[HN Gopher] Ask HN: What's the next big thing that few people ar...
___________________________________________________________________
Ask HN: What's the next big thing that few people are talking
about?
Blockchain & AI don't count, because they're being talked about
plenty!
Author : ScottStevenson
Score : 246 points
Date : 2022-08-07 18:45 UTC (1 days ago)
| Balgair wrote:
| Memristors (sorta)
|
| Though small room temp ones don't exist yet, they likely will
| some day.
|
| As to why they are a 'big thing': Imagine a large GPU cluster
| turned down to the size of a laptop and running off a solar cell.
| They'd revolutionize electronics in other ways too. But the main
| use we can see now is that they allow for great amounts of
| computation for _very_ cheap energy budgets. Stuff that takes
| coal mines today could be done with what it takes to feed a cat.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor
| tmaly wrote:
| I thought HP had announced a breakthrough on these a few years
| back?
| abetusk wrote:
| Energy? I feel like it's been talked about a lot but maybe not?
|
| Solar panels are dropping in cost at an exponential rate [0]. As
| of this writing, consumer "new" panels are $0.75/W and used are
| at around $0.30/W right now (I won't give a link as a Google
| search will do).
|
| Battery technology is also dropping at an exponential rate. I
| believe, with a little effort, one can purchase batteries at
| about $0.08/Wh.
|
| Taken together, one can purchase a 30KWh (daily) solar panel and
| battery storage system for about $4,200 (not including labor and
| extra hardware/electronics), which puts the return on investment
| (ROI) at about 3.5 years if we consider the average house spends
| around $1200 (in the USA).
|
| Dropping costs will quickly put that in the 2 year ROI range
| which, in my opinion, is the inflection point where it
| effectively becomes too good to pass up for the average consumer.
|
| The dropping price of energy comes with all sorts of side
| effects, like a potentially decentralized energy grid, use cases
| for excess energy (eg bitcoin mining, carbon capture, hydrogen
| production, etc.), novel power storage systems etc., which is
| maybe the "novel" part that I haven't heard too much talk about.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swanson%27s_law
| abetusk wrote:
| Apologies for responding to my own message but I wanted to add
| that we can also put a timeline on it.
|
| The dropping price puts the rollout/adoption within the next
| 10-15 years.
|
| So it's not just a matter of 'if' but we have a guess as to
| when as well.
| voisin wrote:
| Surely this doesn't include installation or something? I have
| been quoted $1.50-$1.80/w installed.
| pibechorro wrote:
| You can install it yourself, its not rocket science. Plenty
| of online tutorials.
| codereviewed wrote:
| What about my fear of heights? :lol: . There is a reason I
| chose a desk job!
| abetusk wrote:
| There are 'ground mount systems' for solar panels that
| are popular if you have the space.
|
| A cursory look on YouTube gives many results [0] [1] [2].
|
| There are fields of ground mounted solar panels in the
| country side where I live.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7t4hGBWLtxM
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dzar3xqCb6k
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc-wgpGfbtA
| abetusk wrote:
| I did qualify that this was not including labor and the other
| hardware and electronics needed for such a system.
|
| The (relatively) high cost is most likely because of labor
| and (in my opinion) inflated hardware costs of battery and
| solar panels.
|
| Labor is a massive expense and can't be discounted but one
| could imagine a solar panel "kit" that just includes the
| hardware that you can install yourself.
|
| One could also imagine that the costs of labor being subsumed
| by a larger entity that can take advantage of economies of
| scale and provide solar energy like a "classic" energy
| company. I believe something like that is already happening
| in the region where I live (upstate New York, USA).
|
| For places where labor might be cheaper, then total costs
| would also come closer to raw hardware costs.
| danielheath wrote:
| > Labor is a massive expense and can't be discounted but
| one could imagine a solar panel "kit" that just includes
| the hardware that you can install yourself.
|
| Installing high-wattage DC lines without any training at
| all is a great way to get house fires.
|
| Also, I haven't got whole lot of un-shaded roof space.
|
| I don't understand why commercial solar isn't even bigger
| than it is - are they waiting for prices to come down, or
| what?
| treeman79 wrote:
| Was in a mega rental house and my wife burned her hand on
| the wall. Someone prior had done some diy electric work.
| The diy gas lines is what got us in the end.
| csunbird wrote:
| Land is expensive. I am actually surprised why the
| companies don't lease home solar panel kits, e.g. you
| sign up and they install at minimal cost, and you pay for
| the electricity generated by the solar panels, but at a
| reduced rate compared to the grid. The ownership of the
| panels stay with the company leases them.
| JshWright wrote:
| This is actually a very common model (along with the
| similar "power purchase agreement" (PPA) model).
| vel0city wrote:
| Those structures do exist, but they're not normally
| popular. Look for "power purchase agreement" solar plans.
| Normally those involve some pretty long contracts that
| are hard to get out of, contracts transfer to the new
| owner of the house so it can make your house less
| desirable, often require you to buy all the power they
| generate even if you don't need it all, need to call
| their contractors to remove the panels whenever you need
| roofing work done, you've got a lot of equipment in your
| house that isn't yours.
|
| I wouldn't do it. I don't need yet another interested
| party when trying to sell my house eventually, and I
| don't want to scare off would-be buyers with potentially
| complicated contract terms.
| abetusk wrote:
| People do all sorts of home renovation with lighting,
| fuse boxes, outlets and the like. I don't want to dismiss
| safety concerns but at the same time this is well within
| scope of many home owners.
|
| > I don't understand why commercial solar isn't even
| bigger than it is - are they waiting for prices to come
| down, or what?
|
| I think this is a really good question and I don't know
| the answer to it.
|
| My not-very-well-informed opinion is that there are a
| confluence of factors involved:
|
| * Infrastructure buildout, especially in the USA where
| the infrastructure projects take massive amounts of
| effort and the population is spread out over a large area
| of land, takes a lot of time, effort and money.
|
| * The prices involved aren't as lucrative yet as they
| could be. When the price per MWh is 1/10 that of coal,
| then we'll see huge rollout (in my opinion).
|
| * Adoption/rollout _is_ happening but, in some places at
| least, there 's government capture preventing widespread
| rollout/adoption (Pennsylvania?)
|
| * Aging infrastructure prevents large scale energy
| injection at random points.
|
| To the last point, here in New York state, I've heard one
| has to pay to first do a survey if the site where you
| want to build a solar array can actually inject that much
| more energy into the grid (at a cost of $10k+ or more)
| and even then, you're limited by what the aging energy
| infrastructure can support, capping the amount of energy
| available.
| rm_-rf_slash wrote:
| I wouldn't get too excited for decentralized energy.
|
| More energy sources means more power lines all over the place.
|
| Few things get NIMBYs worked up like power lines.
|
| The social aspect will be harder to solve than the engineering.
| abetusk wrote:
| I would like to see a more in depth treatment than what I've
| seen (or what I've thought about).
|
| Certainly cross country electric lines aren't going to needed
| as much because the energy can be produced by a relatively
| clean factory. With coal, we want it very far away enough
| away from consumers so as not to cause health concerns.
| Decentralized energy, at the very least, means we can create
| solar power plants next to larger cities and towns.
|
| In terms of the wires in urban centers, I don't have a good
| sense. I can see where you might be right but at the same
| time, that infrastructure is already there and there are
| efficiencies to be gained by not transporting electricity
| over many miles of copper.
|
| I also agree that the social aspect but there's a large
| pressure to find solutions because energy costs are going to
| be dropping by an order of magnitude or more.
| briffle wrote:
| > Certainly cross country electric lines aren't going to
| needed as much because the energy can be produced by a
| relatively clean factory. With coal, we want it very far
| away enough away from consumers so as not to cause health
| concerns. Decentralized energy, at the very least, means we
| can create solar power plants next to larger cities and
| towns.
|
| Your going to need very long electric lines, to send clean
| energy from places where its sunny to places where it
| cloudy, or from places where its windy, to places where its
| currently calm.
| abetusk wrote:
| Sorry, I'm not quite sure I understand your point.
|
| There are places that have so much cloud cover year round
| that it makes solar adoption there effectively
| impossible? The frequency of these places is such that
| their energy needs requires the infrastructure remain in
| place?
| mcv wrote:
| Or less. People are using solar to go off the grid.
| Kadin wrote:
| This is something that I think has basically flown under
| the radar of mainstream understanding: you can now live
| "off the grid" and have many of the perks that used to be
| the domain of grid-connected living.
|
| Not all of them... but "off grid" no longer means living
| like Ted Kaczynski. The popular understanding has yet to
| catch up.
|
| You can have artificial lighting all night long (thanks to
| LEDs and batteries), computers (ideally you want to avoid
| the DC -> AC -> DC conversion), Internet access (although
| most satellite systems aren't really optimized for low
| power yet), running water (solar-powered pumps, cheap
| large-capacity plastic storage totes), etc.
|
| The items that are still hard to get, because of their
| inherently energy-intensive nature, are hot water out of
| the tap on demand, and interior climate control (space
| heating especially). You need a pretty big solar array and
| battery system to run even a fairly efficient (AC or heat
| pump) climate control system. Lots of people get around
| this by siting their off-grid cabins in places that don't
| require AC, and making the interior volume small enough to
| heat with a small biofuel furnace (like a modern, efficient
| wood stove) that can burn locally-obtained fuel.
| bilsbie wrote:
| > Taken together, one can purchase a 30KWh (daily) solar panel
| and battery storage system for about $4,200
|
| I haven't researched it but I feel like I'd have pay 20-40K for
| such a system. What gives?
|
| Is it all just labor and regulations? Why can't we solve that?
| JshWright wrote:
| $4,200 is _very_ optimistic for the panel/battery cost for a
| 30kWh system. The GP comment also conveniently excluded
| "labor and extra hardware/electronics". There's a lot more
| that goes into a solar power system (especially one that has
| to manage batteries) than just slapping the panels on the
| roof and dropping the batteries off in the garage. Inverters,
| chargers, grid integration equipment, etc.
|
| I'm also not sure what you mean by "just" labor. You're
| talking about a critical system, that has the possibility of
| seriously injuring someone (including folks outside your
| house) or causing extensive property damage if not installed
| correctly. That seems like a thing where skilled (and fairly
| compensated) installers and some degree of regulation is very
| appropriate.
| abetusk wrote:
| > Why can't we solve that?
|
| Maybe this is the next big thing.
| eurleif wrote:
| Tangentially related, there are a bunch of calculators out
| there for ROI on installing solar, but there doesn't seem to be
| one that will take into account the opportunity cost of
| installing solar now instead of waiting until it's cheaper. I
| would love to see one for that.
| DoingSomeThings wrote:
| I've been thinking about this a lot with the current
| congressional action. I need a new roof ~now. But I have a
| lingering fear that huge product improvement will happen in
| the next 18 months due to added government money. I don't
| know enough about the industry to weight in that possibility.
| tmaly wrote:
| That seems like a decent price. If you talk to the places in
| Homedepot they are floating $30-$40k for an install
| mcv wrote:
| I saw an article recently (here maybe?) that the world could
| switch to 100% green energy and make the investment back in 6
| years. I haven't looked at the math behind it, and actually
| getting that many solar panels up is going to take some time
| too, but it really seems to me like this is the main thing we
| should all be focusing on right now. Because of high fossil
| energy prices, getting rid of Russian gas, and of course
| because of climate change. Three very big reasons to go all out
| on clean energy.
| stazz1 wrote:
| The switch to green will take longer without petroleum.
| e_joules wrote:
| Something about this cannot be right, surely? You are saying
| one can invest in a solar setup and have 7+ years of free
| electricity, and all that starting after 3.5 years?
| hattmall wrote:
| It's not wildly far off but I think his battery costs are a
| stretch. In fact double that would be a challenge to have a
| quality and reliable system. But it is definitely lass than
| 3x. Right now the best value for batteries I'm getting is
| 0.18 per w/h. To get 0.08 you would have to doing something
| like recycling small cell or ev batteries which isn't
| necessarily scalable and comes with some risks.
|
| Panel costs are accurate and the additional electronic
| expense is not super high. $1000 should be enough for most
| setups.
|
| For most people the issue is space. This is going to be
| another thing where the poor are taxed. A significant amount
| of single family residences dropping off the grid will cause
| prices to go up for the people that don't have the luxury of
| 4000 sq ft to fill with solar panels.
| abetusk wrote:
| The $0.08wh is something that you have to hunt around for.
|
| Just a cursory look on Aliexpress gives $0.12wh for LiFePo4
| batteries [0] [1].
|
| Looking on Alibaba, I see some potential sellers that might
| get below that $0.12 but it takes looking around and
| potentially talking with sellers. I do think it's possible
| but it requires some hunting, especially in the 'consumer'
| quantities we're talking about (sub qty 100).
|
| [0] https://www.aliexpress.com/item/3256803821576908.html?s
| pm=a2...
|
| [1] https://www.aliexpress.com/item/3256803518663847.html?s
| pm=a2...
| bko wrote:
| I would be very suspicious around claims from people trying
| to sell you solar panels. There are a lot of incentives in
| the US such as tax credits. This is good but a lot of people
| in green energy industry include that into calculations,
| which is fine except its under the assumption that the
| incentive will persist. Even Tesla shows you "net effective"
| price of their car by calculating the gas savings (e.g. Model
| 3 purchase price is 47k but they "potential savings" price is
| 38k which include potential incentives and gas savings of
| $8,600)
|
| There are other gotchas like PACE loans being senior to your
| mortgage. So if you get a PACE loan, the loan is transferred
| to the person buying the home and is senior to your mortgage.
|
| I'm also suspicious around the maintenance and longevity
| claims. For instance, from my experience, the energy
| efficient light bulbs do not live up to to their claims. I
| changed about half of my lightbulbs within three years and
| they supposedly have a 20+ year lifespan. It's fine that they
| don't have a crazy lifespan, but it just shows the industry
| is okay with outright false claims.
|
| Overall I think the industry is so juiced by incentives and
| manipulated by regulations that it attracts shady players.
| abetusk wrote:
| Why is this hard to believe?
|
| Not for nothing but there are solar bitcoin farms that are
| popping up for precisely this reason.
|
| In the region where I live (upstate New York, USA), there are
| solar panel fields where just five years ago there was
| nothing.
| candiodari wrote:
| One reason is that this will make it a matter of survival
| for energy companies and governments to _mandate_
| connection to the grid and buying of electricity, for fear
| of having these critical companies fail.
|
| Because this is not going to make all energy cheaper. It's
| going to massively increase the cost of "legacy" energy
| while making some types of energy free.
|
| Perhaps they will use a "social" cost-sharing, or ... well
| I don't know, but essentially the time will come when
| living in the countryside will come with "free" energy (not
| unlimited though), and cities will come with punitively
| expensive energy.
| sifar wrote:
| This.
|
| Taxation of energy is a big revenue stream for the
| governments. What happens when people start putting
| independent energy sources to power themselves and it
| causes significant revenue drop ? Would the government
| tax them for putting up solar on their property ? Couple
| this with electrification of transportation and you have
| another taxation source (fossil fuels) losing revenue.
| This would lead to a disruption in the social power
| dynamics in a country.
|
| Yes, energy companies can invest in these too, but why
| would I buy from them if I have my own generation ?
| distances wrote:
| Fuel tax will definitely be replaced with some other form
| of car tax, at least in most of Europe. I don't see any
| way around that.
|
| But I don't quite see how free countryside electricity
| would mean expensive electricity in cities? Large scale
| wind and solar will decrease grid prices too, and most
| people live in cities anyway so the people dropping off
| grid doesn't seem like an issue for electricity transfer
| costs. Plus off-grid won't happen anywhere with a real
| winter, so most of Europe is excluded already.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| California is already debating a tax on residential solar
| generation, even if it never hits the grid.
| georgeoliver wrote:
| What if energy companies also invest in "free" energy?
| suoduandao2 wrote:
| Of course they will, but energy companies have a larger
| minimum capital expenditure than a household looking to
| invest in generation. And the energy company will likely
| still carry the full cost of transporting energy, which
| becomes more expensive with more energy sources
| connecting to the grid.
|
| It would be a change in the dynamics of economies of
| scale vs small and nimble, greater lobbying power is one
| thing economies of scale still have a big advantage in so
| GP's comment seems plausible.
| mcv wrote:
| Exactly. There will be no need for "legacy" energy.
| Companies that are too invested in fossil energy can die
| and be replaced with companies that invested in solar.
| kragen wrote:
| PV can scale down pretty far, yeah, but it can also scale
| up. Having guys crawl around on rooftops trying not to
| damage your shingles is a lot more expensive than just
| setting up some panels in a field. The majority of PV
| getting installed is utility-scale, not household-scale,
| so you can buy cheap PV energy _and_ live half a block
| from a supermarket and half a block from a chichi cafe.
|
| As for costs, there's been concern for more than a decade
| about the "utility death spiral" scenario: some users
| disconnecting from a grid would spread the fixed costs of
| things like transmission and black start over a smaller
| number of remaining users, leading more of them to
| disconnect, and so on. So far it hasn't materialized
| anywhere, but as far as I know it could. I don't think
| the same scenario is likely with "legacy energy" like
| gasoline and natural gas, because the fixed costs are so
| low.
| pibechorro wrote:
| I have been living fully off solar (and some wind here and
| there) for 10 years. Its amazing. Never do I stress
| powerlines going down, brownouts, etc.
|
| You can run a fridge, lights and a laptop 24.7 on about $300
| of solar. You can add panels as your needs and budget
| increases. The biggest cost is the battery.
| abetusk wrote:
| Do you have a writeup of your setup? Do you use lead acid
| for your batteries?
|
| Besides the money issue, the biggest concern I have are
| balancing the batteries, getting the right inverters,
| keeping the panels clear and figuring out what
| inefficiencies are during the non-summer seasons.
| patwolf wrote:
| I'd be curious what your wind setup looks like. I have some
| land off grid which gets good wind, and I'm trying to
| decide whether that could be a reasonable alternative to
| solar. I don't see nearly as much information about
| residential wind turbines as I do solar.
| dont__panic wrote:
| I'd love to learn more about your setup. I'm very
| interested in investing in a solar + battery self-
| sufficient setup for myself, but without electrical
| engineering experience it's quite intimidating.
| aaronax wrote:
| Hopefully the other pieces get cheap enough to enable some
| revolution in the wiring side of it. Falling costs enable some
| acceptable loss of efficiency, so you can blow 100W on
| unnecessary power conversion and another 100W or whatever on
| losses due to smaller cabling.
|
| It badly needs to be standardized in a consumer-friendly
| way...like power-over-ethernet in reverse. Field-installable,
| hot-pluggable, fool proof connectors. You can get 90W over some
| variations of network cabling...bump that up a couple sizes so
| you can handle 400W.
|
| So you buy a bunch of solar panels and some patch cables, and
| plug those in to a one or more "power switches" on the roof
| top. Then run a QSFP+ equivalent "power backhaul" down into
| utility room where you have your "power aggregation switch"
| which has a bunch of (power)QSFP+ ports and plug batteries in
| to a few of those. And of course a couple big QSFP28 ports to
| an inverter to power legacy 120V loads, which maybe someday you
| don't need any more as household things move to using PoLE
| (power over large ethernet).
| jmole wrote:
| This is basically the idea behind microinverters
| mikewarot wrote:
| Deglobalization -- In the US, we're about to be forced to rebuild
| all the manufacturing we outsourced since the 1970s. It's not
| going to go well for thos countries dependent on imported food or
| energy.
|
| It's possible a billion people will face famine in the next year
| or two as a result of the loss of grain from Russia and Ukraine,
| along with the loss of Fertilizers (or being priced out of them)
|
| Energy Blindness -- We're so used to having free flowing oil
| cheap enough to burn for energy, it's an assumption built into
| everything. Unless we plan for the end of easy to reach oil, we
| could have supply chains collapsing everywhere.
| JasserInicide wrote:
| _Deglobalization_
|
| I mean, I think it'd be nice, but in the US our leaders are so
| fucking corrupt and owned by business interests that I don't
| see it happening until at least all the boomers/Gen Xers die
| off.
| tootie wrote:
| I think OP is talking about the semiconductor bill that
| already passed with bipartisan support.
| mikewarot wrote:
| No, I'm expecting supply chain collapses in China and
| Russia, and mass starvation in the next few years.
|
| _I hope like hell I 'm wrong about this!_
| aaronsimpson wrote:
| Is globalization really the result of corrupt leaders though,
| or a shift in corporate practice to accommodate the rising
| demands of consumers? It seems like no amount of corruption
| really matters as long as we're drinking lattes and eating
| avocado every day.
| asdff wrote:
| OTOH demand only rose because of corporate advertising
| pushing a consumerist culture. They made the demand. People
| didn't want corn flakes before they existed. Things are
| made then marketed not the other way around.
| swader999 wrote:
| It has a lot to do with shipping and protection of trade
| routes. That is about to become a lot more harder and more
| expensive.
| orangepurple wrote:
| It's cyclical because demand is induced through media
| propaganda. In turn US media is owned by oligarchs, which
| in turn have a stake in companies that benefit from rising
| demands of consumers.
| aaronsimpson wrote:
| I think your understanding of how consumers come to the
| decisions they do is sorely lacking in terms of stripping
| agency from the people that consume. We're not blank
| slate robots.
| orangepurple wrote:
| So much of what people purchase is based on what will
| maintain or elevate their social standing within their
| social circle. Media reinforces these stereotypes by
| showing idealized applications of products. This affects
| people through subliminal messaging. It works. Subliminal
| messages exert long-term effects on decision-making. You
| can freely read the paper by the same name.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Of course when they were young, the Boomers said that about
| all the people in power at that time. Big government power
| attracts corruptible people. This doesn't change in a
| generation. It probably doesn't change ever.
| orangepurple wrote:
| I'd go a step further and assert that big government
| generally only allows corruptible people to ascend in power
| tkgally wrote:
| > Deglobalization
|
| That's what I was going to say. Some people have been talking
| about it [1, 2], but it's not yet getting the attention it
| deserves.
|
| [1]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220702164210/https://www.nytim...
|
| [2] https://www.harperbusiness.com/book/9780063230477/The-End-
| of...
| TrapLord_Rhodo wrote:
| For discussing deglobalization, those articles have a very
| perceivable 'Western Bias' and i'm from the US
| tootie wrote:
| "Next year or two" is extremely unlikely. The US is absolutely
| no going to switch back to a manufacturing base. It's only
| attempting to gain leverage against adversaries when it comes
| to critical supply chain components. China is all but
| guaranteed to see slowing growth compared to the past 40 years
| simply because there aren't enough farmers left to exploit for
| cheap labor and living standards are already so much higher.
| They'll be in for mild economic winter then emerge just fine.
| Famine seems incredibly unlikely anywhere in the world.
| nostrebored wrote:
| But critical supply chain components are more frequent than
| people would like to think. In a period where sea freight
| becomes less stable, it's not a question of 'what goods can
| we not live without' but 'what goods can we not live without
| if delivery isn't stable and regular'?
|
| The U.S. is already losing sea hegemony. This was a key piece
| that enabled globalization to begin with.
| azemetre wrote:
| Do you have examples of freight becoming unstable due to
| military actions and not supply constraints? The de
| globalization thesis makes sense but I don't see examples
| of regional powers flexing their muscles causing supply
| chain problems, at least not publicly.
|
| I suppose Russia is an obvious example in the EU but are
| their other examples?
| mullen wrote:
| > Deglobalization -- In the US, we're about to be forced to
| rebuild all the manufacturing we outsourced since the 1970s.
| It's not going to go well for those countries dependent on
| imported food or energy
|
| Hogwash. Globalization is good, Globalization is here to stay.
| Whatever is the current location causing issues with
| Globalization will simply be routed around. There are plenty of
| countries that would love to be part of the global supply chain
| with. The only way any manufacturing is coming back to the rich
| industrialized countries is that it involves a lot of really
| good robots. Which is also good.
|
| > It's possible a billion people will face famine in the next
| year or two as a result of the loss of grain from Russia and
| Ukraine, along with the loss of Fertilizers (or being priced
| out of them)
|
| Again, hogwash. The market will force diets to change and
| producers will start producing more. Fertilizer production
| could be an issue but again, diets and markets will adjust.
|
| > Energy Blindness -- We're so used to having free flowing oil
| cheap enough to burn for energy, it's an assumption built into
| everything. Unless we plan for the end of easy to reach oil, we
| could have supply chains collapsing everywhere.
|
| A known issue that will not happen overnight. The world is
| racing toward non-oil based energy, so I don't see this being
| an issue. Don't get me wrong, this one I actually agree with,
| but it won't happen overnight. The world/markets will adapt.
| creakingstairs wrote:
| I don't think the current state of globalisation can last. It
| won't be complete deglobalisation either.
|
| I think we'd see the world market divided in two. It's
| already starting with semi conductors (chip 4 alliance).
|
| For some key industries US will also bring some of the
| manufacturing in house instead of only relying on allies.
| Again you are already seeing this with semi conductors: US is
| bringing manufacturing to its own soil and South Korea has
| already made some raw material processing domestic instead of
| relying on cheaper global market.
| Thorentis wrote:
| Energy is one thing, but I don't see any good replacements
| for plastics, especially medical grade plastic. We rely on
| oil for far more than just energy.
| twirlock wrote:
| kvothe_ wrote:
| unlikely we'll rebuild locally. We will outsource it to a
| friendlier country with cheap labor. In 50 yrs the cycle will
| repeat. (Probably South America.)
| orangepurple wrote:
| That country will be Mexico. There is already a strong
| logistics relationship with that country and it will only get
| stronger
| TrapLord_Rhodo wrote:
| Colombia has one of the biggest ports in the Gulf. With the
| huge flight of people out of Venezuela into colombia, I
| foresee labor being very cheap there and logistics to
| southern states very cheap.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Not for chips it won't be.
| yrgulation wrote:
| The issue is that this goes both ways. The eu is regularly
| imposing harsh rules on american tech. With deglobalisation
| there will be job losses as there will be fewer open markets.
| kragen wrote:
| How does rebuilding manufacturing work? Does it look the same
| as it did 50 years ago, or is it different? What happens if the
| attempt fails?
| orangepurple wrote:
| There is too much environmental and labor regulation in the
| US so it will have to be done in a puppet state in
| geographical proximity to the US.
| swader999 wrote:
| Robots this time.
| sacrosanct wrote:
| Clean Energy, Water Desalination, Nigeria's crackdown on
| anonymous SIM cards, Monkeypox, Separation of Church & State in a
| post-Roe world, Computer chips made out of light, The managed
| decline of Britain, Crackdowns on E2E encrypted messaging apps,
| Quantum-resistant cryptography, Tesla cars charged by burning
| coal.
| Lordarminius wrote:
| >...Nigeria's crackdown on anonymous SIM cards
|
| Nigerian here, also an opponent of the present government, but
| why would a crackdown on anonymous SIM cards be an issue for
| debate ?
| Sargos wrote:
| > Nigerian here, also an opponent of the present government,
| but why would a crackdown on anonymous SIM cards be an issue
| for debate ?
|
| It's a very authoritarian move to threaten privacy and
| prevent people having free access to the internet. It hurts
| people at a minimum and causes the deaths of the most
| vulnerable in society at worst. Definitely up for debate and
| probably not one the Nigerian government can win in a fair
| debate.
| enos_feedler wrote:
| No disrespect to anything on this list, but I would wager most
| of this stuff won't matter to the average person. I can't see
| how my life will change with respect to anything of these. I
| just don't think we can speak to these as the next big thing.
| For example: iPhone was clearly a big thing.
| chrismeller wrote:
| I tend to agree. Most of these seem like "vocal minority"
| issues.
| aglavine wrote:
| desalinization could be big in terms of migration
| bilsbie wrote:
| Turn off CNN and half these problems disappear.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Billy Joel should update "We didn't Start the Fire" with your
| list.
| david927 wrote:
| Separation Church & State
|
| Tesla cars are burning slate
|
| Crackdowns on encrypted talk
|
| Britain shock
|
| We don't want the MONKEYPOX!
| moralestapia wrote:
| >Separation of Church & State in a post-Roe world
|
| Tell me you're an American without telling me you're an
| American.
|
| While I don't diminish the impact it could have over there,
| that's irrelevant to the daily lives of literally the rest of
| the world.
| schnitzelstoat wrote:
| He mentioned the managed decline of Britain though, so maybe
| he is British and I don't know who else would care so much
| about what happens to us...
| baxtr wrote:
| TIL: Just mix two big trends and see what you can come up with.
| Like:
|
| - Quantum Computing and WFH
|
| - Crypto and Micronuclear Power
|
| - Metaverse and Biohacking
|
| Have fun!
| OJFord wrote:
| That's basically how joke 'startup generators' worked before
| GPT3 et al.
| wolframhempel wrote:
| Don't know why this was down voted, this is genuinely a simple
| and reliable framework to come up with promising ideas that
| utilise existing trends.
| EddySchauHai wrote:
| I bet metaverse archaeology becomes a thing in a university
| department before 2030 -.-'
| clavalle wrote:
| The US codifying privacy as a Right.
|
| Too many parties interested in exploiting the lack of privacy are
| making the lack of privacy laws painfully apparent.
|
| When it changes, its going to be all at once.
| moistly wrote:
| Codifying privacy as a right is not in the interest of
| corporations. I am extremely sceptical that the US government
| will harm corporations for something most people obviously
| don't care about. The success of Facebook, Tictoc, Nest, etc
| are definitive proof that most people do not care about their
| privacy at all.
| clavalle wrote:
| I agreed with that...right up to Roe v Wade being overturned.
|
| Privacy is going to become a very important issue very
| quickly as some states start to make laws that will be
| shockingly backward to most people. And those laws will be
| sticky and will require Amendment level changes to correct.
| To prevent an Amendment, even Repbulicans will introduce
| sweeping and broad privacy laws and will likely point to big
| tech companies as scapegoats to divert attention from their
| own generally unpopular activities (that play great to their
| base so they don't get primaried out).
|
| Corporations are going to get swept up in the melee unless
| they begin to self-govern in a very real way very quickly to
| get ahead of this. Because every personal data player that
| does something can can be spun negatively will be dragged
| through the mud for political points from both sides.
| O__________O wrote:
| Governments source huge volumes of information from private
| organizations, very unlikely they would limit these
| organizations unless they had a way to gain the information in
| other ways that are unlikely to be cut off long-term.
| alexb_ wrote:
| >Too many parties interested in exploiting the lack of privacy
| are making the lack of privacy laws painfully apparent.
|
| What incentive do they have to change? If anything, this seems
| to suggest the exact opposite, that privacy will _never_ be
| codified as a right.
| ortusdux wrote:
| WLAN sensing. Off the shelf mesh wifi systems are capable of
| sensing people reliably. This includes qty, position, motion, &
| gestures.
|
| Here is the IEEE spec due for approval in a year or two:
| https://www.ieee802.org/11/Reports/tgbf_update.htm
|
| I have mixed feelings on the tech. The home security implications
| are amazing, and things like automatic fall detection for the
| elderly would be a literal lifesaver. Small business could gain
| great insight into customer behavior.
|
| On the other hand, it's just creepy. How do you prevent the next
| apartment over from spying through your walls? Is the hotel wifi
| going to recognize and catalog physical activity between two
| people?
|
| Anyway, Plume already makes a home security system that utilizes
| the tech.
|
| https://support.plume.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043364893
| alexpotato wrote:
| > On the other hand, it's just creepy. How do you prevent the
| next apartment over from spying through your walls? Is the
| hotel wifi going to recognize and catalog physical activity
| between two people?
|
| I would imagine you just take the "country/private club" model
| and extend it out.
|
| e.g. a private club enforces limits on who can access the club
| and you get more "privacy" since the other people in the club
| also had to pass through those limits.
|
| In this case, the club/hotel/builder of your house can say "the
| walls are all Faraday rated so that you get audio, visual and
| EM privacy when you stay here"
| hn2017 wrote:
| Alternative truths - Trump says election was fraudulent, everyone
| believes it. Crazy stuff like QAnon/Alex Jones. Blatant lies that
| are objectively false (bigger crowd size, etc..), Sandy Hook
| shooting didn't exist. Vaccines/5G/Bill Gates cause
| cancer/zombies. People will start living in an alternate reality
| devoid of truth which will splinter society
| tatrajim wrote:
| Yes, really unbelievable how Trump completely denied the global
| consensus that he was being blackmailed by Russia for the "pee
| tapes". And even worse that Trump's slack-jawed acolytes
| continued to maintain that the Hunter Biden laptop was genuine
| when the most reliable mainstream media and intelligence
| officials all dismissed it as disinformation. How could the
| Trump idiots believe such transparent propaganda?!
| dqpb wrote:
| I heard that coronavirus causes 5G internet.
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| Preimplantation polygenetic testing. The idea is that, when doing
| IVF, you sequence the genome of all the embryos and implant the
| ones that you predict will have properties that you like.
|
| This already exists for monogenetic screening (for parents who
| don't want to pass on heritable diseases for their children,
| where those diseases are localized to one gene). But the idea
| here is that, by checking thousands of genes, you can make
| predictions for things that start to be very relevant to parents,
| like attractiveness or height or intelligence.
|
| I don't think people understand how important this is going to
| be. If the process is expensive, it will only be available to
| rich people. In a generation, maybe they'll have children that
| are more intelligent or more attractive than average.
|
| If that starts happening, I think it would have pretty negative
| effects on society, but there's no way to really prevent it (rich
| people will just go to Singapore if you ban it in the US). So the
| only reasonable option is to have the government subsidize it and
| make it affordable to everyone.
| cauthon wrote:
| > But the idea here is that, by checking thousands of genes,
| you can make predictions for things that start to be very
| relevant to parents, like attractiveness or height or
| intelligence.
|
| Personally, I think this interpretation of polygenic risk
| scoring is a crock of irreproducible shite. I don't think it's
| your fault, I think a lot of people in the field are shilling
| something they don't have for grant money, and they've created
| an exciting sci-fi yarn that's easy for people outside the
| field to digest.
|
| Height is a univariate trait that does not change after the age
| of ~20. If you show me someone who can take a genome and
| predict adult height within a centimeter, then I'll believe
| they have a snowball's chance of predicting something as
| nuanced and varied as "attractiveness" or "intelligence".
|
| I think there's promise in applying PRS to assessing risk for
| non-Mendelian disease, but there's far too many social and
| environmental variables at play to reliably predict these
| softer features. Like other people have joked, if you want a
| single number that best predicts educational attainment, use a
| zip code.
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| > Height is a univariate trait that does not change after the
| age of ~20. If you show me someone who can take a genome and
| predict adult height within a centimeter, then I'll believe
| they have a snowball's chance of predicting something as
| nuanced and varied as "attractiveness" or "intelligence".
|
| I don't know why that would be the standard, since the amount
| of variation in height that's attributable to environmental
| factors might make that fundamentally impossible. But we can
| get quite close to that standard nonetheless.
|
| And even if it's not possible yet, do you think that in 20
| years we'll have no ability to predict height or intelligence
| from a genome? It seems very plausible to me, especially with
| how cheap genome sequencing is now.
| cauthon wrote:
| > since the amount of variation in height that's
| attributable to environmental factors might make that
| fundamentally impossible
|
| Yes, that is my point.
|
| Both intelligence and attractiveness have a significant
| amount of variation attributable to environmental or other
| external factors, and have the additional complication that
| they cannot be measured by a single objective unit (like
| height can).
|
| > do you think that in 20 years we'll have no ability to
| predict height or intelligence from a genome
|
| The quantification of intelligence is notoriously
| confounded by socioeconomic factors. I do not think talking
| about predicting a feature makes sense while we are
| currently unable to describe it well.
|
| IMO dedicating funding to improving child care,
| healthcare+diet, and k-12 education will have a much
| greater impact on increasing a society's measures of
| intelligence and educational attainment. There's much
| stronger evidence that these factors are associated with
| improved outcomes. But, the work isn't "sexy" and doesn't
| come with a sci-fi flair.
|
| Kind of like ignoring climate work in favor of Mars
| colonization. There seems to be a cultural bias in tech
| towards moonshot panaceas vs doing the unglamorous grind.
| It makes me think of the Bill Gates quote that "a lazy
| person will find an easy way to do a hard job," and while
| that's valuable in some contexts I don't think it's
| universally applicable.
| scarmig wrote:
| Have you applied the same statistical rigor to the
| evidence that improved child care, healthcare+diet, and
| k-12 education improve intelligence and educational
| attainment leads to intelligence increases as you do for
| genetic arguments?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > The quantification of intelligence is notoriously
| confounded by socioeconomic factors. I do not think
| talking about predicting a feature makes sense while we
| are currently unable to describe it well.
|
| If we are doing this selection of IVF embryos it is
| feasible to control for these confounding factors.
|
| > IMO dedicating funding to improving child care,
| healthcare+diet, and k-12 education will have a much
| greater impact on increasing a society's measures of
| intelligence and educational attainment. There's much
| stronger evidence that these factors are associated with
| improved outcomes. But, the work isn't "sexy" and doesn't
| come with a sci-fi flair.
|
| Source? Isn't intelligence in adulthood more correlated
| with your parents than any of these environmental
| factors? That was at least what I had recalled from twin
| adoption studies.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Show the military why this is needed and you might get
| some funding action, that is after all how we got a
| school lunch program.
|
| https://www.ilsna.net/resources/schoolnutrition/historysc
| hoo....
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| > show me someone who can take a genome and predict adult
| height within a centimeter, then I'll believe they have a
| snowball's chance of predicting something as nuanced and
| varied as "attractiveness" or "intelligence".
|
| This has been done. Not to 1cm but ~3cm, and it has been
| reproduced by many labs all over the world
|
| That said, most genetic prediction aren't targeting exact
| vales, but avoiding the worst outcomes, which is a lot
| easier.
|
| Instead of saying this embryo will go grow to X cm, the claim
| is this embryo is 90% likely to grow to be taller than
| average.
|
| Same for IQ. They don't predict the IQ, but decrease poor
| outcomes and increase high ones. Hell, we have had rough
| monogenic screening for IQ since the 1960s
|
| https://arxiv.org/pdf/2101.05870.pdf
| cauthon wrote:
| I haven't previously read the Lello paper [1] that review
| is citing, but a quick skim makes me skeptical.
|
| Particulary the legend for figure 5:
|
| > Activated SNPs are distributed roughly uniformly
| throughout the genome.
|
| If the authors were actually identifying a genetic
| component to a heritable trait, I'd expect them to observe
| some linkage disequilibrium. And without any analysis of
| the SNPs (are they coding/noncoding? which genes are they
| associated with?) it's hard to believe that they're
| uncovering actual biology and not just chance correlates
| with external/socioeconomic factors.
|
| I also find it difficult to trust studies when the lead
| author fails to disclose a conflict of interest. [2]
|
| [1]
| https://academic.oup.com/genetics/article/210/2/477/5931053
|
| [2]
| https://academic.oup.com/genetics/article/214/1/231/5930514
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >it's hard to believe that they're uncovering actual
| biology and not just chance correlates with
| external/socioeconomic factors
|
| Do you think no biological basis exists? Either way, they
| are still correlates, even if some aren't causative.
|
| These models are still predictive when tested against
| control groups outside the training population.
| bergenty wrote:
| There may be but "nature" is strong on atleast this
| trait. Just look at height differences between north and
| South Koreans.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| North vs South Korea would be an example of
| nurture/environment, not nature/genes.
|
| An example of Nature would be comparing well fed children
| of basket ball players vs children of horse jockeys.
| wizofaus wrote:
| I suspect that was a mistype based on their other post,
| it was probably meant to be "nurture"?
| cauthon wrote:
| Yes, I think height is a heritable trait.
|
| Understanding whether the model is capturing biology is
| critical when thinking about applying it to IVF. If the
| model is primarily capturing socioeconomic correlates,
| those factors will (in most cases) be fixed for all
| embryos from a given pair of parents. The PRS needs to be
| weighting _biological_ risk conditioned on a fixed
| environment if its to be used ethically in this context.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| What are your requirements for ethical use?
|
| In what case are you expecting the purchasers to be
| harmed? It seems reasonable to screen for the other
| factors as well if a correlation exists.
| bergenty wrote:
| The control on those are in places that have relatively
| standard nutritional distribution. The environment
| obviously plays a strong role, just look at the height
| difference in populations between north and South Korea.
| throw123123123 wrote:
| Making smarter, healthier and more attractive people is a net
| good for society.
|
| The moral issue is not "inequality", the moral issue is
| eugenics - building their behavior to your desire.
| joshmarlow wrote:
| > If the process is expensive, it will only be available to
| rich people.
|
| I have trouble believing it will remain expensive unless there
| is a cultural taboo against it.
|
| In general, once proven out, there should be pretty high demand
| for the tech - and that provides a lot of opportunity for
| profit for whomever can get the costs down.
|
| What looks like a bigger blocker to me - AFAIK, IVF is really
| harsh on the body isn't it? Lots of hormones to force out a lot
| of eggs. That looks like the real adoption bottleneck to me.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Well, another way to put it, it requires that fertilization
| be the explicit focus of the pregnancy and the _means_ of
| that fertilization not really of the more, um, traditional
| variety.
|
| I think at the very least there is a hurdle of willfulness
| (and a monetary hurdle of at least some degree -- compared to
| the traditional alternative certainly).
|
| To be sure it need not be prohibitively expensive, but it
| sounds like it will go hand in glove with the parental
| mindset that also seeks out private schooling, tutoring, etc.
| That probably takes it fairly exclusively into the domain of
| the well off (and want-to-be well off).
| bko wrote:
| > If the process is expensive, it will only be available to
| rich people.
|
| Most technology gets distributed to the masses. It makes more
| sense to sell something cheaply to a lot of people than just a
| few people at a higher price. The same reason the wealthiest
| people in the world can't buy a better iPhone. The economics
| behind the technology encourages mass adoption and a reasonable
| price
| Teever wrote:
| I'm going to piggyback on your comment by saying that
| preimplantation polygenetic testing is only the start of what I
| feel is broader impending reproductive revolution.
|
| Not only are we going to be able to start modifying zygotes
| like you've mentioned, we're going to be able to start
| generating them from any genetic material available[0], and
| bringing them to term in an artificial womb[1].
|
| This is going to fundamentally alter society (for the wealthy
| at first as you mention) because we will be able to do away
| with the health burdens that are placed on women who go through
| pregnancy and we will be able to eliminate huge swaths of
| genetic abnormalities.
|
| Imagine the shock to paternity law once some unscrupulous
| individual obtains a celebrities DNA through some discarded
| water bottle and generates children from it to demand child
| support payments with.
|
| How will organized sports handle genetically modified players
| being vastly superior to ungenetically modified?
|
| It's going to be huge, it'll make the pill seem quaint and I
| feel it's just around the corner, like 2030's sort of thing and
| no one is talking about.
|
| [0] https://www.timesofisrael.com/from-just-skin-cells-
| israeli-l...
|
| [1]
| https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/jun/27/parents...
| philwelch wrote:
| > Not only are we going to be able to start modifying zygotes
| like you've mentioned, we're going to be able to start
| generating them from any genetic material available[0], and
| bringing them to term in an artificial womb[1].
|
| And then you can bypass the entire "we don't know which genes
| do what" problem because we can just clone people who have
| whatever qualities we want.
|
| Well, maybe. It turns out your first citation has been
| validated in mice, and if that was the gold standard, we'd be
| able to put people into suspended animation (this totally
| works with mice but not larger mammals) among 1000 other
| things that never panned out.
|
| If you go back a little bit, there are a ton of things (like
| suspended animation) that briefly seemed extremely promising
| and never panned out, and they outnumber the things that
| actually panned out by about 10:1.
|
| I honestly think that even if this sort of thing was
| possible, it might be politically regulated out of existence
| or even out of being developed. We cloned a sheep in the
| 1990's, but still no human.
| dereg wrote:
| To provide a counterpoint to a couple of the examples you
| provided:
|
| > Imagine the shock to paternity law once some unscrupulous
| individual obtains a celebrities DNA through some discarded
| water bottle and generates children from it to demand child
| support payments with.
|
| This already happens with women who try to sabotage condoms
| and/or collect the specimen after the fact. The rapper Drake
| has put the phenomena in the spotlight. If this becomes an
| actual problem, court systems will likely adjust to the times
| and require a higher burden of proof for paternity claims.
|
| > This already happens How will organized sports handle
| genetically modified players being vastly superior to
| ungenetically modified?
|
| China already does extensive genetic modification by way of
| selective reproduction. Basketball player Yao Ming was the
| product of a forced marriage between two tall, Chinese
| basketball players. He was a truly great player until he
| became plagued by injuries, likely due to overwork. I don't
| think that anybody raised any objections due to the
| (un)fairness of his provenance. In the future, I think that
| social stigmas will provide an effective barrier to excessive
| over screening.
| maxwell_smart wrote:
| Not criticizing, but just pointing out, in all fairness,
| men sabotage condoms and "stealth" remove them without
| their partner's knowledge as well.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Rich people already have children that are more attractive than
| average. Being attractive is the biggest signal for
| generational wealth which reinforces the need for trophy
| spouses which reinforces the signal and so on.
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| Of the truly rich today, can you honestly say that they are
| more attractive than average? I'm not seeing it. I'm not
| talking Hollywood level but much higher, generational wealth
| levels. I realize that it's hard to get data on this but just
| anecdotally, there aren't many examples that come to mind.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Depends on what you mean by "truly rich" I guess. Most of
| the tech billionaires come from upper middle class
| families. They don't generally have trophy spouses. I do
| believe that the old money people i interact with are
| generally more attractive than average, yes.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| I wonder how much of that is genetics and how much of
| that is lifelong access to excellent health care,
| nutrition, exercise, clothing, sleep, etc?
|
| Being poor or even lower middle class is _hard_ on the
| body. And it shows. Big time.
| ericmcer wrote:
| Have you seen Zuckerberg, Musk and Bezos?
| [deleted]
| arbitrary_name wrote:
| Have you seen who they are dating?
| [deleted]
| paxys wrote:
| Top 5-10 richest people isn't enough of a sample set to
| draw any conclusions. Compare the million richest vs
| million poorest people in the world and the answer will be
| obvious.
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| They're also probably smarter than average, because people
| who are smart are more likely to become rich. But I'm worried
| this will accelerate the effect. On the other hand, if you
| make the technology available to everyone, the effect would
| be mitigated
| maherbeg wrote:
| While this is interesting, I think IVF still has a long way to
| go for ensuring solid patient outcomes in reasonable amounts of
| time. There's still a lot of voodoo around getting good
| embryo's from retrievals and implanting them.
| dont__panic wrote:
| [Gattaca](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/) is about the
| long term consequences of this exact technology for society.
|
| In particular, the consequences for the children born naturally
| who don't benefit from this tech. They don't get any say in the
| decision, but end up heavily penalized, barred from certain
| jobs for "safety" reasons, aren't desirable partners... an
| underclass of society.
| norwalkbear wrote:
| People who don't benefit from good genes are already the
| underclass today
| jfk13 wrote:
| You just have to condition them appropriately, so that they
| happily accept their place. See Brave New World for the
| blueprints.
| kanzure wrote:
| You might find that Brave New World is not quite the same
| cautionary tale against genetic enhancement that popular
| discourse would have you believe (it's more about
| totalitarianism):
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22128854
| sigstoat wrote:
| > the long term consequences of this exact technology for
| society
|
| > They don't get any say in the decision, but end up heavily
| penalized, barred from certain jobs for "safety" reasons,
| aren't desirable partners...
|
| you realize gattaca was fiction, right? and also
|
| https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/policy-
| issues/Genetic-...
| kanzure wrote:
| "If the audience is supposed to accept that genetic
| determinism is true in Gattaca, then no amount of Vincent's
| hard work should make Vincent a hero. He's just a fraud. If
| the audience is not supposed to believe that in the world of
| Gattaca genetic determinism is true (that is, it's false),
| then it should be interpreted as a story of discrimination,
| and a story of the underdog's heroic hard work overcoming the
| negative effects of a corrupt, wrong, erroneously-
| discriminating society."
|
| from http://www.ln.edu.hk/philoso/staff/sesardic/Gattaca.pdf
| derefr wrote:
| Seems to me that genetic determinism doesn't have to be
| "right" or "wrong", but rather a sometimes-useful model
| that we other times do not allow to colour our views. I.e.
| we have weight classes and gender divides for sporting
| events (genetic determinism), but each person who meets a
| minimum threshold of competence (e.g. not in prison) gets
| an equal democratic vote.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| What is the model being referenced where someone in
| prison is automatically incompetent to vote? Especially
| given the human legacy of the war on drugs in there for
| example, this seems like a really good example of letting
| one policy color our views of an unrelated one.
|
| You think we're going to formalize our class system with
| genetics and biology but then somehow ignore that in all
| the realms where it's not relevant? Who decides when it
| is relevant.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| To be fair, in most of the USA it's 'has been to prison'
| as voting rights are not restored in every state upon
| release. Some animals get reverted to the 'taxation
| without representation' model. Those inalienable rights
| are actually pretty alienable after all. Who knew?
| dicroce wrote:
| It's not that you cannot use Genetic information to
| accurately predict certain aspects of someone's future...
| It's that genetic information tells you nothing about human
| will, and human will can overcome a lot.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Human will can also be survivorship bias masquerading as
| exceptionalism.
| zajio1am wrote:
| Why do you think that predispositions for human will are
| not genetically determinted?
| tannhauser23 wrote:
| Maybe, but that's not what they tested for in the movie.
| tmlb wrote:
| They sort of touched on this point in the movie:
|
| >No one exceeds their potential. If they did, it would
| mean we did not accurately gauge their potential in the
| first place.
| throw123123123 wrote:
| This is one of the best sci-fi movies of all time - it really
| captures one essence of being a human being, that motivation
| and drive vastly outcompete better opportunity.
|
| "You know, my son was never what they promised me he would
| be" gets me to tears every time.
| CakeEngine wrote:
| This is only a problem is there's a clear mapping from
| detectable genetic feature to an expressed macro-feature like
| intelligence.
|
| My (admittedly limited) understanding is that each detectable
| genetic feature has a whole panoply of effects, some of which
| wont' be apparent at birth. Selecting for intelligence through
| specific genes is like to also be selecting for weak bones,
| reduced longevity, or other unpredictable side-effects.
|
| Maybe one day it will be possible but there's a chasm between
| here and there which can only be crossed by extensive testing
| on real people. Is that even crossable?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| This has been out of the box already for a while. You can
| literally have your embryo commercially screened for
| intelligence, height, and other complex traits today
| philipkglass wrote:
| Has it been out of the box long enough to validate that the
| adult versions of the embryos exhibit the traits that
| they're supposed to? Is it a _noticeable_ intelligence
| boost? For example, a standard deviation higher IQ as
| measured by Raven 's Progressive Matrices, compared to
| siblings from un-screened embryos? I read enough about
| biotech and biohacking that I feel like I would have
| already come across reports if this really works, but maybe
| it's very recent.
|
| I read Gwern's "Embryo Selection for Intelligence" a few
| years ago:
|
| https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection
|
| Near future possibilities seemed pretty limited based on
| that review, unless the reasoning was incorrect:
|
| _As median embryo count in IVF hovers around 5, the total
| gain from selection is small, and much of the gain is
| wasted by losses in the IVF process (the best embryo
| doesn't survive storage, the second-best fails to implant,
| and so on). One of the key problems is that polygenic
| scores are the sum of many individual small genes' effects
| and form a normal distribution, which is tightly clustered
| around a mean. A polygenic score is attempting to predict
| the net effect of thousands of genes which almost all
| cancel out, so even accurate identification of many
| relevant genes still yields an apparently unimpressive
| predictive power. The fact that traits are normally
| distributed also creates difficulties for selection: the
| further into the tail one wants to go, the larger the
| sample required to reach the next step--to put it another
| way, if you have 10 samples, it's easy (a 1 in 10
| probability) that your next random sample will be the
| largest sample yet, but if you have 100 samples, now the
| probability of an improvement is the much harder 1 in 100,
| and if you have 1000, it's only 1 in 1000; and worse, if
| you luck out and there's an improvement, the improvement is
| ever tinier. After taking into account existing PGSes,
| previously reported IVF process losses, costs, and so on,
| the implication that it is moderately profitable and can
| increase traits perhaps 0.1SD, rising somewhat over the
| next decade as PGSes continue to improve, but never
| exceeding, say, 0.5SD._
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Just saw your quoted text, and I do think the reasoning
| is incorrect.
|
| What is gets right is that there are some serious
| practical limitations. The most important are around the
| availability of embryos, financial costs, and diminishing
| returns.
|
| What it gets wrong is modeling the implementation as an
| optimization tool opposed to a screening tool.
|
| If you have a pool 10 embryos, with a trait on a normal
| distribution (eg IQ), you can screen the bottom half out.
| By doing so, the average IQ goes from 100 (normal mean)
| to 110, mean for embryos over 100.
|
| People want genetic children, but if for example, a wife
| is infertile, eggs can be purchased for ~$2.5k.[1]
|
| Using today's technology, you could buy 100 eggs, screen
| the top 10% (>120), and the average embryo in the pool
| would be now be the 95th percentile for IQ (eg 125, +1.66
| Standard deviations above the mean)
|
| The next technology needed to knock this wide open would
| the the cloning or duplication of human eggs from a
| single source. IVT egg extraction yields only 5-10 eggs
| per cycle. If this could be multiplied in-vitro, money
| would be the only constraint.
|
| https://www.cryosinternational.com/en-us/us-
| shop/client/how-...
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| For polygenic traits no, it hasnt been out of the box
| long enough for the embryos to mature.
|
| However, we have been screening for single gene mutations
| that impact IQ since the the 1960s and they are well
| validated. For example, the impact on IQ of Trisomy 21
| (downs syndrome) has a well validated impact of about 30
| IQ points. 16p11.2 Gene abnormality has a well studied
| impact of 16-25 IQ points depending on the abnormality.
|
| If you had a dumb as rocks polygenic test that screened
| just these factors, you would see a noticeable difference
| compared to a control.
| rrwo wrote:
| I think a lot of wealthy people will throw money at genetic
| snake oil.
|
| Traits are determined by multiple genes (e.g. eye or hair
| colour), and single genes control multiple traits (e.g. EDAR
| gene which is associated with thick hair, small breasts, and
| shovel-shaped incisors).
|
| Sometimes genes for less desirable traits (e.g. mental illness,
| sickle cell anemia) may be associated with desirable traits
| (higher intelligence, resistence to malaria).
| philwelch wrote:
| Rich people already have children who are more intelligent and
| attractive than average. They do this via mechanisms like
| "being intelligent enough to get rich, or at least not being
| stupid enough to go broke" and "being rich enough to marry hot
| people and have kids with them".
|
| I don't know if polygenetic testing is going to have a
| significant effect, but if it does, there is going to be a
| significant generation gap in intelligence, and that will have
| unpredictable consequences in education and the labor market.
| youngNed wrote:
| this 'people are rich because they are smart' is not a take i
| expected to find on HN.
|
| Its not quite as damaging as 'people are rich because they
| work harder' but its really not far off
| ColanR wrote:
| To me it falls in a similar category as how highly
| intelligent people are less likely to be overweight. I
| think that with intelligence comes a better sense of how to
| control oneself. Ever seen the stats on how often lottery
| winners end up going broke? Not that many people have the
| capacity and knowledge to control their emotions with their
| reason. Being wealthy is not a question of making money,
| it's a question of keeping it.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| This is all much easier if you grow up wealthy. If you
| start life with a trust fund and people around you who
| know how to manage wealth, you have a huge advantage
| philwelch wrote:
| Sometimes you develop a crippling drug addiction and go
| bankrupt.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| I personally don't no. I have been ill, I have had to
| give up on a career in an industry that died and retrain.
| I have been subject to a very costly legal challenge that
| was not even close to being of my own making. I am
| moderately intelligent, but luck didn't care.
|
| Luck can be a bastard like that
| philwelch wrote:
| I'm sorry to hear that, and I'm agree it isn't your fault
| or the result of some personal flaw on your part that
| you're not personally rich. What I'm saying is that on a
| larger statistical level, when we are talking about
| entire populations, those random factors still exist but
| nonrandom factors also exist, and the nonrandom ones are
| the ones that show up in aggregate once you have enough
| of a sample size.
| nugget wrote:
| Many children of the UHNW families I know are raised by a
| rotating cast of nannies and emotionally neglected by
| their parents. It's heartbreaking to watch the
| psychological damage being done. Given a choice for my
| embryonic self I'd choose an upper middle class couple
| with high degrees of empathy, one mostly stay at home
| parent and an obsessive focus on curiosity, knowledge,
| and self-education.
| yunohn wrote:
| If you're going to use that example, surely you've heard
| of "wealth barely lasts 3 generations"? Surely smart gene
| rich people could sustain it indefinitely?
|
| More - https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/generational-
| wealth%3A-why-d...
| throwaway_4ever wrote:
| No because "smart" genes don't sustain. Like 50% is
| volatile noise. So that would actually line up. I.e. Two
| 150 IQ don't have a 150 IQ on avg. They have a 125 IQ,
| and then the two 125 IQ have a 112, and the two 112 IQ
| have a 106 and voila.
| david927 wrote:
| This is the type of statistic that embarrasses
| statistics. How many of those rated "highly intelligent"
| (I would be _fascinated_ on how they measured that!) were
| in an elevated economic group and so now we 're reduced
| to tautology.
|
| Lottery winners have had no experience in managing
| wealth, often have had years and decades of being
| impoverished and wishing for products like jewelry that
| was always out of reach, and then they get inundated with
| money. They found that who marshmallow experiment was
| literally kids who have their needs met aren't rushing to
| consume what's in front of them and that patience pays
| off.
|
| You're not making any argument here other than when
| you're born wealthy you're more likely to be wealthy, and
| that we know.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I'm genuinely curious what point you are getting at. It
| seems like you are agreeing with the parent post.
|
| >How many of those rated "highly intelligent" (I would be
| fascinated on how they measured that!) were in an
| elevated economic group and so now we're reduced to
| tautology
|
| >They found that who marshmallow experiment was literally
| kids who have their needs met aren't rushing to consume
| what's in front of them and that patience pays off.
|
| Yes, this is what they are saying. There are traits that
| rich people have that seriously help them maintain and
| acquire wealth.
| david927 wrote:
| _> There are traits that rich people have that seriously
| help them maintain and acquire wealth._
|
| I'm saying the only traits that rich people have "that
| seriously help them maintain and acquire wealth" is that
| they almost exclusively tend to be born to rich people.
| That's it. That's the trait.
| ericd wrote:
| You don't have to be rich to have your needs met as a
| child such that you don't need to gobble up marshmallows
| as soon as you see them, unless you mean rich in the
| sense that the vast majority of the people in the US are
| rich compared to the global average. US middle class
| would be just fine in that regard.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| That would be an interesting test to do internationally.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| So are you saying that has nothing to do with their
| upbringing? If someone were born to Rich parents, but
| adopted by poor parents they would still have those same
| traits? Seems like there's a lot more to it than what
| womb you came out of.
|
| I agree genetics could play a small role, but I think
| developmental environment is a much larger part of the
| picture
| david927 wrote:
| How did you get that I'm arguing nature over nurture
| here?
|
| I'm literally saying the opposite. Rich people nurture
| and help their children with connections, etc.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think your use of birth is the hangup. It's not who
| you're born to, it's how you're raised
|
| >I'm saying the only traits that rich people have "that
| seriously help them maintain and acquire wealth" is that
| they almost exclusively tend to be born to rich people.
| That's it. That's the trait.
|
| This is saying that self control and delayed
| gratification isn't a trait. It's saying that financial
| literacy isn't a trait.
|
| At best it's a gross oversimplification that ignores the
| fact that a huge number of poor people have acquired
| these traits
| tristor wrote:
| Okay, rather than being pithy, perhaps you could explain
| succinctly why people are rich, then?
|
| Or perhaps you can admit that in many cases people have
| achieved moderate to high wealth in democratic free market
| societies by either working harder or worker smarter than
| their peers?
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| 'Luck' seems to cover most of it.
|
| Even in your example, how did they get themselves born
| into a democratic free market society?
|
| Luck.
|
| Some people really dont like that answer, since it makes
| them feel vulnerable.
|
| They'd rather blame a victim, and worship a lottery
| winner than accept that some things are outside their
| control.
| philwelch wrote:
| > Even in your example, how did they get themselves born
| into a democratic free market society? Luck.
|
| Sure. Your genetics are also luck. But both genetics and
| being born in a liberal democracy are identifiable
| variables that have non-random outcomes.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| One big reason people get rich is because their parents
| were rich. Rich parents pay for a better education for
| their children. This gives them access to the best jobs,
| and most valuable of all a network of people to give them
| a leg up. This also gives them better access to capital.
| It is also much easier to try your business idea if
| failure means moving back into Daddies pool-house, rather
| than complete ruin. I have worked with a lot of
| 'entreprenuers' and they are overwhelmingly from rich
| backgrounds. 'Started it with a small loan from my father
| of 1m' is a quote I heard more than once.
|
| Another reason is luck. My father worked from nothing to
| owning a house in a nice place because he had a skill
| that was in demand. He nearly lost it all and is now
| scraping a living in his 70's, because technology made
| his skill less valuable. 10 more years of luck he would
| have retired at 50 and I would have had the advantages...
|
| Someone, mentioned that rich people were better looking.
| Perhaps they are just healthier, better dressed, and
| better groomed?
| tristor wrote:
| Without causing this to become an argument of semantics,
| generally speaking, the US has higher class mobility than
| the rest of the world. No, it is not commonplace for
| someone born in abject poverty to become fabulously
| wealthy, it's not commonplace for anyone to become
| fabulously wealthy. That said, it is rather common for
| folks to come to the US in pretty close to abject poverty
| and grow to sustain a middle class lifestyle, something
| which is nearly impossible in most of the rest of the
| world. Is someone with a middle class lifestyle in the US
| "rich"? I guess it depends on your outlook, and this is
| where semantics plays a part. Mobility is not entirely
| caused by intelligence or hard work, but they definitely
| play a part.
|
| You are correct that the best way to become rich is to be
| born into a rich family and inherit the wealth (or the
| opportunities that create wealth). But it is simply false
| to state that this is the only way, or even the
| predominate way, in which people become rich in
| democratic free markets. There are a LOT of small
| business owners in the US that, are at least on paper,
| millionaires, and most of these people were not born into
| rich families. Through my life I've known many wealthy
| people, and only a handful were born into generational
| wealth, the majority grew their wealth during economic
| booms and worked to entrench it so they could survive
| busts, most by starting a small business in a high-value
| niche. By global and national standards, many people who
| are simply professionals and not even business owners,
| are rich or wealthy, just by being smart with their
| money. If you own a home and are working a job that pays
| six figures for your entire career and invest well, you
| will retire a millionaire without much difficulty, which
| definitely puts you in the upper quintile in the US.
|
| This fatalistic, defeatist, and frankly infantile
| attitude from some people that acts as if wealth is only
| ever granted by random chance and at birth is utterly
| ridiculous, doesn't help anyone, and is factually
| incorrect from every angle. Your comment clearly
| illustrates an understanding of this, but you seem bent
| on defending the thrust of the comment I was replying to
| from the other poster.
| dwallin wrote:
| > Without causing this to become an argument of
| semantics, generally speaking, the US has higher class
| mobility than the rest of the world.
|
| This is really not true anymore. We have fallen
| significantly down the list, especially if you look at
| our economic and political peers.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Inde
| x https://www3.weforum.org/docs/Global_Social_Mobility_Re
| port....
| tristor wrote:
| It's likely true that it's fallen, because inflation
| affects people further down the quintiles more than
| people at upper quintiles, and directly reduces class
| mobility. That said, just looking at how the GSMI is
| scored, it appears that they aren't outcome-focused, and
| instead look at correlative factors like educational
| access (which is tied to cost of education) and health
| metrics which drags down the US against its peers. By
| sheer outcomes, the US is in the top 3 most socially
| mobile countries in the world.
| david927 wrote:
| Rousseau said, "Money is the seed of money." We can guess
| at the myriad of reasons but we don't have to wonder if
| it's true. I'm sure you've read this but if not, it's
| fascinating:
|
| The Wealthy in Florence Today Are the Same Families as
| 600 Years Ago
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-wealthy-in-florence-
| today-a...
| philwelch wrote:
| This is all true. If this was the _only_ factor though,
| there wouldn't be any social mobility at all, certainly
| not in any downwards direction but also not upwards. The
| richest 50 people in the world would have the top 100-200
| children in the world in terms of opportunities and the
| billionaires list wouldn't have a single surname that
| wasn't represented in the 19th century elite. This is
| clearly not the case, though.
|
| The net result is that the process of getting rich is
| often a multigenerational effort where each generation
| does everything they can to give their own children more
| opportunities than they ever had. And if you talk to the
| people who do that, they're often motivated by the
| experience of being poor and hungry and deprived and
| being willing to do whatever it takes to give their own
| kids a better chance. Conversely, if you're born rich,
| sometimes you're complacent and entitled and probably
| spoiled and lazy. There's a proverb about how many
| generations it takes to go from rags to riches and back
| to rags.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| People are mostly rich because their parents were rich.
| Rich people do not come from poverty. Why is that? Do you
| think it's because impoverished people are not smart?
| philwelch wrote:
| Sometimes rich people do come from poverty. Sometimes
| middle class people come from poverty and rich people
| come from the middle class. And sometimes rich heirs and
| heiresses go bankrupt and fade into obscurity. Why does
| this happen? Because the people who improve their
| position are either intelligent or diligent and the
| people who decline in position are either stupid or lazy.
|
| To whatever degree these traits are genetic, you'd expect
| them to get roughly sorted out to the point where social
| mobility would decline, but it wouldn't disappear
| entirely.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| > Because the people who improve their position are
| either intelligent or diligent
|
| Or corrupt, or given a leg up through connections of ones
| father or school.
|
| > and the people who decline in position are either
| stupid or lazy.
|
| Or unlucky. Or got ill.
|
| Your ideas sound very Victorian to me. I have noticed
| that most people who did get rich assume it is something
| special about themselves that did it, I'm guessing you
| are one of them.
| philwelch wrote:
| Jokes on you, I'm not even rich.
|
| I'm talking about broad population-level averages. Maybe
| you define "luck" as an actual quantifiable trait that
| measures whether or not you're blessed by God, but I
| define luck as a completely random variable that produces
| noise in the individual case but does not affect
| population-wide averages.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| There is some value to the averages, if not the absolute.
| _greim_ wrote:
| > Hard working and intelligent people are more likely to
| get rich.
|
| > Most rich people are rich because they were born into it.
|
| Both of these can be true at the same time!
| philwelch wrote:
| Being smart and working hard will both make most people
| richer than being stupid and lazy. There's a share of luck,
| but that washes out in the population-wide statistical
| analysis. Plus, if you're stupid and lazy but you max out
| on luck and win the Powerball, the odds are surprisingly
| high that you will eventually go bankrupt, and if you
| don't, your children will. So even if you are lucky, you
| need to be smart and diligent enough not to fuck it up.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Except that most rich people come from inherited wealth.
| Elon Musk is an emerald mine scion, for example.
| Sometimes it's intelligence, but mostly it's not.
| philwelch wrote:
| Elon Musk didn't actually inherit any wealth; he
| emigrated to America essentially broke and didn't get
| rich until PayPal. Also, his father is still alive, so
| any inheritance hasn't even happened yet.
|
| Setting that aside, how does being the son of a guy who
| owned an emerald mine in South Africa explain him being
| richer than the descendants of Henry Ford or John D.
| Rockefeller? How do explain the children of all the other
| emerald mine owners?
| yunohn wrote:
| I believe most people mean significant family wealth, not
| necessarily post-death inheritance.
|
| You can't seriously claim that he was broke while being
| part of an emerald mining family? Also, why are you
| comparing him to other rich/er folk? Is your point that
| every extra million is an IQ point?
| david927 wrote:
| He went to a fancy private boarding school as a boy and
| his family had connections.
|
| > how does being the son of a guy who owned an emerald
| mine in South Africa explain him being richer
|
| That's faulty, _a posteriori_ reasoning.
| philwelch wrote:
| What I am doing is falsifying your hypothesis. If being
| born to rich parents, having connections, and going to
| boarding schools is the sole reason people get rich, then
| we would expect that people with richer parents and more
| connections who went to better boarding schools than Elon
| Musk would be richer, and people who grew up in similar
| conditions to Elon Musk would be equally rich. This is
| not true.
| david927 wrote:
| > _What I am doing is falsifying your hypothesis_
|
| That is not what you are doing. You are picking a winning
| lottery number and saying why did this number win and
| others not? That's faulty logic.
| philwelch wrote:
| No, I'm looking at two "lottery tickets" with the exact
| same numbers and asking why one of them one the jackpot
| and the other one didn't. The only conclusion: it's not a
| lottery and what you have picked out as the winning
| lottery numbers are not that.
| david927 wrote:
| You're really bad at logic but you're confident in it;
| that's not a good combination.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Being smart and working hard will do absolutely nothing
| to make most people richer, _unless they work hard in the
| specific and limited ways that maximise wealth._
|
| Many of those ways happen to be morally questionable at
| best, and criminal at worst.
|
| An artistic genius is very likely to lose out financially
| to an averagely intelligent slum landlord no matter how
| hard they work. Because the opportunities to make money
| from artistic genius are heavily skewed towards failure,
| while for slum landlords they're heavily skewed towards
| success.
|
| The handful of exceptions in the arts are survivor bias.
| No one hears about the many more failures, by definition.
|
| There is no sense in which wealth is a level playing
| field. If you're not born into wealth - still the number
| one way to be wealthy - the most obviously rewarded trait
| isn't intelligence, it's _sociopathy_.
|
| The successful ultra-rich are notorious for greed,
| selfishness, and lack of empathy. Go to any social event
| for the ultra-rich and you'll find a disproportionate
| number of criminals, narcissists, and other kinds of
| damaged people.
|
| Those are the qualities that make someone a "success". IQ
| certainly helps, but if you lack the pathological
| motivation to exploit others it's not going to get you
| far on its own.
| philwelch wrote:
| > Being smart and working hard will do absolutely nothing
| to make most people richer, unless they work hard in the
| specific and limited ways that maximise wealth.
|
| If you're smart enough, you can figure that out.
|
| > If you're not born into wealth - still the number one
| way to be wealthy - the most obviously rewarded trait
| isn't intelligence, it's sociopathy.
|
| That becomes more and more true as your society
| approaches the state of nature that your namesake
| discussed, but it's less and less true in free societies,
| and as a consequence, those free societies become richer
| societies.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Intelligence is inheritable. Intelligence is correlated
| with educational attainment and wealth. People tend to
| marry within their socio-economic group.
|
| Wealthy people who came from nothing are the exception.
| Even in places with high degrees of social mobility,
| climbing the social ladder is a multi-generational saga.
| Maybe a working class family has a child or two who enter
| the professional class, then maybe their child has the
| opportunity for their family to finance a company that goes
| big, like Dell or Microsoft, or maybe break in as an actor
| or sports figure. Most likely though, their kids also enter
| the professional class where the family rolls the dice
| again the next generation.
| gitgud wrote:
| > _Intelligence is inheritable. Intelligence is
| correlated with educational attainment and wealth._
|
| Wealth is also correlated with inheriting money...
| KerrAvon wrote:
| You must not read political stories on HN. We have both
| kinds of music: entitled old white dude takes and entitled
| young trust fundie takes.
|
| I'm exaggerating, but anecdotally HN does have this
| reputation.
| michaelgburton wrote:
| Nothing about the world's rich folks suggests that they, as a
| class, are in any way genetically superior to anyone else.
| Nature vs nurture leans 90 degrees towards nurture.
| sinenomine wrote:
| > there is going to be a significant generation gap in
| intelligence
|
| Have you thought about the obvious implication that embryo
| selection with polygenic scoring could be used _to lower the
| gap_ between genetically privileged types of people you
| describe and the average couple deciding to apply to
| procedure?
|
| What's needed: an egalitarian policy & infrastructure
| allowing any couple to improve the genetic basis of their
| progeny, perhaps with _more of it_ being provided to
| genetically disprivileged.
|
| We have an obligation to provide our children and the whole
| society with an opportunity to live a better life.
|
| > and that will have unpredictable consequences in education
| and the labor market
|
| The "gap" of single digit amount of IQ points _added_ won 't
| have such effect, but over generations it can compound into a
| more thoughtful, creative, capable and lively humanity.
|
| Should we deprive ourselves of such possibility due to a
| generic NIMBY-like market anxiety?
| philwelch wrote:
| > Have you thought about the obvious implication that
| embryo selection with polygenic scoring could be used to
| lower the gap between genetically privileged types of
| people you describe and the average couple deciding to
| apply to procedure?
|
| Of course. If we boost an entire generation's IQ at birth
| and eventually introduce them into the adult population,
| what is going to happen is that the boosted generation is
| going to basically dominate the right hand side of the
| graph. If you visualize two bell curves superimposed on one
| another, with one of those curves shifted to the right,
| then that's what you're going to get.
|
| The degree of augmentation is going to make a big
| difference. During the era of the Flynn effect, we sort of
| had this happen naturally and we handled it just fine, but
| a 20 point boost would basically obliterate things.
|
| I'm not necessarily opposed to doing this BTW. I just think
| it's going to be extremely disruptive and unpredictable.
|
| > over generations it can compound into a more thoughtful,
| creative, capable and lively humanity.
|
| Yes, that's what the original eugenicists thought, too.
| Here's the problem, though: what do you do with all of
| those old and busted natural humans who are less
| thoughtful, less creative, less capable, less lively?
| Because those people are really mad that they lost their
| jobs, and they're obviously not as intelligent or beautiful
| or morally good as the new and improved humanity. I mean,
| all you've done was to erase the unfair gap between the
| below average member of your generation and the above
| average member of theirs. Those people are all privileged
| and entitled jerks, and all they're doing is causing
| problems.
|
| Oh, did you _really think_ we'd also manage to isolate and
| eliminate the gene responsible for the human tendency to
| dehumanize the outgroup? You sweet summer child.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| If we're going to allow this on the basis that rich people
| will share it with the global poor, allowing the poor to
| use it in ways they choose to decrease inequality. then ok,
| hard to argue with that.
|
| First though I'd like to see some more resource-sharing of
| this nature and scale from the rich. Let's see a pilot
| program or something because I don't see all that much
| global-scale sharing of the technologies that can most
| improve life.
|
| When you say things like "deprive ourselves" it's not hard
| to see that you perceive yourself to be in the group that
| will benefit either way. Which is fine I think but my life
| has led me to more easily imagine myself and my descendants
| on the other side of it.
| philwelch wrote:
| > Let's see a pilot program or something because I don't
| see all that much global-scale sharing of the
| technologies that can most improve life.
|
| Yes, we do this. We did this with smallpox vaccination,
| we're doing it with polio vaccines, HIV drugs, water
| purification systems, mobile phone network
| infrastructure, nets that are treated to protect from
| malaria-bearing mosquitoes. Sometimes people in rich
| countries go out of their way to invent technology that
| gives us no benefit but provides tremendous benefit to
| people in poorer countries, such as Norman Borlaug's
| work. The global poor have become less poor to a much
| greater degree than the global rich have gotten richer.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| And based on that outcome you feel optimistic here?
| anovikov wrote:
| My take is that a single trait - that is, capacity for
| delayed gratification - is responsible for the majority of
| wealth accumulated and probably majority of individuals who
| get rich in life. It doesn't take much else really. As long
| as you are not severely disadvantaged (have congenital
| disabilities, very low IQ etc), and live in a more or less
| stable country (no civil wars every 20 years), and you are
| good at delayed gratification, you will almost inevitably
| make it. It's only terribly bad luck (cancer, accidents,
| crime) that could stop you.
|
| Most people think this is not the case only because media is
| not telling about it, because there is little to tell about
| really. Except extreme cases like
| https://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/29/janitor-secretly-amassed-
| an-...
| [deleted]
| abetusk wrote:
| I think the underlying idea is spot on, if not the specifics.
|
| Biology, sequencing, health, bioinformatics etc. is going to be
| huge business.
|
| As of this writing, I believe whole genome sequencing is in the
| range of $400 with the cost (slowly) dropping exponentially.
| When the cost of whole genome sequencing gets to be within $100
| or below, we'll see a huge influx of whole genome sequencing
| and all the side effects that come with it, like sequencing
| colds, flu and other diseases in real time, at home genetic
| testing, etc.
|
| Not just baby screening but made-to-order organs, personalized
| medicine, etc.
|
| I think the timeline is going to comparatively long, on the
| order of 10-20 years, but it's my belief it is coming.
| aaronblohowiak wrote:
| That $400 isn't de novo is it?
| abetusk wrote:
| Nebula genomics claims 30x coverage for $299 [0].
|
| [0] https://nebula.org/whole-genome-sequencing-dna-test/
| anovikov wrote:
| At least we will not be ruled by dumbasses like Trump! That's
| already a big thing.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Seems like this could be a next big thing the same way NFTs
| were a big thing: a big speculative concept to help separate
| gullible rich people from their money.
|
| I predict that any company selling this as a service will have
| extensive legal language in the contract protecting themselves
| from any liability claim if the promised benefits don't appear.
| GTP wrote:
| I don't think there is any genetic basis for intelligence: if
| there was, then you would expect that the offspring of the
| geniuses we had in the past to have an higher chance at being
| extremely intelligent than other people. But this doesn't seem
| to be the case, as you usually never hear about the sons or
| daughters of such geniuses, as they seem to be like other
| "normal" people in most cases. I admit I'm not bringing any
| data to back my claim, but it seems to me that having a genius
| as a parent doesn't really change your chance at being more
| intelligent than average. You also have to consider that many
| breakthroughs in history weren't just the result of
| intelligence, but also being the right person at the right time
| in the right place played a big role.
| elil17 wrote:
| Even if there's no genetic basis for intelligence, someone
| could (and, I'd say, probably will) make a marketing claim
| that they can select for it. Whatever they're actually
| selecting for is going to start showing up in higher rates
| and who knows what the effects would be.
| easytiger wrote:
| That's not how intelligence manifests. "Geniuses" are usually
| products of opportunity as much as anything. Indeed I am
| minded of a "where are they now" on british television of
| some University Challenge winners and despite being believed
| to be geniuses most of them had not done anything remarkable.
|
| Intelligence _definitely_ does have a genetic component - but
| again that isn 't how genetics works. The "UN Man" Tabula
| Rasa doctrine is ideology, not science.
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/nrg.2017.104
| [deleted]
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| There certainly is a genetic basis for intelligence. It's not
| even something that's up for debate academically, there's a
| mountain of evidence for it. We even have identified specific
| genes that play roles in intelligence. Almost every human
| trait is partially heritable, and it would be very surprising
| if intelligence were an exception (considering there's
| considerable variation in intelligence and it's very
| important for fitness.)
|
| More information:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ
| GTP wrote:
| From the Wikipedia page that you linked: "There has been
| significant controversy in the academic community about the
| heritability of IQ since research on the issue began in the
| late nineteenth century" "explaining the similarity in IQ
| of closely related persons requires careful study because
| environmental factors may be correlated with genetic
| factors." "The heritability of IQ increases with the
| child's age and reaches a plateau at 18-20 years old,
| continuing at that level well into adulthood. However, poor
| prenatal environment, malnutrition and disease are known to
| have lifelong deleterious effects" "Although IQ differences
| between individuals have been shown to have a large
| hereditary component, it does not follow that disparities
| in IQ between groups have a genetic basis.[10][11][12][13]
| The scientific consensus is that genetics does not explain
| average differences in IQ test performance between racial
| groups" And it continues in a similar way, so there is some
| genetic basis, but at the same time epigenetic factors seem
| to matter a lot.
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| No one denies that there are also environmental factors,
| lead is one very well-studied example.
| tptacek wrote:
| The issue is the misuse of the term "heritable" to mean
| "genetically determined". Toe count is genetically
| determined; virtually all people are coded for 10 toes.
| But they have very low heritability: variance in toes is
| environmental. Conversely: dress-wearing isn't at all
| genetically determined; anyone can put a dress on. But
| dress-wearing is highly heritable: the variance is
| (almost) entirely due to genetic differences.
| tptacek wrote:
| Heritability is much more complicated than message board
| debates make it out to be. Here's a pretty famous Ned Block
| essay about it:
|
| https://bostonreview.net/articles/ned-block-race-genes-
| and-i...
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| Thanks for linking the article, it's good reading
| mr_toad wrote:
| > I don't think there is any genetic basis for intelligence
|
| Clearly there is, or we'd see more Chimpanzees commenting on
| Hacker News.
| [deleted]
| 6t6t6t6 wrote:
| As someone who has done genetic screening to avoid passing a
| genetic illness to my children, it is not as easy as it seems.
|
| In every IVF session, if you are young and healthy, they may be
| able to extract around ten eggs. Of those ten eggs, 50% will
| valid and will get fecundated. You are down to 5. Then, in our
| case, 50% of the embryos will be carriers and have to be
| discarded. You are down to two or three that can be implanted.
| And, from those, you are lucky if one gets implanted in the
| womb correctly and produces a baby.
|
| What I mean it's that you can choose to a level, but you are
| quite limited by numbers, even if the technology improves or
| you are luckier, and you can get more embryos to choose from
| each IVF cycle.
|
| All that, while the mother needs to be taking a massive amount
| of hormones that will make her gain weight, feel tired, etc...
| It's not a walk in the park.
|
| By the way, we joked about the "boutique baby" with the doctor
| told us that there are many traits that they could select but
| that it was illegal for them to do so.
| more_corn wrote:
| So, like in the 90s sci-fi classic GATACA?
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| If it starts happening, societies will face an existential
| threat in gender ratios.
| aaron695 wrote:
| royandre2k wrote:
| A fundamentally new power source, 100% renewable and with
| unlimited capacity for the entire planet. Since it's not invented
| yet I unfortunately don't have any details to share until a
| decade or two. Stay tuned.
|
| Sidenote: Unlimited power capacity introduced many new
| challenges, so there will be uhm powers who wants to stop it,
| temporarily.
| erokar wrote:
| Lab-Grown Meat. Potentially revolutionary impact on reduction of
| animal suffering and climate change.
| lopis wrote:
| I think before lab meat, we're going to see an explosion in
| both volume and diversity of plant-based meats. Discount chains
| in Europe and NA are jumping on the bandwagon and creating all
| sorts of plant-based products and bringing the price way down -
| already cheaper than meat sometimes. Plant-based raw materials
| are the cheapest, we just need to improve processes and scale
| up. And unless governments increase meat subsidies even more,
| it's likely that meat, specially beef becomes too expensive for
| some people to eat regularly in the next 10 years.
| asdff wrote:
| Plant based raw materials are often cheapest, but
| unfortunately the plant based meats are often far from being
| raw material and are highly processed. Expensive too.
| jollyllama wrote:
| People are aware of Deepfakes and AI generated media, and worried
| about it being used to generate fake news. I haven't seen a lot
| of talk about it being used to change our generally accepted
| histories, but I've been thinking about that for a while.
| [deleted]
| DennisP wrote:
| Possibly nuclear fusion. Everybody's still conditioned to respond
| with the "30 years away" meme, but it's getting serious venture
| funding because all sorts of enabling technologies have made it a
| lot more feasible.
|
| Well-funded net power attempts in the next several years: Zap
| Energy in 2023, Helion in 2024, CFS in 2025, General Fusion in
| 2026.
|
| Previous net power attempts: zero, unless you credit NIF which
| ignores all sorts of losses before energy hits fuel.
| gkfasdfasdf wrote:
| Great piece from Bloomberg on funding of modern fusion tech:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dp6W7g9no0w
| WFHRenaissance wrote:
| Prompt engineering. The perfection of "programming as verbal
| intelligence".
| kordlessagain wrote:
| I'm working on prompt engineering. I can confirm this is the
| next big thing that hardly anyone is thinking about.
|
| I'm getting good results from simple approaches to storing and
| retrieving memories of past conversations and crawled/indexed
| documents. This is being built at https://mitta.us/
|
| https://openreview.net/pdf?id=Bx-fUfKedZ5
|
| inventive-anteater|> The website discusses an approach for
| improving the accuracy of the GPT3 language model by providing
| feedback to the model based on user interactions. The goal is
| to allow users to interactively teach the model to avoid common
| mistakes, such as misinterpretations of word meanings. The
| implementation of this approach is described, and four tasks
| are used to demonstrate how the model can be substantially
| improved with user feedback.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I can't help but feel that this will be a fleeting skill.
|
| As humans work towards clearer communication with AI, AI will
| be working towards clearer understanding of humans.
| O__________O wrote:
| You could make the same argument for Google searches. In my
| experience, yes, Google is trying to get better at
| understanding the (average) user, but average user really
| makes no efforts to get better at even basic ways to search
| better. Obviously advanced users try to get better, but both
| ends require engineer better search engines and better
| understanding of advanced user interfaces.
| abledon wrote:
| In the case of Dall-E, isn't a hack for that to design
| _another_ ML system that looks at the training data
| 'descriptions' and infer a correct prompt strcture for the
| desired result. so the human uses this secondary system as a
| 'guide' to constructing prompts to navigate them towards the
| result (image) they want?
| JamesSwift wrote:
| I think in some cases you're right. But generally I think the
| real answer is more along the lines of near-realtime
| generation of results. That way you can iterate quickly to
| get closer to what you are looking for, and experiment with
| different approaches to see which is more aligned with how
| the AI model thinks about things.
| zh3 wrote:
| Pity it's not possible to open-source execution. So many good
| ideas fail due to poor execution (these days, quite possibly a
| larger number are killed by birth by bigco's - that's still a
| 'failure to execute' though, in a certain sense).
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| > Pity it's not possible to open-source execution.
|
| I first interpreted this as pertaining to the death penalty.
| verdverm wrote:
| To be fair, there is a lot more information and educational
| material out there on how to build new products more
| effectively, the last 10 years or so. It still takes time to
| learn even the basics.
| sneak wrote:
| Planetary defense against civilization-ending-level threats.
|
| There was a movie about it recently and precisely one
| organization developing a realistic hedge (not counting NASA's
| DART test mission) and pretty much still nobody cares.
|
| n = 1. We have no backups whatsoever.
| wizofaus wrote:
| Don't look up?
| [deleted]
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| >What's the next big thing that few people are talking about?
|
| The people you're talking about have already quit talking about
| the thing you would now be interested in, so you're too late
| already.
| gaws wrote:
| Or they found a way to profit off the thing and took the
| conversations to private channels.
| tboyd47 wrote:
| Turkiye is becoming the China of Europe in terms of
| manufacturing.
| e-_pusher wrote:
| For which product categories? There is already a lot of
| textiles and automotive manufacturing in Turkey and has been
| for many years.
| fomine3 wrote:
| Could you introduce some examples, like ODMs?
| tboyd47 wrote:
| Unfortunately no. I don't work in the field, but I just spent
| a few months there networking for business, and everyone is
| getting into the export/import business. Even housewives are
| making money just buying products at the local malls and
| dropshipping them to Europe.
|
| The labor is ridiculously cheap after the lira crash, raw
| materials for practically anything can be sourced
| domestically, and it's right in the neighborhood of
| everywhere except America and China.
| O__________O wrote:
| Lira crash is cause, it's not sustainable.
| m101 wrote:
| China invading Taiwan.
|
| Demographic problems (low birth rates).
| handelaar wrote:
| DC home electricity. If your future home has solar and local
| storage, and your domestic usage is mostly in appliances which
| convert back down to DC immediately behind the plug socket (most
| of us have this) then at some point we're going to start wanting
| to power our homes like houseboats or camper vans.
|
| Yes, this won't help for (eg) appliances with heating elements,
| I'm probably talking about a second discrete wiring loop rather
| than a total replacement, and it's hard right now to find a TV
| with the DC transformer on the outside.
|
| But it'd be _quite_ a lot more efficient for almost everything
| else most of us do. Look around the room you 're in now and count
| how many things use more than 19V DC _internally_. Where I 'm
| sitting right now, it's None.
| moralestapia wrote:
| But wouldn't this cause more issues?
|
| Sure, all my things may work with 12DC internally, but they
| expect 120AC (or w/e depending on country) at the plug, so I
| wouldn't be able to use them if I switch.
| handelaar wrote:
| Yes, it causes issues today. But tomorrow, I'm expecting that
| the transformer will be outside the device (as now with wall
| warts and most laptops) rather than inside (as with your TV).
| And that minority who are handy enough with tools can patch
| past the internal transformer with a soldering iron and a
| screwdriver in the meantime.
| abetusk wrote:
| The idea being that consumer items will, more and more, be
| able to take DC directly instead of expecting AC.
|
| For example, any device that takes in USB power with a 120VAC
| "wall wart" plug can just be used with a buck convert plug
| instead or being powered directly from the DC current.
|
| LED lighting is taking in AC then converting to DC to power
| the LEDs. Your phone is taking in AC then converting to DC to
| power it. Your laptop is taking in AC then converting to DC
| to power it.
|
| There are some household machines which will require some
| heavy duty power draw but much of the consumer products we
| use is powered off of DC to begin with. Powering directly off
| of DC would be cutting out the "middle man" of AC.
| hattmall wrote:
| How inefficient is the conversion process really though?
| honr wrote:
| Power conversion efficiency is at best the 3rd or 4th
| important factor here.
|
| The first factor would be the hodgepodge of wall dongles
| one needs to own and maintain (plus the cost of buying a
| dongle for each device that doesn't have one, or multiple
| of them per device in case you want to charge your
| phone/laptop/etc in more than one location at home).
|
| The second factor is the "smoothness" of your DC sources.
| Most of the common LED lamps have a pretty ugly signal
| shape, and not at all close to a DC flat line. This is
| mostly unavoidable as AC->Smooth DC conversion is more
| expensive than AC-> DC + a ton of 120Hz, 240Hz,... on top
| of it. So, common LED lights tend to opt for cheaper
| "electronics". People notice the flickery LED lights to
| various degrees (some get headaches, some outright see
| the flickers, some claim to be totally oblivious to the
| difference). The DC "quality" also affects some fairly
| sensitive electronic devices, so some AC->DC adaptors are
| fairly sophisticated. A central high quality AC->DC
| convertor (combined with DC wiring) has better
| scalability when you need to care about smoothness (it
| can be a basic quality of life matter for some people).
|
| The third and fourth factors are power discipation and
| conversion efficiency. They are the same thing, with two
| remedies: more $ to remedy the inefficiency (which is
| really small these days, if you go for switching
| convertors), and plans for heat to discipate properly
| (devices end up with pretty hot adaptors).
| jinto36 wrote:
| It varies pretty wildly, often efficiency ends up being
| dependent on the load since power supplies usually get
| optimized for a certain load range. Individually, the
| numbers might not look too bad, but when you think about
| how many individual AC->DC supplies you have, the losses
| can add up.
|
| I've been involved in a side project developing a
| consumer-friendly rating of "power quality" for AC
| devices and AC->DC power supplies which summarizes
| efficiency over a range of loads, as well as
| incorporating power factor measurements. We've been
| testing common devices such as USB power supplies for
| phones and such, as well as things like laptop power
| supplies, due to how numerous they are. We've had a few
| surprises, for example, Apple power supplies generally
| don't fare that well.
|
| Power Quality Score: https://pqs.app/ Detailed test data
| is public for some devices but not all, since we're
| trying to find paths to revenue starting with
| subscriptions for full test results. Let us know if you
| have feedback.
|
| You might also be interested in the Youtube channel of my
| friend/PQS collaborator, where he's done some "deep dive"
| videos of testing some of the devices in the PQS
| database- particularly AC->DC USB power supplies due to
| how ubiquitous they are now-
| https://www.youtube.com/c/AllThingsOnePlace/ .
| abetusk wrote:
| I"m not sure I'm really the person to answer this but I
| would guess inverter and/or buck/boost converters are in
| the 90%-95% range. So, chaining DC -> AC -> DC gives
| about anywhere from 15% to 30% losses.
|
| I think the better argument is one for reduced 'hardware
| complexity'. Instead of having an inverter that then goes
| through a rectifier, all you need is a buck converter.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > and your domestic usage is mostly in appliances which convert
| back down to DC immediately behind the plug socket (most of us
| have this) then at some point we're going to start wanting to
| power our homes like houseboats or camper vans.
|
| Most of these appliances use _low voltage_ which travels poorly
| over long distances. Your car, camper van, and boat all use
| ultra-thick cables to move 12 volts. This is quite uneconomical
| for anything larger than a small studio apartment. (Copper isn
| 't cheap.)
|
| Furthermore, note that I said "12 volts," which is what cars
| and capers use. (Not sure about boats.) Some DC appliances need
| 5 volts, some need 20... They'll all need converters.
|
| So how are both of those problems solved? You'll probably send
| 100-200 volts, DC, though the wall! The big question is, does
| this really simplify anything? The big advantage with AC is
| that it's super-easy to change voltage with a simple
| transformer. What do we gain by going DC in the walls? Are
| there any real advantages in simplifying voltage conversion at
| appliances? Is it worth the added complexity of a whole-house
| AC-DC converter; or the complexity of a DC grid?
| freedomben wrote:
| My thoughts exactly. A/C has some important electromagnetic
| characteristics that make it a lot easier to transport.
| Particularly for long distance lines, high voltage is
| critical and transformers make it trivial to modify voltage
| levels, such as to get to 120V for the house. it's also a lot
| easier to convert AC to DC than the other way around. If we
| start transporting with DC, we take on a number of
| problems/challenges that we don't deal with now.
|
| I could see a point in time where there are AC outlets and DC
| outlets in a house depending on where the power comes from
| (power lines vs. solar panels/battery), but unless we
| radically decentralize (which I don't see happening) it seems
| unlikely to me that we switch to DC for long-distance power
| transmission.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > it's also a lot easier to convert AC to DC than the other
| way around. If we start transporting with DC, we take on a
| number of problems/challenges that we don't deal with now.
|
| Which brings up a very good point: What happens when grid-
| scale battery storage is common? Does a DC grid make a lot
| more sense then?
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| This isn't going to happen because it's much cheaper to
| transmit higher voltages than higher currents.
|
| Your PC running at ~500W only needs a conductor capable of
| transmitting 4.2A with conventional 120V.
|
| If you switch to a 12V source, that same 500W now needs a 42A
| conductor.
|
| It's just not practical.
| handelaar wrote:
| (Sorry, replying to myself but by way of example I recently
| discovered that "old"-style UK plugs -- BS546 ones -- are still
| rated for DC domestic supply. So in at least one or two corners
| of the world this whole notion is already supported with a
| semi-familiar interface.)
| YossarianFrPrez wrote:
| Ooh, fascinating. AC is better for long distance transmission,
| which solar + local storage obviates. Do you happen to know of
| the efficiency we might stand to gain from switching appliances
| to DC?
| saalweachter wrote:
| So you've two competing losses: transformers and voltage
| drops over long DC circuits.
|
| When I was last looking into this myself -- and lamenting you
| couldn't find PoE LED lights for love or money -- it sounded
| like (IANAEE) voltage drops start becoming a thing you have
| to care about around 50 or 100 feet, depending on the gauge;
| wiring a house with DC isn't _impossible_ but it might
| require a little bit of care or some thought.
| nikau wrote:
| You need to move to higher voltage DC which will present some
| challenges you don't get with AC, for example if you get an
| arc in a switch or a circuit breaker with AC it normally
| extinguishes quickly at the zero voltage crossing, whereas DC
| will just keep arcing until stuff starts to burn.
| handelaar wrote:
| Being honest it's not a _massive_ amount of loss if your
| entire supply is coming from the grid. But if you 're
| generating and storing energy at home, then it's much more
| significant because you add the transformer's losses to the
| additional losses spent in your inverter.
| billfruit wrote:
| I thought even long distance transmission now use HVDC(High
| Voltage DC) lines, for various advantages, for example not
| having lines for 3 phases.
| [deleted]
| saberdancer wrote:
| Russia will collapse.
| stenl wrote:
| Some observations in support, by researchers at Yale:
| https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4167193
| baobob wrote:
| Slides for the intellectually sloven
| https://yale.app.box.com/s/7f6agg5ezscj234kahx35lil04udqgeo
| mcv wrote:
| I fear this is a definite possibility, and it's terrifying.
| Because the main thing that Russia has, their only real claim
| to being a major power, and the only reason why they've been
| able to get away with their invasion, is their nukes. And if
| the country really collapses, who knows what will happen to
| those nukes?
|
| I don't mean to upset anyone, and I think the chance of
| collapse is small, but it's not zero.
| leesec wrote:
| They didn't use nukes during the collapse of Soviet Union.
| greenpeas wrote:
| The fear is not that they will use nukes during the
| collapse, but that after the collapse, there will be
| multiple smaller nations, each with their own supply of
| nukes and unpredictable governments.
|
| This was also a concern during the collapse of the Soviet
| Union, and the US government worked closely with the USSR
| government to make sure that all nuclear weapons remain
| within Russia. In particular, Ukraine was forced/convinced
| to give up its nuclear arsenal.
| nnoitra wrote:
| Why aren't you afraid that Israel has nukes or Pakistan?
| mcv wrote:
| They didn't, but those nukes did end up in various member
| states. The last couple months people have talked a lot
| about the 1993 deal between the US, Russia and Ukraine that
| got Ukraine to give up its nukes in exchange of (now
| apparently worthless) guarantees of territorial integrity.
|
| If Russia collapses, there's going to be mostly tribal
| territories in Siberia that have nukes.
| trash3 wrote:
| Only barely
| innagadadavida wrote:
| IMO Russia is just a pawn in this game with China. US is in two
| win-win scenarios with both Russia and China. Currently Russia
| has its hands tied and cannot interfere or support China if the
| Taiwan thing gets bigger. Also, irrespective of Russia winning
| or loosing, Europe will increase usage of American oil and gas.
| If China wins in a Taiwan takeover, the semiconductor industry
| will double up in America and if loses, then America will have
| military dominance in the region. Unless something really crazy
| happens, US will come out on top again and crush both Russia
| and China and also increase exports to Europe.
| baobob wrote:
| I feel like this definitely needs to be expanded. What makes
| you think that?
|
| Their currency is stronger than before the war (despite
| internal fragility)
|
| They have the entire continent of Europe by the balls on
| oil/gas
|
| They've made an absolute killing in the energy sector this year
| due to the fear and scarcity they have created.
|
| They're making steady gains in their war in Ukraine
|
| They have the ear and economic heart of China
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| Re the Russian economy and the Ruble in particular I'd
| strongly suggest reading the recent Yale paper:
| https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4167193
| pavlov wrote:
| All of these are illusions. The currency is propped up by the
| government because it's not freely exchanged anymore. Europe
| is making a massive turn away from Russian energy despite the
| medium-term pain. The Russian military has achieved very
| little in five months of warfare. And China genuinely doesn't
| care about Russia. If the Russian Federation were to
| balkanize into smaller states, the Chinese leaders certainly
| wouldn't mind.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Russia controls the most valuable portion of Ukraine right
| now. Going after Kiev was a win/win for Russia because it
| allowed them to capture the southern coast and maybe even
| gave them the country (it didn't).
|
| Unless Ukraine retakes the southern coast, Russia will have
| achieved their main objective.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| I'm also confused about OP. Military now controls some the
| largest and most productive farmland in Europe.
|
| And the Ruble remains strong because Russia is insisting on
| taking payments in Rubles, and Europe agrees or will freeze
| to death this winter.
| mcv wrote:
| Europe is working hard on getting their energy from other
| sources. And once they've done that, they're not going
| back to Russian gas. In the long term, this is absolutely
| a loss for Russia.
| baobob wrote:
| Germany will not build any new LNG terminals when in a
| few short years they can just resume buying from the
| cheapest seller, before the first new terminal has even
| finished being constructed.
|
| Simultaneously Russia is not stupid enough to completely
| cut off the gas and trigger a total crisis. They are
| pulling on the chains but they understand the risk to the
| relationship just as well as you do. Don't forget all the
| gas supply shortages to date have been justified in terms
| of required maintenances and problems due to western
| sanctions. That's paving a route for resumption of normal
| relations between both parties at a later date with no
| loss of face for either party.
| mcv wrote:
| > If the Russian Federation were to balkanize into smaller
| states, the Chinese leaders certainly wouldn't mind.
|
| There's some territory there that the USSR took from China
| back when China was weak. Once those roles are reversed,
| who's to say China won't start looking in that direction?
| orlandrescu wrote:
| Nukes. Nukes will say that.
| pier25 wrote:
| I imagine as the world moves towards clean energy they won't
| find customers for oil and gas.
|
| Can Russia survive with their grain exports? I doubt it.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| > Their currency is stronger than before the war (despite
| internal fragility)
|
| Stronger than before the war, but weaker than some years ago.
| Russia is declining for a long time now, this war is just a
| last struggle.
|
| > They have the entire continent of Europe by the balls on
| oil/gas
|
| No, they have not. They lost them. Everyone is switching to
| new suppliers, while speeding up their movement to
| alternatives. And this did not happen because of the war.
| Moving to greener technology happens for some time now, 2019
| it got a new boost, and the war only gave it another boost.
| With more than half of their export being a dated resource,
| Russia had an obvious problem pending on them.
|
| > They've made an absolute killing in the energy sector this
| year due to the fear and scarcity they have created.
|
| They made a short term win by burning their long term gains.
| They paid very hard with all the restrictions they received,
| and all the trust they lost.
|
| > They're making steady gains in their war in Ukraine
|
| You mean, steady gains backward? They are losing the war.
| They lost most of the territory they gained in the early
| days, and have now barely more than they had before the war.
|
| > They have the ear and economic heart of China
|
| Having an ear without the backing is useless. They can't push
| nearly as much to China than they sold to Europe. And china
| is switching to greener energy too. Russia's other products
| have little value for china. Not enough to compensate for the
| loss. Though, maybe enough to hold the country alive.
|
| The thing is, overall economical, Russia is an old country
| with a dying market. A dinosaur who failed to adept to the
| future. And they burned every ground with those who could
| help them transform into a better form. But truly, a collapse
| does not depend on economy alone. Russia seems to have a
| population accustomed to suffering, and indoctrinated with
| Putin's nonsense. So quite likely that the country will
| remain as it is for the moment. But until some significant
| change will happen, the country will remain in a very
| stressed state, with a chance for collapse always being
| around.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| keenboy wrote:
| Can I say what I hope/wish were on the horizon?
|
| 1. Approval voting becoming widely adopted. This would go a long
| way toward mitigating the hyper polarization in politics in
| America (and likely elsewhere as well). Electing politicians with
| broader approval means legislation would likely move more
| quickly.
|
| 2. Moving to a Land Value Tax system in America. This would
| organically help us transition to a culture that builds up
| instead of sprawling out. This could lead to tremendous
| reductions in things like municipal infrastructure costs,
| transportation pollution, reduced mortgage/rent prices, etc.
| conductr wrote:
| > legislation would likely move more quickly
|
| I tend to think the slow pace is a feature not a bug. Could you
| imagine if something like Roe v Wade was flip flopping every 4
| years on political whims?
|
| That said, I do think a modern democracy should have more
| frequent digital voting abilities perhaps on a policy level.
| Voting for a person you hope will represent you, it's a decent
| concept when you lack technology but as we know it's heavily
| flawed as well. I don't quite understand how we can build
| something like Bitcoin but can't solve digital voting in a way
| that's not constantly under threat of hacking/some Evil
| manufacturer etc.
| neon_electro wrote:
| The United States has a mechanism for slow-moving policy; the
| Constitution.
|
| That doesn't mean we can't have other mechanisms for policy
| that can be more nimble, local, or "temporary" (for better or
| worse).
|
| Tech policy is the best example of legislation that can't
| keep up with reality on the ground. (subject to corruption
| from monied interests, of course)
| conductr wrote:
| Does tech legislation need to be kept up more quickly? I
| really like the default being no regulation and filling in
| where needed. It's reactive by nature. I don't know what
| broad legislation would have been put in place proactively
| to help tech be better governed (without specifying honing
| in on a specific business/industry after the fact).
|
| I fear more of if the legislation process is too fast
| moving it become subject to mob mentality. Instead of
| #deletefacebook we may have gone straight to a knee jerk
| reaction of legislation that bans social media which I'm
| not sure I want to live in that world either.
| ClayShentrup wrote:
| LVT wouldn't reduce mortgage or rent prices, but what WOULD
| reduce them is eliminating property taxes. and that's easier to
| do if you can offset it with another more efficient tax, like
| LVT.
|
| https://clayshentrup.medium.com/does-a-land-value-tax-have-z...
|
| approval voting is also great.
| Shoemaker666 wrote:
| Fungus based mycoprotein for food and seawater battery. Im
| hopeful that the energy derived from saltwater may reduce the
| pollution of watervessels and maybe help in having more
| sustainable solutions where robots powered by the sea could be
| cleaning up the pollution.
| suoduandao2 wrote:
| Any ongoing projects in this space that would be worth checking
| out?
| Flatcircle wrote:
| There's a real possibility housing prices might go down or
| sideways for a decade or more.
|
| Between high interest rates, depopulation, government
| intervention regarding foreign investment, and new housing tech
| that makes older houses worth less, there may be a new normal in
| which residential real estate doesn't appreciate for a long time.
| DontchaKnowit wrote:
| I think that inflation will balance this out.
|
| E.g. the value will depreciate in real terms but because most
| people purchase with borrowed money it will not be a serious
| problem.
| bombcar wrote:
| If population starts to drop, people are going to be absolutely
| astounded to realize a house is a depreciating asset, and if
| the land isn't increasing in value to make up for it, it
| becomes a cost-center.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| It's absolutely possible that it's artificially high right now
| since it has risen so much. With a big jump, you can never tell
| whether it's the right amount, too little, or too much.
|
| But fundamentally, supply is short due to years of falling
| behind on building it after the ~2008 mortgage crisis. It's
| going to take a really long time to catch up on that backlog.
| There's a relatively low maximum percentage you can increase
| the supply each year.
|
| And now that mortgage rates are higher again and there are
| recession fears, investors may not be as excited about putting
| their money into housing construction. So we will have less of
| a push in the next few years to close that supply gap.
|
| So I think the prices may fall or stagnate, but I doubt the
| bottom will fall out of real estate.
|
| IMHO, another factor is that the pattern of development has
| changed. For a long time in the US, the pattern was sprawl,
| which presents few barriers to building huge amounts of housing
| because the land is cheap and maybe even in some unincorporated
| area with no red tape. Now, many people prefer density (or at
| least not sprawl), which means the housing that's in demand is
| more redevelopment and infill than giant new subdivisions.
| That's more tedious, more expensive, and more regulated, so it
| will happen more slowly. So another reason why supply is
| limited.
| WesleyJohnson wrote:
| Can you elaborate on what newer tech would make older homes
| worth less?
| superasn wrote:
| Technology wise merging backend and frontend into a seamless
| framework seems like the next big thing. A lot of progress has
| been made this year on this with liveview, et al but haven't seen
| any mass adoption yet as only few people are talking about it.
|
| But i reckon once these frameworks mature enough they have the
| power to disrupt the whole way we think about building websites
| and frontend back-end coding.
| elevenoh wrote:
| mrandish wrote:
| When asking this question it's worth considering that
| historically, the hit rate of such predictions is quite low -
| even when made by experts based on reasonable-seeming
| extrapolations. Prior experience indicates predictions more than
| a decade out should be heavily discounted.
| mikewarot wrote:
| Editors that directly manipulate the Abstract Syntax Tree, and
| regenerate source code as a view, offer unmatched ability to
| refactor code.
| gmuslera wrote:
| If the next big things doesn't include how we generate and use
| energy, probably the really big next thing may be runaway climate
| change.
| bilsbie wrote:
| I feel like I've heard this before. When does the runaway
| change start?
| collyw wrote:
| how can people actually believe this pseudoscience. What models
| have been accurate for a number of year? The IPCC one just
| averages others, so that is cheating.
| mcv wrote:
| What do you mean by "this pseudoscience"? Climate change?
| Runaway climate change? Climate change is already happening.
| At what point it becomes runaway climate change is a matter
| of definition and debate, but there are definitely some
| processes that reinforce climate change.
| lolcat_cowsay wrote:
| TMWNN wrote:
| The likely shutdown of all Russian gas to Germany this winter,
| resulting in a) 5-10X rise in home heating costs, and b) complete
| shutdown of many industries, resulting in a c) depression in the
| German (and thus European) economy
| rdtwo wrote:
| Yeah I feel like somehow the market has ignored that
| possibility. Although maybe that's why the 10 year bond is down
| so low and the market is fighting the fed
| philwelch wrote:
| Russia is establishing this threat for leverage and Germany
| will probably concede to Russia's demands rather than suffer
| this consequence.
| Normille wrote:
| Let's hope so!
| l_ron_mcbong wrote:
| You do realize that we live in a globalized economy and that
| a collapse of the German economy would have significant
| consequences for the world at large?
| StefanWestfal wrote:
| Why would you hope for suffering of millions?
| bnt wrote:
| I feel OP is welcoming Germany's demise as the Economic
| Powerhouse of Europe rather than suffering of people. Tho,
| both are linked because Germany is a net-importer of human
| capital and many will be forced to move back East, thus
| further pushing East Europe back into poverty.
| Normille wrote:
| No. I'm welcoming Germany's [and on a wider level, the
| EU's] demise as their just desserts for acting as the
| US's poodle for the past several decades, instead of
| seizing the opportunity to create an independent and non-
| aligned Europe as a force for good in the world.
|
| But, yes, my remarks are aimed at nations and what they
| stand for, rather than people.
| rdtwo wrote:
| I think the next big theme right now is energy. From generation
| to storage to consumption were going to rethink how we deal with
| it. Right now our pricing model is broken due to government
| regulation but I think the coming energy crisis will push
| utilities to use spot rate metering like Texas has already
| started in places. Spot rate metering will finally make iot
| (formally known as the internet of shit) actually make sense as
| many of appliances can store energy while it's cheap and dispense
| while it's expensive (fridge, ac, water heater, even house heat).
| This will really help level load the grid and allow us to do more
| with existing capacity
| bannedbybros wrote:
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| I think I speak for a lot of people when I say the last thing I
| want is for my local power grid to become a low regulation real
| time market. We've seen the flaws of the Texas approach, and
| doubling down on it with a sprinkling of IOT tech on top is not
| gonna go anywhere good.
| dont__panic wrote:
| Not to mention the fact that IoT consumes lots of unnecessary
| power and stuff like Nest that tries to "conserve energy with
| AI" ends up consuming more power for an ultimately shittier
| experience than simply manually managing the system.
|
| I suspect since there's money to extract and profit for the
| power companies, this will happen anyway in the next 5-10
| years across the USA. I'm already bracing for the internet
| providers to start the same bullshit, claiming that the pipes
| are getting clogged at peak times...
| rdtwo wrote:
| We need to stop thinking about power and bandwidth on a per
| unit basis. There are times when it's free someone's you
| might even get paid to burn it and others when it's super
| expensive. As for nest I agree it's a shit experience and
| actually ends up peak loading the grid.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| Yeah, where I'm at my choices are basically Comcast and
| Century Link, both of them not companies I'm eager to do
| business with.
|
| Comcast has been playing games around overage charges for a
| few years now. It's pretty transparently calibrated to ding
| you if you have more than one person regularly streaming 4k
| video.
| paganel wrote:
| Not to mention the fact that a lot of people cannot just
| replace their existing appliances with newer IoT stuff just
| because, especially in this economy.
| rdtwo wrote:
| I agree that it's going to be painful. But it's going to be
| painful either way because power plants take too long to
| build and we have an energy crunch now. We need to get power
| from somewhere and the only immediate solution is to level
| load the grid more efficiently. I do not think this is
| something that will make our lives better but it will make
| more efficient use of our existing power infrastructure and
| its something we will all have to deal with
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Can't wait until Amazon inserts itself in the middle of this
| IoT energy revolution.
|
| /s
| pcdoodle wrote:
| I would say AR for specific applications. It would have profound
| effects in the trades/service industry.
| verdverm wrote:
| AR will impact everything, it is the (pandora's) unboxing of
| our digital world. The possibilities are quite exciting.
| 656565656565 wrote:
| Population control?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_population_planning
|
| We will have no choice eventually.
| m101 wrote:
| The problem that we should be talking about is the exact
| opposite.
| bilsbie wrote:
| You scare me.
| collegeburner wrote:
| Uhh fuck that (pun not intended). We are not the problem,
| America has plenty of space, there is no need. SE Asia is
| stabilizing. Africa has a lot of birth but also a lot of space
| left.
|
| There will probably be some places with "natural" population
| control from lack of food or from disease bht that doesn't mean
| "we" have to do anything.
|
| You def can't be pro-choice or anti-fascist then support
| population control.
| 656565656565 wrote:
| I never mentioned pro-choice or my stance on it or population
| control. For the record I support choice. I added the topic
| purely in response to the OP ask.
| collegeburner wrote:
| I mean fair but when you say "we will have no choice" that
| sounds like you support it. If not apologies and my comment
| wouldn't really apply.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I agree that population control mostly solves our environmental
| issues.
|
| But I don't trust humans to make such collective sacrifices
| willingly. We're just too lazy, stupid, and selfish.
|
| I think the more likely outcome is that reality will control
| our population for us, via drought, famine, war, and epidemic.
| 656565656565 wrote:
| I mostly agree, I added purely based on my opinion of the
| original posters ask
| bilsbie wrote:
| The 1700s called. They want their Malthusian catastrophe
| back.
| philwelch wrote:
| If we have to introduce population control it will be to
| increase the population. All developed countries are below
| replacement.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Is that bad? Surely we can manage with fewer than 8 billion
| people. A gradual reduction should be welcomed.
| philwelch wrote:
| You first.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Are you suggesting I'm advocating euthanasia? I just
| meant natural reduction in population over time due to
| lower birth rates.
| [deleted]
| mcv wrote:
| That's exactly what's happening. Lots of people are
| already not having any kids.
| bilsbie wrote:
| The more people we have the more specialization we can
| have. Do you want 1000 people designing a jet engine or 20?
|
| What problems could we solve if we doubled the scientists
| and engineers working on it?
|
| Plus every new birth is a lottery ticket for our
| civilization getting the next Einstein.
| CalRobert wrote:
| How many people is the ideal amount?
| bilsbie wrote:
| Great question. I feel more is better at this point and
| we're not near any hard limit but I don't know what a
| maximum would be.
| Weatherweathe wrote:
| And yet there is housing crisis almosy everywhere, prob govs
| will have to force people to move out from the big cities
| benstrumental wrote:
| Until per capita carbon emissions are below zero, falling
| population is a good thing.
| philwelch wrote:
| I can't think of any sentiment that I commonly hear that's
| as ghoulish as that. As if the moral value of a human life
| is somehow less than her lifetime net carbon emissions. My
| only solace is the hope that people who believe that sort
| of thing will go extinct and be replaced by people whose
| values are closer to mine.
| agonmon wrote:
| That seems to be the trend. It makes sense, people who
| choose a laziness born of pessimism are probably not
| virile enough to raise children. Surprised to see this
| kind of thinking here though; if you are an engineer who
| is good at solving problems, you should raise children
| that are also good at solving problems. Point them at our
| climate/sustainability/energy issues.
| kickout wrote:
| Autonomous machines operating in farm land in the USA. Several
| billion dollar companies could be spun up. Ripe for the taking
| right now/
| walleeee wrote:
| I doubt these will take off unless climate- or politically
| driven migration slows, which seems unlikely in either case, or
| we stumble across a fountain of cheap energy. A lot of farm
| work in the US is performed by undocumented immigrants paid
| incredibly low wages and too often treated incredibly badly. I
| don't see the cost of robots coming down much if supply chain
| instability and energy scarcity continue. (This is not to say
| it _wouldn 't_ be better to use robots, or pay people a good
| wage and provide good working conditions.)
|
| Plus, a lot of work in precision agriculture is overhyped and
| oversold. I worked in the space for a couple years and things
| like automated, AI/ML-powered high-throughput phenotyping are
| described as breakthrough technologies which will revolutionize
| agriculture and synthetic biology. More accurately they are
| relatively narrow-scoped tools which, while useful in many
| cases, are more often bandwagons people jump on for career
| progression.
| kurthr wrote:
| There are several I know of right now, although they're each in
| very specific spaces. From weeding, to insect removal, to high
| value picking.
| kickout wrote:
| There are a few no doubt. For being either 10x or 100x
| simpler problem to solve than full self-driving, there are
| far fewer companies pursuing it.
|
| All of the tech companies and all the ICE car companies
| should (in theory) be able to solve these problems on their
| way to FSD. But it largely ignored IMO.
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| John Deere can and likely will swallow up anything that seems
| interesting in this space. They already largely are.
|
| Source: Worked on AI in the Ag Industry.
| kickout wrote:
| I can't disagree with your take. Eventually (hopefully) there
| will be someone that doesn't sell out. Achieving Level 4/5 in
| corn/maize fields will be easier than Level 4/5 FSD in cars.
| My own theory is Deere knows/thinks it can't sell 200-600K
| tractors when a smaller, more lightweight unit can do the
| same so it is actively swallowing up competitors to protect
| its moat.
| markisus wrote:
| I heard about many companies in this space that have since shut
| down / become acquihired. Root AI acquired by AppHarvest [1],
| Abundant Robotics (shut down) [2], Traptic acquired by Bowery
| [3].
|
| To me, this suggests that the problem is hard. Last I checked,
| the state of the art in robotic grasping seems similar to the
| state of many other AI systems before ML hit the scene. It's
| super-mathematized all to the questionable end of analyzing how
| a few points points can optimally apply forces to simple convex
| polytopes.
|
| A similar feeling exists when you look at the state of path
| planning for robotic arms. There, collisions must be avoided at
| all costs because we don't have the mathematics for it. So you
| make this super precise plan that carefully snakes its way
| around all the little voxels that happen to become occupied in
| your occupancy grid. To execute these plans we need to
| manufacture robots with expensive harmonic gearing and sub-
| millimeter level repeatability. These types of robots would not
| be economical for outdoor picking tasks.
|
| To make progress, I think there will have to be new ML
| techniques and new lower cost robotic hardware developed in
| tandem.
|
| [1] https://www.appharvest.com/press_release/appharvest-
| acquires... [2] https://www.therobotreport.com/abundant-
| robotics-shuts-down-... [3]
| https://techcrunch.com/2022/02/16/following-acquisition-by-b...
| kickout wrote:
| The higher value crops (fruits, veggies) have different and
| more difficult problems than maize,soybean,wheat,cotton which
| are grown in huge fields with known parameters (thanks to
| precision planting, etc.). Having machines till the space
| between these rows would be an easy proof of concept. Syncing
| and coordinating multi machines in one field would be step
| two. There's 200M acres like this and farmers would be happy
| to pay between 10-100 _per acre_ depending on frequency and
| task performed.
| bombcar wrote:
| The problem is the "easy crops" are already harvested by a
| machine that's GPS guided and nearly infinitely wide; at
| that point hiring some farmer to "pilot" it is cheap.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Tangential, but the people that are hired are _farm
| laborers_ not _farmers_.
|
| The _farmer_ is the person doing the hiring (or, rather,
| on behalf of whom the hiring is done, whether directly or
| indirectly.)
| bombcar wrote:
| True - and an important distinction. Hiring someone for
| $20/hr to sit in the cab of some multi-million dollar
| harvesting machine isn't that hard.
|
| I think it's a bit of an area that doesn't really benefit
| from more efficiency (except on the things that have to
| be picked by hand) - farmers don't even bother flattening
| their land to make it easier to plant/harvest, as the
| machines handle slopes and hills just fine.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I agree it is an area that we have probably already
| reached peak from labour efficiency stand point. Ofc,
| machines can get slightly bigger and methods slightly
| more optimised. But there is good reasons to keep a human
| in loop and near to fix any immediately fixable problems.
| Or just to fill fertilizer or empty the load.
| pj_mukh wrote:
| "Several billion dollar companies could be spun up"
|
| _cries in John Deere Monopoly_
| kickout wrote:
| They and Case deserve to be dethroned. They _should_
| understand the problem and have the engineers to solve it,
| but I think they haven't figured out how to monetize it so
| they slow-walk it or down play it.
| klntsky wrote:
| 80% of all USD have been printed since 2020.
|
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1SL
| walls wrote:
| That's probably because it's not true. You can see the
| definition of M1 changed at the exact time that chart shows a
| spike.
|
| https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h6/current/default.h...
| O__________O wrote:
| What exactly was the change in definitions and is it possible
| to account for the change or is information missing?
| walls wrote:
| Seems like this is probably it:
|
| https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2021/05/savings-are-now-
| more...
| dublinben wrote:
| According to Investopedia, "in May 2020, the definition of
| M1 changed to include savings accounts given the increased
| liquidity of such accounts."
|
| If you look at M2, which already added these in, the
| increase looks much smaller.[1]
|
| [0]https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/m1.asp
|
| [1]https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2NS
| newfonewhodis wrote:
| Ok. I guess I'll ask my dumb question. Why is that bad or "the
| next big thing"?
| afpx wrote:
| There's a lot of demand for those dollars. As long as the world
| continues to bring on 50-70m households to the middle class
| each year, we should be fine.
| david927 wrote:
| This is crazy big news and _no one_ is talking about it.
| kixiQu wrote:
| Really? To me it seems to show up in every discussion about
| the general economy these days.
| rodneyhayes wrote:
| The FED printing money? All I hear is everyone blaming
| everything/everyone but the FED as far as inflation goes.
| david927 wrote:
| It's not that there's inflation -- it's the level of it.
| It's _massive_ and will play out in very large terms in
| the coming years.
| 1270018080 wrote:
| The rough polygon of Idaho - California - Arizona becoming less
| habitable every year. Mass migration to the east, water wars
| between wealthy landowners using most of dwindling water supply
| for agriculture and the rest of the population for drinking.
|
| I'm not expecting some doomer apocalyptic scenario. But every
| year, it'll get 1% worse. People will struggle 1%, there will be
| 1% more resentment between race/class/demographics, 1% more
| people leaving, and so on. It'll just get worse.
| collegeburner wrote:
| There's an easy thing we can do to start fixing: ban ag
| exports. We been subsidizing it for too long and literally
| shipping our water overseas. We reduce our own ag production to
| feed just us, even those uses of water are probably doable.
| ellis0n wrote:
| AnimationCPU is a new live coding platform with code/no-code IDE.
| This demo video https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/732098541 and
| some details https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32181251
| solumunus wrote:
| BBBY
| felurx wrote:
| I could only find "Bed, Bath & Beyond" as a search result for
| that. Could you maybe say what that acronym means, and
| elaborate?
| [deleted]
| Spakman wrote:
| I'm not nearly educated enough about this subject to try to
| summarise it, but the research being carried out by Michael
| Levin's group into how organisms control anatomy growth is
| completely fascinating and has the feel of a breakthrough. Almost
| all the talks I've seen are good, for example:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-9rLlFgcm0
|
| Creating new species without genetic changes seems wild!
| polishdude20 wrote:
| Oh yeah I saw this a while ago on HN. Really mind blowing. I
| can definitely see us being able to regenerate limbs in the
| future because of this.
| a1371 wrote:
| This one is the winner for me in the thread. I saw a video of
| it a while ago and I was fascinated by the idea that voltage
| differences are the way the DNA gets expressed. Yet nobody
| seems to be taking about the bioelectrical science of it except
| for this small academic crowd.
| roberdam wrote:
| Qualia engineering
| [deleted]
| verdverm wrote:
| CUE (https://cuelang.org | https://cuetorials.com) will become
| the common language of config & devops, enabling a whole new
| level of reuse, sharing, and safety. The philosophy is quite
| sound (https://cuelang.org/docs/concepts/logic)
| codereviewed wrote:
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| will?
| verdverm wrote:
| yes, while it is gaining adoption, there are still a couple
| of major tasks before it really takes off, namely dependency
| management and structural sharing.
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| Who's adopting it? I don't even see a Wikipedia article.
| verdverm wrote:
| Many heavy hitting tech companies have developers using
| and exploring it, mainly because it augments rather than
| replaces. It's very easy to add validation while not
| changing anything else. Lots of users around Kubernetes
| applications.
|
| Didn't realize people still used Wikipedia for things
| besides for "facts" since its descent into the political
| / opinion battlegrounds. It's been years since I used it
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| Again, who's actually using it? All I see is Salesforce
| and two no name companies. It's supported by Netlify
| which is something, but I wouldn't say "hard hitting
| companies". Netflix and Amazon are hard hitting.
|
| If it doesn't have a Wikipedia article, there's a very
| good chance it isn't very popular in the industry. At
| least in terms of open source standard technology, which
| this appears to be reaching for.
| verdverm wrote:
| Google, Amazon, Tesla, Tencent, Alibaba, ByteDance are in
| the list, not all are on a website. It's not like a
| company mandate, mainly individual contributors checking
| it out and building things.
|
| It's not widespread because it is just starting to get
| going, but it is definitely popular (well liked) among
| its users.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| Since you're that good at predicting the future, would you
| mind DM'ing me the next EuroMillions numbers?
| verdverm wrote:
| What's the need to make a comment like this?
|
| Though I do appreciate you recognizing my track record ;]
| cassianoleal wrote:
| It's about as necessary as your comment stating facts
| about the future. :)
|
| In any case, I apologise - my comment was indeed
| unnecessary and didn't bring any value to the discussion.
| Had it been made to me I might not have been as good a
| sport as you have so kudos to you!
| mountainriver wrote:
| I've used CUE a bit and I'm underwhelmed by it. In most cases
| it's just another unneeded level of abstraction, it also
| doesn't go far enough, most API based tools need to support
| imperative methods
| verdverm wrote:
| You don't want computability in your config, and CUE is
| useful beyond APIs.
|
| You can already use CUE within other programs when you need
| imperative, there is also the scripting layer where this is
| possible. There is also a plan to support a WASM runtime so
| you can have imperative subroutines in the scripting layer,
| written in any other language.
| valbaca wrote:
| You should really give a mild caveat that you're a contributor
| to this project.
| verdverm wrote:
| I've barely contribute to the code, though I do maintain
| cuetorials.com which is separate from the CUE team. I spend a
| lot time supporting new users.
|
| I'm apparently CUE's biggest fan too :]
| searchableguy wrote:
| david927 wrote:
| The end of the US/NATO hegemony / The rise of a BRICS equilibrium
|
| If this is true, what does it mean? China will invade Taiwan?
| What else?
| midislack wrote:
| WWIV started, WWIII was the global war on terror. WWIV will be
| between major powers again. Better bring a hat!
| david927 wrote:
| I wouldn't use those terms but my comment was similar:
|
| The end of the US/NATO hegemony / The rise of a BRICS
| equilibrium
| midislack wrote:
| There's to be a big war, too. Between the powers. Probably
| nuclear. So exciting!
| david927 wrote:
| My email is in my profile. I'd like to talk more.
| VonGuard wrote:
| Bio-organic solar cells.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_solar_cell
|
| These things, in theory, could be everywhere. You can bend some
| of them, so you could wrap lamp posts with them, cover cars in
| them, put them everywhere. I am confident that within 20 years,
| we will solve power problems with renewables like this, and we
| will have a major revolution in infinite-power designs, like
| illuminated clothing, power generating and emitting roadways, and
| servers embedded into everything, everywhere, for every reason.
|
| They are 17% efficiency, and they don't yet last very long, but
| the work is moving at a steady pace.
| ohiovr wrote:
| The west coast of the USA will be a desert very soon. Probably
| within a few years. Soon 40 million people will be without
| sanitation water. Then the next step is no drinking water.
| GoodJokes wrote:
| tmaly wrote:
| How soon is soon?
| hattmall wrote:
| Never. We will spend trillions of dollars to pump and
| desalinate, and as we do so costs will come down.
| JasserInicide wrote:
| You say that now, but our leaders have regressed to such a
| degree that I don't believe they have any kind of foresight
| to plan ahead more than a couple years.
| RHSman2 wrote:
| Living simply and for the better of others?
| abrichr wrote:
| Conscious realism and the cosmological polytope:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reYdQYZ9Rj4
|
| https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.02813
|
| According to Prof. Hoffman, this model of the universe is highly
| parsimonious in that it can model data from the Large Hadron
| Collider using a single parameter, while the best incumbent
| (Quantum Field Theory) needs millions.
|
| The implication is that everything we see and experience are not
| fundamental, _including space and time itself_. The fundamental
| unit of reality is consciousness.
|
| This has far reaching implications into every other scientific
| and non-scientific human endeavor, from neuroscience to
| philosophy. It's no exaggeration to say that if he's right (and
| he claims the math shows that he is) it may be the most important
| discovery in human history.
|
| Even Albert Einstein appears to have intuited this when he wrote:
|
| "Time and space are modes by which we think and not conditions in
| which we live."
| katmannthree wrote:
| That's a lot of words in those links. What falsifiable
| predictions does this make?
| uggahughuff wrote:
| OT: Let me give you a guessing, maybe the Translation wasn'
| wrong at all, 'Watts per Pound as an Ratio' -calling the
| Movie Matrix to mind... ^^
| O__________O wrote:
| >> "That's a lot of words in those links."
|
| My favorite HN comment ever.
|
| __
|
| As for that lack of a falsifiable claim, agree, not only
| that, but one that would allow for a preponderance of
| evidence.
|
| Donald Hoffman was interviewed and topic of falsifiable
| observations came up and as far as I am able to tell he
| avoided the topic; search for "falsifiable" in this link:
|
| https://tim.blog/2022/04/18/donald-hoffman-transcript/amp/
|
| ___
|
| On same topic, this paper provides overview of possible
| different approaches testing to quantum gravity with
| cosmology:
|
| https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.01597
| mrandish wrote:
| Yes, that's exactly my question too. "Consciousness" is often
| ill-defined for experimental purposes and notorious for being
| abused through vague "deep-ities" to make unsupported
| assertions about "the meaning of everything."
| abrichr wrote:
| It's a good question, and as a layman I don't have the
| answer. However, since it's able to model experiments in the
| Large Hadron Collider, I would assume that it makes
| predictions about the positions and velocities of high energy
| particles.
|
| In any case, Dr. Hoffman's theories are mathematically
| rigorous. I think it's worth listening to the podcast before
| dismissing.
| katmannthree wrote:
| > In any case, Dr. Hoffman's theories are mathematically
| rigorous. I think it's worth listening to the podcast
| before dismissing.
|
| I can't really comment on that as 1) I only skimmed a
| couple sections of the paper and 2) my field is more
| applied math than pure. I'm not attacking or dismissing
| anything, just asking how the claims made are
| substantiated.
|
| > However, since it's able to model experiments in the
| Large Hadron Collider, I would assume that it makes
| predictions about the positions and velocities of high
| energy particles.
|
| Do those models cover experiments which have yet to be run,
| and more importantly are they predictions which differ from
| those of the standard model?
|
| There are a lot of neat theories which model experimental
| work we already have results for, the problem is using said
| theories to make falsifiable predictions which are both
| realistic in terms of actually finding a way to do
| experimental verification _and_ are different from
| predictions made by the standard model. Nobody really loves
| the state of physics as-is, but moving on to something else
| requires meeting those two conditions which has been an
| insurmountable hurdle as of yet.
| samwillis wrote:
| Tooling for developing real-time collaborative remote working
| environments is about to take of dramatically.
|
| CRDTs [0], while complex to work with untill recently, are now so
| much easer for developers to use with toolkits such as Yjs[1] and
| AutoMerge[2]. SAAS and PAAS companies proving tooling around
| these, enabling developers to easily build collaborative tools
| for specific niches and verticals are going to explode into the
| market.
|
| Every 5-ish years there is a big "new" database tech that
| receives massive investment for both enterprise and small
| business. Real time CRDT based data stores are the "next big
| thing" - in my view.
|
| CRDTs are often only talked about in relation to rich text
| editing, but "generic" CRDTs that represent "standard" data types
| (think JSON), and basic operations to them (inset, edit, remove)
| are able to represent so much more. You can use them for building
| so many CRUD type business apps, and by using a CRDT as your base
| data representation you get conflict free collaborative (and
| offline) editing for free.
|
| The nice thing about both Yjs and AutoMerge is that they provide
| both Rich Text and JSON-like data types, covering 95% of what
| people would need for building business apps.
|
| 0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict-
| free_replicated_dat...
|
| 1: https://github.com/yjs/yjs
|
| 2: https://github.com/automerge/automerge
| cvccvroomvroom wrote:
| Did this 20 years ago in an FMMS. It's not worth it. It's
| better to have an arbiter source of truth that can guarantee
| ACID principles with transactions rather than introduce merge
| conflicts or lose transactions for lack of synchronization. The
| internet is almost everywhere, so use that rather than provide
| academic features that cause more headaches than they solve.
| SQL databases with transactions and row locks are invaluable
| inventions.
|
| Also, if you want to collaborate, synergize, innovate, and
| revolutionize consider OTs. They're a known quantity. Handling
| merges of data is fraught with landmines.
|
| You can't sell 2 of something to the same person offline and
| know if they wanted 1 or 2. Plus, giving an end user the
| ability to resolve merge conflicts is asking for theft and
| fraud.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| Actually the theory to do this correctly didn't exist 20
| years ago, so things truly are different now.
| neon_electro wrote:
| Sources and references help you make your argument shine!
| samwillis wrote:
| Not a "proper" reference but according to Wikipedia
| (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict-
| free_replicated_dat...):
|
| > The CRDT concept was formally defined in 2011 by Marc
| Shapiro, Nuno Preguica, Carlos Baquero and Marek
| Zawirski.
|
| Now, that's not to say the gp wasn't referring to using
| some of the CRDT concepts before they were defined
| collectively under that banner.
| ivanvanderbyl wrote:
| Another project to add to the list is Replicache
| https://github.com/rocicorp/replicache
| b20000 wrote:
| i don't want to realtime collab. i want to concentrate and get
| my shit done. slack is a nightmare for example. there is always
| a fool constantly interrupting your flow.
| avel wrote:
| You might be missing the point. Some examples of realtime
| collaboration in the world of remote work can be: google docs
| / sheets, project boards (trello, miro), whiteboarding
| (jamboard, zoom), design/drawing, or even coding (VS code
| sharing).
| b20000 wrote:
| i don't. like i said, i want peace and quiet to focus on my
| work.
| clavalle wrote:
| Agreed. I chunk slack messaging the same way I do email. I
| have two channels that I'll take realtime notifications on,
| but if someone raises those flags without very.good.reason,
| they'll hear about it. I generally won't see anything on
| those channels more than once a month.
|
| For special 'war room' projects I'll set up a special channel
| that I'll pay attention to for real time colab, but those are
| very unusual situations with a well defined end date.
| Kyragem wrote:
| Food waste contributes 7% to global warming. We need to figure
| out how to make food last longer.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Personal transportation by drone: (Basically, flying cars.)
|
| Just imagine, you can travel reasonable distances without needing
| to deal with traffic. Your drone could pick you up on your roof,
| and then drop you off on a roof in a city, bypassing roads and
| traffic.
|
| More importantly, if most personal transport is by drone, it
| means we don't need to invest as much in roads, bridges, and
| railroads.
| enos_feedler wrote:
| I believe the next big thing will be the productization of
| building a home anywhere, without requiring municipal
| infrastructure. There is still a ways to go in terms of
| technology to make it all happen and make it affordable. But at
| some point, it will really reconfigure where and how we all live.
| CalRobert wrote:
| How will transport work? One of the big issues with homes built
| in distant areas is the expectation of roads (and car
| dependency in general)
| contingencies wrote:
| Fixed wing drones are becoming _super cheap_ , and are far
| simpler than their copter-classed counterparts. While
| handover needs smoothing out, delivery will thus be easy for
| items of daily use. Less so for furniture, appliances, etc.
| However, if you are willing to deal with foam furniture,
| earth building or felling a couple of trees on site, robotics
| could still have you covered.
| dont__panic wrote:
| Do you foresee fixed wing drones also displacing cars?
| Would be awfully nice to no longer need to build highways
| and roads...
| dotancohen wrote:
| Including water and sewer?
|
| I can envision local electricity generation and wireless
| communication. But not every home can support a well and septic
| system.
| villmann wrote:
| I just installed incineration toilet at my cabin. Works great
| and burns the shit to ashes. Works with a gass balloon and a
| 12V battery. 220V option being available.
| mountainriver wrote:
| I guess a well and a septic tank? Lived that way for awhile
| up in the mountains and it was tough
| oceanplexian wrote:
| I mean, I grew up with a well and septic tank and my life
| was literally no different than living in an apartment in
| the city. It's not like a radical off-the-grid thing
| millions of homes are this way.
| chris1993 wrote:
| Particularly when you look at modern septic which do
| tertiary treatment with inputs of power and a chlorine
| block every six months.
| Dylovell wrote:
| This is something I have been think about for the past 10 year
| as well. If we can get enough cheap power production,
| incinerating toilets seem interesting. And the growth satellite
| internet is a big win for this area.
| muttled wrote:
| And then we have companies like Space Mobile trying to
| essentially put cell phone towers in low earth orbit which
| will (hopefully) enable 4G/5G coverage all over the globe.
| natoliniak wrote:
| I really hope that this will happen, but I'm skeptical. The
| push to cluster around big cities is still accelerating and
| land scarcity around big metro areas is what is driving out
| affordability. Utilities connection constitutes a small and
| almost insignificant cost of total urban residential
| construction. If a global pandemic couldn't stop this trend,
| then I don't think we will ever live in an affordable
| distributed civilization.
| sprkwd wrote:
| We are currently in the middle of an information dark age. Among
| other things, information in walled gardens will just vanish
| without a trace.
| tmaly wrote:
| True but for the masses. There are people pushing other
| perspectives on lesser known networks.
| historytold wrote:
| +++ News: +++ Aged Worker remain having social-contacts to
| colleagues and may have satisfying feelings if their knowledge is
| in demand.
|
| And like any other 'bubble' at least the ultimate goal seem to
| fleece somebody.
|
| Honestly the whole point of this is 'to make things easier'. +++
|
| P-:
| outsidetheparty wrote:
| I'm having a very difficult time understanding what you're
| trying to get across here; can you rephrase?
| mdp2021 wrote:
| I think the poster assumes that identification of trends
| reveals basically greed. And makes a plausible point in
| noting that the purpose of engineering is to alleviate and
| improve quality of life. Only, the tone is not really
| appropriate (and less so the assumptions).
| Chris_Newton wrote:
| I wonder what the future holds for WebAssembly.
|
| If it doesn't really catch on and just ends up being mostly
| (ab)used for nefarious purposes, I can imagine the major browsers
| dropping support in a few years. They did with technologies like
| Flash and Java applets before, and those had had much wider
| adoption previously.
|
| On the other hand, if someone comes up with a good programming
| language for modern Web-style applications that compiles down to
| Wasm for the client side and the ecosystem around it reaches
| escape velocity, that looks like an opportunity to disrupt a
| trillion dollar industry to me.
|
| Such things used to seem unrealistic, but there is so much money
| in web development, the current state of the art is so bad in
| numerous ways and almost everything is currently so short-lived
| (by wider programming industry standards) that I don't think it's
| completely out of the question to move the goalposts to an
| entirely different playing field any more.
| muttled wrote:
| I wonder if the Ethereum merge (moving away from mining) will
| cause a drop in that misuse? I know a lot of the abuse are
| hidden crypto miners. There's going to be so much computing
| power shifting to the other coins (dropping the ROI) that there
| won't be much worth mining that can be done in the browser.
| neon_electro wrote:
| What does securing a WebAssembly runtime look like? Have
| browser developers made good strides on that front yet?
|
| Flash declined in part because of its poor security compared to
| the Web proper (HTML/CSS/JavaScript), so I'm curious where
| WebAssembly stands.
| afiori wrote:
| Until threads are included in WASM its security model is
| essentially the browser sandbox and scope limitation (WASM
| modules cannot access the global object nor call arbitrary
| functions)
|
| Essentially WASM can be transpiled to Javascript (or ASM.js
| more likely) almost line by line and it would have almost the
| same security.
|
| Flash and Java applet were so dangerous because the plugins
| introduced a ton of new APIs that skipped the browser
| sandbox. Wasm introduces no new API.
|
| For non browser environments WASM mostly brings static
| validation, opaque external references, and bound checking on
| linear memory access.
| theptip wrote:
| I've been thinking about this a lot in the last few years, and
| recently did a deep dive on Rust wasm.
|
| I think it's unlikely to be a single new language that replaces
| the current JS hegemony. My bet is that wasm makes it possible
| for any backend language to embed frontend logic, and each
| language will have framework(s) to take advantage of this
| capability in idiomatic ways.
|
| I want to avoid specific language comparisons because they tend
| to veer into religious territory and shed more heat than light,
| but perhaps I can just note that Java, Rails, Elixir, Python
| and may others have great productive backend frameworks which
| could easily be extended to build and ship wasm to clients.
|
| (I think the model of the new JS framework Fresh is interesting
| to hold as a comparison for what sort of thing you can do with
| unified FE/BE stack; shipping client JS only when the specific
| page needs interactivity is one cool feature for example. But
| with wasm you're free to pick any point along the MPA - SPA
| spectrum.)
| Bjorkbat wrote:
| The end of the social networking era as we know it.
|
| Many of the big giants from the 2000s - 2010s have pretty much
| peaked by now. TikTok is the thing everyone wants to be, but
| arguably its not a social networking app so much as a social
| entertainment app. You don't really connect with friends on it so
| much as with strangers. An endless stream of entertaining
| strangers. It's a lot more akin to YouTube than Instagram when
| you think about it.
|
| That being said, I don't think the social networking era is
| completely over, its just that the focus is going to shift. After
| big social networking platforms come smaller communities that are
| probably isolated from the platform on Discord or some forum
| somewhere, or perhaps something new in the future. The platforms
| themselves won't go away, but more-and-more the dialogue will
| shift towards niche interests and community discovery.
|
| Problem with these communities is that there's a very real risk
| that they could be "unmoored" from reality, especially if the
| user demographic leans towards loners. Prime example is 4chan. A
| lesser example would be someone on Twitter who exclusively uses
| it politically. I think this will only get worse over time, and
| possibly accelerate once AI gets involved. Using, I don't know,
| GPT-4 and DALL-E 3, you can create a seemingly thriving
| "community" filled with "people" who make hilarious memes and
| generate thought-provoking content, culminating in whatever world
| you want to live in. Possibly a very hateful one.
|
| On a positive note, I think that the internet will become a
| somewhat more decentralized place again. I think that with the
| end of the social networking era we'll also see the end of the so
| called "walled garden" era of the internet. Making weird websites
| might just become cool again. VC money will still flow into
| "tech", but it'll mostly be towards AI or things that are more
| physical such as energy, climate, biotech, space, or maybe just
| physical consumer goods. The race to dominate the attention of
| the internet will be over.
|
| Finally, there's "the metaverse". I think a lot of companies are
| going to try, and fail, to build VR Disneyland when what people
| really want to experience is a virtual city far larger than any
| real world city, with public squares to meet new people at and
| private, intimate worlds to share with your friends. Just seems
| far more likely that we'll instead wind up the internet all over
| again, only, you know, in VR, so just the internet really. If
| anything, I think a company might stake its claim in this future
| not by trying to build a platform, but by building tools.
|
| Mind you, this is all still a long ways off I think, but in the
| present there are a lot of companies building 2D metaverses,
| which are basically community spaces.
|
| https://sprout.place/ https://www.gather.town/
| klntsky wrote:
| > which are basically community spaces.
|
| These are primitive 2D games with videochat. These technologies
| existed for decades, it's naive to expect anything more from
| them than already exists. Changing the name to something more
| hyped will result in nothing more than a wave of hype.
| Bjorkbat wrote:
| I wouldn't discount something simply because the underlying
| technology has been around for decades. People said the same
| thing about Slack being nothing more than IRC. Didn't stop
| people from talking about how it was the future of work, or
| whatever.
|
| For that reason, and many others, we really shouldn't ignore
| the amount of innovation in software and web that is largely
| design-oriented rather than engineering-oriented. A lot of
| venture-funded darlings out there are built on decades old
| technology, the key difference mostly being the design
| decisions that went into the product.
| klntsky wrote:
| So what are these design decisions in case of everything
| "meta-"?
| throwaway787544 wrote:
| The stumble over abandonment of ICE vehicles.
|
| By 2030 (8 years from now) at least six manufacturers will have
| stopped making ICE vehicles entirely, and India claims it will
| ban the sale of ICE-only vehicles. By 2040 (18 years from now)
| over half of all new cars sold will be electric, and the UK and
| France claim they will ban the sale of ICE-only vehicles.
|
| However, there's still not a plan that makes all that
| sustainable, as we need 30% more grid capacity, an insanely
| higher number of chargers (1 out of 4 are duds) / service
| companies / land, China still controls most of the resources for
| production (of raw resources, manufacturing, & assembly) and now
| they want the chips too. And the climate picture isn't great
| either, with not enough new clean energy capacity going online,
| and only 8 million barrels of crude will be displaced by the
| estimated number of new EVs. Even with all of this new work,
| there will be only a small reduction in carbon emissions.
|
| Basically there are so many things that can go wrong in the next
| 18 years, and so many things we don't even have a plan for, that
| all the estimates we've been given will result in dysfunction,
| increased prices, and soaring secondary markets. A lot of people
| are going to make money just from preparing for things to go
| wrong.
| [deleted]
| mdip wrote:
| > we need 30% more grid capacity, an insanely higher number of
| chargers (1 out of 4 are duds) / service companies / land,
| China still controls most of the resources for production (of
| raw resources, manufacturing, & assembly) and now they want the
| chips too.
|
| > Basically there are so many thing sthat can go wrong in the
| next 18 years ...
|
| There has to be a name for this particular kind of response to
| change (usually positive change[0]). Please don't read this as
| crapping on your points -- they're all valid.
|
| The problem is that it's identifying problems that "may occur
| in the future" using what technology we have, today, to solve
| them. It also presents those in a vacuum and ignores the
| unknown of what the world could look like after new vehicles
| sales gradually transition to 80% electric. We can speculate
| more easily on the negative, but it's a lot harder to predict
| the positive -- at least, the "societal changing positive
| effects".
|
| Consider that newer EVs can power your home during a power
| loss, or integrating EVs into the grid, itself. Reliance on
| traditional automobiles and _how_ we rely on them is changing,
| as well. My driving habits, due to the vast availability of
| fully-remote work and the purchase of a OneWheel have been
| drastically reduced[1]. I went from ~20 gallons /week to ~10
| gallons/month of gas. I've done the math a few times and it's
| stupid for me to own an ICE vehicle. I own it out of a desire
| of convenience that could probably be eliminated with Uber and
| when my kids are out of the house, I probably will no longer
| own a car. Until then, however, my car could basically be
| filling in that 30% gap (or whatever the gap happens to be at
| this very moment).
|
| Articles that recently hit the front page of HN related to
| Geothermal conversion of Coal Plants[2], the myriad of posts
| related to companies attempting the modern-day alchemy called
| "Nuclear Fusion", there's a lot of energy/money being spent in
| the space, much of it having nothing to do with reducing
| climate change but providing for an increasingly electricity
| dependent future.
|
| Even the incredibly slow-moving electric companies have made
| some pretty serious progress. I think back on my short life; I
| happen to currently live in the city I grew up in -- losing the
| power for a few days in the summer was a "normal thing", as was
| losing it during _every_ miserable thunderstorm. The price of
| whole-home generators and the hardware to integrate it were so
| cost-prohibitive that few people owned one. I still do not,
| however, I 've lost power maybe four times this year for under
| ten seconds. I've lost power once in three years for over an
| hour (still restored in under four hours).
|
| [0] I'm thinking something succinct like Hanlon's Razor.
|
| [1] 2,800 miles and going since I bought it. I grocery shop
| with it ... it's a good upper body workout carrying 6 bags back
| 1-3 miles.
|
| [2] Filed under "I'll believe it when I see it" but still.
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| Also note that "half of all new cars sold" does not mean half
| of all vehicles on the road. People will keep using their ICE
| cars for 10-20 years after their manufacture date. I'm curious
| to see the actual projections of cars on the road that are
| electric vs ICE. My guess is, by 2040, it might be 25% (in the
| USA).
| riskable wrote:
| Another way to look at it: A _ton_ of gas stations aren 't
| very profitable. Most don't even make any real money on the
| gas!
|
| So what happens when 1/4 of all their customers disappear?
| Many will close and when that happens there will be less
| competition, driving up gas prices which will result in more
| people buying electric cars. It's a cycle that--once it kicks
| off--is going to move very quickly. Faster than people,
| cities, and society are prepared for, that's for sure!
| mywittyname wrote:
| The revolution won't be televised.
|
| This is going to hit harder and than people realize. There
| are so many really great EV options from nearly every
| manufacture. And their sales figures are growing at a solid
| clip. According to Cox, EVs are 12% of new car sales in 22,
| and it's the only segment that grew YoY (the overall market
| fell 20% YoY).
| throwaway787544 wrote:
| About 1/4 of cars on the road globally will be electric but
| Europe and China will have a larger share than USA. Still,
| that means something like 25% of gas stations and parking
| lots worldwide having fast chargers. If they can't make that
| number, imagine the impact on driving when 1/4 of drivers are
| frustrated and their trips unrealistic. Passenger car
| ownership itself may fall, which would both hit the auto
| industry and bolster mass transit companies. But at the same
| time demand would be surging for ICE vehicles /
| infrastructure and gas prices will probably rise due to their
| devestment in anticipation of the EV revolution.
| monodeldiablo wrote:
| ... or charging infrastructure companies would simply
| expand their offerings to meet demand, since expansion for
| them is comparatively cheap.
|
| That, at least to me, seems to be the more likely scenario.
|
| Also keep in mind that fueling behavior for EV owners is
| different than for ICE vehicle owners. Fast chargers are
| useful for road trips, but unnecessary and expensive for
| day-to-day driving. Most commuters will simply charge at
| home/work/the store/etc, where the raw inputs to charging
| infrastructure (car-adjacent space and electricity) are
| already in place and slower, cheaper charging is
| sufficient.
| linuxftw wrote:
| > simply charge at home/work/the store/etc
|
| This requires having expensive, redundant charging
| infrastructure at all these places. It works today
| because far less than 1% of cars on the road in most of
| the developed world are electric. If 25% were electric,
| that free charging at the store and work is going away,
| there won't be enough bays to charge all the cars.
|
| Whenever I hear 'X company is going all electric by Y
| date' I assume it's either an outright marketing lie, or
| that company will soon thereafter be out of business.
| dv_dt wrote:
| It's really not much of a leap to put a charger in many
| more spots. It was a bigger effort for many first rural
| grid electrifications for instance.
| jackmott wrote:
| mywittyname wrote:
| > and so many things we don't even have a plan for,
|
| Why do you have the impression "nobody" is planning for these
| things? These topics are talked about endlessly in every medium
| by laypeople. Billions of dollars in public and private sector
| investment is being funneled into everyone of these topics.
|
| The complaint about grid capacity baffles me. The USA used to
| regularly growth capacity by well over 30% a decade. It only
| stopped expanding because energy efficiency standards were so
| damn successful that net usage declined in spite of population
| growth, and the majority new capacity went to displacing coal
| production.
| blinkingled wrote:
| It's amazing to me how little talk there is about reduce and
| recycle - with remote work, better city and public transport
| planning etc if we could completely eliminate the use of cars
| for the vast majority of the populace we would not need to mine
| more for batteries, wonder where and how our electricity is
| going to come from and how we are going to offset carbon.
|
| We literally have no vision for optimization, we just seem to
| obsess about and creating one problem to solve another for the
| sake of capacity and scalability.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > if we could completely eliminate the use of cars for the
| vast majority of the populace
|
| I find this way of thinking unrealistic and paternalistic. It
| might work in an authoritarian society, or in a society where
| the alternative to car culture is appealing.
|
| But, let's get very realistic for a moment. I telecommute,
| and my wife has an in-person job. I'd even go so far as to
| say that most jobs are like hers: in-person, because she
| isn't a knowledge worker.
|
| We go to the grocery store. Even though it's a reasonable
| walk, we take our car because it's not reasonable to lug the
| groceries back home. It's also not reasonable to bring
| groceries onto public transport. (My boss, who doesn't drive,
| uses an Uber for grocery shopping.) An alternate way of
| living would need to figure this out.
|
| Even though most of our trips are very close to home, we do
| about 18k miles a year. Our family (and many friends) do no
| live in town. We also prefer to travel by car. It's much
| easier when going on a family vacation compared to lugging
| kids and baggage through all kinds of trains and bus
| transfer.
|
| And... Where we live is mildly rural. Regular bus routes, (or
| similar) don't make sense.
| asdff wrote:
| Well, what's stopping you from e.g. lugging the groceries
| back on a bike instead and going twice a week to carry less
| each time, earning you a gym membership out of the deal
| from the cardio? That's the sort of thinking we have to get
| past. This, "well I use a car for xyz so I need it for all
| things I do in life" It's fine to have access to a car when
| you need a vehicle of that caliber, but most car trips
| aren't that. Most car trips people take are less than 3
| mile; 30% are less than 1 mile:
|
| https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1230-mar
| c...
|
| All of those could certainly be replaced with something
| more sensible. How many times have you hopped into the car
| to go to the store and grab one thing? Probably a lot in
| your life. With car culture, we basically have a mindset of
| using a big axe for every cutting job, even those where a
| butter knife would do.
| elmomle wrote:
| The problem is that it's a classic large-scale prisoner's
| dilemma. Living in a walking city is nicer than living in a
| driving city. But living in a walking city with a car is even
| nicer!
|
| The only way to fix it is by passing taxes or other
| restrictive legislation, which has so far been extremely
| difficult because most voters choose "let's make things a bit
| easier for you today" over "we should all sacrifice now to
| make things probably better later".
| moooo99 wrote:
| > But living in a walking city with a car is even nicer!
|
| Not necessarily, because it is significantly more expensive
| (depending on how you implement it). But one way to get
| people off their cars and onto public transport could be
| make people pay for their cars. Nowadays, people do pay
| quite a lot for their cars (insurance, registration fees,
| vehicle tax, etc), but the payments pale in comparison to
| the overall costs of having cars as a primary mean of
| mobility. Putting that cost burden onto the people that
| produce those costs would lead to many people reconsidering
| their need for a car.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| That's why it's important to help people understand that's
| it's not about eliminating cars entirely, but about
| substituting significant numbers of trips.
|
| The YouTube channel NotJustBikes has gained a lot of
| notoriety over the last couple of years, and he made an
| interesting point that driving is _more_ pleasant in
| Amsterdam. [0]
|
| The issue is mainly _car dependency_ not cars per se.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8RRE2rDw4k
| _fat_santa wrote:
| How I see it is that it's not that people own cars, it's
| that they drive them absolutely everywhere. I think there
| is a happy medium where you still have a car to get you
| places where you can't walk, but essential services are
| walking distance from where you live.
|
| The apartment I moved into last year is in a neighborhood
| with grocery stores, some restaurants and a gym. It's not
| the epitome of walkability but it gets the job done. While
| at my old place I found myself getting into my car every
| day to go places, now I find myself only using it 1-2 times
| per week.
|
| Also weather is a major factor. When I visited my friend in
| Florida last month I decided to walk to McDonalds one
| morning. By the time I got back I was drenched in sweat
| from the humidity. By comparison I make a similar length
| walk almost every morning and don't think anything of it.
| There even if the place was super walkable, folks would
| still drive because of the heat and humidity.
| katdork wrote:
| I think a key difference here is building your cities to
| be more walkable; if there are humidity and heat
| problems: plant more trees for shade, provide more cover
| in general for people
|
| I can't imagine that the current way of building cities
| with massive multi-lane stretches is going to be good for
| reducing experienced suffering to those who walk (it's
| just not a priority...)
|
| Of course, any of that requires that you actually
| prioritise these features as opposed to extending
| highways/motorways with ever more lanes causing more and
| more induced demand, which... American cities don't seem
| to, generally...?
|
| The usual shilling of "Not Just Bikes" should go here,
| where he talks in depth about what's wrong with American
| car-dependent cities and how they build...
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >> Living in a walking city is nicer than living in a
| driving city. But living in a walking city with a car is
| even nicer!
|
| You know what is even nicer than that, Living in a Rural
| area with a population density of less than 500 people per
| sq mile (310 people per sq km)
|
| >The only way to fix it is by passing taxes or other
| restrictive legislation
|
| That is far from the only way to fix it, and it is very
| regressive, making the burden fall upon poor people, and
| often the elderly.
|
| Using tax code to affect behavior is one of the most
| unethical things government does, and I always find it odd
| that the same people that complain about the rich, and how
| we should do more for the poor are the ones that also want
| to impose these heavily regressive tax schemes because
| "they know best"
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _Using tax code to affect behavior is one of the most
| unethical things_
|
| I am not sure I understand. Those producing externalities
| should pay for them, and taxation is a basic way for
| that. Gasoline (etc.) pollutes, hence it should be taxed,
| on one side to collect the funds for attempted
| compensation, but also to limit the phenomenon and put it
| in the framework of "you will invest your resources where
| you deem them best invested".
|
| You should probably be more specific.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >Those producing externalities should pay for them, and
| taxation is a basic way for that.
|
| very are rarely those proposing taxing externalities
| doing so to cover the costs of mitigating those
| externalities, instead the money goes in to the
| government's general fund, or some other unrelated pet
| project. Also rarely the tax enough to the level that it
| would actually curb the desired behavior enough to effect
| the harm caused by the externality
|
| So all you end up doing is making is harder for poor
| people to put food on the table while doing nothing to
| curb the externality
| mdp2021 wrote:
| But the problem you point to is not the method: it is in
| the regulators.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Incorrect, the fact that in all of recorded history this
| method as proven itself to end up in the same result
| means it is the method, not the people.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| No: epistemologically, that is the indicator justifying a
| growing suspect.
|
| Ineffectiveness should be determined by a logical and
| technical argument over the method, proposed as a
| possible solution, itself. You should identify what has
| it go wrong in practice. And you have in part already
| done it: that taxes are not earmarked (on compensation)
| and that the discouragement factor is insufficient. That
| is not necessary, it is not intrinsic to the method.
|
| Nearby I commented on the infernal noise from electric
| cars. That is not necessary, not intrinsic: it just
| happens that people think it acceptable that some drive
| around with loudspeakers transmitting the screams of
| torture chambers. A potential solution becomes a problem
| because of external (non intrinsic) factors. It would be
| much, much easier to fix the external factors of the
| taxation problem than those of the "broken cybernetics"
| problem.
| ericmay wrote:
| > But living in a walking city with a car is even nicer!
|
| I think that's fine. Most over time will realize they don't
| need 2 or more cars if they're living in a true walking
| city because driving will be more inconvenient than
| walking, and eventually either paying for or building a
| garage (or having it used up by 2 cars that are seldom
| used) or paying for street parking or other things will
| cause people to change habits. It just takes time _if_ you
| have a walkable city.
|
| Personally I think the sweet spot is one crossover SUV,
| highly walkable and bikeable city, and probably street cars
| that run up and down main commerce arteries. At that point
| you really do cover almost every conceivable local transit
| need or chore that you might have to undertake.
| cudgy wrote:
| "... because driving will be more inconvenient than
| walking"
|
| Not sure about this. For example, look at the school bus
| stops and the stacks of cars waiting for children only to
| drive 300 feet back to their house.
|
| Weather is another factor that makes driving more
| convenient. Many people are accustomed to air conditioned
| spaces and have a small comfort range.
| ericmay wrote:
| I think there's a couple of things there.
|
| One is yea there's a certain level of cultural idiocy and
| laziness. I live in front of a bus stop and see it. But I
| _also_ see lots of parents walking to pick up their kids,
| so I 'm not sure what the breakdown is (this is in the
| suburbs in Ohio with the bad weather and all of that).
|
| The other is that we don't really have a lot (any at
| all?) of examples where you have a true walkable
| neighborhood with desirable schools. Most walkable
| neighborhoods that I've seen were built before automobile
| traffic became prevalent, which puts them close to cities
| which tend to have the worst schools. So I'm not actually
| sure what parents would do if they had the combo of
| schools and neighborhood that we'd be talking about here,
| but I bet they'd walk because in those neighborhoods it
| just wouldn't be possible for all or most parents to
| drive their kid to school at the same time.
|
| It's really hard to break out of thinking about things in
| terms of the suburbs and convenience because most use
| that as their starting frame of reference. How will I go
| to Costco if XYZ, well you wouldn't. How will my kids get
| to school? They'd walk or ride their bikes. "But it's
| dangerous" ok then make it safe. Participate in your
| community and your government. That's half the reason we
| have the problems we have now. For better or worse though
| economic physics is going to win. We'll either all perish
| in war over resources or these activities will just
| become too expensive. EVs won't save us either, and this
| is particularly true given the underinvestment in nuclear
| energy that has occurred world wide.
| kixiQu wrote:
| Ehhh.. "Cultural idiocy and laziness" ignores some
| important systemic factors. You can be investigated for
| neglect for letting your kids play in a park you can see
| from your window.
| https://www.familydefensecenter.net/client-
| stories/mother-ch...
|
| You can't "make it safe" for your kid to ride a bike to
| school if, when you think you HAVE made it safe, a police
| officer can still charge you with neglect.
| https://bikeportland.org/2011/09/01/neglect-charges-
| follow-1...
|
| The contemporary US has a narrative about parenting and
| risk to children that creates some very weird
| requirements.
| ericmay wrote:
| Those are just cultural aspects though aren't they?
|
| But that also doesn't excuse what I'll call cultural
| idiocy and laziness for not walking your kid 300 feet to
| the bus stop.
| thfuran wrote:
| That sounds a lot like cultural idiocy to me.
| mwint wrote:
| The "cars to drive kids 300ft to the house" problem is
| due to the rampant safety-ism in today's society, not
| really a car problem per se.
| ericmay wrote:
| Kind of. It's a chicken-egg thing. When you design your
| society around cars and car infrastructure people take
| their cars everywhere and watch the news and get scared
| and all that. We can think back to earlier times where
| this wasn't the case.
| frobozz wrote:
| I have never seen this, and I live right by a school bus
| stop.
|
| The closest place a limited number of cars could wait is
| down a side road about 200ft from the stop, but they
| don't.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| But you did not even talk about CME events, Astroid Impacts, or
| Yellow Stone blowing up.... That is weak doomsday stuff to
| leave out them.
|
| I will say also, any government promises or actions more than 1
| election cycle out are pipe dreams by those governments, When
| we get to 2030, I will be SHOCKED if even 20% of the nations
| promising to ban ICE sales will actually do it
| captainmuon wrote:
| It's feels a bit weird for me as a left-winger to make this
| argument, but won't all that be solved by the market?
|
| If there are not enough chargers, won't that create an
| incentive to build more? And yeah, you probably can't build
| them fast enough, or the grid capacity will not be sufficient,
| but won't people then just move to places where they can? Or
| switch to alternative modes of transportation?
|
| I think the fallacy is that people just want to replace ICE
| cars with EVs as they are, and then realize you need a lot of
| space and grid capacity to charge them, etc. But because of the
| scaling problems you mention, there will be a very large
| pressure to build better public transport. If people can't
| charge their EV, or can't afford a car, or don't have good
| transportation, they will move somewhere else. This is
| structural change, and yeah it is going to be inconvenient and
| expensive (and we could have done it better with more
| foresight), but ultimatively we will figure it out.
| thfuran wrote:
| >And yeah, you probably can't build them fast enough, or the
| grid capacity will not be sufficient, but won't people then
| just move to places where they can? Or switch to alternative
| modes of transportation?
|
| This sounds fine to you? Not having enough grid capacity
| means much higher prices and more frequent blackouts. Not
| having enough charging infrastructure means many people may
| be unable to fuel their vehicles. "Sorry, but this city is
| shit now, I guess you're going to have to move to Texas for
| their great electric grid" doesn't seem like a position we
| should be aiming to put many people in.
| moistly wrote:
| > an insanely higher number of chargers
|
| Or use battery swapping, like China is doing. This enables many
| gas stations to remain viable, allows far better battery health
| monitoring/remediation, permits slower, less stressful charging
| & greatly reduces the grid issue, eliminates the battery as a
| limitation of the car's lifespan, etc.
| bko wrote:
| > By 2030 (8 years from now) at least six manufacturers will
| have stopped making ICE vehicles entirely.
|
| Do you believe this? I know its a stated goal, but is there
| anything to hold the company's accountable or is this just a
| promise? I can't imagine them giving up a cash cow and
| something they've been doing for decades. EV sales in the USU
| are 5.6% of the market. I just find the claim that these
| companies will just seamlessly switch over to electric when
| they can't even get a decent touch screen in a car a decade
| after the first iPad.
| throwaway787544 wrote:
| They are public companies; it will be kinda obvious from
| their annual reports if they aren't investing/devesting
| enough to hit those goals, and if they dont announce it to
| the public that will cause them bigger problems.
|
| They anticipate increased costs for ICE vehicles and
| increased profit from EV which is why they're moving forward.
| They don't control the segments of the market they need to
| make it happen, so it's a risky bet. However, the
| manufacturers that are switching first are largely luxury
| brands, so they make a healthy enough profit that even if
| they stumble they wont be under water.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| > Do you believe this?
|
| There are a lot of built-in incentives for manufacturers to
| switch to electric once the market demand exists.
|
| Less moving parts to warranty means potentially less long-
| tail costs for parts as well as less capital allocation for
| potential warranty service claims paid to dealerships. Less
| moving parts that can fail. Less parts in general. AWD in
| electrics is typically done with a front and rear motor
| configuration versus using moving parts to transfer power
| from the front to the rear.
|
| More opportunities to upsell with lower capital costs. Model
| stratification by power output in ICE typically means more
| complex engineering (forced induction) or larger engine; both
| of which require significantly more R&D, testing, and
| validation. Once you sink capital investments into an ICE
| engine and manufacturing line, you need to reuse it over many
| years across a large range of vehicles to recoup the cost.
|
| Model stratification in electrics is via bigger battery packs
| (stuff more of the same cells in there) and multiple motors.
|
| Basically, electric cars are fiscally better for
| manufacturers in every way -- so long as consumers are
| willing to pay the premium AND willing to live with the
| inconveniences (less infrastructure for refueling, longer
| refueling, range anxiety).
|
| What Tesla did was de-risk the market by showing that
| consumers will buy the product despite its flaws.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > once the market demand exists
|
| I suspect that is where many of us can disagree -- the
| _when_.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| The demand exists. Tesla's order books are full. Ford's
| Mustang Mach-E is sold out with a waiting list. Ford's
| F-150 lightning have a waiting list as well as mechanisms
| to prevent scalping (voiding warranties) because there is
| so much demand.
|
| Problem right now with EVs isn't demand (not saying that
| demand won't be an issue, but right now it seems like we
| haven't reached the inflection point for demand vs
| supply), it's so supply constrained to the extent that
| dealerships can mark up F-150 Lightnings with exorbitant
| costs.
|
| Granted: we're still not really talking affordable econo-
| movers yet, but the market of $40-90k electric vehicles
| is still being restricted on the supply side. There are
| still people who want to buy a $40-90k EV who can't.
| frumper wrote:
| I couldn't find anything on Ford warranties being void if
| someone resold. The only thing I could find is a
| statement from Ford saying warranties do transfer to
| other parties. Any relevant links?
|
| Edit: I saw GM announced they'll strip Hummer warranties,
| pretty crazy. I doubt the people that will buy a scalped
| Hummer EV will care much though.
|
| https://www.teslarati.com/general-motors-warranty-void-
| flipp...
| bko wrote:
| > What Tesla did was de-risk the market by showing that
| consumers will buy the product despite its flaws.
|
| Tesla is sexy, sure. But I don't think they proved that
| people want electric cars. Tesla still sells very few cars
| (~3%). The giants sell a lot more cars
|
| I agree electric cars are better, but nothing stopped the
| car giants from making them decades ago. Tesla didn't come
| around at the right time, even Musk admits as much. The car
| giants could have worked on electric cars in the past, but
| for whatever reason didn't. It would have even been easier
| for them considering their expertise in manufacturing and
| distribution. Not to mention that politicians don't really
| like Tesla for whatever reason. If you listen to Biden talk
| about electric cars he often suspiciously leaves out Tesla,
| which is weird considering their cars are made in US and
| dominate 75% of the electric market in the US.
| DennisP wrote:
| Tesla sells every car they can make. Their backlog is
| about a year long. We won't know how much demand there is
| until they can actually meet it.
|
| Batteries cost a lot more decades ago. Car giants could
| have built electrics but they would have been expensive
| and short range.
|
| If the trend in battery prices continues, electric cars
| will have lower sticker prices than ICE cars in a couple
| years, and then anyone who just wants a good price for a
| new car will change from an ICE customer to an electric
| customer.
| ericmay wrote:
| > Tesla is sexy, sure. But I don't think they proved that
| people want electric cars.
|
| I'm not sure if this is the right way to frame this. It
| would probably be better to say something like Tesla
| proved that EVs are practical and people will buy them.
|
| > Tesla still sells very few cars (~3%). The giants sell
| a lot more cars
|
| Sure, at the moment. But now you're conflating
| manufacturer market share with fuel type market share. A
| better way to think about this in the context of ICE vs
| EV is to look at the efforts underway by _all_
| manufacturers to ramp up EV production. It takes time to
| do. New companies (Lucid, Rivian, Tesa, etc.) take time
| to ramp up production. And then if you want to just
| compare manufacturers against each other with all fuel
| types combined, you can do that separately, to which I 'd
| say this is not at all surprising given EV makers are new
| and take time to get market penetration.
|
| > but nothing stopped the car giants from making them
| decades ago
|
| All of the profit incentives in the world stopped them
| basically. Everyone was fat and happy with oil for cars,
| why bother changing anything or doing anything different?
| mywittyname wrote:
| I believe it. There's a stark difference in comparing the
| available EV models from mainstream manufactures between 2018
| and 2022. Hyundai/KIA in particular are nailing it when it
| comes to EVs.
|
| Manufactures are already quietly sunseting ICEs. It just
| doesn't read as significant right now, because the models
| which are going away are not the big, important ones. But
| manufactures are setting the stage for the transition of
| popular nameplates to EVs (see: Mustang, F150)
| gitfan86 wrote:
| All you have to do is look at press releases from 8 years ago
| and see how many of those plans actually happened. You should
| expect the plans from today to work out similarly.
| kurthr wrote:
| Is there a reason you assume people won't simply charge at
| night with relatively standard 240V (or even 120V) chargers?
| Most cars don't average more than 60 miles a day, which is less
| than 20kWh. In much of the US you could install 10-15 solar
| panels to do that even in the winter.
|
| Now solar panels are mostly made in China (as are almost all
| consumer electronics), but that seems like a far more general
| problem to solve.
| AndrewDucker wrote:
| That's great for people living in houses with plenty of
| roofspace. Trickier for people living in cities with on-
| street parking.
| TrapLord_Rhodo wrote:
| > made in China (as are almost all consumer electronics), but
| that seems like a far more general problem to solve.
|
| Production does not mean capacity.
|
| Obvious one is Tesla. has alot of solar capacity but doesn't
| make alot of sales since they are at the high end of the
| market. Same with Misson Solar and Solaria.
|
| If we took a hard stance on trading with China it would hurt
| alot of the big name players, there would be alot of
| constraints for a while, but would give smaller, US Based
| manufacturers with more capacity than sales time to shine.
|
| There is no way around the labor equation in products without
| effective legislation.
| ericd wrote:
| Eh? Tesla's the cheapest I've seen on a per-installed-watt
| basis, unless you mean solar roof?
| TrapLord_Rhodo wrote:
| My point was that there are domestic suppliers.
| throwaway787544 wrote:
| Charging in cities and apartment compexes is still an
| unsolved problem, and most people live in cities.
|
| For example, just to provide enough chargers for
| Philadelphia's 1.5M residents (63% of them drive to work),
| one of every ~6 car lengths on every residential sidewalk
| would need concrete dug up and a charger installed. The city
| will never pay for that, and it would be a logistical and
| political nightmare. Even if individuals went through a city
| process to get a permit to do it themselves and pay for &
| install their own charger, and assuming there was a posted
| parking limit for only EVs, some jerk down the street with a
| Tesla will take the spot, and you may have to drive blocks
| and blocks to find a free charger. Many people may decide to
| just stick to ICE.
| galdosdi wrote:
| Philadelphia is an interesting choice of example. I've seen
| charging cords going out windows to cars from time to time,
| facilitated by the popularity of the rowhouse. (IMHO even
| in south philly, you can usually snag a spot in front of
| your house several times per week if you care enough to
| try-- if you only drive enough to charge once or twice a
| week this is already enough)
|
| Obviously not an ideal solution but a good example of the
| kind of stop gaps we'll be seeing over time.
|
| I'm also already seeing rapid chargers frequently in strip
| malls and stuff. So maybe doing errands and spending at
| least an hour there once a week will be another stop gap.
|
| Considering how often streets get repaved and that we're
| talking about gradual change over the next decade or two,
| and that there are inferior but workable stopgaps as
| mentioned above (that will allow people to get by, yet also
| incentivize them to loudly demand better) I think there's
| time to add the charging stations necessary as needed
| without any serious issues.
| justsomelittle wrote:
| Why would it require that? In the UK instead of doing all
| that the councils have been installing EV charging points
| into streetlights, negating any requirement to dig up the
| pavements (beyond that required to replace a streetlight)
| to install these.
| throwaway787544 wrote:
| That is not being considered currently, I don't know why.
| https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/electric-car-charging-
| sta...
| mmaurizi wrote:
| I've been thinking about this for a bit (I happen to live
| in Philly) & I think the easier answer for cities is
| instead of focusing on charging "at home" parked on the
| street, to instead go all-in on destination charging
| (charging at work, at the grocery store, etc).
|
| Adding charging to a garage or parking lot is easier than
| on the street, and you don't have to worry about not being
| able to access "your" spot.
| DennisP wrote:
| That does add the cost of a 20kWh external battery for each
| car.
| matt_s wrote:
| I would love to see some company produce components someone
| could purchase and replace an ICE engine with to make it an EV.
| I'm not talking 300 mile range EV with fancy software, etc.
| just basic stuff like a battery pack sized to replace a gas
| tank, electric motor and other components, etc. Some kit that
| you could take a modern-ish Corolla/Civic and turn it into a
| 100mi range EV which could satisfy a ton of households that
| have 2nd/3rd cars. Would be really neat to have them be more
| like PC components than proprietary.
| NibbleAbit wrote:
| I've been looking for this too. Not just for cars, but also
| lawnmowers, snow blowers, chain saws ...
| asdff wrote:
| We could have general purpose electric motors by now but
| the corporations are instead pushing proprietary formats
| that we can't retool ourselves upon us. More money for them
| this way.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| If you want a general purpose electric motor, just head
| on over to your local farm supply store. Lots of them
| there.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| I have a nice Husqvarna brush cutter where the motor has a
| failed bearing and they stopped making that model. One of
| my backburner projects is to electrify it. Current
| candidate is a small router motor: probably has enough
| power and it can meet the duty cycle requirements. Like I
| said in my other post, the biggest issue is the mechanical
| coupling from motor to device: they're all non-standard.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| You can do this now. The technology is here. But bear in mind
| that each application requires a specific _mechanical_
| interface, and that 's the problem. People swap ICE motors in
| cars all the time, but they are skilled enough to adapt them
| as needed.
| neon_electro wrote:
| You wanna provide some sources for your claims?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > The stumble over abandonment of ICE vehicles.
|
| > By 2030 (8 years from now) at least six manufacturers will
| have stopped making ICE vehicles entirely.
|
| If those two seem out of step with one another then I propose
| that one of them will relent with regard to the other. (No one
| is _making_ these six manufacturers stick to their forecasts.)
| dangus wrote:
| EVs aren't going to be popular because they are _the_ solution
| to climate change. The better solution to climate change is
| sustainable city planning and development that minimizes energy
| use for transportation needs, emphasizing walking, bicycles,
| and rail travel.
|
| EVs are going to take over no matter what because in their end
| state they're better than ICE vehicles in nearly every way.
| Quieter, smoother, simpler, faster, cleaner (air pollution),
| and potentially cheaper.
|
| That said, I absolutely disagree with the amount of shade
| you're throwing at the technology in the context of climate,
| emissions, and fuel:
|
| > we need 30% more grid capacity
|
| That's not very hard, especially since EVs are being phased in
| gradually. We had the same problem with air conditioners and it
| was no big deal.
|
| > an insanely higher number of chargers
|
| Which will happen because there is a clear financial incentive
| to build them. They're cheaper to run and maintain than gas
| stations and the fuel is transported much more easily.
|
| > service companies
|
| Are service companies a finite resource?
|
| > land
|
| What land do you mean? Car-based infrastructure already uses
| and has a bunch of land. Where is it that EVs need more of it?
|
| > China still controls most of the resources for production
|
| We already have this situation with the Middle East/Russia with
| oil
|
| Here's the biggest issue I have with your comment: you're
| minimizing _massive_ reduction in oil usage:
|
| > and only 8 million barrels of crude will be displaced by the
| estimated number of new EVs
|
| That's a lot! Globally, 43.7 million barrels of oil are used
| per day for transportation fuel. [1]
|
| That means that EVs will reduce crude oil usage for
| transportation by 18.3%! That's really significant!
| nomel wrote:
| > That's not very hard
|
| From what I understand, it involves replacing nearly every
| local distribution station in existence, because nobody
| prepared for this.
|
| When I had my charger installed, my electrician mentioned
| that I was at capacity for the service line. To upgrade it, I
| would have to pay to have the sidewalk and road dug up and
| repaired, for a couple of city blocks.
|
| I don't think "not very hard" is the appropriate framing.
| throwaway787544 wrote:
| We need to reduce global emissions by 55 percent by 2030 to
| avoid catastrophe. But even if every single (inc. trucks)
| vehicle were electrified, it would at max reduce emissions by
| 20 percent. At the current estimates for 2045 it's going to
| be like 5-10% reduced emissions, well after we go above 2
| degrees temp increase over a decade before.
|
| While we can cheer for EVs reducing emissions, it will do
| nothing to stop the actual problem with climate change, which
| is global catastrophe from runaway warming. Add to that the
| problems we are setting ourselves up for with failure to
| properly handle the coming EVs and the picture looks grim.
| dangus wrote:
| What proposed alternative reduces vehicular emissions by
| more than switching to EVs?
|
| As I mentioned, I'm all for the reduction of automobile
| usage as a generality, but that's not as low-friction as a
| transition to EVs.
|
| We can lament our situation all we want, EVs are what they
| are. I am not saying they're a full climate solution.
|
| Automakers are switching over them purely as a product
| decision, with relatively little government regulation
| pushing them in that direction. (Any regulatory bans on ICE
| vehicles were easily enacted without industry protest
| because automakers already know that ICE vehicles will not
| be competitive products by 2030)
| more_corn wrote:
| Rooftop solar. Done.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| throwaddzuzxd wrote:
| ICE = Internal Combustion Engine for other non-native who
| wouldn't understand how a vehicle can work on ice
| lopis wrote:
| I thought he meant the German ICE trains and I was really
| worried for a second.
| Kaibeezy wrote:
| In Case of Emergency vehicles?
| mdp2021 wrote:
| The initialism is increasingly known. And yet bad: we could
| argue that "ICE vehicles" are connected cars, because - after
| William Gibson - Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics are
| not relevant on traditional combustion-based vehicles.
| maverick74 wrote:
| What amazes me is how little we talk about hydrogen (H2) fuel
| cell vehicles.
|
| Because, unless we get a tremendous breakthrough in the next 5
| years, electric battery vehicles will be a very big pain.
|
| -Batteries are terribly expensive (and prices are not going
| down as fast as expected)
|
| -Batteries degrade too fast
|
| -Batteries take too long to charge
|
| -Electricity prices are already going up terribly fast to take
| advantage of the boom (and blaming the war, and everything else
| to justify it's rise)
|
| -Batteries pollute a lot more than previously though
|
| -recycling Batteries is hard
|
| -Batteries component materials are rare
|
| -if you get into a crash your Battery will most likely be
| affected - which means you will probably have to spend almost
| the price of a new vehicle
|
| Can we bet a little more on the most abundante substance on the
| universe?
|
| I know it also has it's problems... But they do seen less...
| rocket_surgeron wrote:
| >Batteries degrade too fast
|
| What is "too fast"?
|
| Much of the fear about battery degradation was from
| projections and warranty terms at the very beginning of
| modern EV deployments.
|
| Real world observations have shown the battery packs
| maintaining >85% of their capacity after 150,000mi/241,000km.
|
| Also, battery components aren't rare. They're called "rare"
| because they are not found in large centralized deposits but
| rather spread somewhat uniformly throughout the earth. They
| are actually some of the more abundant elements on earth. For
| every two atoms of silicon on earth, there is almost one of
| lithium, which makes it much more abundant than hydrocarbons.
| If battery component extraction was subsidized to the degree
| hydrocarbon extraction is, they would be much less expensive,
| and more available on the market, than hydrocarbons.
|
| >-if you get into a crash your Battery will most likely be
| affected - which means you will probably have to spend almost
| the price of a new vehicle
|
| The battery makes up approximately 1/3rd the price of a new
| EV. As anyone who has had to pay for auto repair can attest,
| labor is almost always the main cost. It is inconceivable to
| me that replacing a battery and motors is more costly than an
| engine, except due to a shortage of qualified personnel
| commanding higher hourly rates. There is a video on YouTube
| of an elderly wheelchair-bound man completely rebuilding a
| Nissan Leaf battery pack in a workshop so I have no doubts
| that it is a skill that can be taught to any able-bodied
| person who is willing to learn.
|
| As far as battery recycling goes, they're working on it:
| https://www.ornl.gov/news/automated-disassembly-line-aims-
| ma...
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Biggest problem with hydrogen is the lack of refueling
| infrastructure. With electric, there's an electrical grid to
| build chargers on top of and worst case you can charge in
| your garage etc. With hydrogen we would need to create tons
| of new gas stations designed for hydrogen as well as the
| delivery vehicles, refineries, etc. to supply them. I've got
| a relative who works for Toyota (who are making significant
| investments in hydrogen) and he said most of their current
| efforts are on semi truck fleets where they only need
| hydrogen stations at a few locations along a pre-determined
| route.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| Charging in your garage isn't really the worst case
| scenario. For most drivers, it's actually the best case
| scenario, because your average commute won't even come
| close to depleting the battery, and can be trickle charged
| over the course of a night, extending battery life over
| fast charging.
|
| The only reason a person should ever need to charge at a
| station is on a long haul trip, and that problem is getting
| better all the time.
| waffletower wrote:
| This reads like fossil fuel conglomerate propaganda. The
| first sentence posits an unproven alternative with a complex,
| expensive and almost entirely hypothetical infrastructure.
| Hydrogen is not addressed further, and fear-uncertainty-doubt
| tropes concerning battery powered vehicles are liberally
| applied. Many of the bullet points on this laundry list are
| disputable. Just take 'batteries take too long to charge' --
| I drove a Nissan Leaf as my main vehicle for 8 years. Even
| given its tiny 24Kw battery pack, I was able to use home
| charging for 95% of my driving needs. For the last 5 years of
| service, I even used 120V 'trickle' charging during the
| evenings and it was sufficient. Now I have an electric
| vehicle with significantly higher battery capacity and a much
| faster charging network, as well as a 240V home charger. It
| is even more flexible and I am freer to take long road trips.
| When charging the car during such trips, I get out and
| exercise, play with the dog. It is a small adjustment that
| occurs infrequently during the life of the car. Most of these
| bullet points can be addressed in a similar manner. Enough of
| the propaganda!
| mdp2021 wrote:
| It is fully plausible that the poster meant: "hydrogen
| based technology looks like deserving more attention -
| especially given that alternatives are imperfect".
|
| Those speaking of a successful experience with home
| charging describe a very personal experience: many people
| do not have any "home charging infrastructure" (the car
| won't do the stairs), nor the same <<driving needs>>. The
| statement <<batteries take too long to charge>> deserves
| referential (and even reverential) noticing of the current
| standard, which is "I refill within one first minute on the
| clock".
| ericd wrote:
| Charging posts are sprouting up all over the sidewalks of
| some cities (Paris comes to mind), "home charging
| infrastructure" isn't insoluble even for apartment
| dwellers. And they don't have to be fast chargers if the
| car's going to be sitting there for 12 hours, which means
| they can be somewhat easier to install.
|
| But a very large percentage of people do live in detached
| homes, in which case, all it takes is a standard wall
| socket and a 14/3 extension cord (in the case of a US
| standard 120v 15 amp circuit).
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| If in the next five years electric battery vehicles become a
| very big pain, then I suspect you _will_ hear about fuel cell
| cars ... or whatever the perceived pragmatic replacement is.
|
| That we don't hear about hydrogen fuel cell vehicles actually
| suggests to me that they are not a viable option.
|
| I presume, stupidly perhaps, that there are bigger thinkers
| than me (or certainly people in positions that have a lot
| more to lose or gain in this field) that have already counted
| the beans and still see the electric (battery) vehicles as
| the current future path of least resistance.
|
| At the very least, swapping batteries for fuel cells seems to
| be a fundamentally simpler step than swapping ICE for
| electric. Going to electric cars generally, regardless of the
| source of power is a big move for the auto industry.
| CabSauce wrote:
| I'm not particularly knowledgeable, but my impression is that
| hydrogen might work for specific applications, but we don't
| have a very efficient of generating it. It still takes
| substantially more energy than if we just store the energy in
| batteries.
| buescher wrote:
| Steam reforming of methane from natural gas to product
| hydrogen is in fact very efficient (up to ~85% iirc). It is
| not, however, carbon-neutral. At a system level, the weak
| point is the fuel cell and they can be about 50% efficient.
| So you have an overall efficiency of a little over 40%.
|
| Batteries can be very efficient but that is not an apples-
| to-apples comparison. You have to get the energy somewhere.
| Good solar systems are about 30% efficient. Turbines are
| about 30% efficient.
|
| Energy efficiency isn't the problem with hydrogen and fuel
| cells. They have other problems.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Big hydrogen subsidies in the climate bill that just passed
| the senate. Remains to be seen if it'll build hype.
| marcus0x62 wrote:
| > Can we bet a little more on the most abundante substance on
| the universe?
|
| One of those problems is there is no abundant source of
| hydrogen in isolated form here on earth. You have to use a
| catalytic agent or an energy-intensive process like
| electrolysis to get usable hydrogen for your fuel cell.
| smm11 wrote:
| The current world of electric cars is sort of like every
| smart phone before the iPhone came out. Then iPhone/Android
| hit, and the world was off to the races.
|
| What is the "electric" car iPhone moment?
| adrian_b wrote:
| Hydrogen fuel cells are more expensive than batteries,
| because they either work at room-temperature and they need
| expensive catalysts using platinum-group metals, or they work
| at high temperatures and then they have a short lifetime,
| requiring frequent replacements of most components.
|
| Also the efficiency of a cycle of storing energy into gaseous
| hydrogen and then recovering it is limited by fundamental
| reasons to low values.
|
| For cars, it is likely that batteries will remain the best
| solution, due to the high efficiency of a charge-discharge
| cycle.
|
| For long term storage of energy, further improvements of fuel
| cells might make them the best solution for recovering energy
| stored in chemical form, but not using gaseous hydrogen for
| storage, but other more appropriate substances, e.g.
| hydrocarbons, alcohols, ammonia or solid carbon.
|
| There are fuel cells for the other fuels mentioned above and
| the only advantage of the hydrogen fuel cells is that they
| currently have the greatest power density, i.e. the speed of
| reaction of the hydrogen per area of electrode is for now the
| greatest (leading to the greatest electrical current
| density), but only either at high temperatures or when using
| expensive catalysts.
|
| The mitochondria from all the cells of our body are a
| demonstration that it is possible to make a very high
| efficiency fuel cell using hydrocarbons as fuel and without
| using any rare or expensive materials for catalysts.
|
| While the solar cells already exceed the efficiency of plants
| at capturing solar energy, the artificial fuel cells have a
| long way until becoming competitive with those used by the
| living beings.
| ericd wrote:
| >-Batteries are terribly expensive (and prices are not going
| down as fast as expected)
|
| Not really.
|
| >-Batteries degrade too fast
|
| No, they don't, at least not the well-temperature-controlled
| ones. Larger EV packs should outlast most ICE cars.
|
| >-Batteries take too long to charge
|
| They really don't, unless you have no way to charge at home -
| the vast majority of charging happens overnight even on a
| 120V plug. We only visit chargers when on roadtrips.
|
| >-Electricity prices are already going up terribly fast to
| take advantage of the boom (and blaming the war, and
| everything else to justify it's rise)
|
| Not really true, at least in our corner of the US. I think
| we're sitting at ~$0.14/kwh, which works out to around
| $0.04-$0.05/mi, or 20-25 miles per $. And any rise in methane
| prices is going to hit hydrogen harder, given that most H2 is
| produced by cracking CH4.
|
| >-Batteries pollute a lot more than previously though
|
| Source? What kind of pollution? More than the steel that goes
| into making a car?
|
| >-recycling Batteries is hard
|
| Not really? Tesla claims a materials yield of 92% on their
| packs, and 100% of the packs recycled. Recyclers are willing
| to pay quite a bit for broken packs, which should tell you
| something.
|
| >-Batteries component materials are rare
|
| Newer chemistries are better about this.
|
| >-if you get into a crash your Battery will most likely be
| affected - which means you will probably have to spend almost
| the price of a new vehicle
|
| Yeah, Teslas aren't great on this front, even wrt the
| bodywork. But battery pack replacements don't cost nearly as
| much as a new EV.
|
| Gaseous hydrogen has a lot of problems, and you'd need to
| build a whole distribution network. Which we already have
| with electricity...
| tomxor wrote:
| I think this has been discussed to death, the TL;DR is that
| H2 is fundamentally really difficult to store safely and
| efficiently at reasonable densities and temperatures. This is
| not something that is likely to improve with technology or
| scale (it's not like it's an underfunded area), they
| literally squeeze past other atoms and nothing is smaller
| than hydrogen.
|
| I do however agree that existing battery technology is
| _still_ severely disadvantaged, not only in terms of
| efficiency and density but the rare materials they need to
| manufacture (same for H2 solutions).
|
| It's annoying because ICE engines are not great (big, heavy,
| complicated with related reliability issues), yet they
| consume an easy to transfer high density liquid fuel;
| Electric engines are fantastic (small, light, simple, highly
| efficient, powerful, great torque), but they consume
| electricity which is hard to efficiently transfer with no
| where near the energy density per unit weight or space
| storage solutions.
|
| However! ICE exists, all of it's issues are mitigated by mass
| adoption, and in the short term it's not environmentally
| responsible to ditch 1 billion cars. I think the best plan
| I've seen so far is to scale up synthesising hydrocarbons
| from solar... electric cars can continue to be developed and
| we can find more reasonable electric storage solutions
| without undermining the purpose of switching to electric by
| forcing the world into an immature solution and throwing away
| 1 billion ICE vehicles and all related infrastructure
| (manufacturing EVEs has an environmental cost).
|
| We like simple to understand solutions, but the solution that
| minimises environmental impact must not underscope itself -
| the whole picture has to be considered, costs of
| manufacturing and switching are not external to planet Earth,
| which means there is some ideal conversion rate that must be
| determined.
| monodeldiablo wrote:
| One small nit: Nobody is advocating "throwing away 1
| billion ICE vehicles".
|
| If you have a car that works, the environmentally
| responsible decision is -- unless it's an absurdly
| inefficient vehicle -- to keep using that car instead of
| purchasing a newly-manufactured EV. Even EV advocates
| acknowledge and proclaim this.
|
| The point of the EV transition is to provide a more
| environmentally responsible solution for those people _who
| are already in the market for a new car_ , as an
| alternative to manufacturing _another billion polluting ICE
| cars_.
| tomxor wrote:
| True yes, i was exaggerating, but there is a pressure to
| accelerate the transition, and a perception by the
| general public and policy makers that the faster the
| better.
|
| Even with the ideal EVE battery solution the
| environmentally optimal solution may actually be to
| prolong ICE use with synthetic fuels to minimise
| manufacturing impact while eliminating green house gas
| emission. I don't think as many people realise this as
| you may think. Minimising manufacturing and consumption
| is also anti-capitalistic which is an extra complication
| making it unpopular.
| blablabla123 wrote:
| Actually the current state of the art of H2 is
| fundamentally safe so to say, e.g. it's wrapped into some
| sort of oxide. But the most important cars on the market
| (of which there aren't many types) still use the 1st gen
| approach which is a bit unsafer.
|
| I think there are solutions to the show stoppers of H2. But
| the package isn't very appealing, at least not for
| individual transport.
|
| Also what makes EVs appealing, they've reached a state of
| convenience that makes them feasible for most use cases.
| And for the rest it seems some hacky solutions are
| possible.
|
| Of course the waste of switching from ICEs to non-ICEs will
| be incredible. But well, hard to see any alternative..
| suoduandao2 wrote:
| understandable if you don't want to give away the secret sauce,
| but what would you recommend an enterprising nibling do to
| prepare?
| HideousKojima wrote:
| People hoarded incandescent bulbs and large tank toilets in
| anticipation of similar bans.
| Salgat wrote:
| Are you purposely forgetting the billions in state and federal
| charger subsidies, and the billions in residential solar
| subsidies being paid out? Total US energy consumption right now
| is at the same level it was in 2007.
| throwaway787544 wrote:
| Many companies choose not to take subsidies/grants due to the
| restrictions they come with. Many areas of the country also
| have lobbyists preventing things like selling excess capacity
| back to the grid. The subsidies will also lower over time;
| the govt isn't going to pay people to use solar in 2040.
| JasserInicide wrote:
| I'm quite worried about the future of cars, especially EVs. I
| will never own a Tesla due to their always-on tracking and
| blatant anti-consumer practices like hiding upgrades on the car
| behind a paywall. Sadly ICE manufacturers are following suit
| with more and more useless dogshit like touchscreens
| everywhere, always-on data connections, and subscriptions for
| shit like seat warmers. I think this apprehension is partially
| fueling the skyrocketing prices of used vehicles (in addition
| to the chip shortage, but that should be assuaged in the coming
| months).
| dont__panic wrote:
| I see a lot more negative anti-car sentiment online these
| days than I used to. I hope this leads to more car-free parts
| of the world. I don't want to use a car on a daily basis,
| owning one is a chore, but I'm forced to by the world that I
| live in.
|
| I'm also worried about the future of cars, of course. I'm an
| optimist, though -- I hope that the oncoming car dystopia
| leads to a rejection of cars by a bigger chunk of society.
| And a more sustainable, quiet, walkable, bikeable world for
| those of us who embrace it.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I hope there are space for both of us in whatever future
| comes to pass.
|
| I love cars, trucks, and the things they enable me to do.
| Literally most of the things that make my life worth living
| are tied to using one.
|
| Perhaps people can segregate into different cities or areas
| based on their preferences .
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| The quantity of CO2 needing to be dumped in to the atmosphere
| to manufacture new cars to meet this is going to be
| astronomical. The majority of the CO2 cost of a car is in the
| manufacturing. I don't understand why they are doing this?
| trgn wrote:
| ICE cars pollute the local environment, which is worse imho
| than their contribution to global warming. ICE cars are
| noisy, stink, and have unhealthy exhaust. For those reasons
| alone, an electric car is better.
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| I agree 100%,and if they sold them on that, I might support
| them. But then I would rather scrap cars altogether. Phase
| them out over 20 years, and replace with public transport
| and bicycles.
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| Plus EV taxis, and private cars only for those with a
| special need.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _noisy_
|
| Now for reality instead: since people have developed the
| direst situation of being "brainless", I have been near
| vehicles you would praise, and the noise they make is
| _unbearable_. That is because some satanic critters, which
| unfortunately constitute empowered components in
| management, marketing and public, believe it a "good idea"
| to replace traditional engine noise with synths of '90s
| operating system boot samples.
|
| This happens because people have lost their nature, of
| feedback-based machines, and can go on living after being
| shot (they will not know about it).
|
| --
|
| Edit: an hybrid in electric mode just parked near me, in
| real time, and the noise was not the most particularly
| annoying - it's a Hyundai - but it was definitely upsetting
| and irritating (though much better than other hellish
| nightmares I have heard driving near me). I assess that
| normal individuals would probably be not that bothered when
| they pass on the streets many yards distant - but I am not
| sure, it really depends which audio bands will reach you. I
| am pretty sure that others I have experienced will be fully
| unbearable at a much longer distance.
|
| Edit2: they just left now, and the noise at the start was
| quite acceptable now - just a mildly loud fan, nothing
| perverse. It seems Hyundai has guessed a few effects
| properly. (Issue is, others have not - and this logically
| opens for more.)
|
| Those evidences of hell on earth are driving by clearly
| unregulated - and it is doubtful that given the mental
| state of nowadays earth crawlers they will ever be
| regulated (you need a clean humanity still capable of being
| bothered by noise for that).
|
| And for what the single sniper that hit this post is
| concerned - likewise for silence, let us refrain to spend
| much verbal judgement.
| monodeldiablo wrote:
| Because the CO2 cost of manufacturing a new ICE car is
| comparable to that of a new EV, but the lifetime CO2
| contribution of a new EV is far lower than that of an ICE
| car.
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| Can you prove that, because that is not my understanding.
| EVs use way more CO2 in their manufacturing. Not to mention
| the added environmental impact of battery manufacturing and
| lithium mining. We can't solve climate change by buying a
| new car.
|
| Edit. I'm sure Musk and Tesla are super proud of the CO2
| savings their company provides, so it shouldn't be hard to
| find the data they are publishing showing the net cost to
| carbon for the entire manufacturing and life time use of
| their product.
| wenc wrote:
| > The majority of the CO2 cost of a car is in the
| manufacturing
|
| Is this true over the life time of the car? Studies indicate
| this may be a widely believed myth.
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| Is it a widely believed myth? Every time I mention it I
| only hear shock and disbelief. I almost never hear it
| talked about. I'd like to read that paper, though.
| wenc wrote:
| If you google there are a ton of studies showing that
| over the lifetime of a car from the time of
| manufacturing, emissions from an EV is still about 1/3 or
| ICE.
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| This one says different.
|
| https://www.volvocars.com/images/v/-/media/project/conten
| tpl...
|
| And Volvo is making EV cars.
|
| Remember that renewables are only, what, 10-20% of our
| electric supply?
|
| EVs are way heavier, and they require more energy, raw
| materials, and toxic chemicals to produce.
|
| If the lawmakers where serious about this, then would
| solve the other problems first. We need a clean electric
| supply, first. Then we need a green supply chain, EV
| trucks, trains and ships and factories etc. THEN it might
| make sense to scrap perfectly good used cars in favour of
| brand new, shiny, must-have EVs.
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| Look, according to Volvo, (who make an EV and ICE version of
| the same car, on the same manufacturing process),
|
| "The emissions from Materials production and refining of the
| ICE are roughly 40 per cent less than for the BEV" [0]
|
| Therefore, forcing people to scrap working vehicles and buy
| new ones, in such a short time period, is going to dump
| massive quantities of CO2 in to the atmosphere in very order.
| This sounds extremely dangerous. I don't understand their
| reasoning.
|
| Surely they need to fix the EV electric energy mix to make it
| more renewable, before forcing people to buy the EVs
|
| [0]https://www.volvocars.com/images/v/-/media/project/content
| pl...
| frumper wrote:
| Who's being forced to scrap working vehicles?
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| California, for one. But it doesn't matter, EVs need
| about 60% more carbon up front. Until you have 100% clean
| electricity supply and greener, longer lasting batteries,
| they can't recover that deficit.
| frumper wrote:
| I live in California and have heard of no such proposals.
| Can you link to one? It does matter, you claimed it. It
| makes it sound like your arguments are just bogus if you
| claim your own arguments don't matter.
| cauthon wrote:
| Hey everybody, at the time I'm posting this, four of the top five
| comments are about energy. Many people are in fact talking about
| the climate crisis.
| smitty1e wrote:
| Rebellion against the Surveillance Capitalism/State.
|
| We understand that granular metrics are needful for tuning an
| information system.
|
| Treating a society like an information system is totalitarian.
|
| Over time, the percentage of society rejecting totalitarianism
| will tend toward 100%
| collyw wrote:
| I hope so, but the last two and a half years hasn't given me
| much reason to believe it will happen. Most people I know
| willingly signed up for a vaccine based social credit system
| without much question.
| b20000 wrote:
| unions
| lolcat_cowsay wrote:
| moron123 wrote:
| Mushroom cultivation
| trgn wrote:
| I'll propose a more utopian future. The end of modernism and a
| return to humanism. A realization in the West that fetishizing
| technology has turned people into widgets. A genuine bottom-up
| counter movement that already exists today, but will be the
| mainstream. Man will yet again be measure of all things, rather
| than adapt to the measure. In practice; things like the triumph
| of the walkable city; more home schooling; disappearance of wage
| labor and more unionization, cooperative work-arrangements,
| stock-compensation; the extended family as the main arrangement
| to raise children; bans on social media and pornography; more
| GDPR and privacy-laws, ...
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _a more utopian future_
|
| Based on what, on the realistic intervention of which actors?
|
| And are you sure all the ideals in your set can be considered
| objective, naturally sharable, as opposed to ideological and
| partial?
| trgn wrote:
| > And are you sure all the ideals in your set can be
| considered objective, naturally sharable, as opposed to
| ideological and partial?
|
| Agreed, they are not objective. If you wish, you can change
| my first phrase to "a more dystopian future", if you think
| it's worse.
| pkrumins wrote:
| Rust implementation of Rust.
| [deleted]
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Cultured meat[0] has the potential to upend the farming industry.
| This isn't near meat, it's actual meat and it's already here.
| We're simply waiting for the cost to come down from $10,000/kg or
| whatever crazy price it's currently at.
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultured_meat
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| wish I remembered what podcast I was listening to... it was
| someone running a company developing synthetic milk and eggs
| explaining why meat will never scale up, the problem is the
| growth medium for muscle is also the perfect environment for
| bacteria, and we basically need to reinvent immune systems
| before you're going to get a cubed inch of healthy chicken to
| grow without contamination
| asdff wrote:
| Thermodynamically it doesn't even seem like cultured meat
| should be any better than traditional meat. Sure you are
| making more stuff than just meat, but like nearly 100% of the
| animal ends up being used in some capacity for different
| sources that now all need a synthetic alternative developed
| that happens to be better for the environment than the old
| way of using a cow. Call me incredulous but I feel like it
| would be better to just figure out how to lower the
| environmental costs of having the cow. You have this sytem
| that already works fine to generate meat and a host of other
| products from known inputs. Why reinvent the wheel? Just make
| a better wheel. Capture the methane. Farm feedcrops in
| sustainable ways. Treat the animal with respect over its
| life.
| shafyy wrote:
| This is probably not the one you're referring to, but Pat
| Brown, co-founder of Impossible, also has quite a strong
| opinion on cultured meat. If somebody figures out how to grow
| animal parts artifically and reliably, there are much more
| interesting applications than to eat it. Such as medicinal
| applications.
|
| I think the main point here is not that we will never figure
| it out, but that it will take a long time. Time, that we
| don't have with the imminent climate and biodiversity crises.
|
| It makes much more sense to create meat directly from plant
| proteins than to try to grow it artifically. Brands like
| Impossible make damn great burger patties, chicken nuggets,
| and what not. I'm pretty most people wouldn't be able to tell
| the difference to animal meat in a blind test.
| OJFord wrote:
| He'd also have 'quite a strong' interest in not having it
| succceed - Impossible, Beyond, et al. don't want to have to
| fight 'ours isn't pretend meat' advertising campaigns, or
| be relegated to being Quorn et al. competitors (which of
| course they are really, but currently seem to be succeeding
| as being seen as meat competitors).
| cassianoleal wrote:
| So someone whose subsistence depends on plant-based meat
| substitutes says their competitor are not good enough? Not
| much to see here.
|
| I'm not necessarily saying they're wrong, only that they're
| not a reliable source for that information.
|
| > I'm pretty most people wouldn't be able to tell the
| difference to animal meat in a blind test.
|
| Perhaps not burger and nuggets, since those are heavily
| processed and seasoned anyway, but try to give them a plant
| based steak or ribs and I doubt anyone would fail to tell
| the difference.
| shafyy wrote:
| > _Perhaps not burger and nuggets, since those are
| heavily processed and seasoned anyway, but try to give
| them a plant based steak or ribs and I doubt anyone would
| fail to tell the difference._
|
| I'm sure people said exactly this about burger patties
| before amazing plant-based burger patties existed.
| There's no physical reason this is not possible. And
| don't forget that making a steak is also much harder with
| cultured meat, that's why they're also starting with
| burger patties and chicken nuggets.
|
| From a higher-level view, most meat that's consumed is
| not in the form of steaks. It's in the form of ground
| meat. If enough people switch to plant-based meats for
| let's say 80% of their meat needs, animal-based meat
| won't be able to compete anymore with the price of plant-
| based meats. So, for Impossible to reach their goal of
| getting rid of the animal based food system, they don't
| even need to be able to make steaks. Sure, there will
| always be meat, but it will be an expensive luxury and
| rarity that we will frown upon as society (e.g. like
| wearing fur coats today or hunting dolphins and whales).
|
| > _So someone whose subsistence depends on plant-based
| meat substitutes says their competitor are not good
| enough?_
|
| Fair point. But also consider why they started a plant-
| based meat company in the first place and not a cultured
| meat one? He had the experience, expertise and funds to
| do either.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| > I'm sure people said exactly this about burger patties
| before amazing plant-based burger patties existed.
| There's no physical reason this is not possible.
|
| I'm not too sure, but time will tell. Are plant-based
| steaks going to be at least as healthy as their animal
| counterparts though? Plant burgers tend to be on par or
| worse, which is not great since beef burgers are not the
| healthiest to begin with.
|
| > most meat that's consumed is not in the form of steaks
|
| Do you have data to back this up? I'm not saying you're
| wrong but I come from a culture where most of our meat is
| in the form of grilled steaks or barbecued chunks of
| fresh meat, seasoned with salt only. Burgers are not
| necessarily uncommon but are generally seen as what they
| are - a fast food treat to be had infrequently.
|
| > consider why they started a plant-based meat company in
| the first place and not a cultured meat one?
|
| To consider this, I'd have to actually know their
| reasons. :) It could just have been that they thought
| burgers would have more acceptance for the reasons I
| stated - they're easier to mimick since their animal-
| based counterpart is already heavily seasoned and
| processed, and doesn't actually taste that much like the
| actual meat.
|
| As a last note, you have my upvote for a thoughtful and
| thought-provoking response. Thank you! :)
| v3ss0n wrote:
| Survival , you need to survive upcoming disasters first.
| EddySchauHai wrote:
| AR seems a pretty safe bet, things like HUDs for warehouse
| workers to improve their productivity.
| mbesto wrote:
| Psychedelics for mental health:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/09/health/psychedelics-mdma-...
| Vox_Leone wrote:
| _Real holographic display_ :
|
| To create an aerial hologram [or a 3d image in space if you
| will], you need something that will emit light at precise
| locations throughout a given volume.
|
| I'm investigating the use of Moller electron scattering[0] to
| create voxels in a 3d coordinate system.
|
| Two electron beams crossing and colliding will emit photons
| [voxels]. If you can orchestrate collisions in a very fast
| fashion at various 3d coordinates in an vacuum chamber you could
| generate a complete image.
|
| I'm working on an article discussing the idea in full, to be
| published on my blog. My goal is to establish prior art, so this
| idea cannot be patented.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%B8ller_scattering
| abracadaniel wrote:
| I'm ready for a comeback of CRTs in the form of a crazy double
| electron gun hologram display. Bring it on
| defterGoose wrote:
| Nitpick: not a real hologram.
|
| Additionally, it sounds like a massively power intensive way to
| do volumetric display. I don't know the total conversion
| efficiency to photons, but it can't be that high.
|
| More recent techniques like stacked panels might be a better
| way forward for this.
| wcoenen wrote:
| Using power from solar panels to synthesize food (or at least,
| food components like starch). It turns out this can be done much
| more efficiently than photosynthesis.
|
| https://phys.org/news/2021-09-chinese-scientists-starch-synt...
|
| I bet this will lead to a agricultural revolution similar in
| magnitude to the Haber-Bosch process. It will also soften some of
| the impacts from climate change, both by improving food security
| and by allowing re-wilding of land currently used for
| agriculture.
|
| It's not being talked about because people already hate the idea
| of "processed food" with a passion, let alone the concept of food
| produced without involving plants. So it will probably make a
| sneaky entrance via bulk stuff like starch and oils.
| asdff wrote:
| If its cheap it will be used, doesn't matter what people think.
| People hate palm oil but its in everything because it has good
| properties and is cheaper than alternatives.
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| Total sensor fusion
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| We saw a post the other day about using DALL-E and GPT-3 in
| conjunction with one another. I think more of these systems
| working together is going to revolutionize basically everything,
| especially when democratized with cheaper consumer hardware.
| throwaddzuzxd wrote:
| Did DALL-E and GPT-3 revolutionize anything yet? (I know it
| might sound snarky but it's not my intention, I genuinely
| wonder how they're used today, other than demos)
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Revolutionize? No. I don't mean DALL-E or GPT-3 specifically,
| just that tech. I think as the hardware needed to run these
| gets cheaper and the tech is applied to other domains we will
| see revolutionary changes. My vision depends heavily on the
| forward march of progress with bigger better compute
| available cheaper.
| rieTohgh6 wrote:
| If nothing else DALL-E showed that automation will takeover
| artists jobs too.
|
| GPT-3 can generate quite sensible paragraphs but is far away
| from generating pages of internally consistent content. On
| there other hand it works OK as semantic aware knowledge
| base: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32348768
| sys_64738 wrote:
| EVs and the ability to power your house for several days. I think
| the combination of solar and and EV provide the ability to store
| power when the sun goes down. This starts to solve one of solar's
| paradoxes IMO.
| soramimo wrote:
| I thought about this too and came to the conclusion that home
| and EV batteries probably have different requirements.
|
| For instance, a home battery might have to be more durable (so
| withstand more charging cycles) but on the flip side can be
| heavier.
|
| That said there might be synergies by repurposing worn out EV
| batteries as home or grid storage batteries.
| asdff wrote:
| There is no chance that these corporations will allow us to
| repurpose our used EV batteries. Tesla doesn't even let you
| work on your car.
| cvccvroomvroom wrote:
| Forget general humanish AI and VR, self-programming systems will
| put a lot of low skilled coders out of work.
|
| FWIW: Metaverse VR is a flying car category... it comes up every
| 10-15 years but never gets traction because there's no point to
| it. Zuck is sailing the ship off the end of the proverbial world
| when he should've tripled-down on making AR ubiquitous and
| simple.
| Normille wrote:
| Lucent wrote:
| Are there previous threads asking this from 5, 10, 15 years ago
| we can read to then see what writers of winning comments now say?
| tatrajim wrote:
| A deeper consolidation of insights from Neo-Confucian philosophy,
| including the elucidation of the grand ultimate Tai Ji and
| duality of form (Li ) and material force (Qi ), schematized in
| the diagrams of, among others, the tenth-century northern Song
| Dynasty thinker Zhou Duni Zhou Dun Yi and the Korean Joseon-era
| philosophers Kwon Keun gweongeun and especially Yi Toegye itoegye
| in his "10 Diagrams on Sagely Learning Sheng Xue Shi Tu ".
| woeirua wrote:
| Nuclear war. It has fallen out of favor to talk about this as a
| serious possibility, but the world is in many ways closer to
| nuclear armageddon right now than it has been at any point since
| the Cuban Missile Crisis.
|
| People seem to have gotten comfortable with the idea of Ukraine
| as a low-tempo conventional war, but it could very quickly turn
| into something much more significant.
| cjpearson wrote:
| Tom Nichols wrote about this recently in The Atlantic. [0] It's
| not just the general public, but also the next generation of
| military and national security leadership that has grown
| comfortable ignoring nuclear weapons and takes deterrence for
| granted.
|
| [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/07/us-
| nucl...
| mlinksva wrote:
| This was the answer, pre-Ukraine already. That war doesn't move
| the needle that much, as NATO/Russia escalation is far from the
| only nuclear war threat -- there's also mistakes by any party,
| India/Pakistan, North Korea, China, etc.
| somenameforme wrote:
| The China/Pakistan border clashes have resulted in fatalities
| on the order of several dozen in something where neither
| nation really wants to escalate. Ukraine would have long
| since lost this war if not for the US directing the funneling
| tens of billions of dollars worth of weapons, training, and
| so on to Ukraine. This support has been directly responsible
| for the excess deaths of Russians and Ukrainians alike
| numbering in the tens of thousands.
|
| Not only is this orders of magnitude more impactful than the
| other conflicts, but perhaps even more concerning is what in
| the world the endgame might be? By effectively throwing its
| entire influence into this war, the US has now effectively
| staked that influence on the outcome of the war. And it's the
| exact same situation for Russia. The two most nuclear armed
| nations are now in a conflict that is a must-win for both of
| them.
|
| IMO this conflict ending up going nuclear is still highly
| improbable, but highly improbable is far closer to nuclear
| war than we've ever been.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| The Ukraine war is small stakes compared to what the U.S.
| and USSR did during the Cold War. The U.S. accepted
| stalemate in Korea and defeat in Vietnam rather than go
| nuclear. They will not do it over Ukraine. It is not "must-
| win" for the U.S.
|
| Supporting Ukraine is not even significantly risking U.S.
| influence or standing in the EU. Getting Finland and Sweden
| into NATO is a benefit to the U.S. that will endure even if
| Ukraine completely falls (which it won't).
|
| I guess there is a chance that Russia could initiate a
| nuclear exchange if Putin is 100% suicidally insane. I
| don't believe that he is.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Surprised I had to scroll down so far to find a
| reasonable comment.
|
| It is in human nature to exceptionalize the time period
| you happen to be living in. It is worth guarding against
| these cognitive biases.
| TrapLord_Rhodo wrote:
| I think you are underestimating a few facts in the
| conflict of Ukraine which downplays it's significance.
|
| The EU and the US have drawn the lines very explicitly,
| which before they were able to whist away any pressing
| questions on relations by claiming 'allies'.
|
| Russia has been cut off from the IMF dominated financial
| system. No FX, No Swift, no IMF support. This is the
| financial equivilent of going nuclear. This has led
| Russia and China to announce they are goiing to directly
| compete with the IMF and start their own federal reserve.
|
| My point is not that nuclear war is imminent, but quite
| the opposite. We have new tools to declare total war
| without a single bullet being fired. Cyber,
| destabilization and financial war might prove deadlier
| than nuclear could ever be.
| 6ue7nNMEEbHcM wrote:
| > This support has been directly responsible for the excess
| deaths of Russians and Ukrainians alike numbering in the
| tens of thousands.
|
| No. It's Russian invasion on Ukraine directly responsible
| for the deaths.
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| Ironically this could all be happening because a lack of nukes.
| Ukraine gave theirs away and have been left essentially naked
| and defenceless since. Would Putin have thought twice if they
| had a nuclear arsenal? Who knows.
| machiaweliczny wrote:
| I know, yes.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Ukraine didn't have the codes to use them.
| bombcar wrote:
| A nation-state reverse engineering the codes/ignition
| module is easier than collecting everything from scratch.
|
| But the general thought is that NATO would have had to
| protect them (I don't buy it, but that's the theory).
| lesuorac wrote:
| Why would NATO protect Ukraine?
|
| Nato isn't a signatory of the Budapest Memo [1].
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on
| _Securit...
| bombcar wrote:
| If Ukraine had nukes and NATO didn't want them to use
| them or risk losing them, they may have acted.
|
| Again, I think it's unlikely and the "Russia wouldn't
| have invited Ukraine if they had kept their nukes"
| doesn't actually fly (and probably would just have been
| another reason for Russia _to_ invade: 'they're right
| there and they have nukes!'
| mongol wrote:
| As long as they could have taken the warheads apart, they
| could have built new weapons out of them. Or for that
| matter, just starting from already enriched fissile
| material would be plenty.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| ....and the USA would have just sat there and accepted
| that?
|
| The US did not want another nuclear power and was very
| interested in making sure Ukraine never became one
| rchaud wrote:
| ...and Russia would just have sat there and accepted it?
| We'd be on the cusp of a much bigger and earlier war.
|
| For that reason, the international community wouldn't
| have accepted it either, because it would open the door
| for everyone else to start developing them. Kazakhstan
| had nukes and voluntarily disarmed for this reason.
| lesuorac wrote:
| I mean Ukrainians aren't idiots, I'm sure they could've
| either cracked any necessary codes or worked around their
| need in the ~31 years since 1991 (Ukraine's independence).
|
| I suspect it would be easiest to just take the nuclear
| material out of the unusable missiles and construct a
| different weapon using it. Russia is adjacent to them so
| any sort of nuclear weapon launch-able from an artillery or
| plane still sounds useful.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| It would have been an act of war. Ukraine would have had
| to fight the Russian army protecting the nukes in
| Ukraine.
|
| Despite the breakup of the USSR, I don't think Russia
| would have let that happen.
|
| For comparison, How do you think that the USA would react
| if Turkey tried to size control of US nukes housed there?
| mambru wrote:
| Not the same situation. Soviet nukes were soviet, with
| good chunks of them buit in Ukraine.
|
| See for instance where that was built:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-36_(missile)
|
| Also, Chernobyl.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think you are missing my point. The Nukes were built by
| the soviets, but after the breakup, Russia had control of
| them _in Ukraine_. In order for Ukraine to take full
| possession, they would have to fight through Russians at
| military bases.
| type0 wrote:
| > It would have been an act of war.
|
| No it wouldn't.
|
| They were pressured by the US to give up Soviet nukes.
| Codes are easy to fix, but nukes need service and are
| expensive to keep so it was as much of sparing measure
| than anything.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think you are missing my point. The Nukes were built by
| the soviets, but after the breakup, Russia had control of
| them _in Ukraine_. In order for Ukraine to take full
| possession of the nukes in their country, they would have
| to fight through Russians at military bases.
| type0 wrote:
| USSR had one army though, but after that it was
| controlled by Commonwealth of Independent States https://
| en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_and_weapons_of_mass_de...
|
| If Ukrainians wanted they could have prevented this at
| the time of Soviet Union dissolution, but they didn't so
| there's not much to discuss.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| We might be saying the same thing.
|
| My point is basically that if Ukraine tried to take full
| control of the Nukes in their country, they would have
| been picking a fight with Russia, and possibly the US as
| well.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1992/03/1
| 4/u...
|
| https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep10926.13?seq=2#metadat
| a_i...
| grej wrote:
| Food shortages. Russia's invasion of Ukraine will lead to
| immediate grain shortages. Decreased yields in future harvests
| will be created due to fertilizer shortages.
| [deleted]
| sprkwd wrote:
| Mass control over access to drinking water.
| pcdoodle wrote:
| Frightening indeed. Care to share any more insights?
| verdverm wrote:
| it is a localized problem to places where there are too many
| people and agriculture for the available water budget,
| especially as you look out and fear climate change.
|
| I'm not as worried, believing in the spirit of human
| ingenuity. Desalination and piping it from the oceans (like
| we do for oil) will be fine. We just need the wherewithal to
| implement real solutions and invest in the sciences rather
| than regulate behavior.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| see also "new world water" by Mos Def
| Normille wrote:
| I keep reading about these future "water wars" and can't
| help but wonder how much of the prediction is realistic and
| how much is coloured by Silicon Valley types extrapolating
| globally from what they see locally.
|
| I live in northern Britain and, even at the height of
| summer, it's rare for a week to go by, without at least one
| day of heavy rainfall.
|
| Maybe it's me who's extrapolating globally from what I'm
| seeing locally. But I don't get any sense at all that the
| world is getting drier.
|
| Still, if the 'water wars' predictions do turn out to be
| true, maybe we'll have an interesting reversal of fortunes
| in the future, where damp, wet, soggy countries become
| fabulously wealthy, like the OPEC nations today --through
| exporting tankers full of their spare rainwater.
|
| Let's see how the Arabs like queuing up at the pumps to
| fill their drinking vessels at PS2/litre!
| saberdancer wrote:
| Water falls from the sky. 70% of the planet is salt
| water. Salt water can be desalinated.
|
| I also think that water wars seem unlikely as if you have
| energy, you can get water.
| asdff wrote:
| Just because water is nearby doesn't mean you have
| infrastructure to make use of it. For example the great
| lakes region has had droughts before that affected
| agriculture. This might surprise you because on a map,
| there is a huge body of freshwater to draw from nearby.
| However, to draw from that body, one needs to build
| pumping infrastructure sufficient to draw from it and to
| have this infrastructure go to where it needs to be,
| likely inland uphill from the great lakes requiring more
| pumping and reservoirs and other infrastructure.
| Reservoirs in particular are often dependent on having
| good natural conditions. It also needs to be overbuilt
| such to work in a drought, and therefore most of its
| costs will be wasted in times when its not needed. All of
| this costs money and political will to improve things,
| both of which the great lakes region is short of in
| recent history.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I think we are starting to see first conflicts.
|
| But it is not the type of war that we fight over oil or
| gas. But instead very localised conflicts over rivers.
| Think of Nile and Kashmir.
|
| There is no point of conquering other countries for lakes
| or ground water. The transport is just too expensive.
| tmaly wrote:
| You ever see the movie Solarbabies that came out in 1986?
| madrox wrote:
| From a customer perspective, people are wanting to retreat away
| from a lot of existing, global players. How many people would use
| something that's basically Amazon/Google/Facebook/Twitter as long
| as it isn't Amazon/Google/Facebook/Twitter?
|
| The last decade was defined by being the one unicorn that could
| disrupt an entire industry, but those days are gone and we take
| it for granted that one company dominating a space isn't a norm.
| There aren't really more industries that are tech vs non-tech. In
| the next decade, more businesses will come online to disrupt and
| compete with tech company incumbents. Customer acquisition costs
| will go up and personas will become more nuanced.
| Xcelerate wrote:
| Just guessing, but: machine learning based off of algorithmic
| information theory / Solomonoff induction rather than neural
| networks, satellite internet (well-known in tech circles but
| perhaps not the general public), rapid advancements in
| computational quantum chemistry that start to replace lab-based
| experimentation to produce real world value. And I agree with the
| other commenter about a massive fight related to water allocation
| over the next few decades.
| gshevchuk wrote:
| Multi-material 3D printing: once we're able to combine multiple
| classes of functional materials, we'll be able to produce really
| unique products and inventions.
| pedalpete wrote:
| One of the things I like about the opportunity in 3D printing
| is the potential to move manufacturing closer to the source of
| sale. From an environmental perspective, I believe this is a
| big win, as well as JIT manufacturing.
|
| I'm not suggesting everyone will have a 3D printer, but if we
| can localize the printing, you can get your same day delivery
| without warehousing, etc.
| thom wrote:
| Drone tech is going to get tiny. It'll have microphones and
| cameras and it'll probably be untraceable. It'll spy on you
| arbitrarily and the equivalent of 4chan will have access to it in
| abundance. You will never again have any form of privacy unless
| you buy expensive countermeasures for your home and office.
| Fortunately deepfakes will be so good you can blame it all on
| that.
| nokya wrote:
| I was recently caught up in a very good friend's divorce, who
| suspected either her apartment or her car had been placed under
| surveillance (her husband constantly had knowledge of her
| whereabouts). For some reason I cannot expand here, she assumed
| I could help her "check" her apartment.
|
| This brought me into looking for solutions on how to detect
| electronic surveillance. I discovered the term "bugsweep", and
| rapidly came to the conclusion that I could either: 1)
| Recommend her to hire government contractors at a price she
| would never be able to afford. 2) Buy cheap stuff on Amazon
| without any knowledge whatsoever on what works or not.
|
| It felt like there was no middle ground.
|
| I also happen to stay in hotels for both work and while on
| holidays, and although I don't particularly aim to hide myself
| from government surveillance, I don't like the idea that any
| moron or stalker could buy some recording equipment online and
| put me under surveillance. I would appreciate being able to
| check my surroundings for obvious / cheap recording equipment
| when I feel the need.
|
| If anyone has some good pointers/recommendations on this topic,
| I think it could interest more than just me.
| r2_pilot wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonlinear_junction_detector
|
| Doesn't work for shielded electronics, and there may be false
| positives, but this is one way to detect circuitry.
| nokya wrote:
| Thanks for the share. I clicked the source cited in the
| page, it seems to be quite an overkill/invasive method (and
| dangerous for the person doing the detection), no? It seems
| to not be accessible to civilians...
| gbear0 wrote:
| I've always wanted to see a swarm of miniature roomba drones
| that can automatically clean/collect dust from anywhere in the
| house.
| jacknews wrote:
| Yes, I watched some drone light-show/fireworks displays
| recently, and thought, 'wait till the drones are the size of
| flies, these shows will be happening in restaurants, bars, in
| your living room'. Imagine walking into a room full of
| fireflies that move around you as you walk, etc.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Bottleneck has been and continues to be energy density. But
| eventually there will be a breakthrough in battery tech and
| we will reach new heights of utopia/dystopia.
| jacknews wrote:
| That is true, but also remember the air gets relatively
| thicker as you get smaller, so flight gets easier.
| machiaweliczny wrote:
| Now imagine swarm of these with gps trackers and a laser gun
| following them. I bet US army already is working on it.
| asdff wrote:
| The drone swarm wars will be crazy. One of the current
| strategies is to crash your swarm into the enemy swarm and
| hope you take them all out with what you got
| LeonTheremin wrote:
| Criminals trained in 4chan will just hack other people's drones
| and use them instead of buying drones themselves.
|
| But they don't need drones, actually, these criminals already
| have access to Microwave Weaponry and Electromagnetic
| Surveillance.
| f0e4c2f7 wrote:
| Virtual Reality.
| unpopularopp wrote:
| Climate migration. What happens Europe now/since 2015 is nothing
| that will come in the next couple of years. And the individual
| countries and so as the EU is pretty much unprepared. I'd even
| say that will be one of the cause of downfall of the union.
| nokya wrote:
| I am under the impression that instead of preparing for climate
| immigration, EU citizens are actually slowly but surely
| mutually brainwashing themselves into increasing hate towards
| immigrants as a whole. From what I read and understood about
| climate change, a tsunami of immigrants from southern
| hemisphere countries towards northern hemisphere countries is
| to be expected.
|
| I would rather have my elected ones work on a framework that
| will govern how this immigration could occur and how to make it
| work in everyone's bests interests. But it seems that people
| will mostly vote for whoever tells them he or she will make the
| country impenetrable.
|
| Europe's population is aging drastically, we make less children
| and our workforce is shrinking. We produce less people that can
| offer social/medical/health care to the elders, less people who
| can pay taxes, and also less people who can defend the
| territory in case of armed conflict. Retirement planning is a
| catastrophy (younger generations are privileging individualized
| financial planning mechanisms instead of State protected and
| tax deducible solutions, and conversion rates for pension funds
| are also diminishing year after year). Finally, "non-white"
| immigrants seem to be perceived by locals as posing a security
| threat and nothing more.
|
| Whether I look at my family, my friends or my colleagues, I
| feel surrounded by people who refuse to engage in the thought
| experiment further than "we should reinforce our borders".
|
| Am I in denial when I acknowledge that both a mass immigration
| will occur towards the northern hemisphere, whether smoothly,
| or by force, and that any economy needs to preserve a strong
| workforce to keep florishing?
|
| What am I missing here?
| snidane wrote:
| Europeans would rather go Japan - ie. keep their national
| identity and downsize, than America - healthy demographics,
| but constant cultural clashes and crime waves.
| ikurei wrote:
| Do you think then that those crime waves in America are
| mainly caused by immigration, or by racial/cultural
| diversity? Care to elaborate?
| nokya wrote:
| In full honesty, I fail to see how crime waves in the USA
| could be explained by immigration or racial/cultural
| diversity. From what I understand, it is mostly a
| consequence of families living through precarious jobs
| (and poverty), limited access to good education and a
| general lack of trust in the government, which they
| either perceive as powerless, or extremely unfair/brutal.
|
| If I acknowledge that some communities are more likely to
| live their daily lives under these three factors
| altogether, it could explain why these communities may be
| more vulnerable to daily life challenges, and more easily
| resort to violence. Still, that doesn't give me a causal
| link between racial/cultural diversity and violence, far
| from it, but I can understand why those who prefer taking
| shortcuts may end up reaching this conclusion.
|
| This shortcut is also very comfortable for the peace of
| mind: once I attribute violence to racial/cultural
| diversity, I can also safely conclude that I will never
| be part of the problem (if I consider myself as being
| part of the "good" racial/cultural group)...
| rowls66 wrote:
| I doubt that Japan would like to have them.
| gautamcgoel wrote:
| He means that Europeans want to mimic Japan, not that
| Europeans want to move to Japan.
| Tryk wrote:
| Nuance
| seti0Cha wrote:
| Outside observer, but my understanding is that a big concern
| is that people from more illiberal cultures will make the
| nation more illiberal. There is also concern that making low
| skilled labor more plentiful will be harmful to the prospects
| of existing low skilled labor. A third concern would be that
| if the immigrants express an ethnic preference for their own
| community, this will cause increasing difficulty for existing
| residents. If you want to convince people that immigration
| will be in their best interest, I'd start by finding ways to
| ameliorate those concerns.
| majewsky wrote:
| I agree, but I don't think the "few people talk about it"
| criterion applies. It's not that it doesn't come up in debates,
| it's that nothing much comes of it (yet).
| JasserInicide wrote:
| Nothing comes of it because we're regressed into a hyper-
| sensitive society where topics that remotely involve race
| can't be discussed anymore for fear of someone's feelings
| getting hurt. Empires have collapsed in the past because of
| migrations of peoples, this is potentially no exception.
| CalRobert wrote:
| This is one of the reasons we moved from California to Ireland.
| People thought it was weird in 2013. Less so now.
| collyw wrote:
| They were telling us Manhattan would be underwater by now 20
| years ago.
| CalRobert wrote:
| "They" also were telling us the US west would experience
| drought, fires, and increased heat waves.
| xpe wrote:
| Please state your exact point.
|
| One narrow interpretation is that one particular study that
| you did not cite got it wrong.
|
| One broad interpretation is that we should not pay
| attention or give credence to the good faith estimates
| offered at the time.
|
| I get tired of snarky one-liners that don't say what they
| mean. They do not promote useful discussion. My comment
| here would not be necessary if you took a few minutes to
| elaborate about what you meant.
|
| Lastly: Estimates change. No model is perfect but some are
| useful.
| claytongulick wrote:
| Not the OP, but I think the point is valid.
|
| I was born in the 70s, and my entire life I've been
| hearing climate alarmism - the end of the world is nigh
| (or just around the corner). No, really, this time it's
| for real! Donate here to stop it.
|
| Most of the "solutions" I've seen are worse than the
| problem. Recycling was a major con that no one wants to
| talk about.
|
| Carbon offset credits? Really?
|
| With the amount of alarmism and blatant opportunism in
| the space, it's pretty hard to sift through and focus on
| real, meaningful change. Like not wasting precious
| aquifer water on lawns.
|
| Simple stuff that would have real impact. Taxing the hell
| out of single use plastic water bottles.
|
| We've done it before. The anti CFC thing was a huge
| success. Seems like that should be a model to follow.
|
| Instead of pearl-clutching global alarmism, we should
| narrowly focus on concrete problems with real, measurable
| solutions, and address them one by one.
| xpe wrote:
| We can't talk about a point being valid or otherwise if
| it is not clear. Saying vague statements such as 'but
| they predicted X and it didn't happen ...' is nearly
| useless when it comes to understanding and predicting X.
| CalRobert wrote:
| CFC's had a more or less drop-in replacement. Sadly we
| lack this for fossil fuels.
|
| And my entire life I've been hearing predictions of
| climate change that would start getting serious... right
| about now. And here we are. A bit ahead of schedule,
| really.
| claytongulick wrote:
| According to what measures?
|
| Sea level rise? The rate of increase hasn't changed.
| Actually it was highest during Lincoln's presidency.
|
| Droughts? Actually less severe and less frequent than 100
| years ago.
|
| Severe weather? Wild fires? Also, pretty much unchanged
| or slightly decreased.
|
| Global temperatures? Sure, seem to be increasing
| moderately, but there's a ton of complication there. And
| we don't really know what the impact will be.
|
| I think it's better to stop handwringing over pessimistic
| alarmist models and to focus on solving real, concrete,
| addressable ecological problems.
| xpe wrote:
| > Instead of pearl-clutching global alarmism, we should
| narrowly focus on concrete problems with real, measurable
| solutions, and address them one by one.
|
| Many neoclassical economists would argue against this
| approach. Fix the incentives, they would say, and things
| will work out.
| xpe wrote:
| > Carbon offset credits? Really?
|
| Your argument is incredulity? Give your reasons. I don't
| want a vapid rant.
| mcv wrote:
| How low is Manhattan? Projections have always been around
| 50-100 cm sea level rise for the next century.
| promethetan wrote:
| The 2001 IPCC report projected 3-14cm of sea level rise in
| the period 1990-2025. Per wikipedia, actual sea level rise
| from 1993-2017 was 7.5cm.
|
| IPCC, see summary of Q3.9 on p9
| https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar3/syr/
| elevenoh wrote:
| paganel wrote:
| We'll most probably increase the handouts to the autocrats
| bordering us, so that they'll do the dirty job in our place.
| See Erdogan, see how what was basically a State coup went
| almost unnoticed in Tunisia.
| swader999 wrote:
| I'd argue we'll see more around 'Climate Mitigation' than
| migration.
| dqpb wrote:
| Complexity Economics
|
| https://www.inet.ox.ac.uk/research/programmes/complexity-eco...
| narrator wrote:
| The next big thing that few people are talking about is that
| thing you get banned from social media for talking about and the
| consequences of that thing over the next few years.
| mouzogu wrote:
| Living in a pod and eating insects.
| vivegi wrote:
| 1. Passive radiative heating/cooling (paints, coatings, etc.,)
|
| 2. Low power electronics and energy harvesters (thermal/clothing,
| kinetic energy, rf energy harvesters etc.,)
|
| 3. Physical logistics networks (similar to Internet Protocol with
| standard physical containers and transfer networks - land, sea,
| rail, air)
|
| 4. Ubiquitous drone delivery (last mile & long haul)
|
| 5. Fiat digital currency/payment networks
| aglavine wrote:
| 3 looks interesting
| Geee wrote:
| General purpose humanoid robots. They're kind of mainstream idea,
| but very few people talk about them or take them seriously.
|
| Humanoid robots will have an absolutely massive impact in very
| near future.
|
| Most people don't realize that with general purpose humanoid
| robots, labor becomes software. Labor becomes repeateable,
| testable, simulatable, modular, extensible, verifiable, etc. All
| things that apply to software will apply to labor.
|
| Imagine pulling an open-source repo from Github for a log house.
| If you want, make changes and simulate the output beforehand. Put
| your robot in a forest with a few tools and soon you'll have a
| log house - built perfectly to the spec.
|
| Labor also becomes abundant. There's no more need for humans for
| economic growth.
|
| Tesla is showing their first humanoid robot prototype in
| September. I predict that Apple will soon follow.
| tootie wrote:
| If you go back to 2009 or so when the recovery of the financial
| crisis was languishing, there was a lot of talk that automation
| meant the jobs would just never come back. Flash forward ten
| years, and we're back to a labor crisis so acute that even
| contracting GDP can't slow it down.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| > but very few people talk about them or take them seriously.
|
| Because there is nothing to take serious at the moment. It's
| still a decade or more away. In the meanwhile, regular
| automation and outsourcing is eating jobs on a regular base. We
| don't need humanoid robots for this.
|
| > Put your robot in a forest with a few tools and soon you'll
| have a log house - built perfectly to the spec.
|
| So it's rich people's tool. Not for the masses.
|
| > Labor also becomes abundant. There's no more need for humans
| for economic growth.
|
| In the first place it means labor will become cheaper. Why pay
| for expensive hardware, when people are willing to work cheaper
| to make a living. The same happens now with automation. Cheap
| products are getting outsourced to poor countries where things
| are man-made for pennies, instead of using some fancy
| automation to make some lasting high quality-product.
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| You could probably get some naive people to invest in such a
| thing, simply because people want to believe in it. In this
| way, it may be the next big VC scam.
|
| Never going to happen though. It's much more economically
| viable and simpler to have the servant class perform the kind
| of labor any general purpose robot could do.
| ironlake wrote:
| >Tesla is showing their first humanoid robot prototype in
| September.
|
| Last time Tesla showed a humanoid robot prototype, it was a guy
| in unitard, dancing.
| DontchaKnowit wrote:
| Sorry but this is just fantasy. Robots are not even remotely
| close to being able to replace humans for 90% of tasks. Robots
| do not deal with uncertainty well and in my opinion only ever
| will in scenarios where there are very tight bounds on the
| task.
|
| A robot is never going to be able to build a log cabin for you,
| because there are far too many snafus in the process to deal
| with. The real world is too fucked up for a non biological
| agent to handle. Until we reach singularity.
| adamckay wrote:
| > A robot is never going to be able to build a log cabin for
| you
|
| Agreed. But when that robot has something like a large scale
| 3d printer, why would it build with logs?
| wyre wrote:
| At that point why not just 3d print the house? Why need a
| robot laborer at all?
| modeless wrote:
| I think it is not "very soon" because progress in hardware is
| slow and the hardware has a long, long way to go. But otherwise
| you are absolutely right and I agree 100%. Recent rapid
| progress in AI has convinced me that we will have sci-fi style
| androids walking around in my lifetime, and the consequences of
| that are impossible to overstate.
|
| Sci-fi gets a few things about androids wrong.
|
| #1, they will not be physically indistinguishable from humans.
| It won't be feasible to build something like that for the
| foreseeable future.
|
| #2, they will not be uncreative and clueless about emotions and
| feelings. They will (optionally) exhibit creativity, and they
| will understand human emotion and humor and be able to
| participate.
|
| #3, they will not go crazy and revolt and take over the world
| for themselves. Neither will an evil corporation use them to
| implement a sci-fi dystopia. The actual danger is that
| governments, intelligence agencies, law enforcement, and
| militaries will control them. This will grant unprecedented
| absolute unchecked power to a small number of people,
| ultimately resulting in atrocities.
| ratg13 wrote:
| This is the one that scares me the most because the labor
| benefits are so big that the field will advance quickly, and
| it's only a matter of time before someone starts fitting them
| with rifles.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > and it's only a matter of time before someone starts
| fitting them with rifles.
|
| "DHS has chosen to lease its robot dog technology from Ghost
| Robotics, which has also debuted a company equipped with
| long-range guns"
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/16/robot-
| dogs-u...
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| I always wonder what would have happened if the Bush
| administration had had such robots available in 2003. There
| were quite a few people in power who thought the US should
| just invade any country they don't like and "fix" it. Turns
| out this was way more difficult than thought and cost
| soldiers' lives but what if invading a country just costs
| money?
| GoldenMonkey wrote:
| AI robots have still proven to be hard. And if my roomba is any
| indicator... we are still a long way off... from that kind of
| sophistication.
|
| What is coming online in the near term. Is robots operated
| remotely by humans. Imagine having a robot in your house...
| being remotely operated by cheap overseas labor. Folding
| clothes, cleaning, cooking, taking care of elders..
|
| Or my dream... a french chef making dinner for me... in my
| house.
|
| This is already in demonstration stage: https://www.beomni.ai
| revertmean wrote:
| Right...that's what people will use their humanoid robot for -
| building log cabins. Wouldn't have anything whatsoever to do
| with "adult mode". Nope, no way!
| machiaweliczny wrote:
| I bet that software creation will get automated before that.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| "Put your robot in a forest with a few tools and soon you'll
| have a log house - built perfectly to the spec.l
|
| I wonder how the capitalists will deal with this. If we have a
| robot that can build and maintain a house and grow food for
| you, how will they make money?
| 888666 wrote:
| Selling robots
| kleer001 wrote:
| that robot will only be leased or rented and impossible to
| fix by the consumer, the newest one will outshine the last
| version just enough to get people to buy it.
|
| think cell phones
| jimmyc_ wrote:
| Robot would be a rental with addons charged as subscribed.
| alexpotato wrote:
| Reminds me of this entry from the Trivia section on IMDB for Ex
| Machina: Director Alex Garland has described
| the future presented in the film as "ten minutes from now,"
| meaning, "If somebody like Google or Apple announced tomorrow
| that they had made Ava, we would all be surprised, but we
| wouldn't be that surprised."
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0470752/trivia?item=tr2358967
| paxys wrote:
| > Tesla is showing their first humanoid robot prototype in
| September. I predict that Apple will soon follow.
|
| Your predictions are off by a decade at least, and probably a
| lot longer. The extent of humanoid robots today is whatever
| billion dollar prototypes you see from Boston Dynamics and
| those security robots rolling around malls.
| frakkingcylons wrote:
| Nobody is saying that general purpose humanoid robots wouldn't
| be immensely useful.
|
| But you talk about them like it's coming in a couple years when
| the reality is that it's still very far away.
|
| Tesla has a terrible track record with keeping their promises
| on their claimed timeline for advanced technology like FSD. I
| would be extremely skeptical of anything they demo because they
| have not been realistic in the past.
|
| I say this as a Tesla shareholder and satisfied model 3 owner.
| I bought a Tesla for their strengths with respect to powertrain
| and battery and it absolutely delivers on those. But I do not
| regret not paying for FSD at all.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I don't know. When automation began to move into the factories
| toward the end of the last century I was promised that menial
| factory labor would be a thing of the past.
|
| Instead, some bean counters figured out it was cheaper to
| manufacture overseas (where labor was cheaper still than
| robots?) and now we have no factories or industry to speak of
| left in the U.S.
|
| Either human labor will always be cheaper than these humanoid
| robots or robot theft will become very lucrative (and then I
| suppose the winners are the robot insurance companies).
| zamalek wrote:
| We already have robots that are adept at single tasks. Washing
| machines, microwave ovens, coffee makers, chip fryers, the list
| goes on. Robots made in the shape of the task that they are
| accomplishing. There is very little to gain from having a
| general purpose robot that is mediocre at everything.
|
| Even if general purpose robots were to become commonplace, it
| is extremely unlikely that they would be humanoid. Apart from
| opposable thumbs, humanoid design is awful for nearly every
| task imaginable (which we overcome with intelligence and
| creativity).
| blackoil wrote:
| Why do robots need to be humanoid. I wouldn't care of the robot
| building the cabin looks like a human or a box with 8
| tentacles.
| Geee wrote:
| They're doing human things in human spaces with human tools.
| Human compatibility will enable the same range of genericity
| as humans. Same robot can operate a bulldozer, cook a dinner,
| play an instrument, interact with humans etc.
| motohagiography wrote:
| Reasoning it through, what don't people politely talk about? Sex,
| money, politics, and religion. Sex: the impact of the
| normalization of casual sex work on sustainable families, and how
| specific tech and financial services for managing single
| motherhood will be huge. Money: financial alternatives to
| emerging social credit based systems, grey markets, working class
| capital/savings flight, cyberpunk dystopia. Politics:
| polarization becomes relative isolation, increasing demand for
| parallel tribe-based economic and information services. Religion:
| pendulum swinging back from civic secularism among those
| disenfranchised by said secularists. Reconciliation of old time
| religions with current tech and science. The christianization of
| fringe ideas like "ancient astronaut theorists," conspiracy
| theories, simulation theory.
|
| True or not, they're big and not talked about in polite company.
| jollyllama wrote:
| The grey markets are intersecting with the parallel economies
| which are intersecting with the religious fringes.
|
| I disagree with you on the sex one though, people are already
| having less sex. This is also intersecting with what you are
| saying about religion.
| orangepurple wrote:
| I don't understand anything you just wrote
| kuramitropolis wrote:
| Blessed.
| tomuli38 wrote:
| How exactly are secularlists disenfranchising religions? There
| is a large swathe believing the separation of church and state
| is religious oppression, and they act like the country is not
| for those of all faiths.
| motohagiography wrote:
| The question misinterprets the dynamic. Point is, people
| disenfranchised ("left behind") by secular administrators are
| turning to religion for community and identity. That's the
| undercurrent in the context of the thread. It's not about the
| legal separation, it's about a change in the upstream culture
| as a reaction to the politics. The official principle of
| agnosticism that the separation of church and state
| represents is not official atheism either. In fact, it's the
| opposite. The US system was famously said to be vulnerable by
| it's founders, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral
| and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the
| government of any other." While it can tolerate almost every
| kind of minority belief, it doesn't survive a shift to
| complete atheism and nihilism. The American system is
| predicated on the universalist idea that, "people here are
| free to have both kinds of beliefs, _theistic_ AND _deistic_
| ," and the trend I was pointing out is religion is becoming a
| reactionary tendency.
| seti0Cha wrote:
| When a court rules that a particular area is outside of
| elected officials' power to legislate, in a sense they are
| disenfranchising those who would vote for officials to make
| such laws. Leaving aside whether it is right or wrong, the
| underlying issue is that someone's set of values has been
| elevated outside of the democratic process. This has always
| been happening since the beginning, but in recent years we've
| experienced a significant lack of agreement over those values
| such that one side feels disenfranchised.
| emehex wrote:
| I'm not sure enough people are talking about Demographics and
| population decline, especially with respect to China. Some
| experts [1] predict that China's population in 2050 will be HALF
| of what it is today!
|
| [1] https://www.barrons.com/articles/china-xi-jinping-
| economics-...
| blackoil wrote:
| Way to many people work on filler jobs that will go away and
| automation will also solve a lot of the problems. China has
| about 22% people working in agriculture, that will go down a
| lot over next two decades.
| Bjorkbat wrote:
| I wouldn't count on that. Sure, you can see increased
| productivity through farm automation, but that assumes that
| the farmer can afford said tools. Those that can might be
| able to grow more crops on less land, but they might be too
| preoccupied with paying the farm loan to go around buying-out
| their neighbors.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Would that mean the population then will be much wealthier (as
| happened after the Black Plague)?
| rednerrus wrote:
| The End of The World Is Just The Beginning delves pretty deep
| into this. Very interesting read.
| bombcar wrote:
| It depends on how you measure it and how it happens, but if
| each couple has one kid, and that kid inherits from both
| parents, after awhile the kids are inheriting a decent
| amount.
|
| Or, all the excess "wealth" could be sucked up by the
| government/companies/large land-holders and everyone else
| stay roughly the same.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| probably the opposite.
|
| In the black plague, most of the wealth was durable physical
| assets like land, tools, farmhouses, ect.
|
| In modern economies, wealth usually buys services and
| consumables. Less cheap labor will be a big hit to these
| costs. To make things worse, the workers will have to
| financially support a large aging population with a shrinking
| young demographic.
| throwaway4aday wrote:
| Unknown. It's never been tried in an industrialized nation. I
| have a feeling it could easily go the other way and return
| China to poverty with not enough people to sustain their
| current economic output. That depends a lot on what's
| possible to do with automation. It could also have drastic
| effects on the knowledge sector, breaking down chains of
| training and knowledge transfer. A lot of expertise could be
| lost.
| asdff wrote:
| If you want to see the results of a fully industrialized
| area losing over half its population look at urban Detroit.
| jensneuse wrote:
| Managing APIs like dependencies, with a package manager-like
| developer experience. (npm for APIs). The number of APIs is
| continuously growing. It's going to be impossible to manually
| manage API dependencies in the future. I wrote about our approach
| to solve the problem here:
| https://docs.wundergraph.com/docs/architecture/manage-api-de...
| I'm curious what others think of this problem space.
| O__________O wrote:
| In a single sentence, what is "Access all your data through a
| single API own by a third-party" best description, or is it
| something else?
| neon_electro wrote:
| >It's going to be impossible to manually manage API
| dependencies in the future.
|
| This feels like a significantly important assumption to _truly
| prove out_ with target customers before relying on this
| assumption to build a product or business.
|
| I'd love to hear more on what's changing in the future that may
| make this statement partially or fully true.
| verdverm wrote:
| I've been thinking about this from a slightly different angle
| (https://github.com/hofstadter-io/hof), but I think we are both
| getting at a higher level of reuse and dependency management. I
| just don't think we need to limit the idea to APIs, there are
| different granularities, both bigger and smaller, where the
| ideas are useful.
|
| You might also find the Thema project by Grafana interesting
| (https://github.com/grafana/thema)
| moralestapia wrote:
| Honest feedback, the whole point of this is to make things
| easier, but the examples on your post seem quite contrived.
|
| Some APIs today are literal one-liners, I wouldn't change that
| for another abstraction layer in between that requires me to
| write 1K of boilerplate.
|
| I think it's a good idea, just work on making the user _feel_
| like it 's actually easier to do the same stuff with wunder.
| jensneuse wrote:
| Thank you, great feedback. You're right in that we should
| provide better examples. If you find anything else that
| bothers you, please keep it coming.
| jrh206 wrote:
| This is a small thing, but one of the first sentences in
| the documentation you linked is "At least I have never
| thought about API dependencies before building
| WunderGraph." It makes the problem seem small, as if you
| can get away with not thinking about it.
| YossarianFrPrez wrote:
| I don't know about "big" in terms of a viral hit, but in terms of
| what will change in our day-to-day experience... Here are some
| wild guesses, mostly along the theme of a societal conversation
| about and re-thinking of "sustainability" on nearly all levels.
|
| * Robotic carts that follow you around when shopping in dense,
| pedestrian oriented areas and/or stores. Might go hand in hand
| with the rapid normalization of e-bikes.
|
| * An increase in eco-villages, apartment buildings with
| permacultured gardens growing their own food, etc.
|
| * Some sort of push for groves of large trees in urban areas to
| provide shade, possibly in roundabouts, to reduce the heat-island
| effect.
|
| * Somewhat decentralized water cisterns and filtration on a
| municipal level. Possibly including creating small holes in the
| bottom of drainage infrastructure to re-charge the groundwater.
|
| * Constructing new clothes out of semi-recycled fabric cut out of
| items that would be thrown away?
|
| * Short-hop electric plane taxi things.
|
| * Energy generating windows ("transparent solar panels") and
| fabrics.
|
| * The wide-spread use of plastic-alternatives: fully compostable
| packaging made out of mushrooms, etc.
|
| The NSF SBIR funded projects page is a cool source for this sort
| of prediction.
|
| Also:
|
| * Much better voice interfaces. At some point in the next 10
| years, it will be common to have primarily voice-controlled
| computer applications. There might be a huge role for this to
| play in hospitals.
| asdff wrote:
| Robotic carts following you around with your cargo are already
| here honestly. Go to a golf course these days.
| voisin wrote:
| > Some sort of push for groves of large trees in urban areas to
| provide shade, possibly in roundabouts, to reduce the heat-
| island effect.
|
| It shocks me how slow municipalities are to adopt this. How
| many sidewalks and paths in hot sunny climates have zero shade.
| And it is so cheap!
|
| Also, how about how many kids playgrounds, or school yards have
| _zero_ shade?
| YossarianFrPrez wrote:
| Especially given that the time to plant the trees is _now_
| rather than when they are really going to be needed. There is
| likely a way to do it / provide shade with native plants
| too, that would require less up-keep...
| mcv wrote:
| > Robotic carts that follow you around when shopping in dense,
| pedestrian oriented areas and/or stores.
|
| I'm now imagining these following you around like The Luggage
| follows Rincewind around.
| huijzer wrote:
| > Much better voice interfaces. At some point in the next 10
| years, it will be common to have primarily voice-controlled
| computer applications. There might be a huge role for this to
| play in hospitals.
|
| Doctor: "Quickly! Give patient 100 milligrams of epinephrine!"
|
| Computer: "Giving patient 400 milligrams of epinephrine. Say
| 'yes' to confirm"
|
| Doctor: "No. 100."
|
| Computer: "Patient received 400 milligrams"
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Computer: "unrecognised unit milligram, applying 400 ounces".
| YossarianFrPrez wrote:
| Hahaha. I was thinking much more in terms of keeping track of
| records, decisions, and scribing.
| PebblesRox wrote:
| I was just in the hospital and the nurses all wore a neat
| voice-activated paging system so they could call each other
| totally hands-free.
| sethjr5rtfgh wrote:
| Some/most of those things aren't a reality because they don't
| make sense economically.
| moralestapia wrote:
| >apartment buildings with permacultured gardens growing their
| own food
|
| This has been tried (and proved wrong) countless times. The
| issue is that it needs a huge footprint, and space is something
| you don't have at large in apartment buildings.
| YossarianFrPrez wrote:
| Good point. I would guess that if electric bikes and other
| mobility options come online, maybe there will be less need
| for parking lots to be as large as they are now?
|
| Even if apartment buildings are too dense, I still think we
| will see an increase in eco-village type arrangements.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Yes, definitely. The farm will be close to the community
| again.
| onionisafruit wrote:
| Subsistence farms are making a comeback?
| CalRobert wrote:
| Thought it was more to have a pleasant place to hang out and
| the odd fresh tomato, etc.. I hope nobody seriously thinks
| you can feed an apartment building from the roof.
|
| Most estimates say if you want to do permaculture/homestead
| living and provide your own calories you need a good acre per
| person and a taste for sweet potatoes...
| elicash wrote:
| I'm not familiar at all with this space. Is vertical farming
| a possible solution here?
| moralestapia wrote:
| It would be very expensive.
|
| One person needs about 5 hectares of land to be self-
| sufficient (i.e. to cover all its food needs, including
| protein). If you can afford your own 432 Park Avenue (Cost:
| ~$1BUSD, Floor area: ~4ha) for that, then the answer is
| yes.
|
| But also, with that same $1BUSD you could buy around
| 100,000 hectares of land in rural US, close to the size of
| Qatar; you can see how relatively inefficient vertical
| farming is in economic terms.
| tomtheelder wrote:
| Disclaimer: I am also _very_ skeptical of the whole
| concept of vertical farming, but...
|
| That 5 hectares of land per person metric is totally
| inapplicable here. Sort of the entire point of vertical
| farming is to be (in theory) vastly more efficient per
| unit of land. If you believe the claims it's somewhere
| between a 10 and 50 times reduction in land usage for
| same output.
|
| 5 hectares is also on the very high end for estimates of
| that metric. It also drops hugely if you're not relying
| on animal products.
|
| I don't think vertical farming in apartments is the
| future, but I think your calculations here are also way,
| _way_ off.
| filoeleven wrote:
| > Research in the 1970s by John Jeavons and the Ecology
| Action Organization found that 4000 square feet (about
| 370 square metres) of growing space was enough land to
| sustain one person on a vegetarian diet for a year, with
| about another 4000 square feet (370 square meters) for
| access paths and storage - so that's a plot around 80
| feet x 100 feet (24m x 30m).
|
| That's about a fifth of an acre, and other caveats apply
| like climate and the amount of labor during the growing
| season. If vertical farming works, and can also reduce
| the labor required (I have no idea if that's one of its
| goals), it starts to look more plausible as something
| that could take off. Still won't fit on a rooftop though,
| and as Jayne would say, "I smell a lotta 'if' coming off
| that plan."
|
| https://www.growveg.com/guides/growing-enough-food-to-
| feed-a...
| elicash wrote:
| Was not aware these projects were trying to be self-
| sufficient! Yeah, that's pretty wild. I assumed from your
| comment they just wanted to have their own tomatoes or
| something.
| rcarr wrote:
| Don't know much about it but from what I gather quantum computing
| leaves anything that is only protected by a password very
| vulnerable to hacking.
| gusbremm wrote:
| Anything except the metaverse
| wizofaus wrote:
| If by "few people" you mean "few people of the sort you might
| encounter on HN" then I'd be willing to bet the next big not-
| much-discussed thing comes out of China, maybe India. The sheer
| number of engineers in those two countries virtually guarantees
| some of sort revolutionary tech being developed there and taking
| the world by storm (I wouldn't exactly call TikTok revolutionary
| but it's a foretaste of what's to come).
| CraftingLinks wrote:
| Having gone through a lot of top posts in this thread, it's kind
| of disappointing how relatively boring these predictions for the
| future are. That's a sign were in a great wave of pessimism of
| what the future will bring. That pessimism may well be justified,
| but there's also an underlying 'hopelessness' emanating from the
| suggested unambitious 'next big thing'. Otoh, there's no shortage
| of CGI moonshot projects that feel like scams, so they fail to
| offset the depressing feeling.
| O__________O wrote:
| Generally speaking future is more like the present than most
| would wish. Climate change is really the biggest change coming
| and one given the progress that's been made, likely only going
| to get worse, not better.
| sAbakumoff wrote:
| how bad we are prepared for the next pandemic that will
| inevitably happen
| justin66 wrote:
| One word: _plastics._
| entropicgravity wrote:
| Personal vehicles will be getting both bigger and smaller. What's
| different from the past is that electric motors scale much better
| than IC engines. Both the world's smallest vehicles (kid's toys)
| and the largest vehicles (huge mining trucks) are both electric.
|
| First the small. Cities will soon start to ban all but electric
| vehicles in their downtown cores (already happening in some
| Chinese cities). The primary reason being electric vehicles don't
| emit the poisonous gases that IC vehicles do. The next phase will
| be only EV's that are half the width of a normal car lane will be
| allowed in the downtown core. Most vehicles in the downtown core
| now are single occupancy, a city can _double_ its downtown
| vehicle infrastructure _for free_ by restricting most EV vehicles
| to taking up just half a lane. These vehicles will be much
| cheaper too, probably less than $10k.
|
| Now the big. IC RV's are a bit of a pain but an all electric RV
| will be _much_ better all around. That 's because all of the
| required functions will be electric and run off the huge battery.
| Hot water, TVs, heat, refrigeration, very little maintenance just
| like a normal house, but smaller. Tesla vehicles already have
| "camp mode" and people love it. Image when Tesla builds an EV RV.
| This will become young people's 'First home'. Buy it for $70k and
| live in it for much less than rent. When you finish Uni, you own
| an asset rather than peeing your money away on rent. Oh and for
| weekend trips to the lake or the ski mountain and all that,
| couldn't be more convenient.
|
| Remember, you read it here first.
|
| EDIT ... a few typos
| O__________O wrote:
| "Halving" vehicles has been possible for long time, also seen
| it mentioned numerous times over the years. Unless large &
| small vehicles never use the same roads, ever, it will never
| happen; imagine being in a small car and being hit by a large
| car, odd of person in small car dying are much higher.
| Basically, something like this will only have a chance in an
| authoritarian society.
|
| As for the RV, you still need parking and most people don't
| want to live in the middle of nowhere. Most cities are already
| strict on RV living, especially long term local RV living; if
| it became even more popular, they would become even more
| strict. RV also are impossible to insulate, as a result,
| frequently follow the weather; majority of people don't want to
| be constantly driving around to find and adjust to a new
| location.
| TrapLord_Rhodo wrote:
| Battery's DO NOT scale like you claim.
|
| A desiel semi is much lighter than an Electric Semi is. That's
| why Tesla Semi hasn't launched yet. They are currently trying
| to change the regulation for maximum allowances on US Roads
| from 10k to 14k.
|
| The Delta-V on an electric vehicle has the problem that the
| battery scales more proportionately to weight and range than a
| desiel equivelent. Desiel gas has a tremendous amount of energy
| stored so compactly that is impossible to match with electric
| batterys.
| jrussino wrote:
| I think the recent electric scooter boom and subsequent
| pushback by communities shows that: - There is (IMHO _huge_ )
| pent-up demand for last-mile style electric transportation:
| scooters, bicycles, etc. - The electric drive technology is
| starting to reach a point where it can support a whole new
| space of designs that make this sort of transportation
| appealing to a wide variety of users (i.e. not just fit young
| adventurous people; the elderly, young children, etc.) - Sadly,
| infrastructure, laws, and social norms move way too slowly and
| are the limiting factor for what could be a major quality-of-
| life improvement for many many people.
|
| Note that "EV's that are half the width of a normal car lane
| ... probably less than $10k." is a pretty good description for
| the electric cargo bikes that are already starting to emerge.
|
| I would love to see cities and towns adapt faster to
| accommodate things like this:
|
| The Car-Replacement Bicycle (the bakfiets)
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQhzEnWCgHA
|
| How to Transport Kids by eBike
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCvx65egUDE
|
| This American Mayor is Creating the Ultimate Biking City
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlVWv9O0qQ4
| feoren wrote:
| I think this is a good insight, and I hope this comes to pass,
| but a couple points:
|
| > the world's largest vehicles (huge mining trucks) are
| electric
|
| What about cruise ships, freighters, freight trains, and
| aircraft carriers? They're diesel or nuclear-powered. Or maybe
| nuclear still counts as having an electric motor, just with a
| nuclear generator instead of a battery?
|
| > only EV's that are half the width of a normal car lane will
| be allowed in the downtown core
|
| Honest question: wouldn't tipping be a major problem for half-
| width cars? And the amount of space needed between cars
| wouldn't go down much, so if you need at least 4 feet of
| clearance on either side, and your lane is 5 feet wide, your
| cars can only be 1 foot wide. This explains why most vehicles
| thinner than a car are motorcycles or electric scooters.
| mambru wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Twizy
|
| Available in Europe since 10 yrs ago. Not a rare sight, but
| not super-popular either.
|
| Also
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citro%C3%ABn_Ami_(electric)
| entropicgravity wrote:
| Yes there are a lot of corner cases that I didn't belabor in
| my post. Most of the very heavy vehicles you mention are in
| fact already diesel electric. ie a diesel motor operates as a
| generator to provide electricity for the electric motor that
| moves things along. Just replace the diesel with a battery
| and you're there. (not as simple as it seems but right in
| theory)
|
| With small cars in a city core these cars rarely go faster
| than 40 mph and on average about 30mph with traffic lights so
| you don't need the separation that you would want on a
| freeway. Several vehicles like this are already available or
| under development. I suspect that a Smart Car would come very
| close to meeting this spec already.
| salmo wrote:
| Freight trains are also electric, just with diesel
| generators. I'll completely speculate 2 things that stand in
| the way of them going fully electric:
|
| 1. Trains derail, crash, etc.
|
| I live in a city that's a rail hub. We probably have a
| derailment every couple years even with annual rail/rail bed
| maintenance. They will fix the rail, the roads around it, and
| have everything back up and running in less than 2 days. You
| spill some diesel and it sucks to clean up. You spill Li and
| you walk into "environmental disaster."
|
| 2. Money. When it's cheaper, then they'll get serious.
|
| To the last point it's similar to fleet vehicles for large
| fleets. You see a lot of pledges to go all-electric by 20XX.
| That's because replacing a fleet requires a TON of capital
| already, and fundamentally changing the vehicles is an order
| of magnitude higher.
|
| Think about a delivery hub like the post office. They have a
| network already established for purchasing gasoline,
| delivering it, local storage, refueling process, etc. They
| have operations built around it.
|
| You now likely have to have parallel infrastructure for
| electric, which means negotiating major power consumption
| with each local power company, purchase of new or adjacent
| land, buildout, etc. Can you refuel in the same time window
| to not effect operations? If not, can you shift operations
| without impacting customer experience?
|
| Now, you will see companies deploying all-electric in niches,
| especially when it opens up new market opportunities. Those
| tiny urban vehicles could enable vehicles to go where they
| could not before, reducing time spent walking. And that might
| have a shorter timeline than autonomous drones that don't run
| old ladies over.
|
| I think even more than cruise ships and freighters, the
| biggest all-electric vehicle impact would come from all-
| electric airplanes. They still haven't gotten off of leaded
| fuel (see #2). The emissions there are massive.
|
| But I think #1 will be a barrier there too. And the
| bureaucracy will slow it way down just like it did with
| unleaded jet fuel, which exists now, but is essentially
| unused.
|
| And I guess a theme I'm coming up with is that electric is
| cool and all, but won't impact big % points of emissions
| until it's adopted by cargo, not human transport.
|
| And cases like trains and large ships that are electric, but
| fuel the local electric with local power generation bring up
| the other big point: How would we even begin to power cargo?
| It's orders of magnitude more massive than consumer vehicles
| and it's growing so fast that supply can't meet demand.
|
| Anyway, whatever. I know enough to be dangerous but not
| enough to be an expert on any of this, and I'm rambling.
| mdip wrote:
| > Honest question: wouldn't tipping be a major problem for
| half-width cars? And the amount of space needed between cars
| wouldn't go down much, so if you need at least 4 feet of
| clearance on either side, and your lane is 5 feet wide, your
| cars can only be 1 foot wide. This explains why most vehicles
| thinner than a car are motorcycles or electric scooters.
|
| Probably would be a problem. I don't know that the author was
| thinking "a car that is half the width of a normal car" as "a
| vehicle that takes up substantially less space". Perhaps
| we'll all be riding around in Go-Karts, who knows? :)
| personjerry wrote:
| One thing I've been thinking about is, how do you scale tourism?
|
| Edit for clarification:
|
| For example, the destruction of local environment is a known
| problem for places such as Machu Picchu and Venice, to the point
| where you now need to reserve and pay for a visit to the city of
| Venice [0]
|
| As population gets higher more and more people want to visit the
| top destinations, and when a new one gets "found" it gets flooded
| (see Dubrovnik after Game of Thrones hype)
|
| Because of physical limitations these experiences don't scale -
| there's a finite number of destinations in the world and an ever-
| growing population.
|
| [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/01/world/europe/venice-
| touri...
| trgn wrote:
| You don't have to. If the local environment becomes nicer (for
| americans, not a soul crushing schmear of strip malls and
| parking lots), people will do more things closer to home.
|
| The driving aspiration of the future will be that you live in a
| place worth visiting. Not a place you look forward to flee 2-3
| times a year.
| personjerry wrote:
| That's just not true, the top tourism destinations are more
| popular than ever since covid restrictions have laxed, and
| the destruction of local environment is a known problem for
| places such as Machu Picchu and Venice, to the point where
| you now need to reserve and pay for a visit to the city of
| Venice [0]
|
| [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/01/world/europe/venice-
| touri...
| paganel wrote:
| The trend is to de-scale it, most probably airplane tickets
| will get even more expensive (I'm talking about things here in
| Europe), not to mention accommodation. It will suck for
| countries like Greece or Spain, which depend a lot on tourism
| money, but there's not much that they can do about it.
| personjerry wrote:
| That's not really solving it, that's just adjusting the point
| on the pricing curve. That means an increasing amount of
| unmet demand right?
| asdff wrote:
| And that demand will just get met at the next cheapest
| destination. If they can't afford to fly to dubrovnik they
| will probably just vacation somewhere else they can afford
| to versus not go anywhere at all.
| Torwald wrote:
| AirBnB?
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