What is happening in tech outside the AI echo chamber?
Got a bit burned out looking the news and tech podcasts today, except for security news (like from Lapsu$ group) no other news that didn't involve openAI and/or AI in general.
In the web framework world, libraries are moving from a react component style of authoring to an older knockout based model. This means, instead of rendering an entire block of HTMl on each render pass, just a minimal subset will be rerendered, as the variable is bound to specific DOM elements. This effort started with Knockout, fell out of favor, and saw a resurgence with the success of SolidJS. Svelte has started moving in this direction. It's my opinion that React's compiler will eventually serve the same purpose to allow their giant user base to get the same benefits.
In the web performance space, there's some interesting stuff happening in origin trails around shared dictionary compression. It has been tried and failed before but the latest iteration/spec hopefully improved those shortfalls that made them unusable. Also, ZSTD compression has taken the crown from brotli.
Metas new AR glasses seem to be approaching the ideal hardware, IMO it's still searching for its killer app. Microsoft exited the AR space by killing hololens.
Startup space is dying right now, with very low VC risk tolerance / interest. Some funds have returned money to investors rather than risk it in investing.
Still seeing new auth companies joining the party, whether they are focusing on SSO, customer identity and access management, or authorization. Most are open source, some are SaaS.
Tech meetups seem to be coming back. People want to chat in person. Finding space to meet and sponsors is still not easy, but the demand from the community is there.
Rails continues to deliver a best-in-class batteries included solution for standing up web apps. I see some new folks being pulled into the community; some who enjoy it so much they participate even though their day jobs use some other stack.
As someone else mentioned downstream, IaC is still happening and getting pushed further and further. Whether you are talking about the more standard TF/OpenTofu IaC or some of the newer declarative environment options (I've chatted with the nitric folks), defining infrastructure as software gives you so much power that it seems to be unstoppable.
I am aware, at least a bit, of the Hotwire/liveview/Laravel turbo idea of just streaming DOM diffs instead of full pages, and how that is becoming a real force to reckon for SPAs.
Agreed! The pitch is great. Deliver twice as much by writing half as many apps as your competitors to deliver the same features. Let your competitors write a server app and a client app, and keep them in sync, while you. just. don't.
Do you have some examples of complex SPA-like apps written in this tech? I find it hard seeing how you would implement interactive components this way. They recommend Stimulus for extra JS, but then, what is the benefit over SPAs?
What I can see is that it could be a nice solution for SPAs that should never have been SPAs in the first place, i.e. mostly static pages with JS navigation used for reasons of fashion.
When I think knockout, I think more about the MVVM method of 2 way data binding, which creates some of the most complicated and difficult to debug apps I've ever worked on - is that the same thing, or is that just in how they're authoring views?
AR/VR is in a hype superposition, large companies have made large investments yet the tech is arguably in the "trough of disillusionment". Few people think it will break into mainstream use anytime soon.
So far, 99% of sales are in the "expensive gaming accessory" category. There is fun and interesting UI and gameplay innovation happening here.
The one non-gaming thing everyone seems to want is just a large virtual desktop workspace. Apple has probably come closest here. It sounds like an easy problem but without a high resolution and a wide field of view, it's not a good experience.
Is there a lot of innovation happening in this space for military applications? I ask this as someone totally unfamiliar with the technology in general. It seems like it could greatly benefit pilots, people on the battlefield, and anyone else who needs access to some kind of visual information while still having both of their hands.
No actually, it was very relaxing. I recommend it. Unlike normal coding you don't have to stop to ponder architecture. There is a pseudo code example of everything you need to write right in front of you. Things are so blatantly obviously wrong that they stick out like a sore thumb and the correct way of doing things is for the most part completely obvious.
For example: The language files have strings with undefined $variables in them. The variables are later set then it uses eval() on the strings. I just make a function with the same name, replace the undefined variables with function params and return the string. The eval() is replaced with the function call (in all files) then do the same with the next string. The php mysql instructions don't work. The sql is mostly fine. It just needs to be prepared statements.
You can just sit down and start writing code (finally!) without pondering what the hell you are doing every other line. Like in the movies.
Bambu labs got me into 3d printing. It’s the most seamless and simple 3d printer and functions as basically an appliance. Huge leap for 3d printing and I suspect we’re closer than ever to making jt affordable and easy.
I replaced my old Elegoo Neptune with a Bambu A1, and what a huge difference! I hated FDM printing for years, but now I use it all the time. I'm upgrading my resin printer next year, and can't wait to see what advances have been made in that realm.
Really? It's been nearly 20 years since Reprap, it's hard to imagine it maturing any more. If I get one I'll probably treat it like a belt sander or something, a tool that sits in the garage with plenty of fresh air. Agreed that it's a little concerning knowing some people that sit in a closed space with a dozen of these running (at that point you can smell the hot plastic...) but using common sense with good ventilation goes a long way.
I currently have a detached garage that wouldn’t be a good place for a printer. If I had an attached garage I could see it being a different situation.
As far as development goes, it seems like there has been a lot of advancement in just the past 5 years. Seeing what some of the high end commercial printers are capable of, I think there is still a lot of development left for what home printers can do. The Bambu printers are bound to get some competition. There are also a few competing technologies, and I’m willing to give it some more time to shake out. It still feels very much like a hobbyist tool for people who want to tinker a bit. I want to design and print without a lot of fuss.
I can’t find the exact video I first saw, but looking around I think it was full color resin printing. They were printing photorealistic figures of 2Pac, and I think some video game or animated characters as well.
I’m not sure how resin stacks up in terms of durability for making parts, but from the perspective of being able to print anything and having it look perfect, it blew my mind.
PHP 8.4 comes out next month and will bring new functions, including array_find, array_find_key, array_any, and array_all. It will also introduce property hooks.
I'd love it if there was a site where I could follow developments at the intersection between business and tech that don't mention whatever's being hyped up at that point in time.
You forgot the secret ingredient - quantum computing. That's what will enable us to run everything efficiently using coal energy that's offset by purchasing carbon credits.
I like the way you think... Wanna join my startup? I'm looking for a technical cofounder. A ninja. A 100x engineer. I can offer 36k/yr and 0.1%. I'm a fast-paced ideas guy, and I need you to be on your implementation game. I'm in touch with some top notch investors-- just waiting for them to respond to my emails, and then we're going to be the next unicorn. This comp package is going to be your ticket to early retirement-- just think, Apple has a 3.5bn market cap, so if you have 0.1% of that you'd be sitting on millions.
(I think I've been in the SF tech scene too long-- I've literally had every one of those things pitched to me before)
The issue is that humanity right now is sort of capped on innovation in any area outside AI. There is plenty of room for optimization of stuff. For example, quad rotor drones replaced the necessity to have a helicopter flying overhead for a lot of industries.
This is an important question that I hope has a lot of responses, thanks for submitting it. From my cloud/infra/sre perspective, the fork of terraform (openTofu) is extremely exciting to me. I wish I had the time to contribute to it, IAC has been a career-saver for me, and terraform/hashicorp have a lot of warts.
Because I am part of this community and since I am yearning for news outside of the AI echo chamber probably some other users here are also looking for it.
Coming to a news aggregator website and asking the users if anyone got news is weird. There's also a lot of posts outside of your imaginary "AI eChO cHaMbEr", which you can see by browsing the site. But how would you make people know that you don't like AI? It's a tough dilemma.
I like AI, I'm not sure where all this luddite project comes from. I want to catch news that are outside of the AI news because it is just overpowering the current news cycle, just that.
I myself am trying NotebookLM to play with my own studies and create content.
But I wonder what else is perhaps getting less attention because AI is overpowering the news cycle, just like it happens in any tech cycle.
Yep, the "news cycle" was dominated by AI news just 2 hours ago, it was an "echo chamber". But now, suddenly and unexpected, it's not like that anymore. And just like that psssh, the echo chamber was gone.
And the people who created the echo chamber are also different now, of course. Let's make a post in the echo chamber and ask them for other news that they didn't want to post on the news website.
You don't want to get my point, that's okay. I don't expect you to.
I think I get your point. Somehow you imagined that I was attacking HN and saying that here is an echo chamber. And somehow you took that personally too.
First of all: I still think the news cycle is skewed towards AI news, case in point: even most of the items on HN front list right now are not news or not tech related. The tech related ones right now (Oct7th-7:15pm PST time) are either:
- AI news;
- Antitrust/lawsuit/lobbying related to bigtechs (kinda tech news, kinda business news);
- Apple related news about their new products and rumors about future hardware
And I don't mean just HN but also looking at my favorite tech podcasts that send tech news (techmeme, hardfork, this week in tech, and so on);
So yeah, objectively speaking not many tech news outside of AI (unless you consider the law stuff and Apple ads).
--
Second point, and I beg to differ from your main point:
I think there are different groups here on HN and I assume some people may know things I don't know. AI is getting a lot of attention, but there are a lot of building doing other interesting things in silence.
I hope this clarifies what I meant by news cycle, because I literally meant news and not just frontpage links, and I don't assume the echo chamber is gone... But I also do not assume that everyone is in a conspiracy to post only AI stuff - that just it is natural when most of the money and startups are looking to AI the topic will sometimes burry other things happening.
Btw, have you checked the Show HN recent posts? It is in a similar situation. Does it mean I think that all HN people are building only AI stuff? no.
Here's your delusion, I personally don't believe that.
> You: "Hey guys, so much AI. AI sucks, amirite? Anyone got non AI news?"
> Me: "Why are you asking us, just look at the frontpage. That's the news we have."
But... There were not many news, like I pointed before and you so conveniently ignored :-) there were tech links, but not many tech news. Later on the day Ruby's new release and later on Python's new release didn't even reach the front page.
I'm sorry you are this mentally limited on the internet to even see that there are tons of AI news.
I even pointed out it is not just HN!
Well, there isn't much I can do.
It is just funny how much time you lose on me replying each time since it's just something you don't want, lol
They're just having a conversation; that's one of the things "Ask HN" is for. I don't know why you're getting all triggered over it. Just ignore it if you don't like it.
In the web performance space, there's some interesting stuff happening in origin trails around shared dictionary compression. It has been tried and failed before but the latest iteration/spec hopefully improved those shortfalls that made them unusable. Also, ZSTD compression has taken the crown from brotli.
Metas new AR glasses seem to be approaching the ideal hardware, IMO it's still searching for its killer app. Microsoft exited the AR space by killing hololens.
Startup space is dying right now, with very low VC risk tolerance / interest. Some funds have returned money to investors rather than risk it in investing.