Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why the Fuck?

raganwald.posterous.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 528 posts

Re: Why the Fuck?

#361

Post by phil »

rquantz wrote: post #99
pud wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This post makes a third incorrect assumption too. That the "greatest minds of our generation" work at Google, Facebook and Apple.

I could be mistaken, but I think that line is a reference to an interview with Jeff Hammerbacher: Hammerbacher looked around Silicon Valley at companies like his own, Google (GOOG), and Twitter, and saw his peers wasting their talents. "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads," he says. "That sucks." http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_17/b42250609... Which, I hope…

It's also a reference to the opening line of Howl, of course: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/179381

I don't know if that's what Jeff intended or not, but a lot of readers are going to have a strong association with the phrase "the best minds of my generation."

Re: Why the Fuck?

#362

Post by ilaksh »

Because the underlying 'economic' and political institutions are fundamentally flawed since they doesn't incorporate relevant information like human needs and social science, ecology, physics and developments in technology, etc.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#363

Post by thedamon »

djt wrote: post #104

My friend has a insulin pump similar to this http://www.medtronic-diabetes.co.uk/product-information/para... This seems to be a solved problem, if only someone could make a way for people to search out such things via the internet ;)

Solved problem? Not even close.

Having an insulin pump is equivalent to doing frequent insulin injections more easily and calculating what your dosage should be in a more complex way. Still requires tons of attention to make sure your insulin sensitivity ratings etc are accurate. I've heard from endocrinologists that patients on insulin pumps tend to have hbA1C scores about the same as patients on multiple-daily-injections. Insulin pump definitely does not 'just do everything for you'

Fun note: I have a very similar insulin pump. Up until a year ago when I logged onto their 640x480 resolution Java Applet to upload my device readings, it warned me that my browser was unsupported and that I should acquire Internet Explorer 6 or higher. That's a good example as what we deal with as far as tools to help us manage our diabetes ;)

Re: Why the Fuck?

#364

Post by rokhayakebe »

oh_sigh wrote: post #26
MatthewPhillips wrote: post #9

Who says programmers are the greatest minds of our generation?

Generally their bank accounts.

By your definition, those realtors of 2006-2008 were the greatest minds of that period, so were the financial analysts, and the personal wealth managers who had nothing other than a 1 week seminar to certify them as such.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#365

Post by jthol »

ramanujan wrote: post #355
johncarpinelli wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need the FDA to regulate drugs and medical devices. There's too much potential for quackery. I don't think removing the FDA is going to find a cure for diabetes. It's a fundamental research problem at this stage. Stem cells are showing some potential as a future cure. See the article below. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/252759.php We need more funding for medical research. PhDs should not be low-paid la…

Let's go point by point. 1) Regarding diabetes and the FDA: I don't think removing the FDA is going to find a cure for diabetes. Well, before the FDA as such even existed, Banting and Best came up with the idea for insulin supplementation in 1921. A patient was treated by 1922. They won the Nobel Prize by 1923. Today's FDA would have made their methods completely impossible and they would have been criminally prosecu…

No one was arguing that point. The FDA does good things. The FDA does bad things. The question is whether the FDA is more helpful than harmful.

I for one am happy that the FDA inspects my food and medicine and holds them to a standard of safety. On the other hand they do make some medical devices and advances overly expensive to make and create a barrier to entry into the market.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#366

Post by rokhayakebe »

jacquesm wrote: post #160
rokhayakebe wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

. To launch a medical device you spend years cutting through regulation and red tape, negotiating with and marketing to an industry that is probably threatened by your existence and will do its best to stop you. I know someone, kind of financially successful, who swears by everything that his team developed a cure for AIDS, but they found out after years of politics that they will never get approval from legal entiti…

If true that's so outrageous you can count on me to work really hard for free on their behalf to get the word out. Can you put me in contact with them?

I am not saying I believe it, but they keep making the claim every time the subject comes up.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#367

Post by steve8918 »

raganwald wrote: post #351
chernevik wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well then shut up and go do something better. I'm not sure how to read this as anything but a passive-aggressive complaint that _other_ people aren't doing more about these problems. You try to disqualify yourself from the responsibilities you imply for others, but the fact is we can all be more diligent, if we like, and we can all do work to improve the lives of others. Guess what? If you _seriously_ try to help oth…

> shut up No. You can say that all you want, and I defy you. You're welcome to suggest that there is some better use of my time, but there is nothing more chilling to freedom of thought and expression than someone saying "That thought is too rude, too lame, to annoying, cuts too close," or whatever else and therefore cannot be uttered. It's like "Let he is without sin cast the first stone." That's a passive-aggressiv…

Please don't try to twist your dumb rant into some sort of free speech issue.

The multiple people telling you to shut up isn't because they are trying to squelch discussion on the topic. They are telling you to shut up because you, specifically, bring negative value to the discussion and you are responsible for decreasing the signal to noise ratio.

In your example about the dumb, drunken football fan yelling at the TV, the people in the bar are now starting to tell him to STFU because they want to watch the game and not have to listen to the useless, drunken ranting of someone with zero credibility.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#368

Post by bhickey »

theorique wrote: post #343
bhickey wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagreed. It isn't a matter of patience, it's all about incentives. Almost all people who are smart enough to make a difference aren't foolhardy enough to make terrible economic decisions that will drastically reduce their quality of life. The existence of economics PhD students still baffles me.

They want to be professors?

Being a grad student and wanting to be a professor is like being 6'2" and wanting to play in the NBA.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#369

Post by readymade »

raganwald wrote: post #351
chernevik wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well then shut up and go do something better. I'm not sure how to read this as anything but a passive-aggressive complaint that _other_ people aren't doing more about these problems. You try to disqualify yourself from the responsibilities you imply for others, but the fact is we can all be more diligent, if we like, and we can all do work to improve the lives of others. Guess what? If you _seriously_ try to help oth…

> shut up No. You can say that all you want, and I defy you. You're welcome to suggest that there is some better use of my time, but there is nothing more chilling to freedom of thought and expression than someone saying "That thought is too rude, too lame, to annoying, cuts too close," or whatever else and therefore cannot be uttered. It's like "Let he is without sin cast the first stone." That's a passive-aggressiv…

In most endeavors you can divide people into roughly two camps – those who talk shit and those who bring the shit. You happen to be talking shit, in a domain that you (presumably) have no experience in. Add to that the angry, hyperbolic tone of the post, and the fact that you offer no suggestions whatsoever as to the marshaling of Internet tech resources towards something as unrelated to the skills of most Google employees as Diabetes research, and it's not hard to see why people would be dismissive.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#370

Post by saurik »

pg wrote: post #358
saurik wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I wrong in thinking that, if you actually did solve the kinds of problems mentioned in the article (obesity, diabetes, etc.) that your resulting business would make a lot of money? Is it really "makes more money" that keeps people working on ad-optimization, and not a simpler reason like "that is the kind of mathematical problem with an algorithmic solution that the analytical brain of a programmer can solve"? It'…

The critical distinction here is between how much something would make, and how much it would make per person-hour.

Ah, that perfectly explains it; sorry for failing to notice that variable. :( (I was actually quite prepared to be told "actually, there isn't much money in those things", and had thereby been in the interim researching the market size of things like "weight loss"; I've been quite shocked to find out that, globally, it is only about three times as large as the market for "smartphones".)
Post reply on HN