I think there should be some sort of subsidized insurance program for hiring ex-convicts. No one wants to hire former criminals, which is clearly a problem since unemployment among them increases the likelihood of recidivism. But if companies where protected against the risks associated with employing ex-cons, then they would be more likely to hire them, especially since ex-cons are very willing to take lower wages.
Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?
381–390 of 545 posts
Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?
#382Interventional radiology (IR). Most people don't know it exists until they need it. IR procedures range from acutely life-saving (strokes, heart attacks, DVTs, etc.) to cancer (burning/freezing tumor lesions). Other procedures have a major impact on quality of life - embolizing the prostatic arteries for BPH treatment, embolizing uterine fibroids, and draining abscesses.
From HN's perspective, this is some of the most technologically advanced medicine. If you've never seen an IR procedure, I encourage you to see an aneurysm coiling. The patient is situated on a table that moves in 8 directions (up, down, left, right, forward, backward, tilt-left, and tilt-right). A C-shaped X-ray machine surrounds the patient to help the physician guide the treatment. The X-ray arm itself is able to move circumferentially to generate 3D images. Note that X-rays have minimal radiation delivery relative to CT scans. The physician will construct a 3D model of the brain's vasculature, find the aneurysm, and stick a reinforcing coil at the out pouching. The entire procedure is performed within a vessel from a single needle prick.
The common analogy is, "It's like a video game." Here's a picture of the setup:
http://www.polytechae.com/consierge/docs/images/882_polytech...
Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?
#383Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Humans need more lifespan, badly. Do we? Or do we need more realistic perspective about death? Why quantity over quality? Seems there's a lot of quality improvements that could be made [1]. For instance, I read recently (can't recall source) that San Fransisco's homeless is the least happy in the world. Also that the top 1% in the world make over $35K a year, but there are far happier people than exist in middle Am…
I remember when I first deconverted. I was horrified that there was no heaven, and that my loved ones weren't waiting for me. That they were just gone forever. They didn't exist. They weren't happy, and I would never see them again. I see many atheists carry on religious memes after they deconvert. Which is only natural, religion isn't just a single idea, it's deeply ingrained into our culture. One of those memes is…
I think death is probably a selective evolutionary advantage for a species.
A species is basically self perpetuating genetic code stuck somewhere in an evolutionary local maxima. In our case there may be an advantage in adaptability by having individuals die and genetic code mix/change more frequently.
This still sucks and if we could figure out how the brain actually worked to prevent it that would be cool, but we'd start getting into identity issues (what makes you you? how does consciousness actually work?).
Sleep is interesting to think about here since it likely has something to do with re-calculating weights in a neural net, garbage collection, persisting memories etc. Though we don't consider going to sleep dying and waking up new because of the sense of continuity. If a copy of you was made and the original then killed though we wouldn't like that.
Sense of purpose difficulties still exist in our relatively brief lifespans, but at least we get an easy out with the biological one - we'd have to think more about this with death out of the way. Also the drive to have sex and reproduce would probably still be around since it's core to our existence, not sure how we deal with that.
Though I'd still prefer a star trek future where we're colonizing the galaxy and the goal is to learn.
Mostly rambling thoughts.
Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?
#384Mental health - specifically in a future where we may be increasingly more connected virtually but increasingly less connected physically. In one or two decades when the average urbanite is serviced by on-demand autonomous vehicles and drones, works from home (or not at all), consumes news/media in a personalized subreddit-like echo chamber interspersed with cleverly integrated native advertising, and spends 10+ hour…
This is something I'm trying to address with my startup, Krewe: https://www.gokrewe.com/about. I want to make it easy for people to quickly form strong, lasting friendships and relationships and become connected with their local community. It gives people access to a small social group in their neighborhood and gradually allows them to expand that group. Since everyone lives so close to each other, it makes it possible to get together often, even everyday if they want, without having to deal with extensive planning or traffic.
If YC or anyone else wants to fund me, I'd be fine with that.
Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?
#385Making better rope.
Seriously. The Space Elevator guys are working with micro-fibers to come up with some kind of rope/scaffording that would support its own weight and that of an elevator all the way out to GSO, but it sounds like there ought to be some early victories where you could take microfibers and create super-light rope and cabling.
I have no idea what the impact would be but it sounds like something very interesting and somewhat useful that the commercial sector wouldn't develop on its own. It could also lead to a bunch of other stuff that'd be neat, like new textiles. If nothing else, we'd learn stuff about what was feasible and what wasn't.
Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?
#386Queensland University of Technology (QUT) has a research project called CAUSEE where they have tracked thousands of Australian startups to find out how many got funded (a very tiny percentage of all startups), what they were planning to build, whether they succeeded or failed, how quickly they got going and so on. Their justification was that too often we look at successful startups and then do whatever they did. Whi…
Have a direct link to the research you could share with us?
Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?
#387Please assess Polywell Fusion.
Here is a recent status update: http://nextbigfuture.com/2016/01/jaeyoung-park-confirms-publ...
It includes a link to a 2015 Physics Review paper, a published patent application, and a pitch deck.
After 20 years of funding by the US Navy, they are looking for $30 million and 3 years to resolve the remaining scientific questions. They are under US ITAR restrictions, so the work must be owned by US entities.
Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?
#388Proof based trusted computing.
seL4 and similar applications of coq proof assistant. Existing academia is funding some development of tools like coq, and also some core applications like seL4, and more accessible applications will happen as open source. But we need to make these techniques more accessible for larger applications that will affect the real world.
Example: A webserver proved to respond only to correctly authenticated clients (covering the end to end: kernel, server, protocols, for every client).
Also fund making this research more accessible: try, compare, file usability bugs on, and then highlight the different technologies for achieving trust. For example Haskell Liquid types as a lighter weight complement to proving stuff in coq. Maybe fund research meshing these techniques with languages that provide different type-system guarantees, such as Rust.
Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?
#389+1 for Meta research. The way we do research needs to be completely overhauled. An outside body could help kickstart this in a way that insiders couldn't. You could also set the bar high and challenge the industry to meet it, whereas something put together by insiders would have a lot of compromise built into it before it ever saw the light of day.
I'd like to see somebody pull out tech at the roots and start over with a new processor or SoC design. There are a ton of problems in the community that all have their roots in the way CPUs process data. There are also a ton of new technologies that become more and more powerful the closer to the metal they're implemented. Even running the whole project as a whiteboard-only, blue-sky effort could produce some conceptual ideas that others would want to follow-up on. I think if this is not done, all the separate techs continue to develop on their own, and we miss out on a huge chance of making a significant leap forward.
Re: Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research?
#390MOOCs.
I see Andrew Ng's class is being offered again for the first time in a few years (https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning), but other great classes aren't, like LAFF http://www.ulaff.net/ , Thiel's startup class etc.
Seems like a travesty that these incredible classes are created by our best minds, but then aren't continuously offered. (the materials are available for self-study, but not the graded homework, support forums, TAs, certificates of accomplishment etc.)
Coursera, the prof, the university, have no incentive to keep it going. Philanthropists should really fund continuing development of the best-of-the-best MOOCs so students can keep learning, best practices can keep improving.
There is no good central discovery and reputation for MOOCs. There needs to be a place I can go and see that e.g. LAFF is the most popular / highest rated for intro to linear algebra, and here's how much work it represents.
There are universities who start online programs, but what we really need is an online 'degree' grantor who can say, OK, you've taken these online MOOCs from various institutions, I can tell from the fact that you logged in with your finger, your device's camera, metrics like typing style, word frequency for essays, etc. that you actually did the work, these courses are worth X number of points, here's a 'degree' or a few numbers describing the quantity and quality of your work in various disciplines at various places.
And then the best of the best should be able to tap funds to be continuously offered.
It seems more like an object for a non-profit startup (should be self-sustaining but doesn't seem like the sort of thing that should be in IPO candidate or revenue-maximizing, will turn into University of Phoenix)