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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?

#281

Post by ameister14 »

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…

Much like the massive opportunity in "DIY Civil Engineering" - those engineers deciding how a bridge should be built don't know that with a couple of two by fours and some selective welding the gray market can give far better outcomes for an order magnitude lower cost

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

#282

Post by peterangular »

gota wrote: post #63
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…

Do you have anything going on related to process mining?

YES. I didn't even know that nomenclature before you said it... I employ an ELK and TIG stack for a huge part of what I do. You can very much say that I "process mine" my own process. I also have a ton of regex capability that's often employed to rip through large datasets to extract key data.

Lots of times I have to measure certain things before I begin to fix a problem, and the above stated tooling (typically ran in Docker containers) has really really helped with that.

I have dashboards, warnings, circuit breakers, etc etc. that all help me monitor complex processes, and that help me react to ongoing changes (ex: when a 3rd-party website updates their DOM).

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

#283

Post by peterangular »

danjc wrote: post #199
kilimchoi wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sounds like RPA

I've been conflicted about RPA because my view is that if there's an API, you should use that rather than comparatively brittle screen-based "integration". What's extremely compelling about this approach though is that you can cut through all of the friction of API's - even end users understand how to use the UI so they're really empowered to build their own automation in a way that they haven't been previously.

80-90% of what I do doesn't have an API. If there's an API that's functional enough you're darn straight I'm going to be using that vs. Puppeteer, etc!

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

#284

Post by yters »

Human in the loop machine learning. All the successful big players use it, but pretend it is all ML. Merely making the human explicit and finding the best trade-off between human and algorithm can do wonders for machine learning.

Plus it has better optics than "AI WILL EAT YER JORBZ". In this case human in the loop ML inherently creates jobs as an essential element.

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

#285

Post by eyegor »

slowrabbit wrote: post #265
starpilot wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very common when you do tech work in a non-tech industry. Comes up a lot with coding-inclined mechanical engineers. Zed Shaw's words are really true: > Programming as a profession is only moderately interesting. It can be a good job, but you could make about the same money and be happier running a fast food joint. You're much better off using code as your secret weapon in another profession. People who can code in th…

Same money running a fast food joint? You're underpaid bro or you know some crazy overpaid fast food managers. People from science based fields are coming to computer science because those other fields lack job opportunities at competitive pay.

I assuming running = owning, not managing. Subtle maybe in practice but not in revenue.

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

#286

Post by wodenokoto »

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…

Isn't this what for a short while was called robotics, but now is mostly referred to as RPA? It sounds like you are competing with things like Blueprism.

These things are really a big deal within large organisations.

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

#287

Post by godot »

slowrabbit wrote: post #265
starpilot wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very common when you do tech work in a non-tech industry. Comes up a lot with coding-inclined mechanical engineers. Zed Shaw's words are really true: > Programming as a profession is only moderately interesting. It can be a good job, but you could make about the same money and be happier running a fast food joint. You're much better off using code as your secret weapon in another profession. People who can code in th…

Same money running a fast food joint? You're underpaid bro or you know some crazy overpaid fast food managers. People from science based fields are coming to computer science because those other fields lack job opportunities at competitive pay.

I believe OP means running a fast food joint as the owner, not a manager employee.

Granted I don't know anything about that business, a quick google search comes up with an article from 2015 saying running a McDonald's provides an average annual profit of $150k so it sounds about in the right ballpark range: https://www.mymoneyblog.com/mcdonalds-franchise-cost-vs-prof...

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

#288

Post by peterangular »

wenc wrote: post #105
kilimchoi wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sounds like RPA

I was going to say. Many companies are already investing heavily in RPA (Robotic Process Automation) these days. It’s not widely known in tech circles but kind of common knowledge in traditional companies trying to automate tedious workflow tasks. When I first saw it, I thought: this looks like a glorified Autohotkey or Automator. But companies like UiPath are doing very well selling this type of automation software.…

> Autohotkey

Yep I've had to employ this software to get things done before. Also OCR doesn't need a cloud vs. a beefy computer - I do a lot of that too.

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

#290

Post by crankylinuxuser »

I'm working on starting my own business with SDRs, radio, and the final area of hacking.

SigInt.

How do you protect yourself and your company from the myriad of radios and devices and BYOD policies? Can you keep up with what's talking over radio? Do you know what's secure and what's not? Do you want to not only find bad devices, but locate them in your facility?

Do you also want to detect radio attacks that originate in or out of your facility? Or, do drones disturb you?

That's what I'm working on.

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