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Ask HN: Cool stuff that's still completely unregulated?

• keiferski 7y ago
  Pretty much any sort of non-institutional educational topic is unregulated. Language-learning in particular is an interesting area, as you have a wide variety of individuals and companies providing different products.
• solipsism 7y ago
  I don't think CRISPR gene editing is regulated, except by convention in the scientific community, and by the ethics boards of individual labs/universities. But there may come a day when we realize this tool is too dangerous to leave unregulated.
  • kylebenzle 7y ago
    I do CRISPR transformations and your comment is by far and away the most uninformed opinion I have ever heard on the subject. To say the least, of course gene editing is highly regulated all over the world.
  • Thriptic 7y ago
    Well, you can't run a human trial without IRB approval, you can't run an animal study without IACUC approval, and you can't introduce a therapeutic without FDA approval so I'd say that's pretty tightly regulated.
    • voldacar 7y ago
      You could do it on yourself, if you were able to afford the necessary research and equipment
      • Thriptic 7y ago
        You could if you wanted to die an unpleasant death.
• Waterluvian 7y ago
  Teledildonics.
  • spondyl 7y ago
    While I was going to just laugh and move on, this is a weirdly unique opportunity to point out that Deldo is a thing: an emacs mode for teledildonics https://github.com/qdot/deldo https://github.com/qdot/deldo
    • SaberTail 7y ago
      Wouldn't be a teledildonics thread without someone mentioning qdot.
    • Aperocky 7y ago
      Another capability of emac that vim has no hope of catching up...
      • harry8 7y ago
        for which we are all truly grateful. You don't choose, the editor chooses you.
  • Nextgrid 7y ago
    Why would/should it be regulated?
    • beatgammit 7y ago
      Why do you ask? OP's question isn't asking about things that should be regulated, just asking which ones aren't. We should have a similar discussion about things that are regulated that shouldn't be.
      • rolltiide 7y ago
        Or things that are unregulated or already regulated that would improve with model regulation and what that might be
• maxander 7y ago
  There’s still no regulation on what you can do with machine learning (At least until your deepfakes constitute unlawful use of someone’s likeness, or you use your classifier to make hiring decisions or something, or something like that.)
  • mlthoughts2018 7y ago
    That’s like saying there is no regulation on what you can do with a database until it begins to violate some other law. Or like saying there is no regulation on what you can do with human imagination until you imagine something unlawful. Machine learning is a technique of mathematics. What do you even mean there’s no regulation of this subset of mathematics? If the law were to say a triangle can’t have three sides would it make it so?
    • ssivark 7y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill At a loss for words :-)
      • umvi 7y ago
        There are some constants you can change with laws though. Like Planck's constant
        • big_chungus 7y ago
          Unless my knowledge is completely wrong, Planck's constant is a universal and un-changing number. That's why the kilogram is based off it. How could you change that by law?
          • umvi 7y ago
            It is not a unitless constant like pi though. Like the speed of light, Planck's constant has units which is problematic (how can you define the meter in terms of the speed of light if the speed of light depends on the definition of the meter?) Thus, you simply assign a value to the constant to break the unit dependency.
• spodek 7y ago
  Not exactly early, but hopefully growing: gardening, minimalism, exercise, reading, writing, playing instruments, sports, cooking, dating, arts, crafts, and other similar activities. I'd say sex, but I don't know if I can distinguish the kinds that aren't regulated.
  • dhhdhdsbdb 7y ago
    In the US, regulating sex was a priority that predates the government by a couple hundred years.
    • thaumasiotes 7y ago
      If you mean the geographical region corresponding to what is today the US, we can be confident that regulating sex was a priority for the last many thousands of years. If you mean the cultural entity from which the US descends, we can be absolutely certain that regulating sex was a priority for the last many thousands of years. (We are generally happy to trace US regulations back to pre-colonial England; I don't see why we wouldn't do the same here.)
  • caymanjim 7y ago
    There are tons of regulations around gardening (illegal plant/seed imports in many states, regulations on how your yard looks, sale of produce); playing instruments (when/where/how loud); sports (depending on context); cooking (for public consumption or distribution, even if free); sex (although most of those are going away).
    • lsiebert 7y ago
      Sex regulation isn't going away. Look at SESTA/FOSTA
  • mindcrime 7y ago
    Some aspects of sex are definitely regulated, at least in some places. Look at laws making sodomy illegal, or laws defining penalties for adultery. Also laws about prostitution. Or "alienation of affection"[1] laws which, while not strictly about sex, often come up in the context of extra-marital affairs. Also, age of consent laws. And sex-offender registries, etc., etc. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alienation_of_affections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alienation_of_affections
• rolltiide 7y ago
  Almost all spot markets of anything. Metals, minerals, lithium you name it. Feds only regulate their financial products derived from the current value of them (“derivatives”).
  • edoceo 7y ago
    For craziness in spot markets check out cannabis and hemp. Some is tightly regulated, some is still black-market and one is like "newly allowed" and driven by fad-market (CBD). Fast and loose. Good times!
• analog31 7y ago
  Something to consider in addition to unregulated industries, are industries where the regulatory burden can be isolated to a few buy-in technologies. An example is that the regulatory burden for an electronic product is greatly reduced (not eliminated) if the product runs on an approved power supply rather than directly from the AC mains. Also, any business becomes regulated if it gets big enough to have investors or employees.
• xbhdhdhd 7y ago
  International waters. Some regulations but not really enforceable. Less regulated than the air inc orbit and even the moon. A famous movie director once said the film director is the last truely dictatorial post left. He was wrong. The captain of a vessel in international waters is.
  • coretx 7y ago
    Although you are de-facto right, limitations on the dictatorial power do apply. Both by the international law that guarantees the "freedom" and regulations set by the flag it waves. These exceptions and limitations do not exist in outerspace, thus only the spaceship captain is totally free/unregulated.
    • xbhdhdhd 7y ago
      Interesting, but a non flag bearing ship is certainly facing less oversight than any spaceship commander. Id also contend the spaceship is likely controllable remotely, and monitored in both location and status. Maybe the private submarine captain trumps all
      • Mountain_Skies 7y ago
        I might be remembering wrong, but I thought un-flagged ships in international waters are considered pirates and can be acted upon in a hostile manner by flagged ships.
        • big_chungus 7y ago
          Theoretically possible because an un-flagged ship has not the protection of a recognized state. You could do it, but it would be mighty risky and you would have almost zero legal recourse against a bad actor.
    • TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
      A ship captain, whether marine or space, is only as free and unregulated as the crew and passengers allow.
• inerte 7y ago
  I am personally seeing more and more electric skateboards here in the Bay Area. Not sure if they got cheaper or enough people bought and stuck with it so now I see more. Or Baeder-Meinhof. I think they are stupid, but people queue for an escalator while a perfectly fine stair is empty right next to it. And while e-scooter as an industry like Lime and Bird is getting regulation all around the world, not sure about these skateboards, maybe with the exception of top speed.
  • bredren 7y ago
    This is a big one. Electric vehicles in general have a huge degree of latitude.
• Terretta 7y ago
  All manner of world record attempts. Speed record attempts seem particularly lethal. Apologies for the listicle: https://www.toptenz.net/top-10-deadliest-attempts-break-world-record.php https://www.toptenz.net/top-10-deadliest-attempts-break-worl...
  • dehrmann 7y ago
    There was a Last Week Tonight bit that Guinness helps some sketchy actors break records for PR, but won't certify records that might point that out.
• Thriptic 7y ago
  Naively I would say cybernetics. To my knowledge I don't think there are many regulations governing the types of things that people can implant in themselves. If you try to market a device as a cybernetic or make health claims about it then the FDA will come after you, but self implantation of hardware is likely not regulated much.
  • cbnotfromthere 7y ago
    Cybernetics has nothing at all to do with cyborg implants.
  • lsiebert 7y ago
    There are absolutely huge regulations around what people can put in others though, even tattoos and piercings.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  • theamk 7y ago
    Are you using the right word? cybernetics is "the scientific study of control and communication in the animal and the machine." I have seen it use to mean classical control theory, machine learning, UX design, and general computers -- but this is the first time I see it being used for implants. I guess you can say "cyborgization"?
    • Thriptic 7y ago
      Well what I mean is human augmentation with machines. I'm actually not sure what the proper word is.
      • roymurdock 7y ago
        Wetware/biohacking
      • carapace 7y ago
• save_ferris 7y ago
  Why do you just seek out areas that lack regulation, as if there’s no such thing as an opportunity within a regulated field?
  • newman8r 7y ago
    It's more of an exercise in trying to identify emerging areas that might be interesting to investigate. I definitely wouldn't limit myself to those types of ideas though.
• d-d 7y ago
  Honesty. Acts of kindness. Ad blocking.
  • SamReidHughes 7y ago
    In many countries, honesty is regulated. Possibly also in the U.S.A., under the guise of employment law.
• aaron695 7y ago
  Private license plate tracking. At some stage license plates will have to disappear, but then you move to facial recognition for cars and other meta data, they probably have unique sounds for instance. I'd try and do a app like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_barcode_games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_barcode_games You should know how to monetize it. (Obviously facial recognition works equally well here, but there is some regulatory attention, although none that would stop you) I'd also look at things like using neural nets to detect race and/or underlying genetic structure from visual, audio and other metadata.
  • awalGarg 7y ago
    I am not sure why this comment was marked dead without any responses, and hence I am "vouch"-ing for it. Can someone point to laws related to license plate tracking? It seems to me that having a huge database of known locations of vehicles could be used to do some cool (but likely immoral) things, specially coupled with the fact that several state agencies all over the world make it free and easy to retrieve licensing and ownership information for vehicles. It'd also be relatively much easier to do compared to facial recognition.
    • noway421 7y ago
      Big question is, how would you do it at scale? You can crowdsorce data, but then it's hardly precise or frequently updated data. Sort of a thing that vinwiki does now. Govt has a head start on it with speed cameras/traffic light cameras etc, but there only so many of them. The wildest idea I can think of is using reverse camera on every car and recognizing the plate of the car which is tail gating you. Now, that's more interesting, but how much of a fleet you would need to track down a random car. Not something car manufacturers would do either, even with their love of telemetry.
      • Theophraustous 7y ago
        I don't recall the exact article, but I believe they "crowd source" the data via repo-men & tow trucks with automatic scanners. https://drndata.com/ https://drndata.com/
• GWSchulz 7y ago
  Offensive cyber weapons and their relationship with international arms control agreements, or the lack thereof. Old school, stateless arms brokers like the infamous Viktor Bout are being disrupted by digital as much as hotels and taxis. Code doesn’t need fake air transport documents or any mothballed Soviet aircraft at all. Oh, and pretty much all of IoT as we’ll come to know it. Regs are coming fast and hard for crypto.
  • ozim 7y ago
    I don't have source data now but in Germany it is forbidden share/sell working exploits codes. In Poland it was introduced not long ago that it is criminal offence to have any offensive cyber tools. I guess there is also quite some regulations on export of tools from US, just like encryption tools. So there are regulations, but they are unenforceable.
    • GWSchulz 7y ago
      Good point. Thx for this comment.
• xpe 7y ago
  We've seen many businesses attempt to exploit the lack of regulation at their peril. Ride-sharing companies come to mind as one example. I think it is more useful to think of regulations in the context of history and societal values. For example, an oilspill off the shore of California helped galvanize support for the clean air movement. Perhaps it is possible to hypergrow a business before regulation catches up. I think expecting such an outcome risks the long-term viability of a business, since ultimately its foundation rests upon trust in its brand. Companies (in a competitive environment at least) must earn goodwill from their customers to do well. I hope all entrepreneurs think about building businesses that can thrive even as regulations shift as society changes. In other words, build in some resilience into your business model. For example, you don't have to have a crystal ball to recognize when a business model over-relies on certain power imbalances. If you want to extract value from such power imbalances, don't be surprised when there is a backlash. For example, ride-sharing companies skirted with employee/contractor definitions. Flirting with this boundary is risky -- and naively hoping that one narrow interpretation is shared by society and lawmakers is, frankly, over-optimism. Realism combined with long-term thinking, I think, tends to lead to similar decisions as "strive to do the right thing".
  • wallawe 7y ago
    that's not the question
    • xpe 7y ago
      Some general responses to "that's not the question": There are different ways to respond to a question; some responses push back on the premise of the question. Some ask about the why behind a question. Both are valuable. A mix of thoughtful responses is the whole idea. There are plenty of places for more constrained styles of discussions, such as any of the topical Stack Exchange web sites. HN is built for open-ended discussion, best I can tell, based on some years of using it. I regularly see comments meander somewhat; discussion takes many forms. Anyhow, I'll try rewriting some of my arguments in a few different ways, in case it helps connect the dots: First, some people have a blanket view regarding regulated industries as 'lesser' opportunities (for starting a company or technical innovation in general). Such a generic belief may lead to the premature dismissal of opportunities. Second, what may appear to be "unregulated" at one point in time may not be a strong signal as to what happens going forward. Third, (and I didn't touch on this in my comment above) it might be useful to think of regulation as one signal that a market area is mature and predictable. (Think of this story: if you want to buy a house, which of the following two choices has more variability? House A in an incorporated city of 100,000 people with known zoning laws and a more-or-less predictable economic and political situation? Or house B at the edge of a sprawling city where an influx of people could lead to dozens of different outcomes? Choosing the best house depends on what outcomes you value and your risk tolerance. With regards to regulation, my point is to say that you can often use regulation to your advantage in choosing a business plan. Fourth, as a general principle, understanding how a range of possible situations affects your objectives is more useful than simply "avoiding regulation". Designing a new method to ingest nicotine that currently sidesteps regulation might work fine until one day it doesn't. You might want to know how regulators might respond to these sorts of situations. Hence my points about history and ethics. These ideas are all connected and relevant. I hope this is of some value to those who seek unregulated (for now) opportunities.
• contingencies 7y ago
  For some definition of completely unregulated: the open ocean / international waters, use of the radio spectrum from those locations, space, virtual reality, software in general (though that's changing), and in much of the world education and religion.
  • lgats 7y ago
    Are there any legal restrictions on broadcasting from international Waters?
    • epse 7y ago
      Nope, which is why a lot of pirate radios operated from just outside territorial waters.
• gotts 7y ago
  Lucid dreaming is still unregulated.
  • buboard 7y ago
    “Thou Shall Not Dream the following:”
• seibelj 7y ago
  Cryptocurrency and blockchain are regulated when a true corporation appears, but there exist many entities that are wholly anonymous and unregulated because they simply don’t exist outside of software and the blockchain. A prime example would be Bisq[0], which is a decentralized exchange that also has a profit-sharing token. If it were a company it would be violating trillions of regulatory laws, such as security and money laundering as its exchange token is obviously a security and it has no KYC, but there is simply nothing to shut down. The government likes to believe that they have a handle on cryptocurrency but the truth is there is a thriving and growing suite of tools that exist to explicitly be uncensorable. [0] https://bisq.network https://bisq.network
  • theamk 7y ago
    I think things like bisq would be pretty easy to shut down of the government wants to, because fiat transfer is always government controlled. Step 1: make a law declaring it illegal. Step 2: have undercover cop attempt an exchange, then arrest/fine the other party. Step 3: repeat until no one wants to exchange anymore. Sure, it wouldn’t be fully effective - the illegal drugs are still around, after all - but it will be annoying enough that all legitimate uses will disappear.
    • dwoozle 7y ago
      Yeah, many cryptographers forget about the XKCD “hit him with this $5 wrench” approach that governments can take.
    • adim86 7y ago
      Wouldn't this approach fail if there becomes a mainstream cryptocurrency, let's say Libra for lack of a better example. Where you can keep converting and switching wallets (laundering) or just buy something that has no ties to you and it would be hard to track? Like you rightly pointed out, the govt control over fiat, but that control is continually being threatened every day
      • theamk 7y ago
• janee 7y ago
  Digging holes. It'll depend where you do it but I think most regulative entities don't have explicit regulations on size or direction of excavations. Same would probably go for heaping all that earth on a mound, I doubt a lot of places will have explicit building regulations on an earth mound
  • dfcowell 7y ago
    You might be surprised. There are many municipal regulations around the location and size of excavations, even on privately-owned land. Primarily to avoid damaging any pre-existing underground infrastructure.
    • FroshKiller 7y ago
      Most of the ground on this planet isn’t municipal.
  • adrianN 7y ago
    As far as I know, moving more than three cubic meters of soil requires a permit in Germany. Once you go too deep you also require a permit from the local mining authority. Not to mention the Balrogs you might wake.
    • caseysoftware 7y ago
      Do the Balrogs issue permits to wake them? How do you prove you submitted the permit - and got approval - before you wake them? Sounds like you're playing with fire.
      • z3phyr 7y ago
        You do not directly get a permit from the Balrogs. Contact your local evil Maia authority.
      • schoen 7y ago
        It's best to make sure you have a servant of the Secret Fire with you at all times.
• bredren 7y ago
  Is this a question of whether some law is on the books or is it a combination of regulation and enforcement? For example, there are regulations in most states about ebikes, their motor capability and whether they have throttle. But these are also very regularly entirely unenforced (nyc not withstanding) It seems often interesting phenomena may have _some_ regulation but it is not remotely enforced. In my mind this meets the threshold of cool unregulated stuff.
  • xtiansimon 7y ago
    Interesting—‘selective enforcement’ [1] or what I’ve heard described as ‘will to enforce the law’. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_enforcement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_enforcement
    • bredren 7y ago
      Yes, the status of marijuana in many states leads to selective enforcement which is often biased against minorities. [1] https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2019/06/26/report-despite-de-emphasis-fayetteville-cops-have-increased-marijuana-enforcement-with-heavier-impact-on-minorities https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2019/06/26/report-despite...
• ronyfadel 7y ago
  I believe meditation is not regulated? Can one advertise the healing powers of their flavor of meditation willy nilly? Same goes for some forms of alternative medicine, such as crystal and Reiki healing (I think)
  • colordrops 7y ago
    Is exercise regulated? Seems like a similar category of activity.
    • ronyfadel 7y ago
      I guess you could add that to the list of unregulated “stuff”
  • everlastingfan 7y ago
    Some of these practices are forbidden by religious law, so unless you're not in touch with anyone religious it will be socially (passive-aggressively) regulated.
• blhack 7y ago
  I just wanted to say that I love this post. There is a huge space around """fitness""" devices that are running around the FDA regulatory process. I think there is going to be a huge health revolution by making everybody take their weight, glucose, blood pressure, sleep statistics, and heart rate statistics every day and feed them into an AI. The major techincal step forward that is happening is microneedles that can draw out interstitial fluid. The patient doesn't feel it, and you can do things like constant glucose monitoring, and constant cortisol monitoring (which is huge) completely uninvasively. It's going to be amazing. The breakthrough device is going to be a watch that can sense glucose and cortisol all the time. A while ago there was some PG post about wanting a tricorder, well it's coming, and it's going to look like a watch. Sidenote: if anybody reading this is working in any of the labs working with these microneedles, please contact me, I would love to collaborate with you.
  • chronial 7y ago
    > I think there is going to be a huge health revolution ... How would any of what you listed help against cancer, aging and the obesity crisis?
    • Madmallard 7y ago
      It won't. Simple as that. Our environment, food, and meds are the primary instigators in biological deregulation.
      • James_Henry 7y ago
        And you can potentially track that biological deregulation and measure the effectiveness of interventions and the harm of certain environments/habits through the use of monitoring. It's not as simple as you state.
        • Madmallard 7y ago
          changes in vital signs will only happen generally during an acute process
• jaxn 7y ago
  Persuasion and behavior modification. Particularly in regards to labor regulations.
  • skydiver16 7y ago
    In Italy we have the "circumvention of incapable" norm against that. But your argument is about political damages in general.
• louisharwood 7y ago
  Paramotors are deregulated in the U.K. (and US I believe). It’s one of the very few forms of flight where a license isn’t required. You have to adhere to air law (like flying close to certain objects) but there are no licenses required to fly. You’d be stupid to do it but you could buy a machine on eBay and start flying (or try to at least)
  • cweagans 7y ago
    I wouldn't say they're "deregulated" in the US. There are still a number of rules that pilots have to comply with (for instance, no commercial use, limited fuel capacity, limited areas where flight is allowed, etc). Sure, a license is not required, but the US will find a way to complicate things with red tape even if a license isn't required.
    • Stevvo 7y ago
      "Limited areas where flight is allowed" is actually very permissive; in class G airspace you could go anywhere. If you take a VHF radio and ADS-B out transponder with you and have done the radio exam from the PPL, in theory you could call up the Tower at a class B/C/D Airport and ask to land. At deltas they might actually let you.
  • wscott 7y ago
    I read 'perambulators' and was very confused for a while.
  • bredren 7y ago
    I saw this guy flying one of these beyond the trash fence out at black rock. Just skimming along the ground then heading back up into the air. Looked like a lot of fun.
  • Stevvo 7y ago
    Watching some videos of people flying these things on YouTube, it's almost like they want the aviation agencies to crack down on them. I've seen; low level acrobatics, low flight over people, guys taking off with no training and no instruction. Reckless airmanship leads to deaths, but the paramotorists often blame it on the equipment, because without any agency investigating, there is only speculation. There is an electric paramotor, with four drone like blades. That thing looks awesome; instead of the sounds and vibration of a 2-stroke engine strapped to your back, it's silent when you let off the throttle to glide. And no worries about will that lawnmower start up again.
• quickthrower2 7y ago
  Javascript!!! Simple AC transformers. (ba boom cha!) IT process frameworks. Make a new one up! We have Scrum, ITIL, TOGAF etc. for some inspiration.
  • vmurthy 7y ago
    > IT process frameworks. Make a new one up! We have Scrum, ITIL, TOGAF etc. for some inspiration. Totally agree. As unregulated as these are, they do have a chicken-and-egg problem. I can come up with a totally new framework/certification but getting people to accept it is going to be very difficult.
  • 29athrowaway 7y ago
    You can become a Certified ScrumMaster (tm) in 16 hours, after getting a score of 36/50 in a 1 hour exam which you can take unlimited times. No education level required. No high-school? No problem. Become a CSM today... for 2 years. Scrum = pyramid scheme
    • vmurthy 7y ago
      One of the very few certifications that count has to be from Offensive Security [1]. Back in the day when I was considering a career in InfoSec, this was a huge motivation to learn new things. [1] https://www.offensive-security.com https://www.offensive-security.com
    • thaumasiotes 7y ago
      Why would an education level be required?
• miek 7y ago
  I don't particularly find these cool but you may. A) Nootropics & performance enhancing/herbal supplements B) (regulation is attemped but limited on) Research Chemicals aka designer drugs These are still fairly "wild west" but will not always be. I had a friend who manufactured herbal supplements and made a killing before selling his business and retiring. His factory was... interesting.
  • Intermernet 7y ago
    "made a killing" is an unfortunate choice of phrase in this instance.
  • t0ughcritic 7y ago
    Would love to know more not sure if you can share
• unscrupulous_sw 7y ago
  Data laundering This means crawling or using illegally obtained datasets then processing it with "machine learning" until you have enough plausible deniability to use it. This could be used for bypassing copyrights. For example you can remix stock photos you don't want to pay for. You can crawl a competitor's dating network to build similar looking fake profiles. You can steal writings and automatically paraphrase it. You can steal algorithms by cloning their inputs/outputs. You can generate new porn by swapping faces and background. An illegal dataset can also be used as a hidden input to improve your core product. For example you can buy up all stolen databases and logs and correlate the users. This can then be used for better ad targeting using data that isn't even available to google and facebook.
  • IshKebab 7y ago
    Nice name for it.
  • bredren 7y ago
    Are there any public examples of this?
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  • phaus 7y ago
    If its illegal I'd consider that highly regulated. I never considered that this was even a thing though so interesting post.
  • buboard 7y ago
    What you re describing sounds like taking photos on the street. I hope thats never regulated
  • petercooper 7y ago
    One area I've heard of this being used is when companies buy lists of email addresses of people in certain industries (which is usually not illegal per se) and then upload them to Facebook's advertising platform to do targeting (rather than spamming them directly).
• TurtlesAllWay 7y ago
  Not cool, its still widely permitted to burn stuff in your fireplace or garden in most parts of the world. Gathering wood in the forest or ordering a truckload of coal or taking your trash to burn for the annoyance of everyone else.
  • mindcrime 7y ago
    Can't speak to the rest of the world, but in the US, there are plenty of places where burning stuff in your fireplace (or wood burning stove[1]) or in your yard/garden is regulated. Regulations range from what you can burn, to when you can do it, to where you can do it (example: outside fires not permitted within 50 feet of a building, or something along those lines). Sometimes there are outright bans on all outside burning during certain periods of time, when - due to weather conditions - there is a heightened risk of wildfires. [1]: https://www.epa.gov/burnwise/ordinances-and-regulations-wood-burning-appliances https://www.epa.gov/burnwise/ordinances-and-regulations-wood...
  • Rarok 7y ago
    In my country there are many restrictions even to do a barbecue in the summer because you could cause a forest fire. That and also you can't do fire in a city because urban fires are even worse that forest ones. And about gathering wood in the forest, if you aren't the owner of the forest that is stealing.
• mister_hn 7y ago
  E-Scooter, car sharing and bike sharing are still not regulated everywhere
  • snypox 7y ago
    Can confirm. I live in Hungary and I can still ride my scooter even on the road.
  • craig 7y ago
    In London they are both illegal to ride on the pavement and the road, so essentially illegal. But it's completely unenforced. I assume it will be deregulated in the next couple years.
• behnamoh 7y ago
  Not sure if they fall in the e-bike category, but "electric scooters and hover boards."
• bjourne 7y ago
  tDCS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZyT_TiPSHw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZyT_TiPSHw Make the device look cool and you could sell it to millions of gullible chess players and exam-taking students around the world.
• TurtlesAllWay 7y ago
  Putting up ads on your house or property is widely permitted, for the annoyance of everyone passing by.
• TheChetan 7y ago
  What about things like credit card rewards? Lots of companies just keep competing by giving better offers and cashbacks etc. Also another thing is funding for startups. Smaller companies don't stand a chance against giants like Amazon because of the way they crush startups or just acquire them.
• dehrmann 7y ago
  Medium to high-power lasers. Every part of a firearm that's not the receiver. More military hardware than you'd think. Indian reservations. Bir Tawil.
  • Rarok 7y ago
    Even consumer grade laser are regulated, they have legal limit in the power they can have. What you are going to use... It's completely regulated.
• skydiver16 7y ago
  Political damages.
• dehrmann 7y ago
  Software engineering.
• otabdeveloper2 7y ago
  C++ programming.
  • nurettin 7y ago
    It is so effective, it should be illegal.
• jonas_kgomo 7y ago
  1. General compute: this will become a big deal as quantum supremacy approaches, with more ability to compute there will be a general consensus in how to deal with individuals with incredible computing power. Since, it is very clear how that can be weaponized. 2. Consequently, companies like Amazon as challenged by Andrew Yang should be regulated upon inspecting their earnings. This might be more common in the future.
  • The_rationalist 7y ago
    It's trivial to have quantum proof cryptography and is already possible today. I don't really know what you're talking about.
• iliketosleep 7y ago
  As far as I'm aware, natural medicines are still largely unregulated.
• jakobdabo 7y ago
  Programming and general computing, it's still possible to write and run any code in your PC, but big companies will be trying to control it. For example the DRM shenanigans in the GPU, or, when you can't write code for your smartphone unless you have permission from its parent company, and even with permission, you still can't write "any" arbitrary code - only some parts of the system are available to you. I'm aware of the exploits and jailbreaks, but those will not be always available.
  • i0nutzb 7y ago
    Just a small note: You _can_ write any code on your smartphone and write any kind of code. You can't distribute in _their_ stores.
• gniv 7y ago
  Robots. I just realized: Why aren't remote controlled robots more of a thing? Like surgeons who can do remote surgery, but for everyday tasks in a remote location. Vacuuming, doing laundry (because the tenant is elderly etc). I guess it's just too expensive still.
  • gniv 7y ago
    Replying to myself, since I find the idea of a cleaning person working from home amusing. I can imagine renting the robot from Home Depot, then hiring a third party to operate it.
• Russelfuture 7y ago
  Really interesting post. My suggestion: Hacking the stock market with AI's, algos, and current results from neural-science research, and large, accurate historical datasets and analytic models. There are lots of regs that mandate "prudent man" behaviour for agents and brokers, and myriad regs around capital required to execute or margin trades - but the domain of research-gathering prior to trade execution - is essentially wide open for "outsiders". Company officers face restrictions on when they can buy or sell company stock - but non-insiders have wide latitude, and in most cases are free to make buy/sell decisions whenever, and at any rate they wish to pay for. You are free to invest and speculate - and lose - your own money. And the neural-science on this is interesting. Most wealthy speculators in commodity markets, mostly lose. Most gamblers at casinos mostly lose. If you have wealth, you are able to give it away (or piss it away), without restriction, unless your family members can get you declared "mentally not competent". Also, environments where very complex regulations exist, allow and encourage "regulatory arbitrage" - structures can be created which take advantage of various regime differences. But the fact remains, few regulations exist which can effectively prevent someone giving away, or destroying their own wealth. (I recall a fellow in Sweden, who was ordered by a divorce court to turn over half his wealth to a former wife. He withdrew over $100,000 in life savings in cash, and carefully burned it all.) People face few restrictions in disposing of wealth. Charities exploit this fact relentlessly. Also, there are few restrictions on attending school, or gaining education - except in truly horrible societies, such as religiously deluded cultures, which for example, prevent women from gaining education to maintain breeding stock. But civilized societies encourage education, and often subsidize it. The existence of unlocked libraries (in ancient times, they were almost always locked), and our western-cultural concept of freely available science information, remains the greatest unregulated open space. It is also where the greatest opportunity resides. Western culture is unique, in that it "deregulated" knowledge acquisition, and scientific inquiry in the early 1600's. And there remains a risk of "re-regulation" of science inquiry. Imagine a world run by book-burning god-believers. You don't have to imagine. You can study the historical examples. Quite possible that science knowledge may be restricted and access regulated in the future. But for now, gaining knowledge, using that knowledge to get rich, and then giving away the wealth accumulated, remains an essentially unregulated activity.
• HiddenWorld 7y ago
  Game of thrones Tyrion Lannister https://youtu.be/NjCBSrSuXms https://youtu.be/NjCBSrSuXms
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• ch3ckmat3 7y ago
  "Lawyers" everywhere.
• kemonocode 7y ago
  Nice try, government. We're not giving you any more ideas. To actually answer the question: I'm glad that ad-blocking remains unregulated for the most part. I'm scared that copyright owners could start making a case that the ads are an integral part of any given content (licensed to them at the very least if they aren't first-party ads) and removing them counts as copyright infringement.
  • Breza 7y ago
    Instead, publishers seem increasingly interested in native ads and referral links since you can't block them.
• 1873leeeeek 7y ago
  u should post it on Blind bro！
• VadimBauer 7y ago
  Smart things, like smart plugs, bulbs, locks or everything that is remotely controllable and manageable via App or Cloud. It is not regulated what happens in the case that the vendor isn't able or willing to support those devices anymore. Keeping Apps up to date and new apps if new Mobile OSes arise or keep the light on in general. Right now it all depends on the goodwill of the vendor. If the provider decides to not support anymore for whatever reason you have a smart brick!
• d-sc 7y ago
  I used to work in the physics industry (cryogenics specifically). There was/is practically zero regulation at the scale we were at & lots of room for innovation. The market is pretty small though so you have to be at a company that is good at selling to academia.
• gwbas1c 7y ago
  (Gosh, I saw this post a few days ago and I can't stop thinking about it.) Why? Regulations exist for a reason. Complaining about regulations is like complaining that eating bacon 3 times a day isn't healthy. (Or, to put it another way, the people who complain about regulations are basically complaining that they can't screw people over. No sympathy here!) Furthermore, this kind of thread implies that you're trying to do something unethical. So what is it that you're really trying to do?
  • movecorp 7y ago
    Regulations exist for many reasons, and it's more often due to either illogical, emotional demands of a voter base or a powerful incumbent using regulation to prevent competition, than it is any idealized notion of justice or safety. I'll venture you're in a stable, post-industrial democracy such that you can treat regulations as having inherent justness or rightness. Imagine if the question had been asked by someone explicitly not in such a place, and was instead asked as "I live in northern Afganistan, what stuff won't get me in trouble with the sharia law interpretation of the regional warlords?" or "I live in North Korea, what stuff won't get negative attention from the party officials?". Would you say that every regulation in North Korea or in ISIS-controlled territories are about stopping people from "screwing people over"? Regulations aren't inherently good or bad, it's just any rule enforced with the threat of government violence for non-compliance.
  • buboard 7y ago
    Regulations are not laws of nature, they are bendable and enforce the will of some humans on other humans. I think u are confusing the two
  • newman8r 7y ago
    New and interesting things often start out completely unregulated. As people start to understand the disruptive potential, regulations will eventually emerge. It's a way to identify early opportunities, nothing more. The thought of specifically seeking out unethical opportunities is actually kind of funny though.