
Ask HN: What’s a big trend we should all be following? - cl42
Inspired by a similar Reddit question here: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;startups&#x2F;comments&#x2F;hc7vqb&#x2F;whats_a_big_trend_right_now_we_should_all_be&#x2F;<p>Curious what ya&#x27;ll think is a major trend right now that we should be following and tracking, that might be big in 3-5-10 years.
======
gringoDan
Remote work. 20 years of progress were consolidated into the last 3 months.

Previously, you saw people living in hubs like SF and NYC for the high salary
and high prestige jobs. But when those jobs are available from anywhere, all
of a sudden the "lifestyle cities" like Boulder, Boise, Chattanooga, etc.
start to look a whole lot better. You no longer have to sacrifice the high-
prestige career to live in a lower cost-of-living area with access to outdoors
activities.

This is going to exacerbate the divide between the haves – who can bounce from
city to city, chasing the best lifestyle at all times, enabled by their remote
work – and the have-nots, who are tied to one physical location because of
their jobs.

~~~
dmode
I am really skeptical of this idea that suddenly people will be moving to
small cities. For one, this assumes that people just move to big cities to
work. Is there any research to prove that ? For most people, especially when
they are younger, people gravitate to big cities for all the amenities that
come with the big city living, jobs being one of them. So in essence, it is
jobs chasing people into big cities, rather than other way round.

~~~
cirgue
It’s kind of both. More people in smaller places means more of the amenities
and lifestyle of bigger cities without the cost and hassle. Will there be a
massive outmigration? Probably not sufficiently to make NYC a ghost town, but
it could absolutely turn second and third tier cities into places where a lot
more people want to live. There are a sufficient number of people that move
specifically for jobs, but would be happy to live in a smaller place. Even if
that’s 5% or 10% of professionals, that’s still a huge impact on the
communities they move to.

------
paulsutter
Space manufacturing. SpaceX Starship should get a kilogram to orbit for $250
(actually Elon's goal is to get the costs down to $10 per kilogram[1] which
seems insanely crazy but be forewarned).

Historic costs[2]:

\- Space Shuttle: $41,000/kg (24.4 t, ~$1B)

\- Delta IV Heavy: $14,600/kg (24 t, $350M)

\- Falcon Heavy 2R: $1,700/kg (57 t, $95M)

A good first product to make in zero G is ZBLAN, fiber optics so clear that
they require up to 100x fewer repeaters than ordinary fiber[3], lightweight
and very high value.

[1] [https://wccftech.com/spacex-launch-costs-down-
musk/](https://wccftech.com/spacex-launch-costs-down-musk/)

[2] [https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-it-cost-to-put-1-kilo-
in...](https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-it-cost-to-put-1-kilo-into-orbit)

[3] [https://www.issnationallab.org/blog/taking-zblan-optical-
fib...](https://www.issnationallab.org/blog/taking-zblan-optical-fiber-
production-to-space/)

~~~
TwoNineFive
Which brings us to what I think is a bigger issue: Space is a finite quantity,
similar to land and EM spectrum.

It's a land race for space. SpaceX and similar are racing to put their junk up
their in orbit as soon as possible so they can squat. So who is going to
regulate space? Will China Russia and North Korea respect ownership at 10KM
up? What happens when GPS and GLONAS go out because of debris and some stupid
war?

Humans have shown no ability to manage resource constraints like this without
losing their shit and fucking it up. I have no faith that there won't be space
drama in the next few hundred years. Maybe this hundred years.

And, to your point, the fact that it's cheaper, and it will get cheaper yet,
is going to exacerbate these space regulatory issues.

~~~
noxer
There is plenty of space in "space" or more like in the earth orbit. Trash is
a problem because it may be hard to track or even have unknown trajectory,
space isn't. It need global coordination ofc but its not like with planes
where everything can changes within minutes due to whether or some kind of
emergency. and there is no need for high vehicle density like around an
airport.

~~~
ornornor
We used to think that way about oceans: they’re essentially infinite so don’t
worry about overfishing, and since the solution to pollution is dilution we
can use the “infinite” oceans for that. This was 50–100 years ago and here we
are.

~~~
noxer
There is plenty space in the ocean. We could put all human trash ever created
and put it in a box and sink it somewhere in the ocean. there is more than
enough space. The problem is we cant make that box and without the box it
affects the life. Earth orbit however doesn't have anything that could be
affected by trash beside what we put there and deem to not yet be trash.

Also keep in mind that humans may have put several hundred tons into orbit by
now in total which is basically nothing if you compare that to the millions of
tons of plastic that goes to the ocean every year. And ofc there are many many
other things than plastic that ends up in the ocean as well. also most of the
stuff we put in orbit came or crashed back to earth especially the large and
heavy stuff like MIR and the space shuttles.

------
panarky
Doing nothing.

We've been indoctrinated from an early age to be productive, to schedule every
moment, to sacrifice sleep, to always be learning, building, networking,
searching and improving.

The covid19 lockdown is showing many people the benefits of disconnecting, de-
scheduling, refusing or ignoring invitations, and being still with our
thoughts for hours or days at a time, producing nothing of tangible economic
value.

~~~
hckr_news
This is great advice but I’m a procrastinator. I have a full time job already
in software but it’s incredibly hard for me to get any will power to work on
side projects such as getting a business going or just working on open source.
I might need to hear the opposite of this.

~~~
eeh
Is your perception of yourself being a procrastinator a result of having "been
indoctrinated from an early age to be productive, to schedule every moment"?

Taking a view from Positive Psychology, the ABCDE explanation for this thought
pattern might go something like:

* [Activating event] You observe yourself not working on side projects

* [Belief] People without side projects or their own businesses are failures

* [Consequence] Label oneself a procrastinator, and feel bad

* [Disputation] People can have meaningful/successful lives without having side projects. People require maintenance in the form of leisure/downtime. Your procrastination is yourself striving for leisure/downtime.

* [Effect] Feel good about activities you previously labelled as procrastination.

I'm not qualified in this area, but this helps me, at least.

[https://positivepsychology.com/albert-ellis-abc-model-
rebt-c...](https://positivepsychology.com/albert-ellis-abc-model-rebt-cbt/)

------
erulabs
\- Grime music. A UK hybrid of hip-hop and punk, with a focus on showing
poverty as a cold reality rather than a hardened persona - removing the "gang"
in favor of the "pang". Honesty and sadness in mainstream music is on its way
back.

\- Self-hosting. A hugely growing movement to host server-side software
yourself (on a cloud provider or at home). De-platforming is not possible
unless ordinary citizens can host applications on the internet, rather than
being relegated to being "clients". Server software needs to be distributed as
much as client software, and no re-invention of the wheel is necessary (ie: no
blockchain required). I am biased here as I am the founder of a startup
focusing on exactly this potential future.

~~~
vestrigi
I think self-hosting should be even more "plug and play" to be appealing to
more users. During the lockdown I was looking for simple board-like games that
could be played over the internet. There were a few promising ones that were
only playable on a single hosted domain that hat a capacity of 100 parties. I
thought that it couldn't be too asking for the most basic cloud server
hardware to serve this game for a few people. I think it should be way more
easy and straight-forward for the average user to try out some server
application on your own server, be it for playing, collaborative work or
organization.

I think Owncloud with its market place is a good example of an engagement into
this direction but it looks like it's more like a garden of apps fitted for
the platform. What we need is maybe an web-browser accessible hub where we can
place or point to an app and quickly configure it to run on the server. SSH
optional.

It's a bummer that that there's little demand and awareness for this,
especially since we're using our devices in a world of internet services that
are either paid or a privacy concern.

~~~
ViViDboarder
This is something that I’ve been thinking a lot about recently. I’ve been able
to self host quite easily as I’m very technical and capable of setting up and
managing a Raspberry Pi, a NAS, and a VPS.

One of my dreams is to make a device that would make self hosting easy and
cheap enough that anyone can do it. Something like a Chromecast, where it’s a
<$50 device you plug in and an app guides you through your setup. From there,
the device could have a platform like Cloudron or YUNOHOST where you install
services via an “App Store” like index.

The open source, self hosting community is getting quite robust now and I
don’t think it will be long before it’s really feasible.

~~~
erulabs
This is almost exactly what I'm working on! :D

~~~
ViViDboarder
Very cool! From the link in your bio, it looks more like a B2B Product than a
consumer one though. Are you looking at a consumer product as well? The same
underlying platform would probably be useful.

------
chrisrickard
Serverside Rendering

* [https://laravel-livewire.com](https://laravel-livewire.com)

* [https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix_live_view](https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix_live_view)

* [https://dotnet.microsoft.com/apps/aspnet/web-apps/blazor](https://dotnet.microsoft.com/apps/aspnet/web-apps/blazor)

edit: added blazor

~~~
elamje
I use Blazor day to day. It’s really awesome. You are trading off ease of
development for a potentially laggy UI connection, since each UI action re
renders across the wire.

I see it being used heavily for enterprises that know C#, don’t care to learn
the latest JS framework, and just want to make a SPA quickly and cheaply.

WASM or client side blazor is definitely interesting, though the client must
download the whole .net core runtime when they visit your site.

Open to any questions about Blazor! Big fan of Elixir, but haven’t used
LiveView yet.

~~~
wenc
Blazor (client-side) is definitely interesting technology if it ever gets
uptake.

I can just imagine the performance of a desktop app on the browser (via WASM)
without having to fiddle around with JS, front-end frameworks, event models
etc. and just write software as if they were targeted towards the desktop.

Software development would get easier again and it would be possible for more
people to write desktop-class software for the browser. I'm thinking a lot of
engineering/technical software that were previously not feasible on a browser
could be rewritten for the browser.

------
dgb23
Investing in yourself, your craft, your empathic capacity, critical thinking,
integrity. And in relationships around us, family, friends, business partners,
colleagues, clients...

I truly believe that these kind of things bring happiness and stability.

~~~
sidcool
Any resources to develop these?

~~~
ta17711771
Mushrooms, a satisfying customer service or labor position, are a couple ways.

------
sunstone
Electric bicycles (and other light electrics) are going to remake the world's
cities in the next 30 years. The signs are already in place. The biggest
transformational factor is the lack of exhaust allowing a lot of personal
transport to be moved indoors.

~~~
jodrellblank
Why is that useful? Who is clamouring to rebuild all the existing roads -
which bikes already work on? Who is hoping to ride miles and miles in
underground tunnels and pay to build them?

Underground tunnels for fast no-traffic movement of people already exist as
subways, and move orders of magnitude more people, many times faster.

~~~
sunstone
Existing roads will slowly become populated with light electrics and covered
(perhaps seasonally) with no need to deal with exhaust gases. Some businesses
will begin to provide indoor parking for the electrics. Some parking garages
will be turned over to electrics exclusively. There will be almost no new
roads or tunnels. It will be a very inexpensive, organic and practical
transition.

~~~
jodrellblank
But why will they become covered? We don't cover sidewalks or bike paths or
pedestrian only areas, we don't cover parks and walkways through them, we
don't cover beaches or ground level car parks, or anywhere else people walk
and run and skate and bike outside. What would be the push to cover roadways -
to the point where the parent poster thinks it will be a "big trend everyone
should follow"?

There's tiny advantage to not being rained on, but you will already want
outdoors clothing for wind chill unless your entire route end to end is
covered and heated, and if you're on an electric bike or scooter doing 20+mph
you'll want some kind of protective wear as well, most likely.

~~~
sunstone
In Phoenix the roads are unlikely to be covered, whereas in Seattle or Buffalo
they might want to cover them in winter. Either way, because of the lack of
exhaust fumes, it would be financially viable to cover them whether they
decide to or not.

------
user3210
Veganism, because we cannot afford for another planet, forests like other
resources on earth are finite. It is a big trend and it will eventually become
the dominant one as the trends show. However reaching a mostly-vegan nutrition
in our lifetimes globally will change the course of environmental distraction
and massive extinctions to come.

~~~
ta97879787
Vegetarianism seems like it should be enough - if your argument is ecological.

~~~
488643689
Do you have a source on that? A source which takes into account "milk cows"
being slaughtered and eaten after max. 4 years too? Accounting for the fact
the cows only produce milk when having baby cows and some of these being male?

I am highly sceptical cutting meat is enough. Animal based protein, and energy
is just inherently wasteful since 3/4 of intake energy is radiated away as
body heat. (Yes, there is this super small niche of grass land unsuitable for
humans feeding agriculture.)

I am not sure about the thermodynamics and ecology of fish in general, but I
think eating predatory fish is an ecological disaster regardless of the carbon
footprint.

Just to make sure, I don't think you have to quit all animal products for a
sustainable future. If people go 95% plant based calorie-wise that's probably
enough. Celebrate a steak once a month, commit to that, pay the real price for
that!

~~~
eeh
"GHG emissions in kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalents per day (kgCO2e/day)
were 7.19 (7.16, 7.22) for high meat-eaters ( > = 100 g/d), 5.63 (5.61, 5.65)
for medium meat-eaters (50-99 g/d), 4.67 (4.65, 4.70) for low meat-eaters ( <
50 g/d), 3.91 (3.88, 3.94) for fish-eaters, 3.81 (3.79, 3.83) for vegetarians
and 2.89 (2.83, 2.94) for vegans"

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4372775/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4372775/)

I don't know what reduction is enough.

~~~
488643689
I think this study does not address my point and includes dairy products as
their partial footprint of growing cow. The problem is: no meat, no milk.

The low footprint of vegetarianism only works as long as there are meat eaters
eating the "milk cows". If everyone stopped eating meat, the dead cows would
end up on the vegetarian's bill. I hope this doesn't sound stupid and you get
my twist :)

------
DreamScatter
Geometric algebra

It's an algebra which unifies linear algebra with quaternions and tensors.

My implementation in Julia is at
[https://github.com/chakravala/Grassmann.jl](https://github.com/chakravala/Grassmann.jl)

We have a chat community of geometric algebra enthusiasts at
[https://bivector.net](https://bivector.net)

~~~
teleforce
Actually I want to suggest this topic as well.

Modern breakthroughs for example Maxwell's Equation and Einstein's Relativity
are both heavily relied on quaternion for their discovery. For Maxwell's
Equation you only need one equation with quarternion instead of four separate
equations as proposed by Heaviside!

The problem is that the majority of academics and scholars are still stucked
with complex number, and they are the same people who are wondering why
complex number concept was originally rejected by the academics and scholars
when it was first introduced.

------
TheAdamAndChe
The discovery and research of CRISPR makes in vivo genetic modification
possible and safe, is going to absolutely revolutionize humanity. Imagine a
world completely devoid of genetic diseases or with treatment for those
diseases. Imagine a reduction in occurrence of over 50% of cancers. Imagine
being able to change fundamental aspects of yourself. Imagine a grad student
learning tools that can be used to recreate smallpox or make influenza cause
cancer. This revolution is happening _right now_.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR?wprov=sfla1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR?wprov=sfla1)

~~~
Balgair
If you're looking for what is going to be the next digital/industrial/etc
revolution, CRISPR _is that thing_.

~~~
terrycody
totally agree, can't agree more, 1000% agree.

------
leashless
Life being worse, year on year average, rather than better for most people in
most of the richer countries.

It's been mostly going sideways since 2008, now it's trending _down_.

This changes everything. It's like a bear market for culture.

~~~
galuggus
Economic downturns are often times of great cultural movements. The
renaissance, hip hop, punk/ post punk all emerged from economies in decline

~~~
gremlinsinc
Politically, I'm a bit anarchistic, so I totally get this. It feels like
sometimes you need shit to start flying before change happens. Look at the
talk on M4A since the virus started and I think we've gotten more accomplished
for civil rights in 3 weeks than 40 years after the George Floyd murder.
(Still we're less than 10% of where we need to be though to wrap that up).

~~~
lotsofpulp
> Look at the talk on M4A since the virus started and I think we've gotten
> more accomplished for civil rights in 3 weeks than 40 years after the George
> Floyd murder.

All I see is a couple states passing some laws about police needing to use
cameras and not choking people. In the last 40 years, civil rights has
progressed to legalizing gay marriage and laws against discrimination for
sexual orientation. I would also count marijuana legalization in some states
as a civil rights matter since I believe it was used to target the black
population.

------
toufka
“Cheap” biotech. Where yesterday’s billion dollar tools are applied to $10M
problems. Starting with food and materials and industrial commodities, but
rapidly altering the industrial and commercial and even consumer landscapes
once one demonstration ‘works’. And then onto cosmetic, health, aesthetic and
other ancillary spaces.

Notice companies like Bolt Threads, Impossible foods, Zymergen, and why they
are different. And if/when they actually start winning they’ll dramatically
change the entire landscape.

~~~
nelaboras
Honestly not sure those are great examples. E.g. Impossible Foods is not an
innovator in any sense, just a 'startup' with an average vegan product that
got $$ for marketing and pretends to be premium. I'm happy that they got
mainstream attention and (again) showed that vegan/vegetarian food can be
diverse but I don't see them applying any revolutionary tech - everything they
do has been standard food industry practices for decades.

I don't know enough about the others, but there are many e.g.
cosmetic/skincare startup that take advantage of cheap production facilities
to produce basic creams/whatever with standard ingredients and add marketing
spin to pretend it's something special.

~~~
fsociety
That’s a bit like saying Dropbox is just rsync.

------
sbecker
Increasing skepticism of science and evidence-based decision making.

~~~
pjkundert
Increased skepticism of _scientism_ , and evidence-based decision making
instead.

Unfortunately, the scientific method has been replaced by trust of
authorities, which are proving themselves untrustworthy. The implosion of
fraudulent monetary systems will complete this cycle.

Evidence-based reality will resume its ascendency, when fraudulent money is no
longer available to cover over bad decision-making.

Observe specifically what happens to municipalities that depend on government
largesse, and have no productive agricultural or engineering capacity, and few
in the community with internal moral imperative, and the will and capability
to defend the innocent...

~~~
nelaboras
I am 100% s believer in science but the challenge is the signal to noise ratio
- there's so much outputs that even niche experts struggle to follow their own
field; for the population it's really hard to follow what is or isn't right.
And often the advice/results are contradictory due to different focus.
Nutrition research suggests to eat frequent small meals (is this still the
right advice?), but also that fasting can be helpful. And if I stick to the
small meals schedule my dentist will tell me that snacking is not good for the
teeth as it keeps the mouth constantly acidic.

Similarly at policy level: there is much research, but often its application
is very much dependent on the frame (eg city vs region vs national scale;
strong-trust Nordic country context vs low-trust Balkans or US; etc).

In the end you need the policy decision to be well reasoned and evidence-
based, but this is often difficult to manage and even more difficult to
communicate (especially in a polarized society like the US where everyone is
either friend or enemy in the political space).

------
hwbehrens
Digitization of national currencies [0] -- don't think cryptocurrencies, but
rather a harmonized API for financial transactions. In particular, I expect
this to drastically affect cross-border transactions by substantially lowering
the bar to implementing them (as compared to SWIFT, for example) by whatever
country gets there first, in the hope that their digital currency might
replace the USD as de facto international reserve currency by virtue of ease
of use.

[0]: [https://www.npr.org/2020/01/13/795988512/china-to-test-
digit...](https://www.npr.org/2020/01/13/795988512/china-to-test-digital-
currency-could-it-end-up-challenging-the-dollar-globally)

~~~
nine_zeros
Can you summarize what the real advantage of digital currencies are? What does
it enable that the current system doesn't?

~~~
throwaway743
Advantage for governments is more control. For citizens, not much. Should the
virus be around during this push, it'll be promoted as a "safer alternative"
to physical cash.

~~~
nine_zeros
How is there more control for government? Just that it cannot be printed into
currency?

Because even now, most wealth is in banks and government can freeze them when
they want to.

------
willcipriano
Homomorphic encryption.

[https://github.com/CEA-LIST/Cingulata](https://github.com/CEA-LIST/Cingulata)

------
ybbond
[IndieWeb][1] and how to own all your content online, linking your posts and
their responses(likes, replies) on your own website that is called
[WebMention][2].

Maybe some trend on how to [annotate and bookmark][3] content online you find
interesting in your own collected notes.

Speaking of some note taking, there's method called [Zettelkasten][4] and a
trend software is called [Roam Research][5]. It is currently trending invite
only software besides new mail provider ["Hey"][6].

\---

[1]: [https://indieweb.org/](https://indieweb.org/)

[2]: [https://indieweb.org/webmention](https://indieweb.org/webmention)

[3]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23227186](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23227186)

[4]: [https://blog.viktomas.com/posts/slip-
box/](https://blog.viktomas.com/posts/slip-box/)

[5]: [https://roamresearch.com/](https://roamresearch.com/)

[6]: [https://hey.com/](https://hey.com/)

------
DeonPenny
How machine learning will be used with physical tech unlike many other
software tech. Everything from generative design, to designing new chemicals,
self driving cars, and everything between I believe will be very big in the
future.

I also think unlike software it will take very few of those new technologies
to change how we live in a huge way.

------
LolWolf
Photonics and its impact in (classical and quantum) computing, VR/AR/Lidar,
telecoms, particle accelerators, etc.

There are some incredible advances being made in many areas of photonics,
including in everything from how to perform computations on chip (which are
marked improvements over how were trying to do this back in the 90s, to little
success) [0] all the way to how to construct tiny, ultrafast on-chip lasers
for Lidar [1], all the way to how to do in-vivo measurement of quantities of
certain compounds (which is useful for things like diabetes monitoring among
many, many other things) [2]. There are also the usual applications to AR/VR
as we've recently also seen [3], and other medical uses like chip-sized
particle accelerators for therapy [4]. The classic other use case, for further
in the future, is as a quantum computational platform [5].

The problem is that, like many physics fields, photonics is really, really
damned technical and unintuitive (and I say this as a mathematician who works
in the field!), so it's very hard to simply take a glance at it and know the
benefits. On the other hand, I think this is where a huge amount of
innovations in the next 2-5-10 years will be coming from and it's really going
to change how we view and interact with the world.

\-----

 _Note:_ I've mixed in both papers and popular descriptions of much of the
work, but either can be found for all of the things I've stated above!

[0]
[https://www.osapublishing.org/prj/abstract.cfm?uri=prj-1-1-1](https://www.osapublishing.org/prj/abstract.cfm?uri=prj-1-1-1)

[1] [https://phys.org/news/2020-04-key-component-autonomous-
cars....](https://phys.org/news/2020-04-key-component-autonomous-cars.html)

[2]
[https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7782291](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7782291)

[3]
[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200603151151.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200603151151.htm)

[4] [https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/y3mgn5/scientists-
built-a...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/y3mgn5/scientists-built-a-
particle-accelerator-on-a-chip-smaller-than-a-human-hair)

[5]
[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41578-018-0008-9?proof=true...](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41578-018-0008-9?proof=trueNov)

~~~
non-entity
Photonics seems like a really cool field and I started looking into recently
after being intrigued by VLC (visible light communications) technology. In
fact I actually bought some books on VLC systems and hope to design a toy one
some time soon. There are some online courses on optical engineering,
unfortunately I havent had a physics or math class outside of high school so
now way I could make sense of that.

------
throwaway743
Industries in the US favoring contractors/freelancers over fulltime employees.

I personally know people who have been affected by this or witnessed this
first hand in well known media companies and more recently at a casino.

Most were laid off and replaced with contractors, but in some cases the media
people and their respective departments were demoted to freelance workers. In
doing this, companies avoid covering benefits, unemployment insurance,
liability costs, paid time off, etc. They're also off the hook when it comes
to traditional working hours/days. At least one person has said that working 7
days a week tends to be the norm for them.

The casino employees have been threatened with layoffs if they did not return
to work during the pandemic. Those who were laid off have been replaced by
contractors.

It wouldn't be all that surprising if this became more prevalent across
industries.

------
freehunter
A nice follow-up to these kinds of threads would be "and how do I get
involved?"

Some are self-explanatory (server side rendering), while others I would have
no idea how to get started in (space manufacturing). There's value in merely
observing trends, but if I want to be actively involved... how do I get
started?

------
chrisco255
Decentralized finance:

[https://thedefiant.substack.com/](https://thedefiant.substack.com/)
[https://bankless.substack.com/](https://bankless.substack.com/)

[https://www.argent.xyz/](https://www.argent.xyz/)
[https://www.dharma.io/](https://www.dharma.io/)

------
leahcim
Black Lives Matter

~~~
kscottz
Black Lives Matter.

Black live matter more than the next stupid tech trend to ride the Gartner
hype cycle. Tech that doesn't include everyone shouldn't be built. Stop
reading HN and get out into the streets and support your fellow human beings.

~~~
Siira
No tech in history has ever included everyone. All ideologies are lies, “buy
low sell high” bullshit. Build any tech that makes the world a better place,
and try to make it as inclusive as possible. My intuition is that for
breakthroughs to occur, we need new technologies in creating markets for
activities with high positive externalities. Look at education, for example.
The budget on that seems mostly wasted, because there is not a good market to
direct the spending to efficient solutions. If we look at MOOCs and
KhanAcademy and similar projects, it’s clear that they are more or less worse
versions of a traditional class. They could be so much more. We could have
great interactive, multimedia textbooks with integrated teacher support that
answer questions, and integrated exercises that auto-grade and tell you how to
fix your mistakes. We could have platforms that measure and certify
productivity of workers, so that the current credentialism and mad-high
university prices crash down. Our problems won’t be solved by religions.
Religions have never worked. The only thing that can solve our problems is
social innovation. We need better institutions that align incentives of
decision-makers to their people, and create competition to drive progress. If
you look at why first world countries are better than third world countries,
you’ll see it’s because of better institutions, not religions. In fact, third
world countries are much more keen on religion and virtue signaling. Religion
thrives on poverty and corruption.

------
perfmode
Abolition of the Prison-Industrial Complex

------
lyonlim
More humility and reassessment of our way of life.

We need a fundamental reassessment of our impact on the environment and
planet, and how to reshape our economies and lifestyle to avert climate
warming, more severe hurricane and wildfire seasons.

There’s so much human ingenuity and i believe we can overcome these
challenges.. but despite all the technological advancements, we still know so
little of how our planet and climate work.

We think we are the apex predator, and yet we’re still held hostage by an
invisible virus.

------
anilgulecha
Decentrailzed, encrypted data store. This will be the base on which next
generation of applications will be written on - users want privacy and the
ability to own their data.

~~~
Lordarminius
Any companies or organisations working on this ?

~~~
Sloppy
IPFS [https://ipfs.io/](https://ipfs.io/)

~~~
russdpale
IPFS is just the file system, you still gotta store the data somewhere and if
the node is offline so is the data..

------
truculent
The right answer is something climate related. I’m not knowledgeable enough to
say exactly what, though.

~~~
mtrpcic
This implies there's only one right answer, which I disagree with.

~~~
freehunter
Nearly every reply in this thread only lists one answer though?

------
ChrisRackauckas
Scientific machine learning. The ability to mix scientific knowledge with
machine learning in order to allow it to extrapolate accurately from small
amounts of data. As machine learning tries to move towards areas where large-
scale data gathering is prohibitively expensive or even unethical (like in
clinical trials: you can't have a million failures to train a neural
network!), mixing scientific models with machine learning will be required to
bring AI into these domains in a way that's beyond hype. Physics-informed
neural networks [1], differentiable programming [2], universal differential
equations [3], SInDy [4], etc. are all ideas directions I think is the next
direction for machine learning.

    
    
      [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0021999118307125
      [2] https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.07587
      [3] https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.04385
      [4] https://www.pnas.org/content/113/15/3932

------
spicyramen
Applied Machine Learning. Areas such Real Time communications like Zoom, Meet,
etc were very mature technologies, now with ML you can add features like Face
recognition, echo cancellation, backgrounds, etc

------
rxsel
Creating ways of sustaining yourself in this volatile, insecure, economic
environment we now live in. Gone are the days of decade long job security, and
firm trust in firms and institutions.

------
jacknews
Synthetic food.

It's already happening with meat made from plants, but going further, you
shouldn't need a cow to make milk, or a fruit tree for orange juice, or even a
whole wheat grass for flour.

~~~
11235813213455
I'd have rather said Organic food. Generally, the least processed food are the
most beneficial to our digestive systems, which have evolved a long way to
assimilate them optimally

------
quickthrower2
Robinhood. r/wallstreetbets and other mainstream amateur investors investing
or betting on crazy risky assets from crypto to options.

Indie hackers - the last 5 or so years is the first time I’ve seen a lot of
info laid out for this group to thrive. The traditional business and startup
advice doesn’t apply directly. Expect to see a lot more people doing this as
they get dissatisfied from work or just need a bit of extra income.

Netflix and other networks raising awareness of social issues and kind of
being in charge of what social issues get to be covered and what don’t.
Related is education from Netflix instead of other sources.

Online universities becoming the de facto way to get a degree and people
opting for those kind of degrees to cut costs and get a job. So study CS or
Stats rather than Chemistry (which requires a lab). Non remote degrees seen as
an upper middle class luxury and will get more expensive.

~~~
wreath
> Netflix and other networks raising awareness of social issues and kind of
> being in charge of what social issues get to be covered and what don’t.
> Related is education from Netflix instead of other sources.

I started noticing this recently where even in Netflix shows (not
documentaries) there are subtle messages. Honestly, I find it annoying because
I'm there to decompress for an hour or so and not have these issues following
me in one of the means of entertainments (i have enough of it at work and
online already).

~~~
rmrfstar
You literally cannot consume media without this feature [1,2]. There is
nothing new under the sun.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessary_Illusions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessary_Illusions)

------
jlbnjmn
UAVs are a trend that I believe will be far bigger than most people are
expecting.

Autonomous cars are a difficult problem, autonomous drones are much simpler.

Package delivery, food delivery, air taxis, and a lot of previously cost
prohibitive applications as well.

The cost and complexity of a drone is low, and an airbag should mitigate much
of the risk.

~~~
mandelbrotwurst
What/who does an airbag in a drone protect?

~~~
mftrhu
People the drone might fall on.

~~~
ta17711771
And...the drone.

~~~
mandelbrotwurst
Are the drone's airbags deployed on impact like a car's? If that's the case,
it's not protecting people it could hit because it's already hit them at that
point.

Is the idea that it has some kind of collision detection system and deploys
them in advance of the collision?

Edit: Did a quick search, I see now that one of the ideas is that it auto-
deploys in case of malfunction that is likely to lead to a crash.

~~~
jlbnjmn
They deploy based on anomalies. Unexpected loss of altitude or attitude,
primarily. Or an obstacle rapidly approaching.

------
zamalek
I'm guessing that Rust will be quite ubiquitous in 3-5, especially as front-
end stuff matures (Yew + co).

------
s3b
More software outsourcing to places where the work can be done cheaper. Now
that wfh is becoming common, companies will start to realize that if most of
their employees are working remotely, then they might as well hire from
cheaper cities or countries.

~~~
WheelsAtLarge
People think this is similar to the outsourcing trend of the past. No this is
bigger than that. The big difference is that in the past there was a
difference between outsourced vs working from the office employees. This time
there will be no difference. All employees will be the same and employees will
be employed based on merit to the company without any stigma.

Also, it's going to be a long time before we go back to normal so companies
will need to adapt. Once things change to work from home first it will be hard
to go back to an office only work environment.

~~~
ta17711771
There will still continue to be large gaps in command of operating language,
and baseline skills.

~~~
WheelsAtLarge
But that's part of my point, people will be hired based on their abilities and
how much they contribute to the company now. That was not necessarily the case
in the past. And the reality now is that there are parts in the US that have a
low cost of living that are now open for people to work from.

I know that I would be willing to work from a low cost coast city if I only
need to show up to my office 1 or 2 times a month. I'm even willing to get
paid a bit less.

------
11235813213455
Minimalism, by opposition of capitalism, consumerism-driven economy. It has
been said in other comments, things like lockdowns opened up people's mind.
Living more simply, is not only beneficial to oneself, but also for
environment, which in return also bring benefits to us

We should rethink various jobs and activities, in the angle of "usefulness" or
"toxicity". Consider advertisement, entertainment, luxury, tourism, skiing,
golf, air-travel, .. even space industry as well since it's mentioned in
comments here for example on one side, and permacultures, remote-work,
environment-friendly transports, environmental-friendly leisure and sports,..
on the other side

I'm not saying we should live like thousands years ago, no, we should just try
to stop wasting and harming our limited environment and ourselves as well,
with this consumerism frenzy of products and services

~~~
natmaka
Those problems are a function of "size" (and "density") of the human group,
and also of its degree of technocracy and centralization.

Leopold Kohr and Jacques Ellul pointed it out.

------
gitgud
Low-code software solutions like Airtable and Monday. They're finally entering
the mainstream and gaining widespread adoption.

~~~
rhlsthrm
What kind of things are people using them for? It seems like most of the low-
code stuff I see is more low-code tools and examples of things that can be
done with low-code. Are there examples of things that are really novel with
low code?

~~~
tluyben2
Why does it need to be novel? Simply being able to put boring but practical
things together in hours vs weeks/months is more than enough imho. There are
enough people who have to build a little crud tool and end up spending
weeks/months adding features that these low/no code tools simply have
standard. That + no deployment, no maintenance (besides the data models and
business logic) etc. Sure it is far more expensive, especially when you get
many users, but there is a sweetspot for these things, again, imho.

------
vivekv
Personal well-being investments - health, Mind, Body if isn't already a big
trend, it sure will continue to be. With the pandemic triggering the fear in
the hearts of people, the focus on personal well being will be higher.

------
galfarragem
My 2 cents: [https://www.slowernews.com](https://www.slowernews.com)

I (try to) extract relevant trends, micro-trends and some edge cases from
daily news.

------
Corrado
I think that the current world situation is going to be a large boost for VR
(Virtual Reality). Before the pandemic I was much more in favour of AR
(Augmented Reality) as a form of entertainment. VR requires so much more
precision to get right and also (generally) prevents you from moving around
too much in meat space. AR allows you to walk around an interact with things,
which seems to be a much easier lift. However, with the social restrictions
currently in place (and possibly going forward) the benefits of VR have
outstripped its limitations, at least in my mind.

Picture this, instead of leaving your house to work (or go to school) you put
on your headset and enter your work/school environment immediately. This
solves the problems of travelling (time wasted, environmental impact, etc.) as
well as being physically isolated. Most of this type of activity is performed
sitting down so VR is a good fit.

It's not even particularity expensive or technologically difficult, especially
if you work in an office job. Instead of requiring a large, expensive monitor
(or multiple monitors) you can use a VR rig to have as many monitors as you
wish. I can imagine being very productive in such a world. I'm already doing
all of my inter-personal contact using video conferencing and VR would only
make that better; I love the idea of not having to worry what my hair looks
like or trying to remember not to pick my nose while I'm on camera.

I think education would see major benefits of VR, especially as you have to
isolate everyone anyway. My wife is an educator and next year's teaching
environment is radically different than previous years. The current plans
include having kids staying in one classroom all day, reducing free time, no
large groups for anything (field day, pep rally, etc.) However, if you embrace
VR you can take the whole class on a field trip to every museum on Earth, dig
deep into science (this Magic School Bus), or even meet with kids from other
countries. This is all (relatively) cheap and easy to do.

This all said, there are definitely opportunities to make VR better and
cheaper. Right now, it can be expensive on the individual level to get a good
set up, but if you factor in office space costs the price looks more
reasonable. Add in advances in light projection and head tracking hardware I
think the price begins to plummet and the quality gets better and better.

~~~
Stevvo
I'm a firm believer that VR will go mainstream and be useful for countless
different applications once the headsets improve enough.
[https://www.highfidelity.com/blog/requiem-for-the-
hmd](https://www.highfidelity.com/blog/requiem-for-the-hmd)

------
adamredwoods
Pre-rendered CDN websites [https://jamstack.org/](https://jamstack.org/)

------
highfrequency
Cloud gaming. GeForce Now immediately upgrades a $500 laptop to a $1500 gaming
desktop with modern GPUs.

~~~
Stevvo
I'm unsure on this one; cloud gaming has been around for 10 years and little
to no progress has been made on the technical issues in that time i.e.
compression artifacts, latency, lack of support from developers/publishers.

~~~
remify
shadow.tech has a 13€ offer that work really well with little to no latency.

Given a good connection and not being too far from the datacenters, it really
is viable.

------
ta17711771
The Department of Education is the largest financial institution in the world.

People aren't just not paying their rent and mortgages in the US - they're not
paying their student loans at an alarming rate.

You can repossess homes - you cannot repossess knowledge.

------
SandroG
Demise of the US dollar as the reserve currency.

~~~
nikivi
Don't think so

[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/comments/hatqdd/seriou...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/comments/hatqdd/serious_is_there_any_reason_to_not_expect/)

~~~
michaelgiba
FYI post was removed by mods

------
larrykubin
Automated Trading and commission free trading API's.

Shameless plug: I have started a YouTube channel on this topic:

[https://youtube.com/parttimelarry](https://youtube.com/parttimelarry)

The interest has been huge, lots of Robinhood traders and beginning Python
programmers want to make trading bots and learn how to apply technical
analysis and indicators. With trades being commission free and documented
API's like Alpaca, it is very easy to get up and running.

~~~
hckr_news
Oh dude love your content :)

------
julius_set
Shift away from swiping based dating apps. Most people I’ve spoken to have all
been infuriated over dating apps, and are now looking for alternatives. Big
opportunity here

~~~
kleer001
Problem is that a successful user stops using your product.

------
ac42
Using one's own head to draw conclusions.

------
rhindi
Homomorphic encryption and the trend of making everything end to end encrypted
online. Puts an end to surveillance, data theft, and complex regulatory
frameworks. Makes people feel safe about using online services, and makes
companies feel safe using third party cloud services.

------
tmaly
Art and creativity.

The covid 19 lockdown has given us a lot of time to ponder about life. We have
ML/AI encroaching on regular work. What can we do when all the routine jobs
are automated? I think create is the answer. Artists and inventors start
creating.

------
pruthvishetty
Electric cars and sustainable energy. Solar is going to get cheaper, and it'll
start making less economic sense to extract fossil fuels.

~~~
elamje
Agree. I would love to be in that space. An important caveat is that the oil
and gas industry has a ton of innovation as well, so extraction costs are
generally going down. If they stopped innovating renewables would catch on
faster, but it might be some time before this happens.

------
perfmode
Self-Enquiry as transmitted by Ramana Maharshi

------
mam2
Wallstreetbets

------
dredmorbius
Hygiene.

(A/K/A unintended consequences.)

------
Imanari
Meditation. Has huge benefits and should be taught to kids in schools.

------
lazyjones
Buying an electric car (instead of any other car).

------
g8oz
Offshore wind turbines on floating foundations.

------
6510
China India conflict/war.

------
lostmsu
The rise of AI capabilities.

------
Lordarminius
DEFI certainly

------
angel_j
Lasers

~~~
gremlinsinc
Could these be applied to sharks?

------
technological
Wearing Masks right now and cleaning hands even after we find vaccination for
covid19

------
perfmode
Civil Rights movements

------
SeriousM
Vegan food. It needs much less resources and yes, you can get everything a
human being needs from it.

~~~
noxer
Veganism is an utopia. If the whole humanity would go vegan we would die out.
Also your body can not produce vitamin B12 and no plants can produce it either
so the "you can get everything" part is factually wrong.

~~~
truckerbill
Why would we die out? I've not seen a convincing arguement about the arable
land thing once you factor in the freed up capacity we use to feed animals.
B12 supplements are cultured from bacteria. "Getting everything" from plants
is no more difficult than culturing cows etc on a huge scale as we do now.
It's just different to what people are used to.

~~~
noxer
Well we would not literally die out just a lot people would die. No one know
how many people could survive but clearly far less than there are now.
Veganism isn't only about not eating some snuff. It's about abstaining from
the use of all animal products for all possible use cases. People who call
them self vegans obviously all have their own definition because it's simply
impossible to not use animal products they may stop at drinking milk or using
leather for clothing while other wouldn't even sit on leather. But all of them
completely ignore that literally everything around us is somehow an animal
product or animals where used in the production. Fossil energy for example
that is partially an animal product. It's also made from plants ofc but since
you cant separate it you would not be able to use it. By that alone, so by
removing fossil fuel from humanity we would already kill a really large
portion of humans. You could spin that even further and realizes that humans
are animals too (yes we are ;D ).

The whole concept of veganism is a religion-like nonsense idea that works for
everyone who wants it to work because everyone defined their rules how they
see fit. But if you look at it from scientific point of view its just people
fooling them-self to feel better/morally superior pretty much like a religion.

Yes modern world can synthesize B12 but a vegan wold could defensively not.
Its just very very ignorant if someone thinks that there is no use of animal
products in the production line of synthesized B12.

~~~
pgcj_poster
The idea of veganism is that humans shouldn't oppress other sentient beings
for our own gain—it's not an aversion to organic material that happens to lack
a cell wall. Fossil fuels are made from dead animals, but unlike, say chicken
nuggets, we don't produce fossil fuels by breeding billions of animals to live
in some of the worst conditions imaginable up until their slaughter. Likewise,
humans are animals, but their labor is typically voluntary, paid, and non-
fatal. When we treat humans the same way we treat non-human animals, it's
called "chattel slavery," and that's not vegan either.

~~~
noxer
Like I said "all have their own definition". If you are fine with using animal
products if they did not suffer because of humans, you still can't use fossil
fuel because obviously your goal then is to avoid animal suffering and
billions of animals suffered and died as a direct consequence of humans using
fossil fuel.

Veganism can be turned and twisted however one wants its either based on total
flawed concept or the only real solution would be to remove humans form earth.
Which would guarantee no further bad effects due to us but it would certainly
not stop animal suffering for millions of years to come.

~~~
pgcj_poster
I didn't say "humans should never cause animals to suffer." I said that humans
shouldn't _oppress_ animals, meaning that we shouldn't treat them as
commodities and we should respect their rights.

Obviously it's impossible to never cause any animal suffer, just as it's
impossible to never cause any human to suffer. For instance, if you don't
donate all of your available organs, you're causing another human to suffer
and die. We accept that, because we'd rather live in a society where people
have rights over their own bodies, even if it hurts others. However, just
because you can't avoid hurting other humans sometimes, that doesn't mean that
you're justified in enslaving, murdering, and eating humans. Likewise, it's
wrong to do any of those things to animals, even if human civilization
inevitably hurts animals sometimes.

If you want to go from a pure act-utilitarian perspective (which is
psychologically impossible, hence rule-utilitarianism), then indeed, you would
not technically be a vegan, because you wouldn't hold any special principal
regarding the use of animal products. _However_ , if you were maximizing
utility, you still wouldn't eat meat or dairy products, because those things
cause massive suffering to animals, and cause environmental damage, with no
benefit (except taste and slightly easier access to B12) to humans living in
developed economies.

~~~
noxer
>humans shouldn't oppress animals, meaning that we shouldn't treat them as
commodities and we should respect their rights.

That however is not even veganism anymore.

>However, if you were maximizing utility, you still wouldn't eat meat or dairy
products, because those things cause massive suffering to animals...

Humans have been doing animal population control since hundreds of years
because we eat them. If we would not eat them we would need to find a non-
lethal way to do that (which would probably still not respect their assumed
rights), else many animals would have massive suffering too.

Nature never optimizes to reduce suffering it optimizes for survival. That's
why a prey population can grows drastically faster than "healthy" and then
gets reduced either by a predator population or the lack of resources. These
circles repeat forever and humans have been "counter hunting" since hundreds
of years for food and other animal products but also because we do not want
exploding populations followed by mass extinction (sometimes called plagues).
So if you really would want to maximizing utility and minimize suffering you
would almost certainly have to go some middle way that does justify killing
animals if it reduces more death and at that point it would be unethical to
let the killed animal go to waist. That however doesn't work if animals should
have the same rights as humans. And it also doesn't work with any popular
interpretation of veganism.

------
motohagiography
Generally, subcultures. If you know about it now, you've already missed it.

Specifically, post-covid personal reckonings and a desire for the essential,
remote work causing an upper-middle flight from cities and a change in
business culture that advantages agile and literate workers, sadly more
political polarization with popular reaction only just beginning, a milennial
demographic baby bust, a wave of cultural nostalgia, privacy and anonymity as
a super-luxury, a weird VC boom as sidelined cash looks for tangible assets,
universal basic income experiments and disposable income for the previously
poor who buy aspirational goods, late middle aged GenX getting boomer property
and cash inheritances, post-covid restaurant and service business reboot after
prior ones went out of business as someone has to serve the demand.

Those are the basic ones.

~~~
eeh
> Generally, subcultures. If you know about it now, you've already missed it.

I don't know about it, even now.

Can you explain a bit more? Is it just that the pandemic adjusted the value of
certain industries/services, and the adjustment has now occurred? Other than
that, business as normal: growing inequality within nations?

------
mrfusion
Giving up our freedoms and way of life for a virus that kills .26% of the
people it infects (and 0.05% for ages 0-49.)

[https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-
scena...](https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-
scenarios.html)

~~~
Jemm
Just curious how you are not concerned about the long term health affects of
COVID infection on survivors?

~~~
mrfusion
It's a good question. I guess here's what I'd say.

Anywhere from 25 percent to 80 percent of people with COVID-19 have such mild
cases that they are unaware they have the virus.
[https://www.healthline.com/health-news/50-percent-of-
people-...](https://www.healthline.com/health-news/50-percent-of-people-with-
covid19-not-aware-have-virus)

And here's a follow up study done on severe patients with actual lung damage
that showed the damage healed within 2.5 months:
[https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-27359/v1](https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-27359/v1)

Moreover, what we have to know is that organ damage is possible with any
disease. People can get rheumatic heart fever from a simple strep infection.
Millions of people get strep, yet millions of people don't get rheumatic
fever. Organ damage is a possibility, but is a very rare complication. The
simple flu you had last winter could have thrown you into the hospital and
caused fibrosis, but it didn't. It's a risk with any disease.

~~~
ta17711771
The simple flu doesn't last 3+ hours in the air, or 72 hours on
surfaces.......

If we weren't doing all this lockdown nonsense, more than 1000/day would be
dead/dying in US.

I'm against it, personal freedom perspective, but...the virility of this virus
is undeniable.

