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Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal recent technology you have seen?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal recent technology you have seen?

#481

Post by daveguy »

chrisco255 wrote: post #454
daveguy wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most of the criticism with self driving is around the over-hyped under-delivered "full self driving" from Musk -- it actually seems to be getting worse compared to 5 years ago. Apparently Cruise and Waymo are doing much more impressive things, but they only get a fraction of the press.

If they're doing more impressive things why is it not in production at scale, right now? Just earlier today there was a story of a Waymo car getting stuck in an intersection in SF. Those cars still need constant intervention and human assistance that's why.

The miles between intervention is known for Waymo and Cruise.

Tesla refuses to publish this data.

Re: Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal recent technology you have seen?

#483

Post by dendrite9 »

roeles wrote: post #336

I've had the good fortune to see people use the balance belt, a belt that you can wear if you have bilateral vistibular loss. The tech is simple, but seeing someone go from not being able to walk without leaning against everything to walking as if nothing is wrong - within 30 minutes - felt like a miracle. The haptic feedback is processed in a very old part of the brain, which makes learning to process and use it fas…

That looks like an interesting device, do you know if it available in the US? I had a friend lose some of his balance due to a tumor. He said he could do surprisingly well with his eyes, probably due to a lifetime of climbing, skiing, etc but others I know do not have that advantage.

Re: Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal recent technology you have seen?

#484

Post by monknomo »

Static2280 wrote: post #71
tricky wrote: post #34

Magnetic resonance focused high intensity ultrasound to open the blood-brain barrier in humans to deliver drugs directly to brain tissue - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12426-9

This is interesting to me because my mother has MS and it's _because_ the blood-brain barrier is too open that she has health issues. Surprising there's good reason to open it up.

It's an interesting problem - I was reading about bipolar, which also (probably) has the issue of too open a blood-brain barrier. There is a theory that repairing the blood-brain barrier would help, but as drugs repair the barrier, it's harder to get drugs into the brain from the blood, which means the doses need to be higher, which means the side effects are worse.

I could imagine a treatment protocol of opening the blood-brain barrier and then administering a low dose of a drug, or something along those lines

Re: Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal recent technology you have seen?

#485

Post by iamwizard »

afpx wrote: post #330
iamwizard wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who recently left the field of experimental neuroscience, anecdotes like this hit at why media coverage of neuroscience is so sensationalized and reductive: it takes a lot of nuance and background to convey the impact of any given finding. In a lot of cases being even slightly reductive of EXACTLY what was reported immediately destroys the meaning and context of a finding. It's a field that actively resist…

Why did you leave the field? The compensation?

That was certainly part of it. The structure of neuro academia meant that I would be stuck in a postdoc position for 3-10 years paying, likely, around the NIH minimum of around $55k. Which goes along with more responsibility and drastically less job security than a graduate student without any better chances of actually getting a faculty position.

Combine that with the fact that I didn't have the drive or disposition that the field selects for and I was out of there immediately after I got my degree for a more lucrative, more interesting (to me) job with a better work-life balance.

Re: Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal recent technology you have seen?

#486

Post by iamwizard »

Balgair wrote: post #365
iamwizard wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The even crazier thing about opto is that it's old hat at this point. You can teach an attentive undergraduate lab assistant to do it and a sizeable portion of labs working with any animal short of a primate did or does use it to address questions.

Care to share the 'new hat' methods?

Really depends on what kind of work you're doing. CRISPR, flexible high-density microelectrodes, scRNA-seq, etc. are all borderline magic compared to the average understanding of biology.

I just remember being awed by opto around a decade ago and now it's just a tool that labs have. Which isn't to say there's not cutting edge opto.

Re: Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal recent technology you have seen?

#487

Post by iancmceachern »

flemhans wrote: post #406
skrbjc wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My brother had a shoulder surgery that he put off for many years. The doctor actually told him that he did the right thing because the type of surgery he needed has some such a long way in the last 10 years. It's great that we're still making so much progress in these areas.

How far behind is e.g. Europe compared to the U.S.? Do these innovations generally spread, or are they hindered by local regulations in each country?

Generally the US, Europe, and a few other countries like Japan, South Korea, etc. are all pretty comparable.

Re: Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal recent technology you have seen?

#488

Post by iancmceachern »

LVADs. We now have what are effectively artificial hearts. The heartmate 3 has been implanted in tens of thousands of people, patients that would have previously died a horrible death of end stage heart failure are now regularly going 5-10 years on these things. In many respects, for many patients, they are far better than the transplant option.

Re: Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal recent technology you have seen?

#489

Post by ubermonkey »

ornornor wrote: post #462
ubermonkey wrote: post #290

Well, this is far afield from the normal discussions here, but: 8 years ago, I had a pretty bad cycling crash and broke my hip -- which, if you're not aware, means I broke the "femoral neck", or the narrow bit of bone between the long part of the femur and the "ball" that goes into your pelvis. Post-repair, my x-ray looked like this: http://i.imgur.com/gRqg50J.png Anyway, with that much hardware in a repair, you're p…

My father, although much older than you probably, has had that procedure done in a much smaller European city with pretty much the same experience. It was incredible that he could get out the hospital the sam me day and be walking pretty much right after.

What kills me is that it's recently become ENTIRELY PLAUSIBLE that I might not be much older than your dad.

Hey, if you're lucky, it'll happen to you, too. :)

(I'm 52.)

Re: Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal recent technology you have seen?

#490

Post by 93po »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #385
raptor556 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been talking about this for awhile now, but I used to run a marketing service that streamed all reddit content in real time and did text analysis and bot detection. It's definitely a rough estimate but about ~65% of text content was determined to be a bot. I am entirely convinced that there are large entities (political campaigns, nations, etc.) that are using bot networks on social media sites like reddit to si…

> large entities (political campaigns, nations, etc.) that are using bot networks on social media sites I think this has been conventional wisdom for a few years now.

And even if they aren't using bots, it's a documented fact they're using humans.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correct_the_Record

The methods matter less than that it's happening at all.

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