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Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on?

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Re: Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on?

#681

Post by steamer25 »

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #322
deadmutex wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the people behind "trustlessness" should have chosen a better word. When people that are not familiar with crypto hear trustless, they can associate the solution with the common definition: "not worthy of trust; faithless; unreliable; false". I.e. the solution isn't reliable. I realize that the people behind it are trying to apply the world trustless to the problem they are solving, but that is definitely not…

Yeah I was thinking more "Provable".

Maybe 'trustification'? A novelish term for novel concepts around creating trust where it wouldn't otherwise be.

Re: Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on?

#682

Post by virgilp »

peterangular wrote: post #349
virgilp wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, UiPath's valuation is currently 7B... But yeah. They have an "academy" for training RPA developers, forums/ social presence, big sales teams, a process for developing automation, an "automation framework", a marketplace for automation activities, etc.... all these are stuff outside of the core software (robot/"activity executor", orchestrator, and studio for designing said activities). Maintaining & expanding t…

Right on! Yeah - I would love to learn more about what the bigger guys are doing. Everything you're saying is 100% something I deal with on a day-to-day basis, and ongoing support is a huge struggle to workout with the companies I've implemented software at. Looking at your product offerings made me chuckle - I definitely have versions of a lot of what you do! My robots are called workers, my orchestrator is called a…

> Lemme know if you guys are ever looking for a remote automation engineer w/tons of cloud experience ;)

Maybe - but how would one go about contacting you? (I have my email in my profile, should you wish to contact me).

Re: Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on?

#683

Post by kortilla »

ncmncm wrote: post #542
johnmorrison wrote: post #171

In the online world, it seems like there are two big things happening right now: - Neural networks / ML (eg GPT-2) Definitely nowhere near its potential for being applied to a wide variety of areas. Find a niche you like and apply there. - Security / Privacy (eg Telegram) Rapidly growing demand pretty much everywhere. Bonus points if you can make your product great for standard users and at the same time hackable/cus…

The most pressing problem for humanity is global climate disruption. Arguably, working on anything that doesn't help there is not just wasted effort, but actively harmful. Wind, solar power, energy storage still have huge room for improvement. Direct solar or wind -> liquid fuel will be essential to adapting fast. Windmills can drive production of liquid ammonia on farms (needing only air and water inputs), for use d…

> Without massive progress in the next decade, civilization will probably collapse by 2035.

This is a joke not backed by any scientific consensus or evidence. Maybe some more instability in some countries, but nothing close to the collapse of civilization.

Re: Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on?

#684

Post by jl2718 »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #222
jl2718 wrote: post #114

I see a huge trend coming in “DIY Medicine”. Doctors, insurers, and the FDA are way too expensive for mere gatekeeping, and technology is developing new treatments and dropping equipment costs an order of magnitude faster than they can respond. For example, I can buy all of the equipment necessary for a PRP injection for less than the cost of a single treatment, and the doctor that does it knows no more about how to…

I wish I could address everything that's wrong with this comment. The biggest thing is you seem extremely willing to take risks without understanding the gravity of what you're doing. Sure, you CAN give yourself PRP injections and LIKELY will have little to no side effects. Healthcare providers need extreme confidence that (a) a procedure will be effective (b) the risks are appropriate.

PRP was a pretty extreme example, but I used it to prove a point that no matter how crazy it seems to do PRP in an underground or gray-market venue, 1. A lot of people are already doing it, and 2. absent blood contamination risk, the risk, benefit, and cost trade-off is still massively better than the surgery it may prevent. It’s not even close. Even if it’s not proven to be effective by statistical scrutiny, neither are the vast majority of orthopedic surgeries. Seriously, look it up, and be mindful that it is the surgeon himself that determines success in most studies.

Re: Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on?

#685

Post by johnmorrison »

ncmncm wrote: post #542
johnmorrison wrote: post #171

In the online world, it seems like there are two big things happening right now: - Neural networks / ML (eg GPT-2) Definitely nowhere near its potential for being applied to a wide variety of areas. Find a niche you like and apply there. - Security / Privacy (eg Telegram) Rapidly growing demand pretty much everywhere. Bonus points if you can make your product great for standard users and at the same time hackable/cus…

The most pressing problem for humanity is global climate disruption. Arguably, working on anything that doesn't help there is not just wasted effort, but actively harmful. Wind, solar power, energy storage still have huge room for improvement. Direct solar or wind -> liquid fuel will be essential to adapting fast. Windmills can drive production of liquid ammonia on farms (needing only air and water inputs), for use d…

> The most pressing problem for humanity is global climate disruption.

I don't believe most would agree here. There are a lot of problems humanity faces, and humanity is a lot of different people. Those still living in extreme poverty today probably don't care about our worries of climate disruption.

> Arguably, working on anything that doesn't help there is not just wasted effort, but actively harmful.

Why is this?

> Direct hydrogen-fueled aircraft are feasible, and more efficient than with kerosine, but the design cycle is too long.

This is really interesting but doesn't strike me as true based on my background. Do you have anything I could read regarding? I would be very interested

> Without massive progress in the next decade, civilization will probably collapse by 2035.

This I really don't agree with or understand.

I'm very worried about emissions, but I don't see why civilization would collapse any time soon, if at all. 2035 is very soon.

Re: Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on?

#687

Post by deanCommie »

johnmorrison wrote: post #685
ncmncm wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most pressing problem for humanity is global climate disruption. Arguably, working on anything that doesn't help there is not just wasted effort, but actively harmful. Wind, solar power, energy storage still have huge room for improvement. Direct solar or wind -> liquid fuel will be essential to adapting fast. Windmills can drive production of liquid ammonia on farms (needing only air and water inputs), for use d…

> The most pressing problem for humanity is global climate disruption. I don't believe most would agree here. There are a lot of problems humanity faces, and humanity is a lot of different people. Those still living in extreme poverty today probably don't care about our worries of climate disruption. > Arguably, working on anything that doesn't help there is not just wasted effort, but actively harmful. Why is this?…

> Those still living in extreme poverty today probably don't care about our worries of climate disruption.

Tell that to 100Million people in poverty in Bangladesh that will become climate refugees if the sea level rises in any meaningful way.

In the west, sea-side living is a privilege for the richest. And sea level rise is mostly ignorable with the virtue of new seawalls.

In the developing world, the most poverty-stricken are the closest to the water, and nobody will be funding solutions for them.

Re: Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on?

#688

Post by xeonoex »

hugs wrote: post #603
xeonoex wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I work for UiPath. This is a problem with almost any type of automation. I wouldn't say our software (I am only familiar with UiPath) is finicky. GUIs are finicky, but there are ways to deal with them. That's the stuff a good RPA dev can handle. I was automating before I started at UiPath, and GUI interaction adds a new layer to automation, of course. But it is still maintainable when you implement them u…

How is UiPath different than open source tools like Selenium?

It's developer friendly and easy to use. It has an IDE for creating automations. I know a lot of devs might think they don't really care about an IDE, but when you're automating interfaces it makes it _way_ easier. It also is not limited to web browsers.

Check out this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B4Y_aUBWTM

It's a very simple automation. It just gets text from a browser and inserts it into notepad. But it's a 3 minute video that does something. Check out Selenium tutorials and compare how much you would learn from a 3 minute video. You don't have to dive into the HTML, you just click on what you want to click/type into/scrape and it knows what you want.

But it still has all the power a developer would want. You can create custom activities using C# and VB. The product itself is not open source, but it is very extensible and flexible. The workflows it generates are text files, which work well in source control. It has source control integration built in, which a custom diff tool. It enables code sharing and encourages code reuse.

The only downside I would point out is that it only runs on Windows for now, which might be a problem for linux only shops.

Re: Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on?

#689

Post by jl2718 »

tsmarsh wrote: post #157
jl2718 wrote: post #114

I see a huge trend coming in “DIY Medicine”. Doctors, insurers, and the FDA are way too expensive for mere gatekeeping, and technology is developing new treatments and dropping equipment costs an order of magnitude faster than they can respond. For example, I can buy all of the equipment necessary for a PRP injection for less than the cost of a single treatment, and the doctor that does it knows no more about how to…

I work in Pharma, we're not worried yet. We've done a few trials of nano-fabs, essentially 3D printed labs where you inject the raw materials and drugs pop out the end. They kind of work, but its still a lot of work and would mean consumers getting hands on a bunch of controlled substances. Being able to produce meth in a 'lab' that fits in your hand is not crazy... except you can clearly see how crazy that is.

I’m not talking about nano-fabs. From a pharma perspective, I’m talking about moleculars that are produced in GMP facilities and sold like any other USP, not for human use. This is admittedly dangerous because the formulations could have contaminants. However, even in FDA-approved pharma, you get things like NDMA being used as a solvent and ending up as millimolar fractions, and the drugs don’t even get pulled for months after discovery by some random independent lab. There are thousands of moleculars that pharma will never push through the FDA because it’s a natural human protein fragment and therefore impossible to patent and profit from.

Re: Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on?

#690

Post by jacobwilliamroy »

peterangular wrote: post #38

I work in this field so I'm incredibly biased: automated business solutions that cut entry-level data employees out of the equation. You save TONS on the bottom line, and cut out human-driven process that is error prone and difficult to manage. I'm talking about things beyond "API-driven dev", more in the realms of Puppeteer, Microsoft Office automation, screen-scraping (mouse/keyboard), etc. I make API's out of thin…

Your post brought back fond memories of combining autohotkey with premiere pro to automate boring tasks. Haha. I agree, you have a nice niche.
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