etc.

Here are a couple newsletters I recommend for following the space:
[https://thedefiant.substack.com/](https://thedefiant.substack.com/)
[https://bankless.substack.com/](https://bankless.substack.com/)

~~~
departure
I went though every link and there was not a single interesting or cool thing.

Outside of the real estate company they are all gambling and coin 'investing'
companies. I was bullish on ethereum and still have ~$11k from early purchases
but I lost interest as it's all people trading alt-coins to trying strike it
rich without creating anything.

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shaneapen
GPT-3 is an interesting mention. What people makes out of it is the coolest
part. Check out
[https://twitter.com/jsngr/status/1284511080715362304](https://twitter.com/jsngr/status/1284511080715362304)

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totetsu
smart algorithms for stratospheric balloon navigation.
[https://medium.com/loon-for-all/1-million-hours-of-
stratosph...](https://medium.com/loon-for-all/1-million-hours-of-
stratospheric-flight-f7af7ae728ac)

~~~
aaron695
I really don't get why HN won't upvote balloon tech.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=fal...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=false&query=balloons&sort=byPopularity&type=story)

It can messed with as an amateur, it's steampunk (I also think cyperpunk).
There's a lot of potential, Loon actually launching in Kenya seems like a big
deal.

There's more people living in submarines than balloons which seems crazy to
me. We'll talk about a balloon habitat on Venus, so lets start here.

Very cool link.

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nieksand
SpaceX Starlink.

We already have low latency, high bandwidth internet available in big urban
areas. Starlink offers a real solution for the rest of the world (rural
communities, boats, vacation homes, isolated industrial facilities, etc).

The era of being outside of internet coverage is coming to a close.

~~~
bamboozled
...if you're carrying a satellite dish with you?

~~~
TomMarius
You mostly already do, for TV at least

~~~
bamboozled
I don't carry a TV with me.

~~~
TomMarius
OK - you don't, but _many_ boat and cottage owners do.

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yen223
Apple's push towards ARM in their desktop line. Apple appears to have both the
right incentives and a solid plan to make the transition succeed, unlike
Microsoft's half-hearted attempt at Windows on ARM.

ARM on the desktop would be one of the biggest things to happen in the desktop
space, and it will be interesting to see if Apple succeeds with it, and if PC
manufacturers follow suit as a result.

------
AlchemistCamp
I've been hearing a lot about AI and blockchain but I'm more interested in VR.

If the hardware were just a bit better, I could see it completely transforming
education.

~~~
alpaca128
I don't think the hardware needs to become better as much as it needs to get
cheaper. You won't bring that tech anywhere on a large scale as long as you
need a recent gaming PC and a $400+ VR headset to get more than horrible
smartphone VR apps or a few PlayStation games.

~~~
pixelbash
It needs to get to the point where reading text in vr is comfortable, probably

~~~
karmakaze
I would pay a good amount of money ($ iPad Pro) to have an AR
display+mobileCPU that was a good desktop/terminal and smaller/lighter than a
laptop--preferably running a full OS (not iOS/Android).

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ZinnZirconium
The social trend to replace technology with marketing. The banishment of nerds
from technical fields. The obsession with status and notoriety and money to
the complete exclusion of intellectual curiosity.

~~~
ctheb
> The obsession with status and notoriety and money to the complete exclusion
> of intellectual curiosity.

To me this resonates with the idea that FAANGs swallow up promising engineers
and have them work on mundane problems to help generate revenue.

Certainly there are novel or interesting problems to be solved even in these
mundane areas, but I wonder what we may be leaving on the table as a species -
if many of these brilliant people were to focus their energies on other
problems or research, what could we achieve?

Tangentially, are there positive (but not necessarily profitable) uses for the
pile of cash that big tech is just sitting on?

~~~
0xy
I've heard from numerous people that FAANGs hire talented engineers and give
them busy work or projects that never launch in a way to keep them from
working for competitors. Is this actually true?

Has anyone seen this in practice?

~~~
solarmist
Yup. It’s not intentional or malicious, but it’s the end result.

You have teams that grow because the manager find work to do and no project is
ever closed as finished or mature so tons of engineers are wasting time making
incremental improvements to systems that already fulfill all requirements.

You also have these engineers see this and decide they can reinvent the system
better because they’re so immersed and knowledgeable about it and boom you
have huge numbers of worthless initiatives the size of which depends on how
persuasive the lead is.

~~~
quickthrower2
Interesting - it is almost a paradox how “inefficient” the most valuable
companies are.

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luckycharms810
A few years ago I heard “HBO is trying to become Netflix before Netflix
becomes HBO”

Today the news is trying to become Facebook before Facebook becomes the news.

~~~
blaser-waffle
Good, glib quotes, and totally true. Not sure if they're "interesting", though
-- mostly just depressing.

You media consumption will be controlled by <5 companies... that's not so
great.

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nurettin
> What are the most interesting things in tech you've seen lately?

Same old, same old. People revisiting old tech (linear algebra, newton-
rhapson, euclidean graph theory, bfs etc etc.) and rediscovering its value are
getting rich with new and interesting projects, people chasing new tech pipe
dreams getting scammed or scamming others. The scene hasn't changed much
recently.

~~~
MathCodeLove
At the sake of sounding naive, how does one who is new to the field find old
tech to revisit?

~~~
nurettin
At the risk of sounding r/IAmVerySmart I think there is great value in
revisiting computer science lectures for inspiration, always keeping part of
your mind busy with the notion of applying them to real world problems. Like
when you see an article from uber/lyft engineering on how they solve their
data collection problems or how they schedule their inter-dependent tasks, the
whole project is most probably rooted in someone revisiting their CS courses
and building upon ideas like state machines and boolean algebra. Even those
fabled blockchains can be invented using undegraduate course on limit theory
and a master's course on elliptic cryptography. It just seems like everything
is just out there for the pickings.

~~~
arkanciscan
r/SomebodyWentToCollege

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newguy1234
The push by people who identify as "conservative" to move to unconventional
social media platforms. Parler being used to replace twitter. BitChute being
used to replace Youtube. Gab being used to replace Facebook and so on. Seems
to have gained more mainstream acceptance to move.

~~~
p1esk
I’m in tech and I’ve never heard of either of the three. Who’s moving to these
platforms?

~~~
kvonhorn
> people who identify as "conservative"

~~~
p1esk
Is there any evidence or data to back this up?

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ve55
AI progress including GPT-3, Biotech progress including anything related to
solving aging and curing diseases, decentralization progress including
everything from finance to chat to social media

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fiftyacorn
I find indoor cycling platforms like zwift interesting, and how the data can
help people train

~~~
idoh
And Peleton. I use TrainerRoad, it is wildly effective at boost my ftp.

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praelud
Social media turning into ads.

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scott31
Deno

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aaron695
OSINT

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p1esk
GPT-4

