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

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

#891

Post by pnako » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 3:01 AM UTC

ncmncm wrote: post #874

johnmorrison wrote: post #795

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All of us will be affected Actually, I'm pretty sure places like Greenland, Canada, Russia etc. will be mostly positively affected. I'm mostly concerned about the changes to the ocean when it comes to affecting all humans. The unfortunate reality is that unchecked global warming will probably lower food prices and increase standards of living in many places that are already rich, while causing destruction in places…

Global thermonuclear war is a likely end stage, as fascists are swept into power in reaction to mass migration from the tropics. Sane governmental response is a fantastic assumption. The orange baboon, along with present counterparts in Russia, Brazil, India, China, Turkey, Indonesia, Hungary are just a hint at what is to come.

You are being excessive.

First, why do you assume they would migrate north and not further south?

In your model do you expect people to move in or out of Australia, South Africa, Chile, etc. ?

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

#892

Post by sh87 » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 3:02 AM UTC

laughinghan wrote: post #886

codeisawesome wrote: post #885

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you guys network with the right business people to speak their language and find out how their processes work? You need that info (a problem description) before you come out with a solution, don’t you?

Just ask. People absolutely love talking about their problems, it'll probably be the most animated thing they have to say about the business they're in. "Some people profess difficulty at finding applications to write. I have never understood this: talk to people. People have problems — lots of problems, more than you could enumerate in a hundred lifetimes. Talk to a carpenter, ask him what about carpentry sucks. Tal…

The "just ask" approach is very tricky. It does not emphasize a critical element : Most people love to rant and complain about things that annoy or bother them. People rarely if ever get to ideas to solve problems or even to describing the underlying problem.

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

#893

Post by strls » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 3:43 AM UTC

johnmorrison wrote: post #878

bluGill wrote: post #830

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being a specialist isn't enough. You along - no matter how good you are - are not enough. Either you need to control enough money that you can hire many specialist (Elon Musk with SpaceX), or you need to convince someone with money that is the right path. The skills for each of these are people skills not technical. Either way you will spend all your time in management activities so technical skills are not worth lea…

Companies that change the physical world require a lot higher specialist:founder ratio. There is enough capital and ambitious managerial types around, what we really have a shortage of is specialists in new technical areas.

How does a former software engineer get into nuclear tech? What specific skills and positions would be required?

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

#894

Post by gnopgnip » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 6:44 AM UTC

mtsr wrote: post #696

cbetti wrote: post #665

Platforms that enable a diaspora of small businesses to operate as effectively as large organizations with minimal startup cost. Why build a massive services organization when you can enable and finance a takeover by a multitude of smaller players?

This is interesting. Do you have any examples in mind that achieve this? Whether in particular niches or solving common problems throughout small business?

Trinet SOI, wageworks

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

#895

Post by biolurker1 » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 6:57 AM UTC

johnmorrison wrote: post #794

littlestymaar wrote: post #790

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Humans will relocate, and lose a lot of wealth, but why would they die en mass? What a wonderful world you live in. Do you genuinely believe it's that simple? What do you think happens when 1 million people move from one country to another? They do not simply relocate, they are parked in camps (if you want current examples of that look at the Rohingya people, or Syrian refugees in Lebanon) until they can go back ho…

I feel you're conflating two different types of migration, and the issue isn't nearly as big as your 150 million deaths figure. Almost all countries have ample space that will still be habitable for their entire population in 2100, even if climate change is left unchecked. Those that don't represent a small portion of the global population, certainly less than 500 million people. I grew up in Botswana, and I know tha…

cultural conflicts are the issue. There may be space in Italy for another 30 million inhabitants but soon you will have Muslims fighting Catholics (and getting slaughtered). That's a humanitarian disaster in my book

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

#896

Post by ahje » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 7:18 AM UTC

ncmncm wrote: post #880

johnmorrison wrote: post #877

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the people terrible enough to launch nukes all other the place are in the position to do that. If the last 70 years are any indication, people don't tend to nuke other people.

There are nukes in Pakistan, India, Israel, Russia, other former Soviet countries, China, and US, all under increasingly fascistic rule. The orange baboon has publicly entertained using them just for dramatic effect. What do you imagine will restrain them as tensions resulting from mass migration, collapsing harvests, and desertification continue to grow?

Hey, with a bit of luck we'll get a nuclear winter which will counter global warming. -.-

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

#897

Post by tanguyantoine » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 7:32 AM UTC

Bubbadoo wrote: post #890

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…

Such ridiculousness in posts like these. You want to stop climate change? That effort needs to include China and India, which between the two, are good for much of climate changing exhausts. You want truly renewable energy, with high yields and limited need for resources, go nuclear. Oh that's right, our climate zealots, who would have you punished for using your internal combustion engine auto, are afraid of nuclear…

You are from US, right?

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

#898

Post by Wh1skey » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 7:32 AM UTC

screye wrote: post #273

ML for healthcare. The whole industry is so far behind everything else, it is not even funny. Problem is, Just like Airbnb or Uber, the biggest road blocks are not technological, they are organizational and political. It is entirely possible, we might need some major privacy / security related leaps in ML to convince the medical industry to adopt it fully. ML in movies and rendering. Deep Fakes is just an amateur's t…

DIY healthcare

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

#899

Post by krageon » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 8:31 AM UTC

eitland wrote: post #862

krageon wrote: post #815

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an american development by a company that refuses to release actually open software. Perhaps it's good in theory! As far as I am aware there is no open implementation of it and it is also inside a problematic regime and therefore just as suspect.

Signal clients are released aa open source as far as I am aware and mathematics doesn't care about what regime it is developed under. You guys will normally find me defending Telegram here but the more important point is that we should stick to the facts even if they go in favor of "the other side".

I have not to date found anything that allows me to build a client myself and subsequently actually use it. Never mind the server, which is about as opaque as they come.

This isn't about Telegram advocacy, it's about how I keep reading "Signal is so good!" even though the devs have a very bad attitude to anyone asking about reproducible builds. When they are that hostile they do not earn trust, so it is mystifying to me that people seem to love them so much.

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

#900

Post by pfbtgom » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 9:05 AM UTC

johnmorrison wrote: post #794

littlestymaar wrote: post #790

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Humans will relocate, and lose a lot of wealth, but why would they die en mass? What a wonderful world you live in. Do you genuinely believe it's that simple? What do you think happens when 1 million people move from one country to another? They do not simply relocate, they are parked in camps (if you want current examples of that look at the Rohingya people, or Syrian refugees in Lebanon) until they can go back ho…

I feel you're conflating two different types of migration, and the issue isn't nearly as big as your 150 million deaths figure. Almost all countries have ample space that will still be habitable for their entire population in 2100, even if climate change is left unchecked. Those that don't represent a small portion of the global population, certainly less than 500 million people. I grew up in Botswana, and I know tha…

I'm less confident that a mass migration wouldn't result in millions of deaths. An example might be the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. Only 14 million displaced, yet an estimated 200k-2 million deaths and another 2 million people missing[1]. In many ways, this planned displacement was a more favorable scenario than a chaotic climate refugee situation.

If we don't have a good answer to the relatively simple refugee migrations now (eg. Central America, Syria), then I have extreme pessimism that we will be able to manage a larger-scale, persistent event. Whereas with economic + political refugee situations we can always hope to resolve the root cause, with climate change it is simply the new normal.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_India