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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?

#741

Post by SkyPuncher »

robbya wrote: post #531
SkyPuncher wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked in these spaces for the past few years. Money is the biggest challenge. Elderly who can afford to pay for their care have plenty of options available for all of this. Many elderly (on Medicare or fixed income) simply don't have any money. > 1. Technology that helps doctors/practices service more elderly patients Telemedicine and home care services, like Honor, are addressing this. Telemedicine will improve a…

> Telemedicine will improve as more technically adept people age. There's a little bit of user blaming in that statement (not being critical, just thinking out loud). Dealing with the elderly and folks who are less familiar with tech is an interesting design space. Does anyone know design patterns that specifically seek to improve the experience for non-tech savy elderly?

I think user blame is a bit of an under simplification.

In this case, the issue stems beyond just the product. In many cases, these elderly households don't even have internet access as it's simply not something that's needed for their daily life.

No matter how good a telemedicine product is, it's nearly impossible to deliver without the underlying infrastructure (and desire for that infrastructure) in place.

For the elderly with internet connection, telemedicine is already a pretty simple user experience.

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

#742

Post by tito »

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #414
tito wrote: post #53

Climate change will create the first trillionaire. Find everything that eats fossil fuels and electrify it. Find everything that requires stable land and predictable weather and put it in a shipping container. Find every infrastructure investment that requires decades to pay off and decentralize it. Instead of water line pipes, pull water out of the air. Instead of copper and fiber optic cables on telephone poles, us…

> Find everything that eats fossil fuels and electrify it You start off with a free lunch fallacy. Open an led bulb sometime. You’ll find a large heat sink, at least one fiberglass circuit board, 30-100 electronics components with their own printing / cases / production footprints, ROHS-exempt parts have heavy metals like lead and mercury, you’ll find metal stampings and plastic coated wire, there will be plastic len…

Never said it would be easy. But fossil fuel powered light bulbs aren't the long term solution, and renewable-powered bulbs definitely are.

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

#743

Post by tito »

rwmurrayVT wrote: post #263
tito wrote: post #53

Climate change will create the first trillionaire. Find everything that eats fossil fuels and electrify it. Find everything that requires stable land and predictable weather and put it in a shipping container. Find every infrastructure investment that requires decades to pay off and decentralize it. Instead of water line pipes, pull water out of the air. Instead of copper and fiber optic cables on telephone poles, us…

That AirMiners site takes 30 seconds to load.

Hmm, wonder why that is. Loads fast for me!

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

#744

Post by phaus »

Miraste wrote: post #428
burntoutfire wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an ocean of quality difference between a video game and a (non-CGI) movie.

There really isn't, any more. A few more polys in the models and a few more rays in the path tracing aren't a big difference. Check out what Blender can do with Eevee, which is more-or-less a realtime engine. Better physics simulations are still a big differentiator, but that doesn't matter for characters. The only reason rendered likenesses don't appear in films more (because they already do, look at Peter Cushing)…

The CGI Peter Cushing is obviously CGI and non CGI Peter Cushing is obviously not. Its impressive but its not remotely close to being there yet. Is there a better example? You can probably make some CGI stills that fool people pretty well, but so far I haven't seen a convincing animated character.

Death Stranding is even more glaringly obvious. However to be fair to the devs they aren't under the impression that it looks like anything other than a videogame. A very pretty videogame, but still obvious CGI.

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

#745

Post by Wh1skey »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #599
daxfohl wrote: post #597

Home meal prep. I think there's an opportunity for someone to nail this, just nobody has. I'd love somewhere to create a schedule, dietary preferences, family size, and have a fresh, healthy, varied meal delivered every day, without having to think about it again.

What do you think is missing from current options, because an awful lot of podcasts have ads for these right now. Freshly comes to mind as a brand I would recognize, but I've definitely heard multiple services advertizing that you can customize to your schedule, number of mouths to feed, dietary preferences (common sensitivities, kosher / halal, veg*, etc.)

Price point

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

#746

Post by tito »

jason0597 wrote: post #477
tito wrote: post #53

Climate change will create the first trillionaire. Find everything that eats fossil fuels and electrify it. Find everything that requires stable land and predictable weather and put it in a shipping container. Find every infrastructure investment that requires decades to pay off and decentralize it. Instead of water line pipes, pull water out of the air. Instead of copper and fiber optic cables on telephone poles, us…

>Instead of water line pipes, pull water out of the air. I thought this story was put to bed a long time ago? [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVsqIjAeeXw

Check it out, this is a different implementation that works!

"A new device that sits inside a shipping container can use clean energy to almost instantly bring clean drinking water anywhere–the rooftop of an apartment building in Nairobi, a disaster zone after a hurricane in Manila, a rural village in Zimbabwe–by pulling water from the air."

https://www.fastcompany.com/90253718/a-device-that-can-pull-...

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

#747

Post by tito »

johnmorrison wrote: post #515
jeffreyrogers wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really see that happening. Most of the things you've suggested would require large amounts on energy to produce. I don't see energy getting cheaper over the next 50-100 years. It seems to me that climate change and reduced dependency on fossil fuels we lead to reduced globalization and population reduction.

Hey, I work at a nuclear fission company. We think we can get our electricity prices to around $0.0025 / kWh by around 2045. This represents a ~20x reduction from off-peak cost in Ontario where I live, and ~150x reduction from average electricity prices in Germany. Also, w.r.t. population, the way I see it our population is growing very quickly whether we like it or not (look at Africa). I think there's a good opport…

Wow that's really exciting, I need to pay more attention to nuclear.

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

#748

Post by tito »

nanomonkey wrote: post #260
jeffreyrogers wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, how about the copper that transports that electron to somewhere it can do useful work? How about the 1800C furnace that melts sand into the silicon for the solar panel? How about the diesel fuel that the massive mining trucks used to haul the copper ore out of the mine are fueled with (these things are heavy and get something like 8 gallons to the mile (not a typo) good luck running them on batteries)? Those th…

Mining trucks are going electric. They actually make energy when loaded and going down a hill. https://hackaday.com/2019/08/22/electric-dump-truck-produces... Furnaces have been run off of solar (parabolic mirrors) for quite some time.

Good to know, thanks! Seems obvious this is the way to go. Excited to see growth in this space in the future.

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

#749

Post by baq »

SeaSeaRider wrote: post #727
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…

“Without massive progress in the next decade, civilization will probably collapse by 2035.” This is deathcult type rhetoric which has no scientific basis whatsoever.

With the way things are going ww3 will be about water. It’s easy to imagine half of Africa, Latin America and parts of Asia to pack and move as a whole.

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

#750

Post by tito »

AareyBaba wrote: post #545
tito wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call it "Sand to Solar". Some of the best ideas start out as jokes, I googled for this because I was curious: "New technology allows heated sand to generate electricity, presenting a viable new option for investors to focus on." https://oilandenergyinvestor.com/acq/new-energy-from-sand-wh...

I wasted more time than I care to think reading that article. There is no mention of how the technology works. A vague reference to an academic project in the UAE. Most of the article is just filler fluff. This is a marketing article to investors for this authors "wealth building energy advantage".

If you're curious, try googling for "SandShifter", here's an energy.gov profile:

https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/project-profile-csp-energy...

https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1183706-solar-holdings-final-tec...

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