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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?

#151

Post by tito »

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #148
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…

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.

The cost of energy will go near zero. The marginal cost of an electron captured with solar is free.

Solar is starting to beat fossil fuel installations already, below $0.05 USD per kWh.

This was not predicted even by the biggest cheerleaders even 10 years ago: "In 2017, the solar industry achieved SunShot’s original 2020 cost target of $0.06 per kilowatt-hour for utility-scale photovoltaic (PV) solar power three years ahead of schedule, dropping from about $0.28 to $0.06 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)." [1]

Sunshot goal for 2030 is $0.03 per kWh.

[1] https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/sunshot-2030

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

#153

Post by rapsey »

somatic wrote: post #137
rapsey wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't need a monitor, you don't need the computer as we know it today. Combine it with a brain computer interface and you throw away the keyboard and mouse as well. Subsequently you also throw away all the OS'es as we know them. AR/VR is a toy today. In the future our computers and mobile phones might look as arcane as an eniac.

I recommend Hegel with Neuralink: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ppGlEiQXrRI Unless the computer is itself capable of anticipating and satisfying your desires — which, I grant, is possible, but, I would argue, incredibly, incredibly dystopian — you will need to consciously articulate your thoughts in such a way that the computer serves your will. That conscious articulation is the bottleneck. Not the keyboard, not the m…

If it needs to be a learnable skill like typing, that is just as revolutionary. The interface does not have to be that deep. Just enough to input words and movements. Hell it could be voice commands.

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

#154

Post by the-dude »

dhruvkar wrote: post #70
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…

This. I work in a small, physical goods business in the Midwest (~30 employees), and the amount of time spent doing data entry is incredible. Documents (often PDFs, sometimes excel) flow between buyers, shippers, freight forwarders and internally. These documents are often updated. I'm looking into EDI for a solution, but there's so much value to be created from cutting out all this data entry. At least 1-1.5 full ti…

I read about EDI in the early 80s.

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

#155

Post by paulvorobyev »

windsurfer wrote: post #97
mathewsanders wrote: post #22

I think AR has potential to be the most impactful new type of technology, but I don’t have any idea if wide adoption is 1 year away, or 10 years away (or more). At the moment most of the focus is around overlaying some virtual world in the real world, but I think that technologies like U1 chip being added to new Apple devices could be really interesting to allow objects in the physical world to better mesh with digit…

It's a fun tech, but I fail to see any real world value that can be derived from it. I have worked on AR stuff before and found some niche uses, but I am having real trouble finding general commercial applications apart from fun and games.

There are tons of applications! The thesis behind AR is that your phone (or some other device) can be a passport to accessing a digital world around you. Some ideas, in no particular order:

* Tourism of any kind (think AR museum or city tours)

* Location and event discovery -- as of late there have been quite a few startups trying to capitalize on giving people things to do, but none successful. This is definitely on Snap's radar with their acquisition of Vurb[1] and Placed[2]

* Interactive public art -- Paris has something like this[3] and I really want to see these types of ARGs spread to other cities

* E-commerce -- superimposing clothing or furniture[4] onto the real world

Also, why are fun and games not valid applications? Epic Games, for example, is worth 4.5bn. Interactive media is finally being recognized by the mainstream, and it's just getting started :)

[1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/vurb [2] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/placed [3] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/flashinvaders/id895180919 [4] https://www.amazon.com/adlp/arview

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

#156

Post by ScottBurson »

richtapestry wrote: post #3
mortivore wrote: post #2

Machine Learning is the hot thing right now. Just find an area you like, and apply it. Not sure what is after this.

Thanks, I've had it on my list of stuff to look into for a while. Any advice on where to start?

fast.ai has some great intro courses on deep learning.

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

#157

Post by tsmarsh »

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.

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

#158

Post by KhoomeiK »

dlivingston wrote: post #18

I have a hunch that the Next Big Thing (TM) will be augmented reality: though the technology is currently in its infancy, when compelling AR glasses are finally released (Apple is rumored to be released theirs in 2020) I think that it will have a massive impact. AR frameworks are a dime a dozen, but if you're an Apple person look into ARKit + Swift.

Big agree. Smartphones have more or less flatlined in the last couple years and the only viable next step seems to be AR. Snap Inc and a lot of smaller players in the market know this, and their pivot to AR is arguably what has caused their resurgence in the past few months.

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

#159

Post by tunesmith »

neltnerb wrote: post #138

Cooperatives. The economy needs to shift away from giant companies with pay ratios of a thousand to one between CEOs and average employees and employees need control over their workplace to move to the next stage of capitalism. Make it easier for collectives to start up businesses that aren't purely focused on profit and instead focused on employees taking ownership of their work. It may not be the biggest profit pos…

I've always thought it would be interesting to figure out the smallest number of people needed to create a pop-up town or microtown. If you get a sufficient number of people together, plop them down anywhere, run water/electricity/sewer, and start a community. It might be that most of them would have to telecommute for revenue, but then you'd also have the local general store or whatever else you'd need. But the people there would be the community and social support network.

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

#160

Post by anon111028 »

ghaff wrote: post #140
dlivingston wrote: post #18

I have a hunch that the Next Big Thing (TM) will be augmented reality: though the technology is currently in its infancy, when compelling AR glasses are finally released (Apple is rumored to be released theirs in 2020) I think that it will have a massive impact. AR frameworks are a dime a dozen, but if you're an Apple person look into ARKit + Swift.

One of the big wildcards for widespread consumer use is the social aspect. We can envision what AR might look like in everyday life. What's far less clear to me is the degree to which people will accept AR glasses that are constantly using video and audio to deliver information to the wearer will be accepted. If I know that person I just met has inconspicuously scanned me and looked up all kinds of information that a…

What if last week that person you were introduced to, and gave your name to(or didn't) happened to look you up and do some research. It wasn't handed to them through glasses immediately, but essentially it's the same thing. I would bet it probably has already happened to many of us and we didn't even realize.

ever have someone come up to you and say "Oh your the person who x"

just a thought on your last sentence

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