11 ms·

Ask HN: Tech that seems to have vanished?

• jollyllama 3y ago
  Hydrogen fuel cells
  • paulddraper 3y ago
    Those are just as present/viable as they ever were. The hypothesis was that they'd advance tho.
  • _hypx 3y ago
    Hydrogen fuel cells are in a midst of a revolution. This is like dismissing photovoltaics in the mid-2000s.
    • jollyllama 3y ago
      I have no doubts of this, but I think it's fair to say they have vanished from public view in comparison to battery tech.
• GlenTheMachine 3y ago
  Generally, a technology has to have a commercial market that scales in order to be pursued, much less to be widely and cheaply available. It's often the case that a number of technologies have to converge to make a compelling product, and then all of them become commercially available at basically the same time. Firearms, for instance, required both the ability to cast strong, straight metal barrels and the ability to produce gunpowder. Prior to around 1600, these technologies existed but nobody was really pursuing them very hard because either one, by itself, isn’t that useful. Put them together and suddenly the world changes.
  • Qwertious 3y ago
    To extend your example: Rifling pre-dates muskets, despite most muskets being smoothbore. This is because muzzle-loaders are slower to load if they're rifled (the point of the rifling is to grip the bullet and force it to spin, but that grip applies just as hard when you're ramming the bullet into its firing position), so you were paying more for a substantially lower rate-of-fire and the rifling was harder to clean, more prone to failure etc. Once breachloaders became common, rifling also became common.
  • pjc50 3y ago
    This is very important. We see a lot of "new battery" or "new green tech" papers here. Very few of them make it to market, because the thousands of details that make up the non-lab manufacturing process are very important. There's a big gap between "works in lab" and a product everyone can buy.
• k310 3y ago
  Look at the Gartner Hype Cycle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gartner_hype_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gartner_hype_cycle Some things have rebounded after a dismal start Tablet computers (credit Steve Jobs) vs. HyperCard (credit Steve Jobs) All sorts of digital (and analog) media (until they're nearly gone) Pivoting headlights (making a comeback, I understand ) Cameras that don't need a battery Gas Turbines?
  • viraptor 3y ago
    > HyperCard I would argue HyperCard of this decade is alive and well as Notion. (And other similar apps)
    • duskwuff 3y ago
      I think that undersells what HyperCard could do. It wasn't just a database or a wiki like Notion; it had some fairly powerful scripting capabilities, and was often used for nonlinear interactive content. (Myst was a HyperCard stack, for example!)
      • viraptor 3y ago
        Notion and others have APIs that can drive whatever you want. But I agree with the gist - it's not the HyperCard reimplemented, but it is HyperCard evolved to today's common needs.
    • somat 3y ago
      I would argue that modern hyper card is the web. a simple document format that can be linked to other documents. with a built in scripting language.
    • emmelaich 3y ago
      And (python) notebooks?
  • wbl 3y ago
    From Whittle to today gas turbines have only ever gotten better and more used
• viraptor 3y ago
  > Thermal Cameras They're not built in, but you can easily get a thermal camera that plugs into your mobile these days - that one's definitely been improving rather than disappearing. Due to the cost of ownership, there are also companies that will come in with their own and do thermal mapping of your whole house. I'm not sure if this one really makes a list since nothing was ever mass produced, but automatic food preparer/cooker machines are kind of a popular sci-fi-of-the-80s idea. Some attempts were made and mostly failed to get traction. I've not heard about them for years now.
  • c_o_n_v_e_x 3y ago
    >automatic food preparer/cooker machines There are some companies out there in the restaurant automation space. Miso Robotics is one that comes to mind. A "cheap" automatic food prep system would have huge public health benefits with people eating less processed **. Stretching the idea out further, you could probably save a lot of time and energy from saved/avoided trips to the grocery store.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • nitwit005 3y ago
    >automatic food preparer/cooker machines Cleaning is the main problem. Anything that comes in contact with meat, dairy, etc, is going to need to be cleaned after every use (at least in a home setting).
  • eclipticplane 3y ago
    You can also rent decent thermal cameras for a day if you want to do your own thermal mapping of your house. For me it was worth the cost to avoid the "home energy inspection company" trying to upsell me on needless things. I could not get any one of them to agree to come, do the imaging, leave, and send me the video for a fixed price.
  • emmelaich 3y ago
    They are built-in on some Caterpillar phones. https://www.catphones.com/en-au/features/integrated-thermal-imaging/ https://www.catphones.com/en-au/features/integrated-thermal-...
• coder543 3y ago
  > still cannot buy graphene in any real quantities (cm's for $100's) I’ve never needed to buy graphene before… why would most people? Not every technology needs to be applicable at home for it to count as “not vanished”. Upon googling it, I found this source for about $1/cm^2 of graphene, which is 100x cheaper than what you seemed to be claiming: https://grolltex.com/product/monolayer-graphene-on-copper-foil-6-x-6-150-mm-x-150-mm/ https://grolltex.com/product/monolayer-graphene-on-copper-fo... Regardless, one recent product announcement I remember hearing about, which can apparently be bought on Amazon for $13: https://www.thermal-grizzly.com/en/products/625-kryosheet-en https://www.thermal-grizzly.com/en/products/625-kryosheet-en Graphene is real. It hasn’t vanished. It just takes a long time for a new material to become widely used unless it fits neatly as a substitute for something else that was already there. By all appearances, the graphene industry is still growing. > Thermal Cameras Seriously? Thermal cameras are commonly used in so many professional applications. They’re not even that expensive, if you want one. No, every smartphone maker is not going to add 5% to 50% to their BoM (depending on quality and phone price, rough estimate) for a feature most people don’t need. Some smartphones offer thermal cameras for people who need that.
  • kylebenzle 3y ago
    OP is asking us for OUR ideas of vanished tech, not a critique on his imperfect examples. Maybe like Space elevator, or wireless electric transmission...
    • majewsky 3y ago
      Space elevators have never been a thing besides in sci-fi or maybe project plans somewhere. Wireless electric transmission is an established commodity. I used it to charge my phone this morning.
      • mcv 3y ago
        If we want space tech that was here and then disappeared: manned missions to the moon. And after retiring the Space Shuttle, the US even lost the ability to put people into orbit until SpaceX came along. Of course that's all really about money and not knowledge, but that's true for all recently disappeared tech: it just wasn't economically viable. For tech that has actually been forgotten, you have to go back to Roman self-repairing underwater concrete.
• FormerBandmate 3y ago
  Cloning has largely been banned, no wonder there hasn’t been innovation there
  • SOLAR_FIELDS 3y ago
    Cloning your beloved dog is apparently legal at ViaGen for the low price of ~$50,000 USD
    • snerc 3y ago
      It would be an interesting mnultigenerational experiment to clone a dog every time it dies, and pass the dog & its genes along via cloning for 100 years. If I could get that for $50k, I'd pay for it today. Not a guarantee that I have $50k to spend, but I do have $50k in thought experiment bucks.
      • userbinator 3y ago
        The Dog of Theseus?
      • Anon84 3y ago
        Just don’t name the dog Duncan Idaho!
      • SOLAR_FIELDS 3y ago
        I thought at first that Gunther the Dog would meet those requirements but when I looked it up it turns out that entire story was just made up by the guy administering the fund.
  • nitwit005 3y ago
    It hasn't, excepting for cloning humans. It's just, largely pointless. Aside from hoping you can get another champion race horse, why would you spend a bunch of money to get a cloned animal?
    • biomcgary 3y ago
• mikewarot 3y ago
  Thermal cameras are subject to tight ITAR restrictions, which would tend to restrict their use in consumer products. I'd expect 1080p thermal cameras are a thing, if you have the "need" and can comply with all of the restrictions.
  • dylan604 3y ago
    I could see some comedy spoof of a SEAL like mission with the team running around with their cell phones attached to their rifles like a mobile game controller. SEAL Team GenZ reporting for duty!
• davidhyde 3y ago
  Memristors are touted as the forth fundamental electronic component after resistors, capacitors and inductors. Progress is steady and fairly recent but the technology only seems to hold public attention for very brief periods over the decades. So I guess you could say it has withered in the eyes of the public at least. It should be a big deal though. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor
  • InSteady 3y ago
    >Experimentally, the ideal memristor has yet to be demonstrated. I'm not an expert by a looooong shot, but it looks like there is some baseline of expected behavior that has been experimentally demonstrated for all three established components. If I'm understanding correctly, that would be a huge roadblock to wide adoption.
  • tetris11 3y ago
    > Memristors can potentially be fashioned into non-volatile solid-state memory, which could allow greater data density than hard drives with access times similar to DRAM, replacing both components. It's weird I had to scroll down so far to understand what exactly this thing could do.
  • abstractcontrol 3y ago
    > It should be a big deal though. If they can get the manufacturing process for them worked out. I really do wish memristors turned out to be a success, HP hyped them so massively in the 2011-2015 era. What happened was that the material they had was susceptible to rusting, so what seemed like a good initial yield would become unusable some months down the road. I google for memristors sometimes, and all the activity regarding them is still confined to the lab unfortunately.
• mindcrime 3y ago
  /u/davidhyde already said it, but I'll pile on: memristors. So much hype and potential, but so far as I can tell it's still more or less impossible to buy a memristor today.
• paulddraper 3y ago
  Smart glasses (e.g. Google Glass). IIRC Google Glass was announced accompanied by sky divers landing at the conference center.
  • poulpy123 3y ago
    fun fact: I predicted it would flop because as someone who just got eye surgery few year prior I knew that nobody would want to wear glasses all day
    • pschuegr 3y ago
      Don't many people wear glasses all day?
      • poulpy123 3y ago
        because they don't have choice
        • latexr 3y ago
          I know people who used to wear glasses for fashion (i.e. they didn’t need them and chose to wear them). Contact lenses are also a choice for many who wear glasses, but many prefer the latter due to cost or convenience. Maybe you haven’t worn them long enough, but you do get used to glasses to the point you forget you’re wearing them, leading to events like showering in them or searching for them while they are in your face.
  • mcv 3y ago
    I think the backlash against Google Glass set back the interest in wearable computing. I haven't heard about Steve Mann in a while either.
• mindcrime 3y ago
  Thermal Cameras - I really thought every phone would have a cheap, mass manufacture thermal camera by now, so everybody could do "U so hot" jokes. They may not be in phones, but thermal cameras are cheap, and ubiquitous in many fields. I'd venture that the majority of the fire departments in the US have thermal cameras in operation at this point, and probably most of the people (including hobbyists) with an electronics test bench have one.
• Octokiddie 3y ago
  Physical newspapers and books. Not trying to be cute, but it's very easy for these vanishing technologies to, well, vanish.
• kypro 3y ago
  The technology I always cite for something that had huge hype then died is 3D generally. I remember around the time Avatar was release everyone was convinced that 3D was the next big thing. For several years after Avatar it was hard to watch movies that weren't showing in 3D. People rushed out to buy 3D TVs. Phones were featuring 3D displays. Cameras were boasting the ability to capture 3D pictures... I think 3D will eventually make a come back as VR technology progresses, but I genuinely didn't get the hype for 3D during that period.
  • sdf4j 3y ago
    3D hype has a comeback every other decade. It never sticks.
    • Qwertious 3y ago
      3D hype is going to come back soon, and it will stick - but instead of being in TVs, it'll be in VR headsets. It'll stick because 3D is inherently available in VR headsets, so there's no need to have a "3D VR version" and a "normal VR version"; if you're targeting VR at all, you might as well use its 3D. I think VR will (given time) succeed, because VR has a couple of benefits aside from 3D - first up, you get infinite screen-size. Second, it's more portable than basically anything else can be; even laptops are limited by their screen-size whereas future VR goggles could potentially fit in your pocket. Third, it integrates "companion apps" much better than a smartphone can, due to AR capability - you don't need to keep glancing between your <smart toaster> and your phone, you can just open up the toaster-VR app and look directly at the toaster. To be fair though, VR might skip a decade before it truly breaches mainstream (e.g. it might be simply too expensive with current tech, when a smartphone can be bought for <$100), although I doubt it. I think VR will become mainstream by 2030.
      • ilikerashers 3y ago
        I just hate the form factor for now. Putting on a VR headset is still like sticking a console onto your head as opposed to a pair of glasses. I'm very pro-VR, love "thrill of the fight" and "alyx" but sweating it out with a chunky plastic headset is not something I go back to regularly.
• jlund-molfese 3y ago
  Not world-changing, but self-heating coffee/cocoa cans! I remember getting these 15 years ago at Walmart and thought they were the coolest thing ever, but they never really took off.
  • q_andrew 3y ago
    My guess is that their dubious disposability works against them. You can get self-heated coffee and ramen in a lot of Japanese vending machines, which makes sense because Japan is the capital of non-biodegradable disposables.
  • Apreche 3y ago
    Other countries have these all over.
• PlunderBunny 3y ago
  I remember watching a tv program named "Beyond 2000" (obviously, this was last century) which featured upcoming technology. One of these was an ultra-sonic dishwasher. It was supposed to be faster, and use less detergent and water than 'ordinary' dishwashers (though I suppose dishwashing machines in the 1990s probably used a lot more water than they do now). Never heard anything about it again. (Edit: I mean a full-size dishwasher, not the little devices that are partially immersed in water)
  • theNJR 3y ago
    Oh how I loved that show. Defined my childhood and technoptimism
  • emmelaich 3y ago
    That show was great. A successful Australian export of a non-primary kind, woohoo! Trivia, it's predecessor was called "Towards 2000"
  • InSteady 3y ago
    It probably wrecks tons of non steel dishware. Also energy usage might be fairly off the charts, not sure though.
  • dexterbt1 3y ago
    Also loved that show. It aired through my teen years (90s) in Discovery Channel. There are other similar shows like this such as Next Step.
  • mamcx 3y ago
    This was one where was demoed a fabric that was fully fire resistant? I remember something like a flame tower direct at it and it not even get black....
  • stevage 3y ago
    Fun fact, the company that made it became Beyond Productions which made MythBusters. Which is why they are always talking about their Australian production crew.
• patapong 3y ago
  E-ink displays... After seeing the OLPC I expected every display would soon have the same properties of eye-strain-reduction, legibility in the sun, angle indifference and low power consumption. Yet here we are - while there does seem to be a resurgent niche of e-ink enthusiast products it seems like they never broke through to the mainstream except in ebook readers. It's a shame!
  • nine_k 3y ago
    E-ink displays are all over the place, where they make sense: price tags at stores. Book-reader devices are alive but very niche, because phone screens got much better.
    • diogenescynic 3y ago
      I've never seen e-ink used to display price tags at stores. What country are you seeing that in?
      • toast0 3y ago
        In the US, best buy uses them. I think I've seen them in some airport shops too.
        • nine_k 3y ago
          Whole Foods, too.
      • helf 3y ago
        [dead]
      • phil21 3y ago
        It's seem to have finally roughly hit critical mass these days. I imagine it will become somewhat ubiquitous in the next 5 years or so in most of the western world. Inflation seems to have kicked this into high gear as I'm guessing prices update a whole lot quicker. Plus it's a lot cheaper now to fiddle with dynamic pricing and change stuff day to day based on your metrics.
• ketralnis 3y ago
  I was reminded by another post on HN today: RAD - Rapid Application Development. Newer "no/low code" systems pale in comparison to what novices used to be able to do with Visual Basic or Hypercard or even old PHP. I was one of those novices and I learned so much from them.
  • jimjimjim 3y ago
    Add Delphi to that mix. Proper Delphi I mean, not the complicated mess it later became.
    • j_crick 3y ago
      Delphi 5-7 was such a boon to anybody picking up Pascal in school. Still remember that feeling of discovering that you can drop controls on a form, write some spaghetti to make them work together, and bam! you can make a real windowed application all while being 14. Nostalgie…
• mongol 3y ago
  Bubble memory
• anshumankmr 3y ago
  ipod
• sowbug 3y ago
  This might not qualify because it was never really in the zeitgeist, but I remember around 2000 that flywheels were going to be an amazing mobile energy storage mechanism. Your car would rev up a massive disk inside a vacuum, and use its momentum to propel itself in stop and go traffic. I believe the showstopper was that in even the slightest fender-bender, the flywheel would get off-balance and yeet off in a random direction, causing mayhem and calamity.
  • RSHEPP 3y ago
    In ME school I was on our human powered vehicle team and we actually designed our bike with a flywheel. I remember using it like one or two times during a race at UF just to give my legs a break. It was a piece of junk bike, but the flywheel was cool.
  • consultutah 3y ago
    Isn’t that exactly what this company is selling? https://www.torus.co/ https://www.torus.co/
    • sowbug 3y ago
      Neat! Hadn't heard of them. I think the company I remember was called Ballard, and their flywheels were intended to drive the vehicle mechanically rather than to generate electricity.
    • h0l0cube 3y ago
      It sounds unbelievable. > Energy Retention After 10 Years 100% > Potential Storage Capacity 1 day 32 kWh, 10 years 116,800 kWh, 25 years 292,000 kWh What's the down side? Is it expensive? Is it slow to release energy on demand?
    • pjc50 3y ago
      Everyone still slightly worried about what happens if it cracks, and I think the cost of lithium batteries has simply won?
  • WirelessGigabit 3y ago
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• woleium 3y ago
  Starlite [0] thermal shielding plastic. the inventor took it's recipe to the grave. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlite https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlite
• jacknews 3y ago
  Tech generally disappears (though it never/rarely really does completely) either because it proves not viable/economic, or it's superseded. Though sometime it's because of shifts in fashion, or legal/moral restrictions. Hyped then didn't take-off: persistent ram (mram, Feram, PCram etc). Superseded: Incandescent lightbulbs, gas mantle tech, CRT display tech, vinyl, cassette and especially CD/DVD tech, etc. Fashion: maybe teasmades (alarm clocks that brew tea), I'm sure there are better examples. Legal/moral/health restrictions: maybe 'consumer' radioactive tech, radium clocks etc.
• oceanghost 3y ago
  I worked for a lab that did IR research 20 years ago, so I don't know if this is still the case. But at the time, the IR sensors were made with a rare mineral only available in a remote region of Russia. At the time (late 90s) I bought (on behalf of my employer) a FLIR camera that had a 512x512 sensor for $70k. I remember the cheapest camera we could find was 15k, it had almost no optics and the sensor was noisy as all get out. I have a thermal inspection workstation (FLIR) that cost about $2700 and has a 320x240 sensor. So there really has been a cost reduction. It's just more linear than exponential. A few years back, I got a camera for a friend which had a 90x90 sensor, and I think it cost $165 if memory serves. When I worked at that lab, it was inconceivable that a normal person would ever own an IR camera. They were the exclusive domain of researchers, large corporations, and law enforcement. I have 5 or so. Also, the average person doesn't understand the electromagnetic spectrum, or concepts like emissivity or reflection. They think they're seeing an accurate temperature from their device, not understanding that every material they measure has its own k value. ** BTW: I tried to research this mineral/element and could not find any documentation on it. If you happen to know its name, or if I'm completely off base and its not used anymore, I'd love to know about it.
  • alexfromapex 3y ago
    Was it indium antimonide?
• mstaoru 3y ago
  3D printers which can fix everything at your home. Hand gesture computer control (Leap Motion). Flash. Wework. Peloton. Google Plus. Google Wave. Google Reader. Google...
• WirelessGigabit 3y ago
  Alcohol batteries for your laptop / phone. Instead of a battery it would be a fuel cell that you would just add alcohol to instead of recharging it. https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/storage/tiny-alcohol-fuel-cell-to-power-laptops-for-weeks-5443/ https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/storage/tiny-alcohol-fu...
  • more_corn 3y ago
    This would be revolutionary. When you spill wine on your computer it’d be a good thing.
  • anotherhue 3y ago
    Not sure if this is serious, or a Futurama reference.
    • WirelessGigabit 3y ago
      Very serious. Another news report: https://www.zdnet.com/article/smart-fuel-cell-shows-off-alcoholic-laptop-power/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/smart-fuel-cell-shows-off-alco...
• tuatoru 3y ago
  Music/mp3 players. Something that has local storage and plays files stored there, and works away from network coverage, and doesn't require a subscription of any kind.
  • gorbachev 3y ago
    Plenty around still, but they've moved to the audiophile space, added hifi (FLAC) support and increased in price by 10x - 100x.
  • poulpy123 3y ago
    it's integrated in phones now, but you still can buy it
  • mathgeek 3y ago
    You can do this with most smartphones (e.g. by installing VLC). Folks just stopped buying dedicated devices in any sustainable amounts outside of audiophile markets.
    • stephenr 3y ago
      You can do it with iPhones with the built in music player. Does the android music app really not support playing from local storage?
      • mathgeek 3y ago
        I provided VLC as an example in order to head off any responses around what built-in apps do or do not support (rather than to imply that you need VLC). Not sure where you inferred that I was using Android, but apologies if what I said led you down that path.
  • kalleboo 3y ago
    If I'm carrying my phone around anyway, why not just put my music on there? I've been using my phone as my mp3 player since the Sony Ericsson Walkman phone (W800) came out in 2005
• rcarmo 3y ago
  Intel Optane. That was pretty muck killed off, but has its uses.
  • teleforce 3y ago
    Come here to tell this story, Optane or 3D Xpoint. It promises a game changing non-volatile memory technology (RAM) for the masses but it never took off for some unknown reasons. Backed by the biggest processor manufacturer (Intel) and the biggest RAM manufacturer (Micron). [1] 3D XPoint: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_XPoint https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_XPoint
• yread 3y ago
  Some good examples here already. The one I was optimistic about (it was never super hyped but sounded interesting) was laptops that would have heatpipes bringing the heat from the CPU to the lid were it would just dissipate - so using laptop lid as a radiator. I remember they were saying it could dissipate ~20W continuously (which was not enough at the time ~2005?) but lots of laptops now could be completely fan-free. I can't find much about this on google, but I swear it was a thing. Some people discussed it on this website for half-baked ideas: https://www.halfbakery.com/idea/LCD_20heatsinks https://www.halfbakery.com/idea/LCD_20heatsinks
  • zeusk 3y ago
    Microsoft has sort-of used heat dissipating lids but that's because the lid itself contains the CPU (surface book, surface pro).
  • toast0 3y ago
    I think you run into a couple problems with this idea. It seems mechanically challenging to have a heatpipe that can flex as needed for a laptop. LCD performance is connected to temperature, so if you pull a lot of heat to the screen, you're going to see weird effects as the heat distributes unevenly. Moving the cpu to the lid is probably a better idea, and some devices have been made that way, but it's not common either.
    • kridsdale3 3y ago
      iPad Pro + Keyboard is essentially this.
• orbital-decay 3y ago
  > Thermal Cameras - I really thought every phone would have a cheap, mass manufacture thermal camera by now, so everybody could do "U so hot" jokes. Well they kind of do - you can buy a cheap tiny thermal camera for your smartphone. They aren't built-in in most phones because it's a specialty feature and it's not "cheap" cheap. The thing with thermal cameras is that the progress has been artificially restricted by the arms regulations, especially in the US. That was a major factor behind them staying so expensive for years despite having the tech.
  • teleforce 3y ago
    Yep, remembered buying the thermal camera as a sensor for a project on a new type of rice cooking that is more effective in term of rice cooking quality, i.e. just the right amount of cooked rice texture in between conventional boiling (too moist: how modern rice cooker works) and steaming (too dry: use by some fancy restaurants). It turned out that the rice cooking heat overwhelm the thermal camera to provide any meaningful reading, and but later improvised it for detecting multi-point temperature readings from the face during the Covid pandemic. It's a cheap FLIR thermal camera with just OK resolution to be useful for imaging. The shipment was delayed due to the need to sign off form declaration for non-military application before importing.
  • giantg2 3y ago
    It's not just the arms restriction. Theres little restriction if is 9Hz or less. Easily commercially available but can't be exported to many places. You can get a 9Hz 120x80 FLIR Lepton module for about $200. Even stuff at higher frame rates isn't that had to get domestically. The real problems are lenses and volume. The low quality stuff like the Lepton use low quality silicon dioxide lens. The better stuff uses the expensive germanium. Cheaper zinc selenide can be used with good effect but has health hazards under some conditions. Then there's a small market (maybe 1M Leptons sold is considered high volume) with really one manufacturer (Teldfyne FLIR).
  • atleastoptimal 3y ago
    Even if it weren't restricted, what is the advantage to the average consumer? What benefit does a thermal camera offer that would make it being built in as a standard phone feature economically justifiable?
• theogravity 3y ago
  The Orbo "free energy" device that turned out to be running on batteries in the end. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steorn https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steorn https://www.wired.com/2009/12/orbo-strikes-back-perpetual-motion-machine-demonstrated/ https://www.wired.com/2009/12/orbo-strikes-back-perpetual-mo...
  • voxadam 3y ago
    Perpetual motion isn't tech, it's a scam. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuxbMfKO9Pg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuxbMfKO9Pg
• yen223 3y ago
  Not very many people talking about NFTs nowadays, perhaps unsurprisingly
  • kridsdale3 3y ago
    I am delighted.
• aaron695 3y ago
  [dead]
• voxadam 3y ago
  The underlying tech isn't dead but in the 90s I remember reading article after article about how ramjets and scramjets were going to change air travel forever any day now. That day still hasn't arrived and I doubt it ever will.
  • pjc50 3y ago
    They are unbelievably noisy. High efficiency turbofans have won for subsonic, and nobody's really interested in the inevitable cost barrier of supersonic. People keep talking about SSTO spaceplanes, but I think there are unsolvable thermal problems in the engines?
    • RetroTechie 3y ago
      It's not just cost of supersonic planes, but sonic booms & how far they travel. So around populated areas it's a no-go. Which means you have to do a good portion of flight subsonic, and benefit from SS flight over a smaller leg of the yourney. Iirc there were some studies showing that sonic booms were heard by people 100s of km's away. And eg. in Europe: more or less densely populated areas everywhere. So no SS city hopping there. Never mind check-in, waiting on runway & taxying vs. actual flight time. Benefits simply don't outweigh the negatives on most routes. And where they might, too small a market to invest in passing technology / regulatory hurdles.
• trevyn 3y ago
  Something like the Ergodex DX1: Easily spatially reconfigurable physical keys. https://www.ergocanada.com/products/other/ergodex_dx1_input_system.html https://www.ergocanada.com/products/other/ergodex_dx1_input_...
• trumbitta2 3y ago
  Hyperloop
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • fckthisguy 3y ago
    Because people caught on that it's a terrible idea with terrible (unstated) goals.
• gnz11 3y ago
  In the 00’s there was a lot of hype around “smart” textiles being the next big thing. A lot of sports companies were trying to make something happen with it but aside from some niche projects, seems to have fizzled. In the 90’s, mini discs were hot for a year and then just vanished.
  • afavour 3y ago
    Global Hypercolor!
    • helf 3y ago
      [dead]
  • appplication 3y ago
    I think the reason a lot of this vanished is that textiles were quickly banned in competitive sports. Swimming is a great example - the advanced suit fabrics were really impressive engineering. As someone who had a chance to wear them (and the subsequent inferior replacements after the ban), they really did make a huge difference in performance. For a while people thought the suit records would be untouchable, and many folks even specifically requested they be specially designated with an asterisk. Since then, the new generation of swimmers have absolutely stepped up to the plate, and many of the believed-immortal records have since fallen.
    • qball 3y ago
      One would think they'd just do it by division; it's not that difficult to have a Production division for standard suits and an Open division for the highest of the high-tech fabrics. Other sports that have this kind of division still have Open competitors get beat by Production ones anyway.
      • appplication 3y ago
        I think in this case it was because people could essentially just buy speed to some degree, which was a first for swimming, and this had implications on equal access within the sport. The suit bans were both swift and restrictive, which was definitely a clear signal on how seriously this issue was taken. Ultimately, as fun as the super suits were, it was definitely the right call to put an end to the fabric arms race early.
• timthelion 3y ago
  Nuclear powered domestic water heaters. You could have heated your home just by pumping water through a radio active pipe section. It would have been very cheep, carbon neutral, and relatively safe (no risk of chernobl style meltdowns). Trouble is disposal and security.
  • pjc50 3y ago
    This seems like an extremely hard sell. It's a heat source you can't modulate, and what's the effect of neutron absorbtion on water?
    • timthelion 3y ago
      European water based radiators have regulators built into them and can heat with water anywhere from 40 all the way up to 120C (steam). They regulate the flow based on the room temperature and configuration.
      • pjc50 3y ago
        I'm talking about the radioactive source itself. I know what a radiator is. (do you understand what I mean about not being able to modulate the output of radioactive decay? Or are you proposing an actual reactor?)
  • joe__f 3y ago
    What will you do with all the radioactive piping and water that you produce?
    • timthelion 3y ago
      The water isn't in direct contact with the radioactive material and does not become radioactive itself? Its not like the water normally expelled from nuclear powerplants is radioactive.
      • aeonik 3y ago
• notacoward 3y ago
  Bubble and holographic memory. Magneto-optical and fluorescent multi-layer disks. Plasma displays. VLIW/EPIC processors. Fast infrared communications.
  • mepian 3y ago
    The Russian government has been slowly moving everything to the homegrown VLIW architecture known as Elbrus or e2k. Not sure how the sanctions affected this, considering that the high-end implementations (28nm iirc) were being manufactured at TSMC, with only the low-end ones (90nm) manufactured locally.
• ben_w 3y ago
  Smart dust. Especially as both microcontroller chips and sensor modules now exist at the scale of literal dust.
• cshah4 3y ago
  Juicero https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/01/juicero-silicon-valley-shutting-down https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/01/juicero-s... ;) Somehow I ended up remembering this out of all the things.
• giantg2 3y ago
  I assume most stuff you mentioned fizzled out because there wasn't a viable business model (small number of adopters, high cost manufacturing, etc) and patents. Just look at 3d printers - been around since the 80s but the advances in computer size and being common coupled with expired patents makes it viable today.
• laserdancepony 3y ago
  Hardware accelerated 3D sound in video games a la EAX. That one went away with Windows NT IIRC and never surfaced again.
  • JayStavis 3y ago
    I think that the Apple Vision Pro might claim to have something _like_ this in audio raytracing?
    • kridsdale3 3y ago
      I think this was also a hyped feature of the PS5 when paired with specific Sony headphones.
• the4anoni 3y ago
  Stand alone portable music players - nowadays that's niche product for audiophiles. PC sound cards - for most people integrated HD Audio is enough. SLI, AMD Crossfire
• metallurge 3y ago
  With respect to graphene, it's possible to make reasonable quantities fairly cheaply using several different methods. See here for a recent rundown (yeah, I know, youtube, but it's worth it in this case if you actually care about the subject.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7q4UQL5k4wI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7q4UQL5k4wI Graphene will be commercially cheap fairly soon, I suspect. Meantime, it isn't that difficult or expensive to experiment with for yourself.
• mikewarot 3y ago
  MEMS switching/logic. The premise was that you could have a mechanical switch that was actuated electrostatically, and just stayed where you put it due to magic, consuming no power, until you altered the state electrostatically again. You could implement logic that functioned with effectively no static power consumption, but capable of passing gigahertz signals. To get an idea why it didn't pan out, here's a PDF[1] from Analog Devices for the ADGM1144 SP4T MEMS based switch ($50 in quantity, $72.88 for one from Digikey). [1] https://www.analog.com/media/en/technical-documentation/data-sheets/adgm1144.pdf https://www.analog.com/media/en/technical-documentation/data... [2] https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/analog-devices-inc/ADGM1144BCCZ-RL7/16895779 https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/analog-devices-in...
• saltcured 3y ago
  I have this decades-old memory of science magazine articles about acoustic imaging using phased microphone arrays. Unlike phased-array radars of the time, it claimed to be passive and the imagery was shocking. The example images I recall were underwater and looked like some ray-tracing scene but where the surface ripples were like ceiling lights. It seemed like the kind of thing that was going to revolutionize sensing applications. I remember wondering whether it could work in air instead of underwater, such as to provide better visual sensing in fog/smoke conditions. But, I have trouble finding any reference to it, and always wondered where it went...
• araes 3y ago
  Thank you for all the responses, suggestions, and lengthy discussion. Below is a summary of everything I have seen on here (per 9/12/2023) Phased Microphone Arrays (actually used to work in this field, not discussed much, yet NASA uses these for Liftoff acoustics) - https://benwang.dev/2023/02/26/Phased-Array-Microphone.html https://benwang.dev/2023/02/26/Phased-Array-Microphone.html (DIY if you'd like your own) - https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20120007205 https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20120007205 (NASA Paper) Memristors - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor 3D Movies (has a revival almost every 20 years) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_film https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_film Full Body Impermeable Swimsuits (banned after 2008 Olympics) - https://www.engineering.com/story/the-technology-behind-speedos-high-tech-swimsuits-that-challenged-the-olympics https://www.engineering.com/story/the-technology-behind-spee... Mini-Disc (perhaps Multi-layer Blu Ray mini-discs?) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray#Mini_Blu-ray_Disc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray#Mini_Blu-ray_Disc E-ink displays - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_Ink https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_Ink Rear Heat Sinks for Laptops / Portables - https://www.halfbakery.com/idea/LCD_20heatsinks https://www.halfbakery.com/idea/LCD_20heatsinks CPUs in Non-standard locations (behind the screen) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37473795 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37473795 Thermal Cameras - Cat S62 Pro (who knew Caterpillar had phones? Only $500 new? Yoink) - https://www.catphones.com/en-au/features/integrated-thermal-imaging/ https://www.catphones.com/en-au/features/integrated-thermal-... Alcohol Fuel Cells - https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/storage/tiny-alcohol-fuel-cell-to-power-laptops-for-weeks-5443/ https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/storage/tiny-alcohol-fu... Personal Nuclear Systems (water heating suggested, occasionally also hear about personal nuke power in your backyard) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37473795 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37473795 Automatic Food Preparer/Cooker Machines (mostly exists as restaurant automation) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_restaurant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_restaurant Flywheel Energy Storage (Suggestion for Sale) - https://www.torus.co/torus-flywheel https://www.torus.co/torus-flywheel Rapid Application Development - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_application_development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_application_development Ultrasonic Dishwashers (exist, just not talked about) - https://www.google.com/search?q=ultrasonic+dishwasher&source=lmns&tbm=shop https://www.google.com/search?q=ultrasonic+dishwasher&source... Ultrasonic Dishwashers (ver2, medical, really expensive, yet 0.85m x 0.85m x 1m) - https://www.proxibid.com/lotinformation/51850649/getinge-model-2460-uc-cleaner https://www.proxibid.com/lotinformation/51850649/getinge-mod... Music/mp3 Players (dedicated device, rarely mentionedd, "why not use your phone?", still exist) - https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=dedicated+mp3+player https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=dedicat... Self-Heating Coffee/Cocoa/Ramen - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-heating_food_packaging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-heating_food_packaging Starlite Thermal Shielding Plastic (now owned by Thermashield, LLC) - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlite https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlite 3D XPoint / Optane Memory (discontinued non-volatile memory, sold since 2017, largest sales non-charge storage memory) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_XPoint https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_XPoint Graphene (disagreement about my example, shrug, 150mm x 150mm for $240? 30mm x 30mm for $20? Even an 8.5 x 11 that is not) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37473795 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37473795 Generalized 3D Printers (lots of varieties, just not in one machine, Note: link has slightly invasive ads) - https://all3dp.com/1/types-of-3d-printers-3d-printing-technology/ https://all3dp.com/1/types-of-3d-printers-3d-printing-techno... Ramjets and Scramjets - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramjet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramjet and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scramjet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scramjet Bubble Memory (several mentions) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_memory Hardware Accelerated 3D Sound (ex: Environmental Audio Extensions (EAX)) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_Audio_Extensions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_Audio_Extensions Hydrogen Fuel Cell (not vanished, just little public awareness) - Spatially Reconfigurable Keyboards - https://www.ergocanada.com/products/other/ergodex_dx1_input_system.html https://www.ergocanada.com/products/other/ergodex_dx1_input_... Smart Dust (chips and sensors at "dust" scale) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartdust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartdust General Topic Stuff: Gartner Hype Cycle (lots of criticism, yet common, start -> hype -> disillusion -> enlighten -> productive) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gartner_hype_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gartner_hype_cycle Need for a market that can scale - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37473795 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37473795
• barryrandall 3y ago
  Fourth-generation programming languages were hot for a while until people got sick of writing GUI applications in SQL.
• temeya 3y ago
  I was going to suggest the :CueCat [0], but as I just realized, scanning QR codes with one's phone is quite trivial. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat
• fuzztester 3y ago
  CASE tools? Related to CASE: round-trip engineering.
• hnaccountme 3y ago
  There was some 3d rendering tech that promised infinite details in the early 2010s. Can't remember what it was called. The premise was the pixel colors were searched instead of computed in the regular manner.
• gadders 3y ago
  When I was growing up in the late 80s, there was a lot of talk about computers that would use light rather than electricity in their processing. That doesn't seem to have happened. The other thing that has vanished is supersonic commercial air travel.