Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on? • Hacker News Board

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

#831

Post by bluGill » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 3:46 PM UTC

frobozz wrote: post #793

Thorentis wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are at a turning point in society right now because of all the things you address. In the last few decades have seen a rapid shift in the willingness of family members to look after their elderly. There's a few reasons for this, the biggest I think is the ageing population. When your parents need care at 85 years old, and you are 60 looking at retiring soon (or perhaps can't retire and need to work for another 7 y…

> Relatives often shoot themselves in the foot though ... because they didn't want to look after them themselves. Or because it is too difficult to do so. People are having children later in life and moving to different cities. Housing affordability in many places makes it difficult to provide for a family on one income. If your parents need care as young as 80 and you are 50 with young teenaged children, your capaci…

There are refuges from poor countries that would love to live in my parent's basement and take care of them. They would think it is great - a kitchen of their own (not all houses have this, it happens my parent's house does), bathroom with a tub, a private bedroom, plus a living room that is larger than the mud hut they lived in back home. Of course they will discover in winter that they won't be going outside so that much space is small, but there is also the rest of the house that is semi-available. Of course everybody has a different house and so situations are different. However if you are reading this odds are you have (or could afford if you wanted) a house large enough to have spare space for servants.

Legally though you can't do it. You can't import such people easily. Even if you could, you have to pay them a wage that is affordable despite also providing room and board. I'm not sure this is a bad thing overall, but even though for the world's poorest just room and board, and $1/day would be a lifestyle improvement.

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

#832

Post by bluGill » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 3:49 PM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #760

Uptrenda wrote: post #481

Maybe this is not the answer you're looking for: but I think CRISPR-Cas9 seems like the most exciting technology probably in all of science. It's a system that can be used to literally change the DNA of living creatures, and on top of that it's highly accessible. Think of the hacker culture today and now imagine the same rate of change for biological engineering. We'll have massive libraries of re-usable "components"…

I get the heebie jeebies when I hear computer technologists getting excited about gene editing. Computing and biology are opposite one another as disciplines. Computing has been built up by people from invented principles; but in biology we are working our way down from observations to try to infer the principles underlying them. It’s easy to look at our global computing infrastructure and think we are good at unders…

Genetics has its own share of bugs. I'd love to edit high cholesterol our of my genes. Yes we must be careful, but it isn't like doing nothing is risk free: doing nothing means me and my family have heart attacks and die young.

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

#833

Post by nate » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 3:57 PM UTC

A lot of folks are look forward to what's coming in tech, which is fine and good and can lead to promising careers and innovation. But I'm even more impressed with folks like Nintendo who do the exact opposite. They look at all the junk we've already passed up to see what can be done with it. So many times along their path they came up with products using what the Sony's would have considered obsolete junk. This is a great book about that history: https://www.amazon.com/Super-Mario-Nintendo-Conquered-Americ...

I mention it because I think there's a lot of value looking at the "no longer promising" areas and see what can still be done with those tools and pieces in innovative ways. And so few are actually doing that.

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

#834

Post by charliepark » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 4:00 PM UTC

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?

This is a good article on design patterns and considerations when designing for older users: https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2015/02/designing-digital-t...

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

#835

Post by p1esk » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 4:06 PM UTC

MiracleUser wrote: post #826

Balgair wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Talk page on the wiki has some activity from this year, so it may be up to date - ish. There are a few companies that are selling memristors [1], but, as you say, they may not be fully truthful in describing their products. I'd take a look at some of the texts that are for sale [2] to dive deeper, provided you already know a fair bit of EE. If you do not, pick up this book [3] to get a good education. I may not b…

Amazing reply. Thank you. I see Dr Chua is dropping a new text in December. I'll see what I can learn by then and if it sticks I'll support with a purchase

Don’t bother. I work at a lab where some of the largest and best memristor based crossbars have been developed, and I can tell you it’s almost all hype at this point. There are significant problems with memristive circuits, and very little advantage over something a lot more mature such as NOR flash crossbars (we work on both). There are many competing device technologies to use for analog computation, it’s far from clear which one is better.

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

#836

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 4:07 PM UTC

johnmorrison wrote: post #768

ahje wrote: post #728

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those still living in extreme poverty today probably don't care about our worries of climate disruption. No doubt about it. At this point it's probably a better idea to start preparing for the changes rather than stopping them, unless we somehow manage to achieve some magical global unity around a single goal. > I don't see why civilization would collapse any time soon Civilizational collapse is a slow process. I d…

> At this point it's probably a better idea to start preparing for the changes rather than stopping them Yeah, this is probably best practice for people in regions that are projected to be left mostly uninhabitable / with severe barriers to life. This won't really be too much of a problem even if climate change is left unchecked, as Bjørn Lomborg says[1], it will only cost us 2-4% of GDP by end of century. > Civiliza…

[deleted]

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

#837

Post by brianhorakh » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 4:11 PM UTC

johnmorrison wrote: post #768

ahje wrote: post #728

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those still living in extreme poverty today probably don't care about our worries of climate disruption. No doubt about it. At this point it's probably a better idea to start preparing for the changes rather than stopping them, unless we somehow manage to achieve some magical global unity around a single goal. > I don't see why civilization would collapse any time soon Civilizational collapse is a slow process. I d…

> At this point it's probably a better idea to start preparing for the changes rather than stopping them Yeah, this is probably best practice for people in regions that are projected to be left mostly uninhabitable / with severe barriers to life. This won't really be too much of a problem even if climate change is left unchecked, as Bjørn Lomborg says[1], it will only cost us 2-4% of GDP by end of century. > Civiliza…

Dear friends,

Ahem.. Humans have only had rationale thought for the last 50000 years. We are classified as Greater apes.

Destabilized governments run by extremists and nuclear weapons. Trumps usa deny Climate change. Fuch koch.

It was a good run. Unchecked climate change toxins from unchecked reactors exploding, blabla caused by heAT triggering rising water tables.. Godzilla.

Its a Multi species collapse. Nothing humans have ever experienced. Nothing mammals have ever experienced. Stfu and join r/extinctionrebellion

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

#838

Post by eismcc » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 4:13 PM UTC

nate wrote: post #833

A lot of folks are look forward to what's coming in tech, which is fine and good and can lead to promising careers and innovation. But I'm even more impressed with folks like Nintendo who do the exact opposite. They look at all the junk we've already passed up to see what can be done with it. So many times along their path they came up with products using what the Sony's would have considered obsolete junk. This is a…

This what Roku did as well - built tech out chips nobody even wanted to sell.

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

#839

Post by aianus » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 4:18 PM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #759

echelon wrote: post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The most pressing problem for humanity is global climate disruption. Our climate and ecology are certainly at risk, but I think the biggest threat in the world right now is the rapid rise of fascist China. They're challenging the notion that free speech and democracy are required for capitalism and economic gain. China has grown so emboldened under President Xi that they're no longer content to just alter or buy ou…

Everything you fear about the rise of fascist China was far worse under the USSR in the latter 20th Century, and in fact far worse in China during that time too. I’m not intending to downplay the impact on minorities within China, or their growing global influence. It’s just that what China is doing is fundamentally the same category of human and national behavior we have seen for 100 years. Relatively speaking, it i…

What is the point of the human race surviving if it turns into some 1984-like dystopia with cameras in my house making sure I pledge allegiance to Emperor Xi's portrait every morning or my social credit score plummets?

Give me the climate (or nuclear) apocalypse, instead, please.

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

#840

Post by brianhorakh » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 4:27 PM UTC

chimprich wrote: post #798

johnmorrison wrote: post #768

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At this point it's probably a better idea to start preparing for the changes rather than stopping them Yeah, this is probably best practice for people in regions that are projected to be left mostly uninhabitable / with severe barriers to life. This won't really be too much of a problem even if climate change is left unchecked, as Bjørn Lomborg says[1], it will only cost us 2-4% of GDP by end of century. > Civiliza…

> it will only cost us 2-4% of GDP by end of century The projections suggest that it's much cheaper to avert climate change than to deal with the consequences, and much less painful. If we can afford to lose x% of GDP dealing with the problems, why can't we spend less than that to avoid the problem, and avoid a huge amount of human misery and ecological collapse in the process?

Gdp is a imaginary number madeup by economists using mg outdated pre computer methods. Gdp will break down under climate change. Heat causes discomfort, toxins cause mental illness. Your great America capitalist machine cant even stop mentally corrupted children from shooting their schoolmates. Wake up.

Egyptians lasted for 5000 years before christ was born, their civilization had expired completely during the rise of rome.

our modern society requires (depends) on specialization. It is not good at adaptation.

Our brains principally stopped evolving 50000 years ago. We're still learning how to use them and enhance/repair our bodies.

Gdp is 100 years old. We're not using gdp for anything in a ClimateChange multiple species foodchain collapse. Capitalism is 150 years old.

We probably aren't even using money in 100 years. A quantum supremacy machine has broken bitcoin satoshi blocks. Elons neurAlink connected by starlink allows us to communicate telepathically. If his hypermind doesn't build it by that time then mine will. Cheers.