Ask HN: What is happening in tech unrelated to AI?
What is happening in tech outside the AI echo chamber?
Got a bit burned out looking the news and tech podcasts today, except for security news (like from Lapsu$ group) no other news that didn't involve openAI and/or AI in general.
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[ 5.3 ms ] story [ 33.7 ms ] threadSo far, 99% of sales are in the "expensive gaming accessory" category. There is fun and interesting UI and gameplay innovation happening here.
The one non-gaming thing everyone seems to want is just a large virtual desktop workspace. Apple has probably come closest here. It sounds like an easy problem but without a high resolution and a wide field of view, it's not a good experience.
In the web performance space, there's some interesting stuff happening in origin trails around shared dictionary compression. It has been tried and failed before but the latest iteration/spec hopefully improved those shortfalls that made them unusable. Also, ZSTD compression has taken the crown from brotli.
Metas new AR glasses seem to be approaching the ideal hardware, IMO it's still searching for its killer app. Microsoft exited the AR space by killing hololens.
Startup space is dying right now, with very low VC risk tolerance / interest. Some funds have returned money to investors rather than risk it in investing.
What I can see is that it could be a nice solution for SPAs that should never have been SPAs in the first place, i.e. mostly static pages with JS navigation used for reasons of fashion.
It has a tutorial, also a demo and some videos.
I'm not being snarky. What apps must be SPA's and why? I'm personally questioning where that line really should be.
Tech meetups seem to be coming back. People want to chat in person. Finding space to meet and sponsors is still not easy, but the demand from the community is there.
Rails continues to deliver a best-in-class batteries included solution for standing up web apps. I see some new folks being pulled into the community; some who enjoy it so much they participate even though their day jobs use some other stack.
As someone else mentioned downstream, IaC is still happening and getting pushed further and further. Whether you are talking about the more standard TF/OpenTofu IaC or some of the newer declarative environment options (I've chatted with the nitric folks), defining infrastructure as software gives you so much power that it seems to be unstoppable.
Did that help you understand?
Maybe this is a good time to start Luddite News.
I like AI, I'm not sure where all this luddite project comes from. I want to catch news that are outside of the AI news because it is just overpowering the current news cycle, just that.
I myself am trying NotebookLM to play with my own studies and create content.
But I wonder what else is perhaps getting less attention because AI is overpowering the news cycle, just like it happens in any tech cycle.
I write tech news summary for my own substack and I assure you: the last 4 days were dominated by AI news.
But I am 100% sure you're not interested on that.
I ask you again, why are you projecting so hard that I hate AI and that I am delusional? You're just attacking someone you literally don't know.
And the people who created the echo chamber are also different now, of course. Let's make a post in the echo chamber and ask them for other news that they didn't want to post on the news website.
You don't want to get my point, that's okay. I don't expect you to.
First of all: I still think the news cycle is skewed towards AI news, case in point: even most of the items on HN front list right now are not news or not tech related. The tech related ones right now (Oct7th-7:15pm PST time) are either:
- AI news;
- Antitrust/lawsuit/lobbying related to bigtechs (kinda tech news, kinda business news);
- Apple related news about their new products and rumors about future hardware
And I don't mean just HN but also looking at my favorite tech podcasts that send tech news (techmeme, hardfork, this week in tech, and so on); So yeah, objectively speaking not many tech news outside of AI (unless you consider the law stuff and Apple ads).
--
Second point, and I beg to differ from your main point: I think there are different groups here on HN and I assume some people may know things I don't know. AI is getting a lot of attention, but there are a lot of building doing other interesting things in silence.
I hope this clarifies what I meant by news cycle, because I literally meant news and not just frontpage links, and I don't assume the echo chamber is gone... But I also do not assume that everyone is in a conspiracy to post only AI stuff - that just it is natural when most of the money and startups are looking to AI the topic will sometimes burry other things happening.
Btw, have you checked the Show HN recent posts? It is in a similar situation. Does it mean I think that all HN people are building only AI stuff? no.
HN: "AI sucks."
HN frontpage: 95% non-AI news
You: "Hey guys, so much AI. AI sucks, amirite? Anyone got non AI news?"
Me: "Why are you asking us, just look at the frontpage. That's the news we have."
You: "DON'T TAKE THIS PERSONALLY!"
Here's your delusion, I personally don't believe that.
> You: "Hey guys, so much AI. AI sucks, amirite? Anyone got non AI news?" > Me: "Why are you asking us, just look at the frontpage. That's the news we have."
But... There were not many news, like I pointed before and you so conveniently ignored :-) there were tech links, but not many tech news. Later on the day Ruby's new release and later on Python's new release didn't even reach the front page.
I'm sorry you are this mentally limited on the internet to even see that there are tons of AI news.
I even pointed out it is not just HN!
Well, there isn't much I can do.
It is just funny how much time you lose on me replying each time since it's just something you don't want, lol
I think I need to give it a few more years before it reaches a maturity level I would actually use.
As far as development goes, it seems like there has been a lot of advancement in just the past 5 years. Seeing what some of the high end commercial printers are capable of, I think there is still a lot of development left for what home printers can do. The Bambu printers are bound to get some competition. There are also a few competing technologies, and I’m willing to give it some more time to shake out. It still feels very much like a hobbyist tool for people who want to tinker a bit. I want to design and print without a lot of fuss.
I’m not sure how resin stacks up in terms of durability for making parts, but from the perspective of being able to print anything and having it look perfect, it blew my mind.
https://phpbb.go-here.nl/index.php
It's from December 2000[1] (phpBB 2.0.0 was released in April 2002)
The idea the only thing that remained of 1.4.4 was a broken screenshot[2] didn't agree with me.
[1] - https://www.phpbb.com/about/history/#:~:text=phpBB%201.4.4%2...
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhpBB#/media/File:PhpBB1-defau...
For example: The language files have strings with undefined $variables in them. The variables are later set then it uses eval() on the strings. I just make a function with the same name, replace the undefined variables with function params and return the string. The eval() is replaced with the function call (in all files) then do the same with the next string. The php mysql instructions don't work. The sql is mostly fine. It just needs to be prepared statements.
You can just sit down and start writing code (finally!) without pondering what the hell you are doing every other line. Like in the movies.
Meshtastic now has way better encryption from what I hear.
The CH32V 20 cent riscv chips seem to be Arduino ready and somewhat mainstream.
(I think I've been in the SF tech scene too long-- I've literally had every one of those things pitched to me before)