So, what does hn think is especially interesting from the past year? What went un- or undernoticed?
Germany is going digital against its will.
I was an early backer of the Oculus (backer ~200, if I remember correctly) and have been a big fan of VR since then. But it's had its challenges, and while it's a fun escape, for me it hasn't been ready for prime time and has been relegated to occasional workout Beat Sabers.
But I thought Apple nailed it with their AVP approach. Targeting MR _first_, with eye tracking and the pinch interaction seems like a smart approach to begin this new visual medium and UX. I think MR will be here to stay, as the tech miniaturizes and matures, and that the AVP will be looked back on as the Apple II of this tech universe. In the same way that my grandparents have sort of been left out of the "information economy" and the move to everything online - booking hotels and flights, interacting with customer support, banking, shopping, etc - I think people who don't have a MR headset will eventually be left out of the "ambient information economy". Stores will have prices virtually displayed over their goods, people will have profiles associated with them that you just see when you interact, etc.
I think a lot of people will see this as a dystopia, but my prediction is it will be coming. And I'm excited for it. Being able to "zoom in" at will, put screens and panels wherever I need them, redecorate my house, add hovering timers of my stove, have real-world ad-blocking, etc.
I'm pretty excited about being able to film my kids growing up with a spatial video camera (say, the iPhone 15 Pro), and then watch them in an AVP. I expect it will be a qualitative jump up in remembering and reminiscing, like going from paintings to black-and-white photographs, to color photos, to videos. Right now, the quality probably won't be great, but it's akin to watching those grainy '80s home video VHS clips you see from time to time.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emerging_technologie...
(Granted, as I understand it there was some AI involved)
DOE's prediction is 17MW Wind turbine by 2035[1], but the 22MW is coming online in 2025, 10 years sooner.
[1]https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/wind-turbines-bigger-be...
While I am comfortable using a password manager and creating a new login for new website, I see friends and family who are exasperated whenever they have to log in to their email account or streaming service on a new device, or dumbfounded when something breaks with their iCloud Keychain/Google Password Manager. Managing dozens or hundreds of passwords just seems to be really difficult for "non-tech" people. I'm not sure what the password/passkey landscape will look like in a couple of years, but I can't help but thinking, once the rough edges are smoothed out, that passkeys will make managing accounts a lot easier for people, at least make a lot more sense to people. Physically picking something up off the table and saying "here are my keys" just makes sense.
It will be interesting to see what problems are solved and what new problems arise if there is a strong shift away from passwords to passkeys, and how much lock-in there is with the big players like Apple and Google. I'm hopeful that the FIDO2 WebAuthn alliance will create an industry standard that prevents a strong lock-in, but Apple and Google do have a way of making their offerings convenient. A large shift away from passwords would be huge, and I hopeful that it will be a net-positive change.
More importantly, anyone with a battery (Electric car!) can make money by opting in for VPP.
Tesla Electric customers report making as much as $150 a day: https://electrek.co/2023/07/05/tesla-electric-customers-repo...
Thats with powerwalls, no reason it can't be done with an EV, definitely a bigger battery.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsPzEEBNAxc
Enormous gains in heat transfer efficiency, per unit of volume or power, relative to traditional air cooling with fans. We should see this hitting the market pretty soon in phones and laptops.
I almost gave up on ever seeing missions to asteroids, but we have: DART, Lucy and Psyche in a short time frame.
The next prototype of the class of ships that will bring colonists to Mars is scheduled for a test flight on November 18 or 19.
It’s good to see somebody doing something actually useful and consumer friendly for once.
CATL’s new condensed battery will have almost double the energy intensity of Tesla’s 4680 cells, whose rating of 272-296 Wh/kg are considered very high by current standards.
midi: 2.0
web: local-first as a trend