Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on? • Hacker News Board

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

#871

Post by hinkley » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 7:42 PM UTC

cbetti wrote: post #665

Platforms that enable a diaspora of small businesses to operate as effectively as large organizations with minimal startup cost. Why build a massive services organization when you can enable and finance a takeover by a multitude of smaller players?

We are on a treadmill, though. There are a set of differentiating features that larger companies can supply and any time the tools get good enough for that, the narrative shifts. Very much like fashion.

For instance, everything has been Cloud Cloud Cloud for quite some time now and people are still scrambling to adapt to this forced march.

'The cloud' is building out a set of management tools that will ultimately help, I think, small companies transition to medium sized companies. But when those tools are good, people will probably also be migrating out of AWS and GCS into something else. At which point there will be some other set of tools or solutions that everyone else is copying.

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

#872

Post by ncmncm » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 7:48 PM UTC

ahje wrote: post #728

johnmorrison wrote: post #685

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The most pressing problem for humanity is global climate disruption. I don't believe most would agree here. There are a lot of problems humanity faces, and humanity is a lot of different people. Those still living in extreme poverty today probably don't care about our worries of climate disruption. > Arguably, working on anything that doesn't help there is not just wasted effort, but actively harmful. Why is this?…

> Those still living in extreme poverty today probably don't care about our worries of climate disruption. No doubt about it. At this point it's probably a better idea to start preparing for the changes rather than stopping them, unless we somehow manage to achieve some magical global unity around a single goal. > I don't see why civilization would collapse any time soon Civilizational collapse is a slow process. I d…

Civilizational collapse has more often been sudden than gradual. Previous collapses have been local or regional. The world is much more interdependent today.

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

#873

Post by Balgair » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 8:01 PM UTC

K0SM0S wrote: post #670

Uptrenda wrote: post #481

Maybe this is not the answer you're looking for: but I think CRISPR-Cas9 seems like the most exciting technology probably in all of science. It's a system that can be used to literally change the DNA of living creatures, and on top of that it's highly accessible. Think of the hacker culture today and now imagine the same rate of change for biological engineering. We'll have massive libraries of re-usable "components"…

> I think CRISPR-Cas9 seems like the most exciting technology probably in all of science. I tend to agree. However, having spoken at length about this with a friend doing her PhD, there are a few major problems between now and then. - Scope: if you thought Big Data (relating to human behavior ) was a massive endeavor (still very much not solved, not by a long shot), try genetics. We're talking orders of magnitude Big…

> We have the PoC but finding practical solutions remains a hard problem as we speak (needle in a haystack).

One of my former lab mates was doing his thesis on some fluorescent cancers screening stuff, somewhat similar. In his presentations, he'd use a slide explaining the order of magnitude issues in finding cancer cells this way. To illustrate this he'd explain it wasn't like finding a needle i a haystack, but more like trying to find a 20-gauge needle in a Walmart filled with 19-gauge needles.

>Bio-sectors don't pay software engineers enough to compete with the tech sector (almost no one does), and bio-experts are generally not good enough at it.

I've a fair amount of programming (enough to be really dangerous), so other students would come to me with help every once in a while. One of my friends getting his PhD in neuroscience traded a case of beer for an afternoon in helping him. He was doing some vision research with gerbil and was trying to time neuron spikes with some images on a screen. By the 32nd nested 'if statement', I requested another case of beer.

Generally, research-grade programming and software is, at best, spaghetti. At worst, you get answers that you think are right, but are wildly off. You can really lie to yourself, and the rest of the world, when you publish those errors as facts. Most grad students are learning programming by the seat of their threadbare pants, and it shows.

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

#874

Post by ncmncm » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 8:01 PM UTC

johnmorrison wrote: post #795

ahje wrote: post #787

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah, this is probably best practice for people in regions that are projected to be left mostly uninhabitable I'd go as far as arguing that _everyone_ should prepare for what's coming. All of us will be affected, be it directly or indirectly, through things like the (most likely) inevitable refugee crisis, or increased food prices and lower standards of living. > but civilization itself has never, in history, colla…

> All of us will be affected Actually, I'm pretty sure places like Greenland, Canada, Russia etc. will be mostly positively affected. I'm mostly concerned about the changes to the ocean when it comes to affecting all humans. The unfortunate reality is that unchecked global warming will probably lower food prices and increase standards of living in many places that are already rich, while causing destruction in places…

Global thermonuclear war is a likely end stage, as fascists are swept into power in reaction to mass migration from the tropics.

Sane governmental response is a fantastic assumption. The orange baboon, along with present counterparts in Russia, Brazil, India, China, Turkey, Indonesia, Hungary are just a hint at what is to come.

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

#875

Post by ncmncm » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 8:06 PM UTC

johnmorrison wrote: post #807

chimprich wrote: post #798

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it will only cost us 2-4% of GDP by end of century The projections suggest that it's much cheaper to avert climate change than to deal with the consequences, and much less painful. If we can afford to lose x% of GDP dealing with the problems, why can't we spend less than that to avoid the problem, and avoid a huge amount of human misery and ecological collapse in the process?

> why can't we spend less than that to avoid the problem We can, and we are. That's why I do what I do. You're absolutely right, it is much cheaper to avert climate change than deal with the consequences. It's also necessary to transition to sustainable energy eventually because we will run out of fossil fuels regardless of what happens with the climate. The solutions to climate change are being worked on right now b…

We aren't, and we won't. Coal and oil usage are still increasing, and the US is increasing its subsidy for them. Russia, China, and India are still building new coal-fired power plants. Fascist representation in governments is increasing worldwide.

Action is falling far short of what would be needed to cap temperature rise, and there is no motion toward greater enforcement.

Any developments in fission could only have substantial effect decades after events will overtake them.

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

#876

Post by johnmorrison » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 8:12 PM UTC

ncmncm wrote: post #854

1337biz wrote: post #827

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just wish there would be a way to hold these doomsday preachers responsible. In the end they will all shrugg it of with that smirk of 'oh back then we didn't know better'.

If you know how to manage involuntary migration of 100M-2B population from newly uninhabitable land to established sovereign territory without triggering global thermonuclear warfare, do speak up.

The governments in those countries have enough resources to buy enough land in colder areas for all their people. Would definitely be economically disadvantageous for the migrant nation, but there's no reason it needs to cause "global thermonuclear warfare"

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

#877

Post by johnmorrison » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 8:14 PM UTC

ncmncm wrote: post #874

johnmorrison wrote: post #795

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All of us will be affected Actually, I'm pretty sure places like Greenland, Canada, Russia etc. will be mostly positively affected. I'm mostly concerned about the changes to the ocean when it comes to affecting all humans. The unfortunate reality is that unchecked global warming will probably lower food prices and increase standards of living in many places that are already rich, while causing destruction in places…

Global thermonuclear war is a likely end stage, as fascists are swept into power in reaction to mass migration from the tropics. Sane governmental response is a fantastic assumption. The orange baboon, along with present counterparts in Russia, Brazil, India, China, Turkey, Indonesia, Hungary are just a hint at what is to come.

I don't think the people terrible enough to launch nukes all other the place are in the position to do that. If the last 70 years are any indication, people don't tend to nuke other people.

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

#878

Post by johnmorrison » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 8:18 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #830

johnmorrison wrote: post #594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Being a specialist isn't enough. You along - no matter how good you are - are not enough. Either you need to control enough money that you can hire many specialist (Elon Musk with SpaceX), or you need to convince someone with money that is the right path. The skills for each of these are people skills not technical. Either way you will spend all your time in management activities so technical skills are not worth lea…

Companies that change the physical world require a lot higher specialist:founder ratio. There is enough capital and ambitious managerial types around, what we really have a shortage of is specialists in new technical areas.

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

#879

Post by ncmncm » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 8:35 PM UTC

SamPatt wrote: post #828

mcv wrote: post #813

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Imagin…

Rich countries do indeed adapt better to climate change than poor, but the point about GDP is to show that in the future all countries will be rich countries (compared to the present). If wealthy nations today can adapt to rising sea levels, and today's poor countries will eventually become just as wealthy, why will they be unable to adapt as well?

Rich countries are, visibly, adapting to increasing migration by adopting increasingly fascist governments. Is there any objective reason to expect this trend to reverse, as migration continues to increase?

Please explain your reasoning.

There is no reason to believe that countries that are becoming uninhabitable will become wealthy at the same time. The people who are best positioned to create wealth are exactly those who flee first.

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

#880

Post by ncmncm » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 8:45 PM UTC

johnmorrison wrote: post #877

ncmncm wrote: post #874

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Global thermonuclear war is a likely end stage, as fascists are swept into power in reaction to mass migration from the tropics. Sane governmental response is a fantastic assumption. The orange baboon, along with present counterparts in Russia, Brazil, India, China, Turkey, Indonesia, Hungary are just a hint at what is to come.

I don't think the people terrible enough to launch nukes all other the place are in the position to do that. If the last 70 years are any indication, people don't tend to nuke other people.

There are nukes in Pakistan, India, Israel, Russia, other former Soviet countries, China, and US, all under increasingly fascistic rule. The orange baboon has publicly entertained using them just for dramatic effect. What do you imagine will restrain them as tensions resulting from mass migration, collapsing harvests, and desertification continue to grow?