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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?

#651

Post by jonfw »

applecrazy wrote: post #377
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…

> 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 ).

> There's many ways to mess this up, from intentional dataset poisoning (to encourage patients to get unnecessary procedure)

Within the current system- you can just skip to encouraging patients to get unnecessary procedures. At worst, ML adds an extra step.

It's important to remember that innovation doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be better than the system it replaces.

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

#652

Post by JabavuAdams »

alexashka wrote: post #643
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rebranded nihilism. The trend of positivity focused, directionless hedonism seeking self actualization is no better than lying around drinking all day or addicted to opiates. Find something outside yourself to be devoted to. Do the hard work to determine what that is, test and iterate. Happiness is a side effect of a job well done, not a goal.

I'd love to know why you think you know what's better or worse for a stranger on the internet. Have you discovered objective reality that completely accounts for every subjective experience of every human being and can conclusively prove what is better or worse? My, those foolish philosophers and scientists can finally retire - Andrew Kemendo has arrived, we just need to listen and do as he/she says.

You're going off half-cocked and it's embarrassing.

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

#653

Post by zelly »

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 is a huge monopoly. They won't add modern tech because they don't need to compete, even in the US where healthcare is/was supposedly free market. People in healthcare are extremely conformist from my experience and basically look down on the SV way of doing things. I think the only way they will advance is if something is 10x better than what they already have, which to their credit, nothing so far is. You have to come up with something better than, “Do what you were doing but holding an iPad”. It also has to be directly obviously profitable, so no disease prevention. A good general direction would be something that somehow lets a doctor see more patients. One of the big macro trends is there's going to be a huge shortage of doctors.

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

#654

Post by JabavuAdams »

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…

Funny that you mention PRP. Was about to get one, then decided to do more research. The evidence is not good. Just saw a surgeon today who says he doesn't get good results with it for sub-patellar tendon tears, but has seen promising results for arthritis.

I dunno there are a lot of medical conspiracy theories, but the average person doesn't know crap about how we know their bodies work. A couple of years of biophysics has taught me that biology is waaaaaaay more complicated than the nastiest distributed computer system you've ever heard of.

When I hear civilians trying to talk about health or bio, or why cancer is a hoax ... it's like being a car mechanic who knows a thing or two about cars and having someone come up to you to tell you they need their banana wipers replaced because the windshields don't roll properly when they put their foot on the cigarette lighter. Like ... I have no idea what you're even saying beyond some medieval animist notions of good stuff and bad stuff. /rant

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

#655

Post by srikz »

prad9104 wrote: post #645
mcs_ wrote: post #543

Yourself. 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…

Hey. I am 22 (from India), suffering from depression and with zero skills which can get me a job. I have wasted last 4-5 years without doing anything or learning anything. All i do is sleep, laying on bed and daydream through out the day. Can you tell me how should i go about improving my life?

Like the other poster suggested, consider seeking help from a counsellor. Depending on which part of India you are in there is a good chance of finding someone who suits you.

Since you are on HN, I’m guessing you are aiming for a tech career. The good thing with tech is that it is so widespread now that you can pick any niche and you’ll be able to work in that domain. Feel free to reach out to me (contact in bio) if you would like to discuss about tech in India / Bangalore.

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

#656

Post by ISL »

ReD_CoDE wrote: post #598
ademars94 wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do I make money while I am doing this?

Anything in this world has a value you have to pay. Money comes at the right time if you go the right path in your life. Don't think about money, think about the path you want to go, a path you would be happy to go and money comes in its right time Choose "infinite" goals in your life, and follow them.

What odds are on offer? I'd love to hedge against poor luck.

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

#657

Post by JabavuAdams »

dr_ wrote: post #268
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…

"Doctors know that the price of the most effective treatments may not sustain their profession." This is not really a fair assessment. The most cost effective treatments can be self administered. But if you are coming in to see me because of persistent knee pain, more often that not you have already tried tylenol and over the counter nsaids (ibuprofen, etc.), and your pain has been persistent. The next set of treatme…

Robo-medicine! Every upgrade is a fleet upgrade.

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

#658

Post by ethbro »

hugs wrote: post #622
ethbro wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- 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.

In my experience, no.

(A) Selenium's UX isn't nearly where it needs to be to upskill an analyst to create their own automations.

(B) Selenium's Windows app compatibility is haphazard.

(C) Selenium doesn't have the kind of corporate support it would take to expand compatibility quickly enough to catch up with its competition.

The RPA space is the Linux desktop problem in a nutshell. Polish and niche compatibility are the final 10%.

Nobody on the open source side has the interest in making a VB6 app work. And nobody on the corporate side really wants to use it for more than what they're currently using it for.

I can't overstate the sheer number of bizarre situations a tool needs to be able to handle to be effective here.

Because being able to automate something 95% of the way to completion is usually a lot less valuable than 100% (note: talking about percentage of happy-path process, not of total incoming workload here).

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

#659

Post by ethbro »

hugs wrote: post #610
ethbro wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anyone in this thread wants to talk RPA, I'm happy to talk your ear off. At this point, I've been doing it for... about 7 years? It's been an interesting ride. Email in profile

Would love to know more. How is RPA different than Selenium?

See reply to your other comment.

Tl;dr - different target user & no corporate sponsor seriously incentivized to improve legacy compatibility

Would love to get the Selenium viewpoint though! Have always been curious, and I'm not as well versed in that side of the house.

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