I tend to not really care for most new things, as most of it feels cheap, inauthentic or a scam to further the surviellance facist oligarchy state. Id be completely content with time frozen in 2004.
So, to be a little more positive, what are some new things that are actually good?
Note, to me, new is within the last 10 years.
I’ll start. The fediverse concept is neat.
EGPWS - stops airliners accidentally flying into mountains.
Home Assistant - full control over your smart devices, internet optional.
Sierra Leone hospital - their first hospital that has a neonatal unit, already drastically reducing the maternal mortality rate.
PMSM - electric motor that can exceed 95% efficiency.
Heated Rivalry
Solar panels combined with House batteries or Vehicle to grid is cheaper and more reliable than a backup generator, and in many cases, is even cheaper than using energy from the grid.
The majority of materials in each battery and solar panel can be recycled into new batteries and solar panels at end of life (often after 25+ years), so the raw resources are only needed once.
Most new batteries don’t use rare or controversial materials.
As someone who focus on low/no-tech, I must say it’s a tricky question. But the answer is obvious for me: medications.
I should have died many years ago, and if I’m still alive today (nearing my 60s) it’s thx to constant innovations in the medical fields and research in pharmaceuticals (and also thx to radical life changing decisions, but those would not have been an option at all without new medications to begin with).
Andor is arguably the best Star Wars content since the original movies
Heat pump technology has come a long way recently. In locations that stay above 0F (-18C) they’re now competitive with fossil gas furnaces for performance and cost (cost results may vary based on local incentives). Many units now work below 0F too, but they get more expensive/less efficient
Personalized mRNA vaccines to prevent pancreatic cancer recurrence after surgery have had some promising early results in clinical trials. This is one of the hardest cancers to treat, so this could be huge.
Webb space telescope
Fully homomorphic encryption doing useful things
Higgs boson detected (oops, 2013)
Solar power and battery storage cheap enough to displace fossil energy and let ordinary people go off grid
New tacqueria in my neighboorhood is actually pretty good.
What more could you want?
New tacqueria in my neighborhood is actually pretty good.
And I’m only finding out about this NOW?!
Fully homomorphic encryption doing useful things
Like what?
Private information retrieval with just one server! Nobody thought that was possible.
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~csd-phd-blog/2024/piano-private-information-retrieval/
Shit like this is what makes me realize I’m an engineer and not a computer scientist. I get the logic, but not so much the practical math.
It seems like there’s a lot of unknowns for where PIR is best used, though. Like using DNS as their example has a lot of issues (that they mention). In what cases is it really best to download the whole dataset (temporarily) to just then go back and query the server on that dataset?
Though maybe I’m just not that creative of a thinker.
Single server PIR is kind of a theoretical surprise but good ways to do it with multiple servers have been known for a long time. See the Wikipedia PIR article. Yes it’s maybe a solution looking for a problem, but it’s way cool that it can be done at all.
Induction burners for cooking are pretty cool. All the heat of gas with none of the “slowly poisoning you and may explode”.
Gaming:
- Steam Deck and Linux gaming altogether
- Solo TTRPGs
- The TTRPG space in general
- Board games
Music making:
- Dirtywave M8
- Synthstrom Deluge
- Elektron Digitakt
- An absolute flood of amazing software and plugins
- Tons of pedals from boutique manufacturers
- Music software for mobile devices
- Import guitars are top notch without breaking the bank
PS: A ten year old GTX 1080ti can still run most modern games at 1080p…which is still a very popular entry level monitor resolution.
Still running a 980ti Classified, there’s only a handful in the overlap of “Games I want to play” and “Games I can’t play” diagram at 1440.
For super duper recent news, the Giant Panda has been moved off the endangered species list and into Vulnerable status.
My favorite 3 things of the last decade
Electric cars, Incredible performance, low maintenance.
Steam deck, great fun in a small package, great to play games before bed
Podcasts, seriously there’s one that will speak to you.
Bonus: taskmaster, it’s entirely free on YouTube, it’s a worldwide phenomena, simple low stakes fun, akin to the great British baking show without the manufactured drama (not that there’s much in gbb)
I saw recently they’ve cured Parkinsons for the first time, and I think HIV can be reversed now. So that’s pretty cool.
Oh, and I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but they fixed airport and hotel wifi. I don’t know why I thought shitty wifi in hotels and airports was something I would have to live with for the rest of my life. It just always was that way, so I thought it would always be that way. But the last time I went on vacation, blazing public wifi at the airport and at the hotel. with video playing. We are the future.
You’re gonna have to link that Parkinson’s news.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/stem-cell-therapy-parkinsons-china-b2880000.html
I think it was probably this one that I read, though they did not use the word cure. They significantly improved symptoms.
Good thread, since I hate a lot of “new” things. It’ll be good to read about the good ones.
I’ll add: GrapheneOS (and other custom phone OSes) giving us a choice besides being tracked by the big corpos.
Same. Updated to Graphene almost two weeks ago and have been loving it so far. The only thing I’m missing is the built in call screening. I get so many spam calls.
What do you use for call screening?
Batteries are about to get really good. Solid-state is close and that should be huge.
And for those not aware, by “close” they meam that solid-state batteries are being manufactured in mass this year.
Plus sodium batteries are going online too, though at a much lower rate due to the cost of lithium going down causing many sodoum battery manufacturers to declare bankruptcy since they’re having trouble with sales
Are we talking about the Donut Labs battery, or is someone also promising to bring solid state batteries to market this year? My gut says Donut Labs is like 1/8 odds of coming through.
Car back up cameras.
Waze
2025 Seadoo GTX models
Many Broadway Plays
Keypad front door locks
Online DVRs
Legalized gay marriage
Legalized pot
Waze was founded by former members of Unit 8200, but has been owned by Google since 2013. I do like that it can alert people to the presence of police, but that’s about it.
Dropout TV! I like Make Some Noise, it’s got the old Whose Line feel.
Dirty Laundry, Gastronauts, and Game Changer is where it’s at.
Very Important People is great, I don’t quite understand how some of the costumes are done, so it’s extremely impressive.
