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Why the Fuck?

raganwald.posterous.com

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Re: Why the Fuck?

#141

Post by fudged71 »

haberman wrote: post #80

In my five years at Google, I am not sure I have met a single engineer who is "trying to figure out how to get Scott Hanselman to click on ads." I have met tons of engineers who work on interesting problems like building models of query patterns to detect spiking queries (Google Trends and Google Hot Trends, all publicly accessible: http://www.google.com/trends/ ), Gmail, Maps/Directions/Traffic, improving (machine)…

Furthermore, many basic services form a backbone of functionality for larger features. Things like voicemail transcription and 311 speech recognition were likely used to develop better recognition models so that deaf people can now have closed captioning for online videos, and will allow us to have natural interfaces with our public infrastructure in the future. Spam and importance filtering in GMail might be used to research and develop distributed machine learning, which can be used for much larger scale problems in other industries.

I'm glad that Google is working on things like automated cars from the same revenue that they get from something as simple as online advertisements.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#142

Post by stared »

raganwald wrote: post #102

My fellow HNers: It does depress me, daily, that I do not have a career in physics or chemistry or biology or medicine where I could work on "big problems." The simple truth is, I'm not smart enough, I don't work hard enough, and I've been napping when opportunity knocked a few times in my life. That being said, sometimes a man in a saloon has a few drinks and yells at the television, telling the coach of some footba…

A short question: have you ever worked in research? Or know well anyone working in academia?

First, many problems there are much harder just to get to the level that one can do any valuable contribution. And approaching them goes well beyond reading tutorial, playing with it, asking some questions on SE, being expert.

In mathematics, or medicine, it's rather years than weeks.

Second, many deep problems are not that easy to commercialize; even if they may, possibly, save many lives in future, they are not an easy base to make profit in, say, next 10 years.

Third, as projects are way to hard to be run by a few enthusiasts + commercialization is not straightforward - everything works in universities, with an inertia typical for huge institutions (and no 2-3 people startups are available). As a secondary effect, it deters creative people to pursue such option.

And fourth, there is money in programming. When you fail a startup you can still get a great job. If you fail your academic career - it may be harder.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#143

Post by hackingla »

raganwald wrote: post #102

My fellow HNers: It does depress me, daily, that I do not have a career in physics or chemistry or biology or medicine where I could work on "big problems." The simple truth is, I'm not smart enough, I don't work hard enough, and I've been napping when opportunity knocked a few times in my life. That being said, sometimes a man in a saloon has a few drinks and yells at the television, telling the coach of some footba…

"I'm not smart enough" - this is not an excuse.

I have no education, no college etc... and I created software that generates meal plans according to my Crohn's symptoms (made it from my hospital bed at SF General) and now I am off all my meds.

Made an app for a friend that helped her identify that she had a Gluten allergy (later verified by doctor)

And right now I am working on a way to help match patients and doctors based on case histories.

My passion is helping people, so that is what I do. I am not smart, funded etc... I just really really really give a fuck and refuse to quit.

You dont need education, funding or any of those things. You just need drive, passion and google. I cant take these products to market myself and have been turned down by all Incubators, Angels etc... but that does not matter because like i said; I wont quit.

Your problem is not lack of intelligence or funding, your problem is lack of passion. You dont work on these things because you dont give a fuck.

[edit]

http://hackingcrohns.com - (took down meal plan because I cant afford the machines for the ABM Sim)

http://trackxvsy.com - Site not active but if you want the app email me

http://cvchk.com - going to have this ready for HN Whose hiring (job applipicaion only) but you can see how structured search for a job w/ resume is same as structured search for doc w/ case histroy.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#145

Post by Evbn »

thecosas wrote: post #85
bhickey wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Type II diabetes is almost entirely the result of obesity. Put on 10 pounds and your fasting blood glucose will skyrocket. Sure, there are genetic factors that predispose a person to insulin resistance, but the dominant factor is adipose tissue. Type I (juvenile/auto-immune) is more interesting. Sugar production in the US is heavily subsidized.

Thanks for making the distinction. I've had Type I diabetes for over 20 years and occasionally get the "but you're not fat" comment. EDUCATE :o)

They need to change the stupid name already. Hypoinsulinomia and caloroglucitis, or something.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#147

Post by kylemaxwell »

kyro wrote: post #136
raganwald wrote: post #102

My fellow HNers: It does depress me, daily, that I do not have a career in physics or chemistry or biology or medicine where I could work on "big problems." The simple truth is, I'm not smart enough, I don't work hard enough, and I've been napping when opportunity knocked a few times in my life. That being said, sometimes a man in a saloon has a few drinks and yells at the television, telling the coach of some footba…

If it's of any consolation, it depresses me daily that I have a future career in medicine but don't have a strong skill set (be it programming, statistics, biomedical engineering) to work on any meaningful problems. There's really not a day that goes by where I don't regret not majoring in one of those areas, or being more interested in them at a younger age. I'm just a guy who can design an okay-looking site. I'll b…

A doctor with an understanding of programming - even if he's not a world-class programmer - is more than a few steps ahead of others. If you get that career in medicine started, you've got tremendous potential in ways other people do not.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#148

Post by Evbn »

_delirium wrote: post #95
oh_sigh wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any indication that education needs geniuses? Does it substantially improve innovation? When America was world dominant in innovation, were its geniuses in academia, or industry?

> When America was world dominant in innovation, were its geniuses in academia, or industry? Good question. How I'd answer for the 1940s-60s depends heavily on what you consider the status of research labs that were outside academia, but rather academic in terms of personnel, style, and management: the national labs, the NSA, the Manhattan Project, Bell Labs, etc. If that's included as honorary academia, I would feel…

Google includes teams that are very similar to Bell, including the surviving employ.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#150

Post by nemothekid »

oh_sigh wrote: post #47
cynicalkane wrote: post #15

Bad incentives. Maybe smart people don't care about money all that much, but they want their lives to not suck, their effort to not feel wasted, their identity not wrapped up in the service of dysfunction and politics. There are not many places where you can better humanity for a living and live the life such a person deserves, and it is not the job of humans to sacrifice themselves for no reward. That's why people w…

Is there any indication that education needs geniuses? Does it substantially improve innovation? When America was world dominant in innovation, were its geniuses in academia, or industry?

I doubt any industry needs geniuses. I don't think the human race needs a super-human .01% individuals to come in and solve all our problems every quarter century. I wouldn't be surprised if 90% of the genetic geniuses Mother Nature gives are struggling in the 3rd world somewhere.

I don't think most of our medical breakthroughs in the last 50 years came from geniuses either. They came from mostly regular people, who put the perspiration in and slaved away trying and failing time and time again to deliver life saving products.

The sad thing is these people aren't praised for their work and these people have a much higher bar to set. These people aren't any more gifted than the guys at Google. They just made the choice to work in Medicine and not Software Engineering. To me post like OP's say "To everyone who has done anything in medicine in the last 100 years, your achievements don't matter because you aren't as famous as Rob Pike."

Why the fuck does this guy think that the engineers at Google would be have half as good as the researchers at Johns Hopkins? What special quality do they have that allows any field they enter to turn to gold? Is it really the case that Google Engineers are super humans or is OP ignoring the hundreds/thousands of researchers who are working towards a cure for diabetes?

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