this post was submitted on 18 May 2025
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Other than AI ideally. I've long been fascinated by CRISPR.

Wanna hear about niche tech or anything y'all find fascinating

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Maser drills: https://newatlas.com/energy/geothermal-energy-drilling-deepest-hole-quaise/

In a nutshell, it’s a economically brilliant idea: take hand-me-down microwave(ish) spectrum lasers from fusion research, drill holes deep into the crust (leaning on the fossil fuel industry), then hook up the resulting steam to existing coal plants, so you don’t have to build anything else. The coal plant gets free geothermal fuel, they move onto the next site: everyone wins.

It’s taking a worryingly long time though. I hope it gets enough funding.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Oh now THIS is the kind of answer I was looking for. Great explanation and a great topic. Thanks for that

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Good!

At risk of sounding like a shill, NewAtlas is a great source for exciting upcoming tech. I find myself reading it more these days.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago

Gonna go take a look

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 week ago (4 children)

I am excited for the tooth regrowing tech coming up. I've got some awful dental work that would be much better replaced by a real tooth

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

I've been loosely following this for years. Great to see it getting close to the deployable state.

spoilerPun intended

Also the eventual stem cell treatment for replacing damaged Inner ear cells

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I think you got autoincorrected from "deployable"

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Nice catch! Autocorrect is a pain...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

That HMS article is wild. As someone with moderate hearing loss and raging tinnitus, this would be a dream come true if it ever happens.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Ain't no way. Havent heard of this!

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Internal alpha-therapy.

Imagine, attaching a radioactive atom to a biological marker that fixes to a tumour, and deliver radiation at the very right place, rather than having to cross healthy tissues with radiation.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

Ok I've heard of this somewhere. It seems like theres a lot going on in medicine!

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I used to be excited for ai, and, let's just say, that excitement has dwindeled due to recent events.

I'm scared that the same happens to CRISPR honest

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago

The issue with tech is the economic model its under. I can imagine a million dystopian changes to society.

The doctor in China for example.

Hey maybe China starts creating soldiers with four arms and the us does too and you have a new arms race.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

I'm studying biology and CRISPR is a crucial tool for a ton of research. So it's already really useful!

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Manual typewriters. You did not precised the age of the technology in question!

Do you knew that there are an average of 1'800 parts in a typewriter? That it can print in two colors, with different margins, different interlinear space, tabulations and that some even have things like word count? It's a marvelous and yet understandable piece of technology. Someone technically inclined can understand 100% of the working of a typewriter, nobody can understand 100% of a word processor.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago

No that's good. Typewriter nerds are the nerdiest nerds I've ever met. Love it

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

California typewriter is a really neat documentary that scratches the surface.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Fusion power and small modular reactors.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago
[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

Just was in a talk of Jennifer Doudna. That CRISPER will cure many cancers in about ten years is incredible. Too bad it will be too late for my parents, but still.

To answer your question: phones and medical devices are incredible. Due to my moms pancreatic cancer she is a diabetic now. Her fingers can't feel anything anymore due to all the piercing. But now she gets a new sensor on her arm and has continuous glucose readings. And she can apply that by herself. And I get warned if she has low sugar. This bus amazing.

Shoutout to GlucoDataHandler, which does a better job than Abbott's own app.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Jennifer Doudna talks about it sooo well. Check out her episode on the Ezra Klein show (podcast). https://pca.st/episode/12135fc7-b935-4daa-92c9-8b998cafae37

Sorry about your parents.

Oh wow my mom actually got diagnosed as diabetic just a few months ago herself. That sounds like a really useful tool to have.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Also check the pancreas if possible. It almost always is found too late. And my mom started with 'just' diabetics too.

Edit, I hope it's nothing.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Aptera. A solar panel on the roof of an electric vehicle. They’re slashing the power needed per mile in half because of weight loss and aerodynamics. That helps increase the range, especially for highway driving 400-1000 claimed miles on a charge depending on the model (40, 60 or 100kwh). It would be nice if they integrated v2x technology so you could use it as a generator.

I’ve been burned before by these too good to be true projects that never see the light of day, so I’ll believe it when I start seeing them on the road.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago (2 children)

On the long-term, none. In the short-term, FOSS no-code tools are finally allowing grassroot organizations to have self-hosted, customizable internal tooling without having to rely on devs or sysadmins. This has a lot of potential to overcome the failures of the last decades of hackerist unadoptable software.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Any Foss no-code tools you'd recommend?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Baserow and n8n are good enough for me to use in a professional production setting. Nocodb could be good, but it has some very basic bugs and shortcomings that make it hard to use.

Appflowy is getting there, but I would give it some more time.

Appsmith is good, but complex. Worth investing some time into, but it cannot be picked up casually to play around.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Now I don't understand this stuff very well. But I know I like everything FOSS. And I know I like self hosting. So this certainly sounds good

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

It's AI but a specific use case of AI: an android at home to take care of the housework. Cleaning my dishes, doing the laundry, vaccuming and putting stuff away where it belongs are obvious use cases. But also:

  • Go through your fridge and throw away everything that has expired or gone bad.
  • Take care of your cat while you're away on vacation.
  • It's your personal fire fighter.
  • It paints your house or does any kind of house maintenance.
  • Let's say you're in the middle of playing a board game on your dinner table but need to put it away for the night. Ask the android to memorize everything and put it away. The next time your friends come around to play, it can place everything in exactly the same spot.

Possibilities are endless.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yeah! I've been asking chat gpt to take care of my daughter every day and I've not heard her cry in months!

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago

That is anything but specific!

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Any technology is cool if you look at it in isolation. I just can't get terribly excited because I generally doubt they will be used in a sensible/humane manner.

Med tech is looking cool. It's one of the few unambiguously good uses of AI. AI systems for reading scans, detecting disease, etc. seem like they could be used to make medicine faster, easier, and more affordable, but I have doubts that the tech won't just be used to increase profit margins and somehow mess things up to benefit insurance company executives.

CRISPR/synthBio looks like it could do amazing things, but I have to wonder how long until things hit the sweet spot, intersecting democratization of powerful tools and destructive ideology, and lead some lunatic or group of lunatics to develop a society destroying bioweapon.

It's hard to get excited about the development of a new power when you look at who's likely to hold it.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

One of my favourite modern writers is Ted Chiang. He has argued that the horror in science fiction tends to come not from the technology but the system that it exists in.

You might appreciate this: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tedchiang/the-real-danger-to-civilization-isnt-ai-its-runaway#.nq4zaYNr6

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Oh man, that first sentence, already...

This summer, Elon Musk spoke to the National Governors Association and told them that β€œAI is a fundamental risk to the existence of human civilization.”

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago
[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Zero knowledge proofs. I've worked in the industry for a couple years now, and I've got a lot of hope it will actually help us fix the internet, stop spam bots, and allow for people to interact with better control over their data.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Blockchain cryptogrpaphy thingy?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It's very useful in a lot of areas, blockchain being one, privacy being another, provable computation being a big one

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago

trains. i know it isn't particularly new technology, but i am still excited about it.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

This is the key to so much. Worried about NestlΓ© monopolizing freshwater? With nuclear fusion we can just take any old seawater and remove the salt. Worried about the war with Russia? With nuclear fusion we can become independent of all gas from Russia and cut off one of their biggest income sources. Lots of special materials are expensive because electricity is expensive - with nuclear fusion electricity is practically free. Over time we can get rid of any coal plants etc. that produce CO2.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

with nuclear fusion electricity is practically free.

Like that'll ever happen under capitalism.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Free, except for the amortized R&D and construction costs.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Oh i recently read a bit about it but honestly. Not my field.

I just want energy to be transformed, I like solar but nuclear is where its truly at.

China has a lot of nuclear projects going on

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (2 children)

In response to you, have you seen GATICA it's a great movie that shows clearly why that tech scares me.

I think batteries are super interesting, and sodium solid state batteries are a pretty huge innovation, but graphene batteries will be utterly insane if we can get there. Very interesting stuff.

Graphine being a single atom think sheet of carbon, which is dope!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (3 children)

For anyone else searching, the movie is spelled β€œGattaca”.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

With home IPL (laser hair removal) being easily accessible now, I'd like to see other useful lasers developed for home use as I have a tattoo I'd like to remove.

I'm not particularly following this technology though, just moderately hopeful, which is as excited as I can get these days, that it'll come along and be affordable before civilisation collapses.

(It's not a tat of anything shameful, I just don't like having to go outside or talk to people if I can possibly avoid it.)

[–] rabber 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'm really nerdy about camping gear. The shit coming out every season is just insane.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I went down a rabbit hole of watching camping gear reviews a few months ago. I hear a good pillow is an issue.

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