8 ms·

Someone needs to compile a list of all this fringe tech that I see popping up in my feeds, almost daily now. I know there are techpress blogs that pump out arti

Someone needs to compile a list of all this fringe tech that I see popping up in my feeds, almost daily now. I know there are techpress blogs that pump out articles like this, but there doesn't seem to be an authoritative compendium of such tech anywhere on the net. I could curate this by hand with 3 hours of free time and some Red Bull I suppose. The reason I want this is because we seem to be swimming in innovation, but nobody to aggregate and make sense of it all, and `join-the-dots` of all this tech so we can make even bigger leaps with it. Also: A lot of these articles are great, but too quickly shoved into people's bookmarks and forgotten about, without any real action taken on them. Put simply: we are addicted to innovation, but with little action taken on this innovation!!

cosmodisk 5y ago
Such a good idea! There's so much stuff being invented, some of it outright insane and yet it's almost impossible to find anything, unless you are very knowledgeable in a particular field. For instance,I've been subscribing to materialdistrict.com for years and some materials they showcase are simply mind boggling.
Xplune13 5y ago
I agree. Such a compendium would be great and more so if that would be the only place where we can get the information about inventions and innovations.
loonster 5y ago
Custom RSS News feed?
FredPret 5y ago
Speaking of joining the dots, did you know that both the train and steam power (albeit a toy version of it) were invented in ancient Egypt? Think what could have been had we joined those two dots in 2000BC instead of 17-1800 AD. I should note that their train was of course pulled by slaves and not a locomotive.
- yetihehe 5y ago
  They didn't have one important dot: cheap good steel or other durable materials. Steel for them was more expensive and hard to get than titanium now.
  - VBprogrammer 5y ago
    This reminds me of the 2.8kg pyramid which sits atop the Washington Monument. At the time it was cast, it was the largest single casting of an exotic metal which cost more than silver, known to you and I as Aluminium.
    - FredPret 5y ago
      I think Napoleon had a set of aluminium cutlery... to show off his extreme wealth.
- quickthrowman 5y ago
  You need machine tools capable of tight tolerances and quality metals/alloys to make useable (for work) steam engines. The Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Abbasid, Persians, Europeans, etc all lacked these, thus no usable steam engines in antiquity/Middle Ages. Usable engines followed consistent quality metal production and machine tools pretty closely, it’s not like older people were just stupid, they didn’t have the technology necessary to create steam engines capable of real work. It’s like asking “Why wasn’t there a chess engine as good as stockfish for the PDP-11?” It simply wasn’t possible with the technology in 1970.
  - FredPret 5y ago
    Good point regarding tooling, metal, and tolerances. But in this hypothetical timeline they would’ve hand-made the first leaky and inefficient engine if someone with some clout had the idea for a piston back then. These people didn’t blink at moving mountains to build burial crypts, so it’s conceivable that they might’ve experimented with steam if that notion struck, say, the pharaoh.
bbaumgar 5y ago
Would $99 + gratitude be enough to motivate you to take that time? I got serious value out of this compendium [0] and have been looking for more. Contact info is in my profile if interested. [0] https://elidourado.com/blog/notes-on-technology-2020s/ https://elidourado.com/blog/notes-on-technology-2020s/
sandworm101 5y ago
This is nothing new. You are just now hearing more about it because of how journalism is being done online. There have always been lots of revolutionary things happening in labs. They are rarely ever practical, or if they are it will take decades to bring to market. How many dozens of new battery techs are announced as being "better than lithium ion" only to disappear once everyone realized how impractical they are. Such announcements were once confined to scientific journals and trade mags. Now the great algorithm makes them daily news bulletins right beside the Kardashian latest puppy video.
- snitch182 5y ago
  oh yes, there was a sort of 3d memory lasered into scotch tape(german tesa) rolls. They just could not make it durable.
  - EvanAnderson 5y ago
    I researched this a few weeks ago and commented here[1]. I got a reply from someone with firsthand knowledge of the work. I love HN for that kind of stuff! [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26040009 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26040009
- malloryerik 5y ago
  Your point clearly has merit in many cases, but paint seems almost the epitome of practicality. Assuming that it could be mass producible at a price similar to premium house paints I can't see the problem in bringing this to market. And from the article: > In the US, New York has recently coated more than 10 million sq ft of rooftops white. The state of California has already updated building codes to promote cool roofs.
  - obmelvin 5y ago
    > Assuming that it could be mass producible at a price similar to premium house paints I can't see the problem in bringing this to market. Unfortunately, that's the whole point of this little discussion, right? GP is saying how many things like this, yes, seem like they have merit, but at the end of the day can't be produced practically outside of a lab.
fidesomnes 5y ago
Scientific American Magazine. You're welcome.
duxup 5y ago
I think ultimately what you want is some measure of say it's practicality / viability to really make change? I think the catch is that if you really knew that... you'd be out making an insane amount of money as you'd be able to pick and choose winners / make them work ;) I'm reminded of the old TV series "Connections" where lots of individual innovations are cobbled together over surprisingly long periods of time to really have an impact. Mostly... it seemed like a combo of inspiration and happenstance when someone strung them together.
- dmoo 5y ago
  For those that haven’t seen it I would highly recommend it. https://youtu.be/XetplHcM7aQ https://youtu.be/XetplHcM7aQ
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Red_Leaves_Flyy 5y ago
I think part of they problem is that whoever invented this paint is going to want a massive premium for its sale. So it'll get some niche industry use until the patent expires and people start painting their desert roofs with it, or whatever else. Apply to this virtually every technical innovation that is iterative. Fundamental breakthroughs allow for a shakeup of the incumbents, iterative ones don't, due to the archaic IP laws that only serve to stifle innovation. I think a better solution would be arbitrated profit sharing as a percentage of the cost of the product proportional to the value added with no requirement for the consent of the rights owner. Decay the percentage to 0 over the same timespan as current patents.
- bwestergard 5y ago
  This is a very insightful comment. Perhaps you are aware, but some economists have designed mechanisms to "split the difference" in a manner similar to what you describe: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2744810 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2744810
  - Red_Leaves_Flyy 5y ago
    I was not aware, though I am not the least bit surprised to discover that economists have explored this before I tapped it out. Thanks for the link!
- dismalpedigree 5y ago
  I’m pretty sure this is developed and patented by Purdue University (or perhaps a partnership). They don’t really try to extract extreme fees for usage.
- jokethrowaway 5y ago
  Or get rid of patents entirely and let innovation and copying happen freely. I already ditched all my physical startup ideas because China could clone any of them in half a day and I think it's fair: they have superior / more efficient manufacturing available. Similarly I don't see why discovering something should force everyone else on the planet to give you money. In this particular case, thought, the article claims they won't be patent trolls and this paint should be cheaply available.
thinkingkong 5y ago
What sources are you using for fringe tech that you would compile from? Even a list would go a long way to expanding mine and other peoples concepts of innovation.
divbzero 5y ago
Wikipedia’s “List of emerging technologies” [1] provides a glimpse of the breadth of our ongoing innovations. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emerging_technologies https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emerging_technologie...
- cyberlab 5y ago
  Thanks for the share. Great list that.
brentjanderson 5y ago
The field you're looking for is called "tech transfer" - many universities have technology transfer offices that help research connect from a lab to industry, usually enriching researchers through the sale of patents or consulting contracts. I don't know of any compendium on the web, but if someone were looking to get started there is a field to dig into where people do this kind of work full time. It's essentially a two-sided market making process of curating useful innovations and building up a sales function to close deals.
jamifsud 5y ago
Completely agree. I'm working on something to solve this problem and I'd love chat more about your thoughts on this. Contact info in profile if you're interested!
pjungwir 5y ago
In The Chip, T. R. Reid talks about how Kilby and Noyce (inventors of the integrated circuit) spent time reading through new patent applications every day/week. As programmers, we spend a lot of time reading blog posts, but it's possible to take it further than that. For a couple years I attended a database reading group every Friday at a local university, where each week we would discuss a paper someone was interested in. You may also have alumni access to interesting journals. Or A Morning Paper[0] is a more Readers Digest approach. It takes some intentional work, but it's fun and you learn a lot. [0] https://blog.acolyer.org/ https://blog.acolyer.org/
surfpel 5y ago
www.sciencedaily.com is what you’re looking for. This story, like most others, was published there the same day the research came out: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201021112358.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201021112358.h... And they have an absurd number RSS feeds for every topic too: https://www.sciencedaily.com/newsfeeds.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/newsfeeds.htm
- aaroninsf 5y ago
  I would pay for an Axios-like native app which repackages science daily for me in a very pleasant readable way.
macspoofing 5y ago
>The reason I want this is because we seem to be swimming in innovation, but nobody to aggregate and make sense of it all, and `join-the-dots` of all this tech so we can make even bigger leaps with it. There is. It's called "the market". Each one of those innovative ideas gets tested by their inventors and backers against real world use-cases. Nothing validates an idea or innovation more than someone writing a check to buy it.
- swsieber 5y ago
  > Each one of those innovative ideas On their own though, right? That's not what was being asked. They wanted someway to track things that would work really well together and bring bigger benefits than things could on their own.
  - macspoofing 5y ago
    >On their own though, right? Yeah. When I ran a startup, you look for customers, but you also look at partnerships all the time to complement whatever you're doing. Sometimes the partnership finds you, and sometimes you find the partnership. You attend tradeshows and conferences. Sometimes your customers will point you at another company you should work with. That's all part of the market. People behind innovative technologies (inventors, and investors) are constantly looking to find ways for their tech to gain traction. >They wanted someway to track things that would work really well together and bring bigger benefits than things could on their own. OP is advocating for a top-down system where they can get a list of innovative technologies and just put them together like lego. It doesn't work that way. It's why a top-down command economy with a central authority doesn't work. There's a lot of trial and error (and failure) that happens at the bottom level and from the top, you just don't know what ultimately is worth expanding effort on and what is a waste of time. Any decision you make about what should go with what is going to be wrong. That's why the market is so powerful for innovation.
bsanr2 5y ago
The Two Minute Papers YouTube channel covers new research related to (visual) simulation and AI. It's like a weekly mini-Siggraph. https://youtube.com/c/K%C3%A1rolyZsolnai https://youtube.com/c/K%C3%A1rolyZsolnai
simplecto 5y ago
hey @cyberlab, how can I get in touch with you? I've got something that might be a fit to your 3-hour challenge. If you see this then you can reach me (in profile)
RichardHeart 5y ago
Perhaps this list works? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emerging_technologies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emerging_technologies

cosmodisk 5y ago

Such a good idea! There's so much stuff being invented, some of it outright insane and yet it's almost impossible to find anything, unless you are very knowledgeable in a particular field. For instance,I've been subscribing to materialdistrict.com for years and some materials they showcase are simply mind boggling.

Xplune13 5y ago

I agree. Such a compendium would be great and more so if that would be the only place where we can get the information about inventions and innovations.

loonster 5y ago

Custom RSS News feed?

FredPret 5y ago

Speaking of joining the dots, did you know that both the train and steam power (albeit a toy version of it) were invented in ancient Egypt? Think what could have been had we joined those two dots in 2000BC instead of 17-1800 AD. I should note that their train was of course pulled by slaves and not a locomotive.

yetihehe 5y ago
They didn't have one important dot: cheap good steel or other durable materials. Steel for them was more expensive and hard to get than titanium now.
- VBprogrammer 5y ago
  This reminds me of the 2.8kg pyramid which sits atop the Washington Monument. At the time it was cast, it was the largest single casting of an exotic metal which cost more than silver, known to you and I as Aluminium.
  - FredPret 5y ago
    I think Napoleon had a set of aluminium cutlery... to show off his extreme wealth.
quickthrowman 5y ago
You need machine tools capable of tight tolerances and quality metals/alloys to make useable (for work) steam engines. The Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Abbasid, Persians, Europeans, etc all lacked these, thus no usable steam engines in antiquity/Middle Ages. Usable engines followed consistent quality metal production and machine tools pretty closely, it’s not like older people were just stupid, they didn’t have the technology necessary to create steam engines capable of real work. It’s like asking “Why wasn’t there a chess engine as good as stockfish for the PDP-11?” It simply wasn’t possible with the technology in 1970.
- FredPret 5y ago
  Good point regarding tooling, metal, and tolerances. But in this hypothetical timeline they would’ve hand-made the first leaky and inefficient engine if someone with some clout had the idea for a piston back then. These people didn’t blink at moving mountains to build burial crypts, so it’s conceivable that they might’ve experimented with steam if that notion struck, say, the pharaoh.

bbaumgar 5y ago

Would $99 + gratitude be enough to motivate you to take that time? I got serious value out of this compendium [0] and have been looking for more. Contact info is in my profile if interested. [0] https://elidourado.com/blog/notes-on-technology-2020s/ https://elidourado.com/blog/notes-on-technology-2020s/

sandworm101 5y ago

This is nothing new. You are just now hearing more about it because of how journalism is being done online. There have always been lots of revolutionary things happening in labs. They are rarely ever practical, or if they are it will take decades to bring to market. How many dozens of new battery techs are announced as being "better than lithium ion" only to disappear once everyone realized how impractical they are. Such announcements were once confined to scientific journals and trade mags. Now the great algorithm makes them daily news bulletins right beside the Kardashian latest puppy video.

snitch182 5y ago
oh yes, there was a sort of 3d memory lasered into scotch tape(german tesa) rolls. They just could not make it durable.
- EvanAnderson 5y ago
  I researched this a few weeks ago and commented here[1]. I got a reply from someone with firsthand knowledge of the work. I love HN for that kind of stuff! [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26040009 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26040009
malloryerik 5y ago
Your point clearly has merit in many cases, but paint seems almost the epitome of practicality. Assuming that it could be mass producible at a price similar to premium house paints I can't see the problem in bringing this to market. And from the article: > In the US, New York has recently coated more than 10 million sq ft of rooftops white. The state of California has already updated building codes to promote cool roofs.
- obmelvin 5y ago
  > Assuming that it could be mass producible at a price similar to premium house paints I can't see the problem in bringing this to market. Unfortunately, that's the whole point of this little discussion, right? GP is saying how many things like this, yes, seem like they have merit, but at the end of the day can't be produced practically outside of a lab.

fidesomnes 5y ago

Scientific American Magazine. You're welcome.

duxup 5y ago

I think ultimately what you want is some measure of say it's practicality / viability to really make change? I think the catch is that if you really knew that... you'd be out making an insane amount of money as you'd be able to pick and choose winners / make them work ;) I'm reminded of the old TV series "Connections" where lots of individual innovations are cobbled together over surprisingly long periods of time to really have an impact. Mostly... it seemed like a combo of inspiration and happenstance when someone strung them together.

dmoo 5y ago
For those that haven’t seen it I would highly recommend it. https://youtu.be/XetplHcM7aQ https://youtu.be/XetplHcM7aQ

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Red_Leaves_Flyy 5y ago

I think part of they problem is that whoever invented this paint is going to want a massive premium for its sale. So it'll get some niche industry use until the patent expires and people start painting their desert roofs with it, or whatever else. Apply to this virtually every technical innovation that is iterative. Fundamental breakthroughs allow for a shakeup of the incumbents, iterative ones don't, due to the archaic IP laws that only serve to stifle innovation. I think a better solution would be arbitrated profit sharing as a percentage of the cost of the product proportional to the value added with no requirement for the consent of the rights owner. Decay the percentage to 0 over the same timespan as current patents.

bwestergard 5y ago
This is a very insightful comment. Perhaps you are aware, but some economists have designed mechanisms to "split the difference" in a manner similar to what you describe: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2744810 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2744810
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 5y ago
  I was not aware, though I am not the least bit surprised to discover that economists have explored this before I tapped it out. Thanks for the link!
dismalpedigree 5y ago
I’m pretty sure this is developed and patented by Purdue University (or perhaps a partnership). They don’t really try to extract extreme fees for usage.
jokethrowaway 5y ago
Or get rid of patents entirely and let innovation and copying happen freely. I already ditched all my physical startup ideas because China could clone any of them in half a day and I think it's fair: they have superior / more efficient manufacturing available. Similarly I don't see why discovering something should force everyone else on the planet to give you money. In this particular case, thought, the article claims they won't be patent trolls and this paint should be cheaply available.

thinkingkong 5y ago

What sources are you using for fringe tech that you would compile from? Even a list would go a long way to expanding mine and other peoples concepts of innovation.

divbzero 5y ago

Wikipedia’s “List of emerging technologies” [1] provides a glimpse of the breadth of our ongoing innovations. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emerging_technologies https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emerging_technologie...

cyberlab 5y ago
Thanks for the share. Great list that.

brentjanderson 5y ago

The field you're looking for is called "tech transfer" - many universities have technology transfer offices that help research connect from a lab to industry, usually enriching researchers through the sale of patents or consulting contracts. I don't know of any compendium on the web, but if someone were looking to get started there is a field to dig into where people do this kind of work full time. It's essentially a two-sided market making process of curating useful innovations and building up a sales function to close deals.

jamifsud 5y ago

Completely agree. I'm working on something to solve this problem and I'd love chat more about your thoughts on this. Contact info in profile if you're interested!

pjungwir 5y ago

In The Chip, T. R. Reid talks about how Kilby and Noyce (inventors of the integrated circuit) spent time reading through new patent applications every day/week. As programmers, we spend a lot of time reading blog posts, but it's possible to take it further than that. For a couple years I attended a database reading group every Friday at a local university, where each week we would discuss a paper someone was interested in. You may also have alumni access to interesting journals. Or A Morning Paper[0] is a more Readers Digest approach. It takes some intentional work, but it's fun and you learn a lot. [0] https://blog.acolyer.org/ https://blog.acolyer.org/

surfpel 5y ago

www.sciencedaily.com is what you’re looking for. This story, like most others, was published there the same day the research came out: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201021112358.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201021112358.h... And they have an absurd number RSS feeds for every topic too: https://www.sciencedaily.com/newsfeeds.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/newsfeeds.htm

aaroninsf 5y ago
I would pay for an Axios-like native app which repackages science daily for me in a very pleasant readable way.

macspoofing 5y ago

>The reason I want this is because we seem to be swimming in innovation, but nobody to aggregate and make sense of it all, and `join-the-dots` of all this tech so we can make even bigger leaps with it. There is. It's called "the market". Each one of those innovative ideas gets tested by their inventors and backers against real world use-cases. Nothing validates an idea or innovation more than someone writing a check to buy it.

swsieber 5y ago
> Each one of those innovative ideas On their own though, right? That's not what was being asked. They wanted someway to track things that would work really well together and bring bigger benefits than things could on their own.
- macspoofing 5y ago
  >On their own though, right? Yeah. When I ran a startup, you look for customers, but you also look at partnerships all the time to complement whatever you're doing. Sometimes the partnership finds you, and sometimes you find the partnership. You attend tradeshows and conferences. Sometimes your customers will point you at another company you should work with. That's all part of the market. People behind innovative technologies (inventors, and investors) are constantly looking to find ways for their tech to gain traction. >They wanted someway to track things that would work really well together and bring bigger benefits than things could on their own. OP is advocating for a top-down system where they can get a list of innovative technologies and just put them together like lego. It doesn't work that way. It's why a top-down command economy with a central authority doesn't work. There's a lot of trial and error (and failure) that happens at the bottom level and from the top, you just don't know what ultimately is worth expanding effort on and what is a waste of time. Any decision you make about what should go with what is going to be wrong. That's why the market is so powerful for innovation.

bsanr2 5y ago

The Two Minute Papers YouTube channel covers new research related to (visual) simulation and AI. It's like a weekly mini-Siggraph. https://youtube.com/c/K%C3%A1rolyZsolnai https://youtube.com/c/K%C3%A1rolyZsolnai

simplecto 5y ago

hey @cyberlab, how can I get in touch with you? I've got something that might be a fit to your 3-hour challenge. If you see this then you can reach me (in profile)

RichardHeart 5y ago

Perhaps this list works? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emerging_technologies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emerging_technologies