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James Dyson Award – International and Sustainability winners announced

jamesdysonaward.org

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Re: James Dyson Award – International and Sustainability winners announced

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in this case a false positive is unlikely to have any negative effects other than temporary anxiety while awaiting further screening, which is vastly more preferable to a false negative. The use of COVID PCR tests for "mass testing" of asymptomatic individuals in the UK has resulted in the number of positive "cases" corelating more closely with the number of tests performed than with other measures[1], such…

> vastly more preferable to a false negative depending from the POV. if a condition has an incidence of 0.001%, production capacity of test kits will probably be geared to that. if you suddenly have 0.01% false positives, you're outstripping production by a factor of ten it will also use up production capacity that might be necessary for other kits, driving up both test prices and/or wait time for everyone else. for…

> false positives have far more implication than one individual short time of anxiety.

That was my point - for example in Liverpool 700 "asymptomatic cases" were found (0.4% of those tested) using lateral flow tests[1]. Well below the expected ~2.5% of the population currently expected to be infected, and well within a range which makes it likely that a significant proportion are false positives. All of these people will have been legally required to isolate for two weeks, many likely unable to work.

The problem with mass testing is that the false positive rate is far closer to the actual incidence.

[1]https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-54966607

Re: James Dyson Award – International and Sustainability winners announced

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, the FDA usually has to approve medical devices like this. 23 and Me was paused while they talked to the FDA. The cloud connection of the award winner is of some concern. Should you include PII and a sample, US health insurers could use that against you in the future for pre-existing conditions. https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/vitro-diagnostics/direct...

Isn't it insurance fraud to fail to report a pre-existing condition anyway? Are you suggesting that people engage in fraud?

1) Some US insurers consider acne and pregnancy pre-existing conditions and have denied claims.

2) Most people don't know their genetic pre-dispositions.

Oh, and stop being a dick.

Re: James Dyson Award – International and Sustainability winners announced

#43
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wow, there's no mentioning of Google in the article at all (ctrl-F showed no hit); Even then, "Google engineers" do NOT just get access to GCP client's data... it would be a immense breach of client trust for GCP and would be a code red for google immediately. Please refrain from making strenuous, baseless connections to arbitrary articles for your own privacy vendetta. It helps nobody.

I used Google as an example of what it normally means to send stuff to the cloud. Sorry If it bothered you. Insert X powerful monopoly private company instead.

HN readers don't seem to be very good at detecting hypotheticals used as narrative devices.

I think the "no jokes or fun" rule hurts comprehension.

Re: James Dyson Award – International and Sustainability winners announced

#44

How well known is James Dyson in the US? The reason I ask is that in the UK he is quite a polarising figure, with many people hating on him because he is a Brexiteer with all of his manufacturing now moved out of the UK to the Far East. Plus the products are not liked by all with some daring to say his vacuum cleaners are heavy, expensive and lacking in durability. Others insist on a Dyson product and won't settle fo…

He got some press for that vaporware electric car.

Re: James Dyson Award – International and Sustainability winners announced

#45

I feel like I keep seeing these as science fair wins and innovation award wins, but where are they in real life? Are they making it to (the biomedical equivalent of) prod?

I work for a winner of a similar type of award. The tech quite predictably went nowhere. There was an initial surge of interest and funding, all of which was squandered. Primary issues ignored while making more science fair demonstrations with deal-breaker issues of their own. It's been a ride, I'm looking for work.

How successful do you think someone could be by picking up the ashes of the great-idea flareouts, and re-executing them with competent scientific and business practices?

Re: James Dyson Award – International and Sustainability winners announced

#46

The section about the sustainability winner completely ignores climate change. Mind boggling. > The problem: Fossil fuels continue to account for over 81% of global energy product according to the International Energy Agency. It is estimated that, if we continue to burn fossil fuels at the current rate, global supplies of gas and oil will deplete by 2060.

> global supplies of gas and oil will deplete by 2060. In 1990 I was told fossil fuels will be depleted by 2010.

The prediction was that peak oil (i.e. the maximum rate of oil extraction) would happen in 2000. For conventional oil, this was not far off: production peaked in 2005 and has been in decline since. What the prediction missed is that we would extract shale oil on a large scale. The long-term economic viability of fracking is in doubt, though, since apparently no fracking enterprise has been profitable to date; it's all financed by venture capital.

https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2020/11/16/peak-oil-neve...

Re: James Dyson Award – International and Sustainability winners announced

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work for a winner of a similar type of award. The tech quite predictably went nowhere. There was an initial surge of interest and funding, all of which was squandered. Primary issues ignored while making more science fair demonstrations with deal-breaker issues of their own. It's been a ride, I'm looking for work.

How successful do you think someone could be by picking up the ashes of the great-idea flareouts, and re-executing them with competent scientific and business practices?

Some of the most simple things are ready to become products, but they're sitting on a shelf. We've had widespre commercial interest, but it seems the boss isn't interested in small things. The more complex and involved ideas have a long way to go, even if there were people dedicated to solving the problems. I doubt a solution exists that will work outside of the lab.

I'm sure we would have been better selling hundreds of cheaper sensors than zero complex ones.

Re: James Dyson Award – International and Sustainability winners announced

#48
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading „cloud“ and „cancer test“ in the same article gives me the shivers. This is arguably one of the most sensitive pieces of information one can own about a person. The NN could just run in the app, recent phones are heavily optimized for this anyway.

Do cloud tests really change much? How many people will start Googling information about a disease as soon as they have a positive diagnosis, giving Google the information without any cloud tests.

I could be googling for a relative, or because of an upcoming test. An uploaded test is a hard fact.
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