
Ask HN: Most overhyped technology of 2016? - kirillzubovsky
What do you folks think is the most over-hyped technology out there today. Is that self-driving cards, video chat apps, VR, bots? The barrier to entry into tech has dropped quite a bit lately, and a lot of &quot;stuff&quot; is being pumped out from every corner of the net. I am oversaturated and wondering how others are feeling.
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DigitalSea
Virtual Reality.

As someone who has tried HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Playstation VR (I own PSVR)
and even Samsung's foray into VR via its flagship Galaxy phones (S7 Edge) I
would have to say that at present, it's still overhyped. The technology is so
new that most companies are experimenting and finding their feet.

As cool as VR is, the cool factor wears off very quickly when you realise that
screen technology hasn't quite reached the point where VR can compete with a
4K monitor on a gaming PC or even the level of immersion of a gaming console
on a TV.

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Grangar
I would say it's neat. But whoever thinks this has any use outside of
entertainment, in ecommerce for example, is wrong IMO.

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wmboy
Not even for virtual meetings for companies that have a lot of remote staff?

Edit: or actually, a better use case...how about a quadriplegic that can no
longer walk or move around easily?

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flukus
Considering the state of audio/video conferencing, I have zero hope that
virtual conferencing will ever be achievable.

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joeclark77
"Deep learning" and virtually any other kind of "data science". I teach
classes in analytics and I think ninety percent of what people really need is
better understanding and visualization of the simplest statistics: sums,
averages, counts, time series. Fancy statistical algorithms have some
applications for example in fraud detection, but for most business people I
think a great dashboard that lets them visualize patterns with their own two
eyes is much more robust and useful.

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sharemywin
I'm too old...

1\. Microsoft awesome way cheaper than apple

2\. Amazon .. None of my friends will ever buy anything over the internet...

3\. Google Cool..but nobody will click on those tiny ads.

4\. Facebook kinda dumb why not use email.

5\. Twitter the dumbest thing I've ever heard of

6\. Uber seem useful but I'd never used it.

7\. AirBnb just plain creepy...

8\. snapchat, Instagram, tinder ... don't you already have facebook?

I would take my predictions with a grain of salt... but I don't really get AI
bots? Sure they could work someday just not sure how you get a break out
company from it.

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knz
> 6\. Uber seem useful but I'd never used it. > 7\. AirBnb just plain
> creepy...

AirBnB is at least as useful as Uber if you travel. I've used it for multiple
trips in five countries now and always had a good experience - the
accommodation is always what was advertised, the user interface is easy to use
(especially when in a country with a foreign language), and the pricing has
always been competitive. I do have concerns about the impact of it on locals
but I'm also not sure that AirBnB is exerting more pressure than many places
have always had from other factors (tourist towns always have a balance
between tourist prices and locals trying to make a living - more often than
not that balance tips in favour of the tourists).

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fuqted
He might be referring to the thought of sharing the home of a person while
they're in it.

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knz
Ah. We've only ever booked a whole unit for that reason .

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nathan_f77
I stopped using Airbnb when I realized that most of the units I was booking
were just hotels and guesthouses, and I could get a huge discount by just
booking via their own website. Especially if you are visiting a tourist town
or a big city, Airbnb is generally a waste of money.

~~~
knz
My experience has been the opposite - renting whole apartments in Copenhagen,
Madrid, and London for less that I would otherwise pay.

It likely varies depending upon the market.

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flukus
Everything Elon Musk. Even the good stuff (power wall) is over hyped, he's a
walking hype machine.

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JoeAltmaier
But then he puts rockets into space. So not just hype?

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flukus
It's a massive amount of hype for something we've been doing for 50 years.

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davelnewton
"We" haven't, the governments of the world have.

Hyped or not, the privatization and commoditization of space travel is new and
interesting.

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elkos
I'm biased on the matter, but I believe it would be interesting if we had more
focus on open sourcing space technologies too.

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romanovcode
In my opinion it's Javascript. Everything is javascript now and I see it as
step backwards.

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wslh
Private blockchains: everything there could be built before Bitcoin. It can be
just replaced with fintech in general. Other technologies like VR are easy to
understand even if they fall short.

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ynafey
Can you please explain a bit more on this. Why do you think blockchain is
hyped? Also did anything similar to blockchain (distributed decentralized
information store) exist earlier?

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wslh
> Can you please explain a bit more on this.

Yes, sure. The bitcoin innovation was solving the duplicate transaction (or
spend) problem in a trustless network. In a private blockchain you have trust
between the nodes so this innovation does not apply.

> Also did anything similar to blockchain (distributed decentralized
> information store) exist earlier?

Yes, databases supported this configuration before and the idea of smart
contracts predates Bitcoin. Also, there are a lot of articles before Bitcoin
about secure transaction logs.

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Yxven
From a web dev perspective, I've heard a lot about React lately, so I learned
it. I'm not saying it's bad, but I expected it to do a lot more.

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nathan_f77
I've heard a lot about Vue.js lately, apparently it's even better. But yeah,
they're just small view libraries. If you want something that does a lot more,
then you should check out Ember.

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almostkorean
Chat bots. Still don't think I've heard of one that is actually useful.

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BorisMelnik
thank you! and most people that I've spoken with that found out they are
speaking with a chat bot get really, really pissed off.

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baccheion
Virtual reality (and augmented reality), self-driving cars, bots, internet of
things, assistants (Siri, Cortana, etc), Apple Watch, bitcoin..

~~~
BorisMelnik
yes to all that EXCEPT internet of things (IoT)!

One word: NEST! The NEST (or Ecobee, smart HVAC etc) is eventually going to be
in every house in 5+ years.

Lightbulbs, refrigerators, smart watches, CAMERAS! alarm systems, or even
frameworks (Zwave etc) - (some more than others) are all taking off at a very
fast pace.

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baccheion
The idea of the Nest systems (in a very distant way) was good. Nest itself
won't be able to deliver. However, the idea Nest used to push itself wasn't a
new one. It's something that's been repeating for years, that existed on
display in movies, and that many (who are rich enough) already have (fully
automated and "cool" home systems).

Also, the way they are implementing all of these things seem brute force,
crude, and bulky. The house is a finite space filled with a specific set of
things. Linking them all together (and to a central control) and having them
all work together automatically seems like a very straightforward thing. So
much so that many hobbyist Engineers already have their home systems working
that way (and in a much more elegant and scalable way than the crap being
pushed).

The only thing I'm really excited about are the LED light bulbs. Not the
wireless control and programmable nature of them (though that's cool), but the
range of color temperatures and intensities they make available and _then_ the
fact that they can programmatically be controlled/changed/accessed.

That is, it's cool to me to be able to buy a light bulb, then be able to link
it with a clock and light sensor, then have it automatically adjust the
intensity and color temperature of its output throughout the day as necessary.

But then LED light bulbs (programmable in that way, even) have been around for
years.

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DrNuke
Big data where big is volume, as in the mainstream. Influencers do not know
statistics, do they?

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nathan_f77
Haha, I never thought about that. I think you're saying that you can gather
meaningful insights by looking at a small sample of data, instead of
collecting and processing absolutely everything. Is that what you mean?

