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Rebecca Heineman has died

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Re: Rebecca Heineman has died

#151

Post by WorldMaker »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #75
rsynnott wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This… is a think that people believe, but it’s not as simple as that. Most basic research is universities, all over the place. Many drugs are developed in Europe. A lot of medical machinery is developed and made in Europe (Siemens, Philips and Roche are huge in this space). Like most things, med tech is fairly globalised.

> This… is a think that people believe, but it’s not as simple as that. This is a thing people believe because pharmaceutical companies keep repeating it. And to be fair, they're not entirely wrong in that getting a drug/treatment from the lab to the pharmacy is incredibly expensive because most drugs don't work and clinical trials are super expensive. It does seem to me that a better system would be to split out the…

Which the US had a situation exactly like that until very recently: development labs, often at Universities, with scientists paid for by grants (some private, but the majority being public, government grants), with clinical trials overseen by government agencies like the National Institute for Health (NIH), and winning research eventually being tech transferred for cheap to Pharmaceutical companies to manufacture, distribute, and market.

The companies have the biggest PR arms, so took the most credit for a system that had been balanced on a lot of government funding in the earlier, riskier stages. Eventually the marketing got so unbalanced people didn't realize how much the system was more complex than the marketing and voted for people that decided it was a "free market" idea to smash the government funding for the hard parts of science.

Re: Rebecca Heineman has died

#152

Post by deeg »

CursedSilicon wrote: post #5

I was lucky to catch some of Becky's livestreams on YouTube over the years. More than a brilliant programmer she was truly a kind soul. She never approached topics with any kind of ego. Just a joy and love for the things she'd worked on and the people she'd worked with

I didn't know her but reading the eulogies it was obvious she was a kind person who touched so many people. I hope some day my eulogies will be similar (if lower in scope).

Re: Rebecca Heineman has died

#155

Post by squigz »

yawaramin wrote: post #136
empressplay wrote: post #14

@dang could we have a black banner please?

Also, would it be possible to make the black banner a hyperlink that points directly at the HN submission?

Here is a good response/thread from last year on that

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39064497

Re: Rebecca Heineman has died

#156

Post by chaostheory »

Dedime wrote: post #11

Admittedly I didn't dive much into this to get the full context, but it's saddening to me that a legendary game designer had a GoFundMe. I was hoping achieving that level of status in a traditionally well-paid industry would leave one well off, financially.

The video game industry is not a well paying one, even for programmers

Re: Rebecca Heineman has died

#157

Post by [deleted] »

simondotau wrote: post #128
stavros wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As for whether this represents a "kafkaesque tragic absurdity" we would need intimate knowledge of a lifetime of financial decisions. Maybe she was really bad with money, and frittered it away in casinos. Maybe she was amazing with money, and donated to others more than will ever be donated to her. As someone in a nation with socialised healthcare, no you don't. It's a Kafkaesque tragic absurdity, and this sentimen…

> this sentiment of "maybe she was bad with money" sounds a bit like "maybe she was holding the live hand grenade wrong". Yes, it does sound like that when taken as an isolated sentence fragment. I'm not sure what your point is though, since no reasonable system of economics could possibly solve for people holding the metaphorical live hand grenade wrong.

[deleted]

Re: Rebecca Heineman has died

#158

Post by connicpu »

ido wrote: post #25
Dedime wrote: post #11

Admittedly I didn't dive much into this to get the full context, but it's saddening to me that a legendary game designer had a GoFundMe. I was hoping achieving that level of status in a traditionally well-paid industry would leave one well off, financially.

The games industry is not traditionally well paid, unfortunately.

Yep, unfortunately that's a big part of the reason I left for a more traditional tech role. The same skills are extremely valuable at any company writing performance critical software.

Re: Rebecca Heineman has died

#159

Post by devnull3 »

alecco wrote: post #145
devnull3 wrote: post #138

Meta: I think such black strip moments should be pinned at top of the hacker news while it lasts.

Please no. It would be impossible to decide the cutoff for who deserves it. Loud communities would bring drama when their favourite person doesn't get pinned. A black strip might be fine, though.

In this case, I had to search for the word died/dead/"no more" to even know who is no more.

Re: Rebecca Heineman has died

#160

Post by parpfish »

alecco wrote: post #145
devnull3 wrote: post #138

Meta: I think such black strip moments should be pinned at top of the hacker news while it lasts.

Please no. It would be impossible to decide the cutoff for who deserves it. Loud communities would bring drama when their favourite person doesn't get pinned. A black strip might be fine, though.

i think the comment is saying that "if there's a black strip, we should pin the article/news that justified it"

because there's currently a black strip up but there's no articles about a death on the first page

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