Ask HN: What cutting-edge technology do you use? What technology do you use today that is far from mainstream? Think Tony Stark technology.
Examples are mobile phones / internet in the 80s, metal 3D printers, quantum ML, night vision device, large language models (GPT-3) for personal communication, CRISPR, manned drones. |
Haskell
Jax / Awkward Array
Topological Data Analysis
Cocalc
CLIP
gitpod / vscodeweb / github codespaces
CodeQL
DDSP
mathlib
neovim
language-server-protocol
adafruit feather m0
rr
linear logic
tmux
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GNU Radio lets you build flowcharts, and compiles them (via python) into real-time data flows. I've built all sorts of things in it, including one that tells me the direction to a VOR aircraft navigation beacon near me.
It also does audio frequencies, so can work with your speaker and microphone.
It's not the slickest package around, but it gets the job done, and it's open source.
rtl-sdr.com has a buying guide: https://www.rtl-sdr.com/
Or maybe this is mainstream already and i don't know.
I built out the library for these myself, checkout https://github.com/NimbleEdge/RecoEdge
I've often wondered about decentralized recommendation systems and ML. Good to see something going in this area.
We all care about how our data is used and processed.
Surprisingly, the tech has been there since the '90s, but never really caught up. Then it went into a weird walled garden direction with mobile phones that often work against you.
Pocket computers are still sometimes janky, like Linux phones are, but having access to all the software and permissions is an unparalleled power.
* sleeve ( https://newatlas.com/wearables/team-hart-vibrating-sleeve-la... )
* eye controlable via smart glasses?
* human jestures
* mind-computer interface
* requires an advance degree in coreography & contortionist flexibility to use?
1. Solid state Lithium battery - safer, and denser power than the li-ion batteries of today. https://youtu.be/Jlt8_z86F-o
2. Well, for the goodness of planet earth - Nuclear Fusion reactor to generate power.
Pen and paper. ;)
Also, I have been using an agenda with on the left side the week, and on the right side notes for the last 10 years. It has a special holder for a pen, contains some information on units, UTC differences, a world map, holidays, year overview, and much more. This is very useful. At work I only have to carry around my agenda. It contains all information that you need directly in meetings. And I can take notes on the right side that I can process (digitally) when I'm back at my desk.
Certainly 3d printed thimbles/finger protectors not needed for aforementionied paper materials. 3d printed ceramic ginsu knife(s) bit more on page with a chance of getting a DMCA notice though.
diy eink doesn't quite allow the pen to roll. No need for Xerox contracts, but the internet connectivity might cost just as much. Although, something like https://newatlas.com/wearables/team-hart-vibrating-sleeve-la... means able to get a better feel for the meeting conversation in addition to things being immediately presentable whe make it back to desk.
Social norms not withstanding, eyeclass displays means being able to processing things on the way back to the desk.
Desk time now "free time. Although if carrying a the new desktop, aka electronic phone, guess that would be more appropriately taged as free time while the desk is charging.
That was a fun side project but I got ahead of myself in the tech and failed on finding a product-market fit.
Gave me a lot more confidence in my drivetrain.
The web side of it seems rather different from a Flask or FastAPI setup, and it obviously doesn't have SQLAlchemy (which I really like). Do you have any recommendations on that front?
The ecosystem is currently in the process of porting all the libraries to Scala 3. So if you're new to Scala, I'd recommend to start with Scala 2, which is rock-solid and already very powerful.
I never worked with SQLAlchemy. But on the scala database side, popular libraries are Doobie (https://tpolecat.github.io/doobie) and Quill (https://getquill.io). Keep in mind that these are for Scala on the JVM. On the ScalaJS side I'm using the javascript library pg. But I'd like to try if it works well with Prisma soon.
The nice thing about ScalaJS is, that you can use Javascript libraries. And if there are typescript facades, then you can transpile these to Scala and use them in a type safe way (https://scalablytyped.org).
(as an aside the storry of how Magnacut came to be is pretty cool - https://knifesteelnerds.com/2021/03/25/cpm-magnacut/)
Of course I immediately tried to find a MagnaCut knife to maybe gift myself for Christmas... But it seems they aren't really available yet, if I'm not mistaken?