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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?

#561

Post by K0SM0S »

momentmaker wrote: post #479
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…

You can think of it like Trust as a Service (Taas).

That's a very, VERY good start. I'm stealing it. ;-) Y'all should do the same when explaining what this crypto-thing is — and stay away from even mentioning 'coins', stay on "BlockChain" as it is the enabling tech (call it "distributed database" to make it even simpler and non-buzzy); whereas applying it to currency is but one application among many (and possibly not the killer-app that BC needs to emerge in the mainstream).

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

#563

Post by philipkglass »

johnmorrison wrote: post #509
jes5199 wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is interesting to me because it’s such a cultural blindspot: the left-wing point of view is that energy efficiency is the only way forward, and the right-wing point of view is that more traditional fuels is the only way forward. But solar panels seem to have a version or Moore’s law - and even a single doubling of efficiency from here would completely revolutionize our energy economy (and dramatically shake up w…

Solar panel efficiency does not have an analogue to Moore's law, and their efficiency physically cannot double two or more times. Solar cell record efficiency is 46%, that only gives room for 1.12 doublings theoretically, and thermodynamics is nasty in the real world so we probably cannot even get past 1 doubling from here.

You are correct about thermodynamic efficiency. I interpreted it to be about economic efficiency. In which case one or more doublings of kWh output from dollar input is still a stretch but plausible.

Modern rooftop solar modules haven't even doubled efficiency from 40 years ago, but they have improved cost per kilowatt hour by more than 100x.

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

#565

Post by geonnave »

You may find this useful: https://80000hours.org/key-ideas/

> At 80,000 Hours, we do research into how people can most effectively use their careers to help solve the world’s most pressing problems.

It seems their two top priority areas that attend to a "huge, neglected, and solvable" filter are:

- Positively shaping the development of artificial intelligence

- Biorisk reduction

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

#566

Post by flixic »

secabeen wrote: post #508
jakemal wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It reminds of the article that was posted yesterday ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21315942 ) that said the biggest disruptors are the technologies that start out looking like toys. An HN commentor mentioned (which I now can't find) that what differentiates actual toys from big technologies that start out looking like toys is the fact that the fad never passes despite looking like a toy. Crypto has seemed lik…

If someone can figure out how to do crypto without burning through thousands of CPU-hours of compute, they would have a real winner on their hands. Of course, execution is also a key factor in success. There are lots of good ideas that were had by multiple people, but only one successfully executed.

It’s called Proof of Stake (as opposed to Proof of Work) and there are multiple implementations working already and Ethereum will migrate to PoS next year.

PoS is conceptually more complicated (block producing is assigned to nodes with staked currency and there are multiple validation techniques) but requires very little CPU power.

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

#567

Post by datavirtue »

alexhutcheson wrote: post #474
BubRoss wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to learn VBA to do this, you can just include windows.h in C and call the SendKeys function.

I'm interested in scripting stuff in Excel.

Professional Excel Development Bullen, Bovey, Green

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

#568

Post by amatecha »

dcolkitt wrote: post #345
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…

Healthcare tech has been the "next big area" for the past 40 years. Maybe this time is different, but historically it never pans out. Healthcare's an extremely regulated, extremely change-averse area of the economy where entrenched insiders will always close ranks to protect their own.

"healthcare tech never pans out" -> BRB while I check my heart rate and take an electrocardiogram reading on my watch... Looks like the [10000 steps] I've been averaging per day are improving my resting heart rate and I see my daily weight scale shows I've lost [5lbs]! :)

Yeah, that's kinda-surface-level stuff, but these kind of health metrics are already extremely commonplace and helping open the door to further techhealthcare integration.

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

#569

Post by alexanderdmitri »

reubens wrote: post #535
SkyPuncher wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could address everything that's wrong with this comment. The biggest thing is you seem extremely willing to take risks without understanding the gravity of what you're doing. Sure, you CAN give yourself PRP injections and LIKELY will have little to no side effects. Healthcare providers need extreme confidence that (a) a procedure will be effective (b) the risks are appropriate.

I disagree. Some doctors will attempt new procedures with only a company promoting new tools. I once saw a surgeon try out new combined cut & staple hardware designed for bowel surgery on a patient's liver, because he had been told it would work. It didn't, and there was a ridiculous amount of staples in the patient's abdomen afterward. Doctors often become more risk prone the more power they have, and the hierarchy…

sailor: captain! there's a hole in the ship, if we don't do something quick we'll sink!

captain: there's only one solution ... make the hole so big we can no longer call it a hole.

sailor: aye aye captain, i'll go get the explosives.

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

#570

Post by samstave »

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…

I may be biased, but i freaking love slack.

I even keep my own slack channel just for me to store stuff.

Basically what evernot wanted to be. Evernote sucked. Slack is great.

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