I had to look up what this was a reference to. Several months ago a cat ran underneath a Waymo and the vehicle's rear tire ran over it while pulling away from the curb. The NYT has a video [1] of the incident.
I’d bet you already have a mode that would’ve prevented what happened to the cat. From NYT reporting on the actual incident:
A human driver, she believes, would have stopped and asked if everything was OK after seeing a concerned person kneeling in front of their car and peering underneath.
“I didn’t know if I should reach out and hit one of the cameras or scream,” she said of the perilous moment. “I sort of froze, honestly. It was disorienting that Waymo was pulling away with me so close to it.”
I watched the video and read the article. (I wish I didn't; I love cats. I've known some wonderful bodega cats myself.)
But I'll bet I already have a mode that makes me want to drive away from people I don't know who are acting weird around my car.
I mean: I've got options. I can fight, flee, or hang out and investigate.
But I'm human -- I'm going to make what ultimately turn out to be poor decisions sometimes. I will have this condition until the day I die, and there isn't a single thing I can do about it (except to choose to die sooner, I guess).
So to posit an example: I'm already behind the wheel of my fleeing-machine with an already-decided intent to leave. And a stranger nearby is being weird.
I've now got a decision to make. It may be a very important decision, or it may instead be a nearly-meaningless decision.
Again, I've got options. I may very well decide that fighting isn't a good plan, and that joining them in exploring whatever mystery or ailment they may perceive is also not a great idea, and thereby decide that fleeing is the best option.
This may be a poor choice. It may also be the very best choice.
I don't know everything, and I can't see everything, and I do not get to use a time machine to gain hindsight for how this decision will play out.
(But I might speculate that if I stopped to investigate every time I saw a nearby stranger act weird at night in neighborhoods with prominent security gates that I might have fewer days remaining than if I just left them to their own devices.)
I think you’re right that it’s hard. But I think you’re implying that it could be less hard if we just behaved better à la “be the change you want to see”, and I believe you’re wrong about that. The people that send death threats do not read your advice, nor do they care enough to take it to heart. The people that _will_ listen were not sending death threats to begin with. And getting 500 thankyou-messages does not outweigh the handful of death threats
The people who send death threats, call peoples employers, etc largely view themselves as very normal people that are fighting a just fight. Social media has had plenty of these folks, IRC before it, and probably BBSs before that.
They probably do read that message, but they say to themselves, "Well when I did it it was for a good cause."
I think it does. Internet death threats are upsetting but you also learn they tend to be toothless 99.9% of the time. Most of it is just internet tough guys hundreds or thousands of miles away.
A lifetime of small positive outcomes can easily offset that for many people.
Also 90% of the time when you finally manage to get someone to quote one of these "death threats" it turns out to be something like "I hope you die of cancer" or "You deserve to get shot" which are horrible but are not threats in any sense whatsoever.
This is why when you see yet another article about someone getting "death threats" they don't actually say what the threats are: most of the time they aren't threats at all.
On the other hand, sometimes people really do actually threaten people and if someone actually threatens you, the likelihood that he is 1000s of km away isn't particularly reassuring let me tell you.
Not to invalidate your experience, but I think both of you feel this way because “you only want what you don’t have”. There are different kinds of joy that come from being impactful, and different kinds that come from moving fast. If only we could move fast and be impactful :’(
I could be fast and impactful. Just in a negative way. The problem is that I come from the software dev side so I tend to be less interested in the medical side. It’s the same in a lot of safety critical. There is a lot of mundane work to tick the necessary checkboxes. There isn’t much that is interesting from a technological side. Maybe the result is interesting but getting there takes a lot of extremely boring work.
Maybe you should change your line of work. If you're that unhappy about what you do in spite of the fact that what you do is orders of magnitude more important than the next move-fast-and-break-things-advertising-driven-unicorn then that suggests to me that you should let someone else take over who does derive happiness from it and you get yours from a faster paced environment.
Personally, you couldn't pay me enough to do the latter and I'd be more than happy to do the former (but I'm not exactly looking for a job).
I am retiring next year. So that should solve my problem :). I don’t know how other medical device companies are working but in mine leadership is dominated by people who know medical devices from a sales or medical perspective. Software is kind of secondary to them although it’s becoming really important. A lot of our processes aren’t very good for software so we end up doing a lot of work that makes no sense and makes the product actually worse. It’s better not to fix bugs because a new release will take months of paperwork. The requirement structure doesn’t map to software but the SOP isn’t written by people who known software. It feels a little like the development speed of NASA with the SLS vs SpaceX who are basically doing everything faster and cheaper while still having high reliability . My company is NASA here. Just very frustrating
I've worked with a startup in the medical device space. Well funded. They were indistinguishable from most other startups, except in one detail: they did everything right. They made some extremely high tech stuff, very lightweight, and technology wise they were closer to watchmakers than to software and hardware people. I loved working with them and helped them to improve their yield (their QA was so strict that of their initial couple of runs more than 2/3rds of the devices got binned for the smallest infractions).
I suspect you may have just been unlucky with where you ended up. I'm getting closer to retirement myself but I no longer have to work for 'the man' so in that sense I got really lucky. But I really sympathize with how you feel. So, count the days, and look forward to something nicer. Best!
From what I have seen startups have it a little easier. They are usually focused on one product and often just get acquired before having to go to market themselves. Selling multiple products worldwide and complying with regulations is a totally different ballgame.
I think serious studies would be strongly preferred here, as compared to anecdotes or conjecture. I don’t even know if I disagree with your stance, it’s just an absence of data is not convincing.
> The Buteyko method is not widely supported in the medical community, in part due to the lack of research supporting the theory that hyperventilation and hypocapnia causes disease,[7] with one review noting the absence of convincing evidence to indicate that trying to change asthmatics' carbon dioxide level is either "desirable or achievable."
The comment about it being neither desirable nor achievable is so funny to me! It really walks the line between complete dismissal and polite confusion.
Income is what you earn from your labor (the things robots will do in the future). Capital is setting money to make more money (e.g., by buying robots to get rid of labor that earns income).
What is the non-insulting alternative? Here's my proposal:
Can we have an honest discussion that uses numbers instead of hyperbole?
Notably, that still seems pretty insulting to me. jimbokun wants to have an honest discussion about the problem, using true data instead of emotional exaggeration. This is a reasonable thing to ask IMO, but of course it seems like an insult towards the person that's making stuff up.
One failed initiative does not mean the company is bad. In fact if a company always succeeds, Im suspicious that they’re aiming too small. Is there something else that made you doubt them?
Right, there's always room for the "exception" in startup land. But majority will fail right? For me personally, it just wasn't worth the risk to jump, especially given this surge of AI right now. Also, already working at a fintech company has shown me that margins can be razor thin/tiny at times, depending on the product. For Mesa, I am guessing they relied upon interchange fees, partnership/commissions, and interest income.
Making a first aid kit for stingray stings! If there are lifeguards nearby they’ll usually treat you, but we think it would be nice to have a “go bag” in the back of your car for scenarios where there aren’t lifeguards (remote beaches, or after sunset, etc). The standard of care is to clean the wound and submerge it in water around 110-120F for 1-2 hours. We’ve been researching the best, safest method to get that heat, and working on putting a package together. Here’s our first attempt:
I actually doubt that. Irwin was a philanthropist and a scientist, with a decent sense of humor. This is a basically profitless project for public good. I think if the founder has bona-fides, Irwin’s estate would jump at it.
Hmmm we've never approached the Irwin estate, even though all our work is about stingray sting prevention and treatment. We do need to make profit to stay in business, so it's not entirely charity. Maybe we should see how they feel though. I also worry about the optics of advertising so directly on somebody's death. Especially because none of our products would have prevented / helped in his scenario.
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