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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?

#521

Post by [deleted] »

tunesmith wrote: post #502
8ytecoder wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A tool for children to remotely manage parents' phones, tablets, routers and (may be) computers would be nice to have. My parents are not very tech savvy and when something goes wrong getting someone to fix it takes forever. If I had remote access I'd do it in just a few minutes.

This is tough for us too - we were even thinking of buying two iPads connected to their Cloud account, just so whenever they locked themselves out, we could mail them the one we have while they mail us the broken one. The biggest problem for iPads is every time there's a software update, it asks you to set a keypad password. They set one, thinking they are guessing one they've already set, they don't remember it, and…

[deleted]

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

#522

Post by alexanderdmitri »

tabtab wrote: post #73
lewisjoe wrote: post #27

Unpopular opinion: Domain driven stack. We have been living in the golden era of software industry, thanks to Moore's law. We were able to afford RISC (= general purpose CPU arch), general purpose operating systems, general purpose languages, general purpose databases etc all because the hardware was going to evolve and get faster anyway. Now with Moore's law showing signs of death, the future for better computing wo…

Re: "cloud applications will be written with cloud-friendly languages" Carefull, you invest your code base on a "cloud-friendly" language and clouds then could fall out of style. That goes for other components as well.

I feel like the language choice isn't going to be what bites people here, the danger is more architecting to a specific platform, relying on its SDKs and optimizing to a provider's specific resource idiosyncrasies.

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

#523

Post by el_dev_hell »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #245
awinder wrote: post #147

I'm gonna go in a different direction: broadly, solutions that deal with the problems of an aging population: 1. Technology that helps doctors/practices service more elderly patients 2. Wellbeing technology for seniors (Headspace/Calm should totally push towards this area) 3. Personnel management for homecare nursing List could go on and on. None of this is especially "trendy" but there's clear demographic reasons to…

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…

> I don't blame them either. Why would you do home health when you can get similar pay working at a factory, warehouse, or, even, fast food.

My mother was a nurse for years in the aged care sector. The pay for a qualified nurse is actually pretty good (I would still argue it should be higher for the work, but it was well above average).

Homecare aids (or AIN/care assistants as they were called here) are paid horribly and treated as expendable (even when the roles are difficult to fill since no one wants to wipe asses and give 89 year old dementia patients bed baths for $18.6 AUD per hour).

Most of the care assistants I met were checked out and only there because they had no other option. The combination of minimum wage and high turnover also means you end up with some really horrible people in these roles. I remember hearing multiple stories about care assistants stealing from homes and mistreating patients. If you paid a little better and treated the staff with respect, you wouldn't need to hire the dregs of society to look after the most vulnerable in society.

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

#524

Post by blazespin »

inopinatus wrote: post #507

Communications technology has moved past the ability of human brains to tolerate and mitigate the adverse effects. Every addicting dopamine surge from a Like or Retweet is the evidence; every viral pile-on, every echo-chamber lunatic fringe. Making humanity resilient to the negative externalities of our own technological advancement is essential for the survival of our species. Right now, a vast army of the smartest…

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

#525

Post by ameister14 »

munchbunny wrote: post #460
ameister14 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm having trouble telling whether this is satirical.

I figured 'selective welding' would give it away

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

#526

Post by jeffreyrogers »

johnmorrison wrote: post #515
jeffreyrogers wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hey, I work at a nuclear fission company. We think we can get our electricity prices to around $0.0025 / kWh by around 2045. This represents a ~20x reduction from off-peak cost in Ontario where I live, and ~150x reduction from average electricity prices in Germany. Also, w.r.t. population, the way I see it our population is growing very quickly whether we like it or not (look at Africa). I think there's a good opport…

I'm excited about nuclear, but it seems like we will eventually run out of uranium fuel unless we switch to breeder reactors. Am I off on this? This is assuming that nuclear usage grows to become a larger portion of our total energy use. I see nuclear as potentially solving a lot of our problems, but it seems to have some difficulties as well.

I'm more skeptical that we can support such a large population. Right now we make heavy use of fertilizer, which is produced from natural gas and by mining phosphates. Probably we could avoid using natural gas, but this would require using more energy, so I'm not sure how sustainable this is long-term.

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

#527

Post by m0zg »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #480
applecrazy wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ML for healthcare. I'm kind of apprehensive about this advancement. There's many ways to mess this up, from intentional dataset poisoning (to encourage patients to get unnecessary procedure) to just terrible errors made with just a shift in data capture methodology. This paper has a lot of detail on how such systems can fail ( https://arxiv.org/pdf/1804.05296.pdf ).

People are already encouraged to get procedures or medications they don't need. A data set isn't going to change that.

Not to mention quarter of a million dead per year due to medical errors. If we could even just reduce the number of medical errors by 10 percent, that'd be HUGE. Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/medical-errors-third-leading...

Unfortunately, it's a multi-trillion dollar industry with insanely entrenched and deep pocketed players, and the old boy network the likes of which us software people can't even imagine. And that's before you consider the regulatory framework and the cost of compliance with it.

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

#528

Post by uwuhn »

paulz_ wrote: post #433

Virtual Reality. If you're reading this and you haven't tried VR yet - I can't recommend it highly enough. Particularly a higher end experience connected to a PC with tracking (HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, or Valve Index). The lower end ones like a gear VR are fun and novel but it just isn't the same experience. I have introduced dozens of people to VR for the first and you just can't explain it to people. Videos are no he…

Do you have a link to a recommended parts list? Or a recommendation for somewhere I could go in/near SF to try it without purchasing my own parts. You have me interested. It would be great to experience something similar to the late 90s internet again.

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

#529

Post by jfdi »

If you're looking for (1) area w/lots of users (2) few producers and (3) likely involves software, I'd consider human computer interfaces w/the goal of making technology more integral and natural for more of us to leverage to more significant and healthy effect.

- voice - augmented reality - abstraction atop all remote controls - something next beyond the rectangular brick mobile phone - etc

$.02. Great thread to start up!

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

#530

Post by GhettoMaestro »

el_dev_hell wrote: post #518
johnmorrison wrote: post #171

In the online world, it seems like there are two big things happening right now: - Neural networks / ML (eg GPT-2) Definitely nowhere near its potential for being applied to a wide variety of areas. Find a niche you like and apply there. - Security / Privacy (eg Telegram) Rapidly growing demand pretty much everywhere. Bonus points if you can make your product great for standard users and at the same time hackable/cus…

> That all being said, if you are ambitious and talented without an all-consuming passion for software, I highly recommend you find something you can work in hardware. Since the '70s or so most industries have been basically frozen, besides computer hardware/software. Yet in the meantime materials science and engineering design has advanced considerably, both of which form the basis for innovation in new technologies…

How do we act on it, instead? (not being a dick)
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