Founder of GitLab battles cancer by founding companies • Hacker News Board

Re: Founder of GitLab battles cancer by founding companies

#281

Post by gault8121 » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 9:39 PM UTC

rvwaveren wrote: post #152

sytse wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doing well. We've not seen the cancer for 10 months (not for lack of trying) and I'm enjoying an international trip for pleasure!

Glad to hear! After losing my wife to cancer (highly aggressive brain tumor, she only had six weeks), I'm happy that you had the time, resources, strength, will to take cancer by the lurven

So sorry to hear that. I'm providing caretaking for my mother, who has GBM now, and we've been lucky to get to month 15 now. It's such a difficult disease to grapple with.

Re: Founder of GitLab battles cancer by founding companies

#282

Post by lofaszvanitt » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 10:15 PM UTC

I have a conspiracy theory that people who are overachievers and/or somehow thorns in the side of certain interests get these hard to or borderline incurable illnessess to move them out of the way. Hope I'm wrong...

Re: Founder of GitLab battles cancer by founding companies

#283

Post by Enderthe3rd » Wed, Apr 01, 2026, 7:53 PM UTC

bluerooibos wrote: post #264

wyager wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bottleneck isn't research funding, it's getting past the FDA

The bottleneck is capitalism, in which only things that turn a profit are deemed worth doing.

Which alternative economic system has done better on pharma R&D?

Re: Founder of GitLab battles cancer by founding companies

#284

Post by BobbyJo » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 7:04 AM UTC

melling wrote: post #56

BobbyJo wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't compare the output of small teams driven by a fanatic with a single output metric with government funded research. NIH invests about 40 billion in research a year in the US as it is I believe.

I asked Gemini AI and it says the NIH spent $7.3 billion last year. Would it be a big deal to double that?

Do we just keep increasing spending until the marginal value of further spending goes to zero so long as the next incremental dollar "isn't a big deal?"

Re: Founder of GitLab battles cancer by founding companies

#285

Post by goodrubyist » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 9:33 AM UTC

dasil003 wrote: post #76

fumeux_fume wrote: post #28

The linked post about his treatment is basically a vanity article; low in useful information, but high in vague assertions and platitudes. There's also a link to a post griping about the red tape someone experienced while trying to self-treat their dog's cancer that's weird. I clearly live in a different world than these people.

It's wild to me to hear this being spun as vanity, like it's some influencer clickbait or linkedin slop. You could argue anyone posting anything online is driven by vanity, but in this case we're talking about someone who took agency in his own medical outcome, and essentially experimented on himself. Sure it was selfish in the sense that he didn't want to die and he bent all his effort and resources to it, so what?…

it's basically the American mindset vs the European one (or anyone not in the US?).