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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?

#291

Post by deadmutex »

lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #276

Crypto. And no, I don't mean applying blockchain to everything, or internet money that just goes "up and to the right". I mean the new applications of distributed systems research and cryptographic primitives that allow for highly composable, highly trustworthy, permissionless, autonomous machines. MakerDAO, Arweave, the whole field of open finance (aka "DeFi"), and so many others collectively are very likely to chan…

I think the people behind "trustlessness" should have chosen a better word. When people that are not familiar with crypto hear trustless, they can associate the solution with the common definition: "not worthy of trust; faithless; unreliable; false". I.e. the solution isn't reliable. I realize that the people behind it are trying to apply the world trustless to the problem they are solving, but that is definitely not clear from the quick soundbites people read.

source: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/trustless

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

#292

Post by CamperBob2 »

yodon wrote: post #116
elcomet wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm thinking of assisting drivers. Projecting stuff into the road to guide the driver, or warn him when there are dangerous objects.

I'm not sure the thing people have been doing perfectly well for 100 years without AR glasses that billions of dollars are being invested in making people not need to do at all is the place to launch your AR dream company

For values of "Doing perfectly well" that encompass "Killing 30,000 people a year."

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

#293

Post by peterangular »

wodenokoto wrote: post #286
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.

Yep! I'm effectively a boutique provider of such services.

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

#294

Post by jcmontx »

peterangular wrote: post #231
charliemil4 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any advice for companies getting into this realm, specifically around making sure you get your 'valued' price? Charging for value can sometimes feel exorbitant... i.e. saving a $100+/hr person ~20 hours a month. Sure I can calculate out it on an excel sheet the customer ROI, but still feels crazy.

My market value is $10-15k/mo USD for just myself (sometimes more if I'm needed in an emergency). If you have a proven track record with a solid reputation you can command that sort of pay without an issue. I also bring a lot of general web development capability to the table, so selling on an easy-to-use interface also does a lot to add to my value. If you think about it - $35-40k for a 2-3 month dev timeline (which…

Solid comment. How do you deal with getting the knowledge of the process out of the people you are trying to leave without a job? That must be rough.

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

#295

Post by TurkishPoptart »

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 would like to see something like tele-medicine that works internationally with local pharmacies. Why should I pay for an insurance plan I don't want to see doctors I can't afford? If I am an English speaker, I should be able to connect with any English-speaking physician in the world via a Skype-like system. And if they prescribe me medications, they should be sent to my pharmacy (and if my insurance or lack thereof makes it too expensive, have the system order the generics from India or Mexico). I think the health industry giants have already seen this coming, but your idea with "doctors, insurers, and the FDA" as arbitrary and overpaid gatekeepers jibed with me.

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

#296

Post by fingerlocks »

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.

McDonald’s franchise owners make $500k to $1 million a year, in average. That’s profit, not revenue.

My source is from the McDonald’s franchise disclosure documents. The money blog mentioned in sibling comments claim it’s less.

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

#297

Post by paulkon »

topkai22 wrote: post #29

To borrow a term from Microsoft, "Intelligent Edge." With the shift to the cloud, we are finding there are still many scenarios that should start local for latency, bandwidth, or legal considerations. Organizations still want those scenarios to be easy to manage though. An example might be in store retail analytics- a set up with a bunch of cameras that can detect what people are touching or otherwise interested in.…

How do you create a recurring subscription model without gating the service in the cloud as a SaaS?

/s (or maybe not..)

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

#298

Post by peterangular »

tudelo wrote: post #279
peterangular wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> SendKeys Holy cow why didn't I know about this 6 months ago =| VBA is something I have had to reluctantly learn. It's a horrid/ancient language. Sorry if someone gets offended at that but to someone who uses a lot of modern development languages/tools it's just very very difficult with near-zero "nice to haves"... you just end up taking this huge lib of code around with you with functions like "inArray" etc. > As a…

Do you use AutoHotkey ever?

Yep! Sparingly but for some Windows-based tasks you can't beat it. Also it's a solid solution that has great support/devs behind it so it definitely has a home in my toolbox!

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

#300

Post by robotresearcher »

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.

Lots of businesses make billions in fun and games.
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