People are all talking about niches over here. Work on fundamentals. Strong fundamentals are an investment that pays dividends. If you want to learn something niche like ML, because you think it's gonna be big, then learn the math and calculus and stats that underlies the ML. Then if ML really becomes something most devs should know, you'll be able to pick it up better than the people who have to only get the surface. And if it doesn't, you'll have a strong foundation for other things, which is great because foundations are by definition broad.
Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on?
621–630 of 947 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on?
#622Earlier quoted context omitted.
A big challenge with the Blue Prism world is getting the people who will lose their jobs to map the processes Robotic processes will automate. Fiddly, tricky and easy to automate a vast number of errors. Only works once extensively tested and results verified. Ignore analyst and sales hype at your peril.
- Never use an RPA tool that doesn't integrate with third-party SCM. If they tried to roll their own, that's a bad sign - Never use an RPA tool that doesn't generate plaintext-serialized scripts. You're going to have a bad time if they're binary locked - Never choose an RPA tool that's been around fewer than 3 years. It's probably just a shim on top of MS automation libs, and can't handle the really gnarly stuff - Ne…
Could Selenium be used for this? It checks most of the boxes you mention.
Re: Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on?
#623Climate 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…
One thing I've never been able to figure out is that given Crispr, why it wouldn't be possible to engineer an organism that can suck much more CO2 out of the air than any existing tree / algae could. Even more ideal if we can make a good building material out of the engineered plant to sequester Carbon. It's easy to see how the manual selection process would work here - plant a bunch of trees, see how much O2 each pr…
As I understand it, algae growth is generally limited by iron, so just removing the limiting factor can increase growth and pull more CO2 out of the air. There has been at least one rogue geoengineering project along those lines - https://csi.asu.edu/ideas/the-first-of-the-geohackers/
Maybe we don't actually need genetic engineering - maybe we can just build big algae ponds and feed them iron supplements. Basically build algae heaven, open source it and random groups across the globe can start doing it.
Re: Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on?
#624Yourself. One of the most complex areas, having lots of users, that need to be fixed, is human beings. Spend all your time to know who you are, why you are like that, and change this world starting from the most promising thing it has on it: you. In the meantime, try to carry out activities that you like (ride your bike, walk alone or with real people). Do it disconnected from any device or social network. Do things…
It's important. After more than three decades in corporate life, I have "dropped out," and I'm working on doing stuff that makes me feel good. Being happy is a lot more important to me than toys; but I have a company that provides the kinds of toys I like to play with, anyway. I've been focusing on re-establishing my working engineering cred; mostly by creating a pretty vast portfolio of new, relevant projects. It wi…
I think you're missing a key ingredient--your network of colleagues. I don't think companies care that much about technical skills after a certain level. The way you get work is by having associates who know you and can get you in.
Re: Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on?
#625Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do we act on it, instead? (not being a dick)
General answer: Become a specialist, or drive funding/regulatory pushes towards these new hardware technologies. Figure out what you see as the barriers to their commercialization, then figure out what component of that problem you'd love to work on, and become an expert in that. My biased answer: If you're in the position to spend a lot of time learning and experimenting with new stuff (e.g. a highschool or uni stud…
I love how you say you're working on fission because it's at > If all goes well, I'll be needing people in just about every specialization there.
How far along are you in the Oak Ridge guys' elaborately detailed Molten Salt Reactor development program plan from 1974 [1], as far as it's relevant? If parts of it are irrelevant, how significant are the things you have to do that they didn't?
Re: Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on?
#626I listened to Robert Green's talk at Google recently [0] He proposes the following idea: - Everybody born within 22 years of each other belong to a "generation" - Generations follow a cycle: - There is a rebellious generation - The next generation is trying to keep the ideals of the rebellious generation alive - The third generation is very conservative - The fourth generation is a "crisis" generation that will event…
It's more likely that every generation is all of the above - or more precisely, every generation goes through phases where one or more of those might apply. Every generation will believe that the older generations are stupid and short-sighted, then as that generation gets older it will believe that the younger generations are stupid and short-sighted. Every generation will think the older generations are backwards and the newer generations naïve.
If there's any sort of cycle between generations, it seems like cynicism v. optimism is more likely. I like to think of it as a sort of "day" v. "night":
1920's: evening / night
1930's: night / early morning hangover
1940's: (cycle temporarily pauses while the world blows itself up)
1950's: morning
1960's: afternoon
1970's: evening
1980's: night
1990's: morning hangover
2000's: afternoon
2010's: evening / night
2020's: night / morning (predicted)
Re: "hippies", they seem to be a feature of the Boomer, Gen-X, and Millennial/Gen-Y generations alike; all three have had very similar movements (which makes it all the more poignant that now the Millennial hippies are scolding the very generation from which hippies originated in the first place).
Also, I don't know if I'd characterize Gen-X as "conservative".
Re: Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on?
#627Earlier quoted context omitted.
Think you nailed it - the most important problem is overcoming the social friction that enables companies to centralize control of entire industries for no reason other than - they got to it first. We need ways for consumers to organize en-masse to switch services - since trickling out one by one has such a disadvantage ("all my friends use X..."). My hope there, if any, lies in someone developing a mature incentiviz…
> centralize control of entire industries for no reason other than - they got to it first. But those big companies didn’t get there first. History is littered with companies that were too big to beat. The secret is obvious but difficult: find a better way and people that agree it’s a better way. Look at Cirrus Aircraft for a relatively recent example — they tackled an ultra regulated, expensive business and are now t…
Those big companies may not have gotten there first but they moved the quickest to buy the companies that did. That's how many not-so-big companies became "those big companies."
Re: Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on?
#628I listened to Robert Green's talk at Google recently [0] He proposes the following idea: - Everybody born within 22 years of each other belong to a "generation" - Generations follow a cycle: - There is a rebellious generation - The next generation is trying to keep the ideals of the rebellious generation alive - The third generation is very conservative - The fourth generation is a "crisis" generation that will event…
I see this rebellious generation as those paving the way for financial revolution with permissionless and trustless blockchain technologies. They are ignoring suppressive regulation and moving forward building the world they want to see.
Re: Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on?
#629Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
We are at a turning point in society right now because of all the things you address. In the last few decades have seen a rapid shift in the willingness of family members to look after their elderly. There's a few reasons for this, the biggest I think is the ageing population. When your parents need care at 85 years old, and you are 60 looking at retiring soon (or perhaps can't retire and need to work for another 7 y…
"Centuries ago, if you could live comfortably (not amazingly, but not be in the street), just by showering a few old people and cleaning up poo, you'd have people lining up round the block to do it."
I'm not sure you'd need to go back centuries. There were times in the 1900's that was the case. And in some countries, other that the USA, it still is.
Re: Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on?
#630Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s reasonable advice, but it’s hard to pay the bills when you are off getting Zen on yourself.
And likewise, it's hard (though I guess not impossible) to achieve that Zen when you can't afford food or shelter. Maslow's hierarchy of needs and all that.
I understand what you say, the world is not fair and some of us, including me, have started from zero and should have basic needs in our life.
However, I don't think spending time, for instance, 30-60 min a day for things we love to be hard
I call myself constant learner, some years ago I said if Japanese people improved their country through small changes rule (10 min a day) what if I spend 1-3 hours a day for things I really love to follow?
Also read this book [1]: Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? How to drive your career and create a remarkable future
[1] https://books.google.com/books/about/Linchpin.html?id=eqrFTy...