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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?

#811

Post by arcadeparade »

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…

RE: deep fakes, in a few years a movie director will be able to say to his editor: "increase Tom Cruise's rage and facial contortions in this scene by 50%"

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

#812

Post by jfk13 »

johnmorrison wrote: post #805
maze-le wrote: post #791

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the history of the last 40 years of "climate debate" teaches us anything, then that it will not only be left unchecked, but it will become worse. There is absolutely no reason to be optimistic about CO2 emissions on a global scale. If zero emissions by 2040 is a realistic scenario, then we have to create the foundations of this development now. What we do instead is: lackluster regulations in Europe, active denial…

> There is absolutely no reason to be optimistic about CO2 emissions on a global scale. > we have to create the foundations of this development now We are. The company I work at aims to eliminate ~60% of global emissions ourselves and provide the economic basis for the other 40%. The only major section of global emissions that doesn't seem to have an obvious full solution is concrete production, which I'm sure we can…

> The company I work at aims to eliminate ~60% of global emissions ourselves

Well, nobody could accuse your company of having small ambitions!

When its website consists of little more than a few sweeping "We will [...]" statements and a lot of "This page is missing", though, you'll perhaps understand if some people are a little sceptical.

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

#813

Post by mcv »

littlestymaar wrote: post #780
johnmorrison wrote: post #766

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is much more accurate of our best predictions. Bjørn Lomborg says[1] by the end of the century, climate change left unchecked will only lower the global GDP by a 2-4 percentage points of what it would have otherwise grown to , which is going to be 300-1000% higher than today. So basically, best case scenario 980% GDP growth, worst case 288% GDP growth. This shows climate change is a problem, but it's too sl…

This is an interesting answer. Somebody says there will be hundred millions of people fleeing their then uninhabitable countries (which will lead to millions of death, just look how many people drown in the Mediterranean see each year now, and how the European population is more xenophobic year after year). And you answer saying GDP will be fine!

That's a big part of the problem. Policy makers have a tendency to care more about GDP than about people. As long as the numbers look good, people are mere statistics.

Rich countries are in a better position to mitigate the effects of global warming and climate change than poor countries. Rich people will be better able to insulate themselves from the effects that do occur in their country than poor people do.

Imagine New York is about to flood. Rich New Yorkers will probably already have a house somewhere else. The poor ones won't. And they can't afford to buy a new house if their current one becomes worthless. Their jobs are also more tied to the city than those of rich people. Moving Wallstreet will cost a lot of money, but that money is there.

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

#815

Post by krageon »

teknologist wrote: post #786
johnmorrison wrote: post #775

Earlier quoted context omitted.

E2E encryption is kind of a fucky thing, some suggest it is fundamentally impossible for central web services and even mobile / desktop apps. Basically, if there is a third party involved in the code besides Alice and Bob, the two can never guarantee E2E encryption. Web part is simple, as there are countless ways you can get malicious code delivered from what you think is the correct, safe, web server. Same concept a…

Two words: Signal Protocol

It's an american development by a company that refuses to release actually open software. Perhaps it's good in theory! As far as I am aware there is no open implementation of it and it is also inside a problematic regime and therefore just as suspect.

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

#816

Post by ryanlol »

krageon wrote: post #815
teknologist wrote: post #786

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two words: Signal Protocol

It's an american development by a company that refuses to release actually open software. Perhaps it's good in theory! As far as I am aware there is no open implementation of it and it is also inside a problematic regime and therefore just as suspect.

Yeah, the Kremlin backed startup that was already caught shipping blatant backdoors is so much better https://habr.com/en/post/206900/

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

#818

Post by Aperocky »

echelon wrote: post #675
ncmncm wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most pressing problem for humanity is global climate disruption. Arguably, working on anything that doesn't help there is not just wasted effort, but actively harmful. Wind, solar power, energy storage still have huge room for improvement. Direct solar or wind -> liquid fuel will be essential to adapting fast. Windmills can drive production of liquid ammonia on farms (needing only air and water inputs), for use d…

> The most pressing problem for humanity is global climate disruption. Our climate and ecology are certainly at risk, but I think the biggest threat in the world right now is the rapid rise of fascist China. They're challenging the notion that free speech and democracy are required for capitalism and economic gain. China has grown so emboldened under President Xi that they're no longer content to just alter or buy ou…

> They're challenging the notion that free speech and democracy are required for capitalism and economic gain.

Well this notion is simply not true, these two things are tangentially related at best.

You sound like ‘because they demonstrated against my beliefs, they need to be shut down’. Not for this reason, there are plenty of other reason to pick from.

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

#819

Post by pjc50 »

johnmorrison wrote: post #794
littlestymaar wrote: post #790

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Humans will relocate, and lose a lot of wealth, but why would they die en mass? What a wonderful world you live in. Do you genuinely believe it's that simple? What do you think happens when 1 million people move from one country to another? They do not simply relocate, they are parked in camps (if you want current examples of that look at the Rohingya people, or Syrian refugees in Lebanon) until they can go back ho…

I feel you're conflating two different types of migration, and the issue isn't nearly as big as your 150 million deaths figure. Almost all countries have ample space that will still be habitable for their entire population in 2100, even if climate change is left unchecked. Those that don't represent a small portion of the global population, certainly less than 500 million people. I grew up in Botswana, and I know tha…

> Russia and Canada alone could easily fit a few billion immigrants each if global warming is really severe in a few centuries.

Russia absolutely isn't going to do that, and who's going to pay to move them across the Atlantic to a country that they're not allowed to immigrate to?

I'm kind of leaning the other way: millions of avoidable deaths is the "normal war" situation, even if we magically solved climate change tomorrow.

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

#820

Post by pjc50 »

johnmorrison wrote: post #803
littlestymaar wrote: post #800

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Almost all countries have ample space that will still be habitable for their entire population in 2100, even if climate change is left unchecked That's a really dubious one. There's multiple issues with global warming, drought and desertification being one of them (and it probably will not affect a whole country) but the second one is just the max temperature the human body can, withstand especially with high humid…

> drought and desertification This is an issue, but increased atmospheric carbon and the latitude land distribution of the Earth probably means desertification will be net-negative for at least a while. (I don't have a source for this, but I recall reading that we have more trees today than ever in history?) Keep in mind, carbon is what plants eat. > When every summer, heatwaves take a few of your neighbours you star…

Desertification is currently increasing: https://www.un.org/en/events/desertification_decade/whynow.s...

> more trees today than ever in history?

Depending on how big you count history this sounds really implausible.

> carbon is what plants eat.

A slogan commonly repeated by global warming denialists, because it's true but highly misleading. Plants also primarily require water, and the temperature rise dries out a lot of places.

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