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Susan Wojcicki has died

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Re: Susan Wojcicki has died

#291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Main factors are sleep, sunlight, diet and exercise as well as stress. You can see her schedule here: https://press.farm/susan-wojcickis-daily-routine-youtubes-ce... Sleep about 6hr, which isnt ideal. Not much chance to get sunlight which significantly reduces cancer incidence. Not much relaxing time. The question becomes, is the work worth it?

That's probably not her real schedule. It looks like clickbait and was probably invented by the author. (Who might be our prolific friend Chat-GPT.) Besides 10:00pm to 5:30am is 7.5 hours, which is either optimal or (arguably) too much. Lastly, there's no clear evidence tying sleep duration to cancer incidence. See, e.g.: https://bmccancer.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12885-...

Yeah, that article definitely looks like ChatGPT imagination.

Re: Susan Wojcicki has died

#292
post #199

People of course associate her with YouTube, but Susan Wojcicki has had an overall fascinating career. Page and Brin started Google in her garage. She was employee #16 at the company. She was behind the Google logo, Google Doodles, Image Search, AdSense, then all of advertising, and ultimately YouTube. Safe to say Google would not be where it is today without her role. RIP.

I always wonder how many people could have replicated similar successes if put in similar positions and i always feel like it is a lot. Like i can't imagine you taking someone from the same time period as newton or einstein and replacing them and seeing similar success but in a rich environment surrounded with bright people like early google, i feel like just being early to google is enough to guarantee that you'll have some good ideas. Using advertising to make money has always existed that is what tv channels and magazines did for a long time before the internet, i'm sure google would have been just as successful without google doodles or put another way - google's success allowed it to be whacky and not vice versa.

Re: Susan Wojcicki has died

#293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where’s your scientific report that says sunlight significantly reduces lung cancer? We shouldn’t have people making such claims on HN without providing references. She was also home having dinner with her family by 6:30pm.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/joim.12251

This seems key:

“ Following sun exposure advice that is very restrictive in countries with low solar intensity might in fact be harmful to women's health.”

Thanks for the link. Now we know with certainty that lack of sunlight wasn’t a cause.

Re: Susan Wojcicki has died

#294
post #282
post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Younger folks forget that YouTube launched (2005) a few years before both the iPhone launched and Netflix pivoted to streaming (2007). In that weird era, (a) average home Internet connections became fast enough to support streaming video (with a healthy adoption growth rate), (b) the most widely deployed home recording device was likely still the VCR (digitizing analog video from cable to burn to DVD was a pain), (c)…

That was also an era where bandwidth to serve content was extremely expensive, I still don't know how 2005 YouTube was able to find a way to make serving user-uploaded videos for free financially viable, but that was a HUGE component of their success.

Self-hosting video at scale is still pretty expensive although using CDN can reduce it.

Re: Susan Wojcicki has died

#295
post #282
post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Younger folks forget that YouTube launched (2005) a few years before both the iPhone launched and Netflix pivoted to streaming (2007). In that weird era, (a) average home Internet connections became fast enough to support streaming video (with a healthy adoption growth rate), (b) the most widely deployed home recording device was likely still the VCR (digitizing analog video from cable to burn to DVD was a pain), (c)…

That was also an era where bandwidth to serve content was extremely expensive, I still don't know how 2005 YouTube was able to find a way to make serving user-uploaded videos for free financially viable, but that was a HUGE component of their success.

Also, the DMCA had just passed, which basically eliminated liability for hosting copyrighted video content as long as the infringement was laundered through a service provider.

I honestly don’t think YouTube would exist without that particular piece of regulatory capture.

Contrast the video and podcast ecosystems.

Podcasts are arguably much healthier (the publishers maintain creative control), and are certainly decentralized.

Re: Susan Wojcicki has died

#296
post #86
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s BS. Yes, both rich and poor die of cancer. But being rich or even just comfortable gives you a completely different experience during the end of life. You can afford to quit your job and be with your friends and family. You can afford to see that best doctors that will ensure you have as comfortable as possible end of life. Your kids can afford to take a sabbatical to come spend time with you. You can be sure…

If you're poor you won't even officially have cancer, because no one will diagnose you, since then you'd be entitled to services. Someone who's actually been poor would understand this.

Eh, I made 75k on my IRS forms last year and don't have health insurance. The poor people I know all have way better access to treatment through medicare/medicaid and various subsidies, and all use the medical system multiple times a year while I look up videos on YouTube (thanks susan!) to learn how to perform minor surgeries on myself

When my mother died of cancer (also in her 50s, still working as a public teacher in NYC so should have had great insurance for this) the hospital went after the estate with a million dollar bill. I couldn't even afford a lawyer to contest it at the time and ended up not inheriting anything except what I could take out of the house.

The only people with good outcomes are the rich who can afford it, and the poor who couldn't afford anything yet are still being treated because other tax payers are paying into this system.

Re: Susan Wojcicki has died

#297
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of YouTubers have been very critical of YouTube’s approach to things and treatment of creators in the past. Also, just as an example, YouTube demonetises (and therefore effectively punishes) you for using words like ‘suicide’ so now we have to say silly things like ‘unalive’ — at least until Google/the advertisers catch on. These days YouTube is more censored than traditional TV.

I think the "unalive" nonsense is idiotic too, especially when it increasingly bleeds into elsewhere online (and probably offline, too). But that's not the same thing as "mixed opinions" in general on HN. That would be more accurate of, say, Twitter (where we are nearing two years and counting of the imminent collapse of the site any day now post-Musk acquisition, as opposed to seemingly every news event proving that…

How are you still digging in here? There are very clearly mixed opinions in these threads about youtube.

Re: Susan Wojcicki has died

#298
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Health is only temporary, and everyone in your family is going to die, until someone makes a trillion dollar startup to cure aging. So it is fundamentally wrong to put health, family, and work as things opposing each other, ultimately they are all needed on a way to get all of the galaxy filled with life. And as Susan have shown one can both do great work, and have a big family with 5 children.

Cure aging? We could relieve a lot of pain in the world by just curing cancer(s), or at least make them treatable like HIV. Jake died yesterday. I don’t even think he was 40 years old. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41201555 Susan was only 56. Let’s at least give everyone a chance at a full life.

Yeah, but magnitude wise it doesn't seem like a huge difference of 56 vs 90. 56 to me now looks way early, but I assume when I get 70 then I start to think that 90 looks way too early. When I was 10 years old, 56 seemed miles away though. So there's always going to be this problem. Especially since supposedly the older you get the faster time seems to go. So the fact that I and we are all going to die at some point not too far away is still something that is constantly in the back of the mind and frequently on the front.

E.g. compared to being able to live more than 1,000 years or forever and with body in its prime condition recovery etc wise. E.g. having a 25 year old body for 1,000+ years.

Re: Susan Wojcicki has died

#300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High levels of stress (often related to work) have been shown to impact health. So I think it’s a fair thing to oppose them.

Isn't that person and stress source dependent. Also working until late in life actually improves mental acuity and fights off dementia. So maybe work but not in excessively high stress loads is your point? Though i think your implied underlying assumption that because she was a leader in tech and under a high workload somehow caused this is unfounded and unnecessary.

There must be a difference between the stress experienced by a financially independent CEO and a marginally-employed gig worker.

One is the stress of essentially playing a game or working on a challenge and the other is existential.

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