What's the best thing you could be working on, and why aren't you? | Hacker News Reader

What's the best thing you could be working on, and why aren't you?

5 pointsbootload9 comments

The best thing I could be working on is curing HIV. I'm not because I don't have $25 million to get myself a top-notch team of Biochem PhDs.

So I'm starting small, by doing a genetic test for HIV immunity so I can raise enough money to make a serious attempt at actually curing HIV.

To cure HIV: Start with some adult stem cells from the HIV patient to be treated, specifically the stem cells that produce T cells. We introduce the 32 base pair deletion in the CCR5 gene and grow the cells in culture. These can then be "transplanted" back into the patient. These transplanted stem cells will create HIV immune T cells. Once there are enough immune T cells, the patient will probably still have HIV, but it will not develop into AIDS. There will be no chance of rejection since they are the patient's own cells. Furthermore, since the body does produce antibodies to HIV, these modified T cells may even be able to fight off the HIV.

To test this, we would get a mouse line, which are genetically very similar to each other from inbreeding so we won't have to worry about rejection of the transplants, and introduce the human CCR5 receptor into them. This, in theory, will allow the mice to be infected with HIV since HIV attaches to the CCR 5 receptor to enter and infect the cell. If this works, we can then try the technique of taking some of their stem cells, introducing the mutation, transplanting them back in, and see if their T cell count increases or if the levels of HIV decrease. It could also be used as a preventative therapy, which we can also easily test on the mice.

The UI for the project I pitched to YC. It's one of the two hard interesting problems in the project, and it's the one that has the most effect on the success or failure of the project.

(There's another hard interesting problem, but it's the sort of thing that can be tweaked and tuned.)

I'm not working on it at this moment because I'm at my day job looking busy, and I don't want to do any concrete work on that project here because of IP issues. (Any work I do off company time is not theirs, and I have that in writing; any work I do on company time is theirs. One of the advantages of working for a very corporate boss is that "company time" is defined as 9 am to 5 pm.)

I'm not working on it in code right now in general because it's still percolating in my backbrain while I am picking off a few of the more straightforward problems to get myself going. And because it's big and scary, and code seems more permanent than sketches.

I added this question [0], [1] after reading the 'How do you come up with your ideas for startups?' [2] and 'What is your idea filter? How can you tell if one of your ideas is worth pursuing?' [3] posts. So you now have some suggestions on how to get your ideas and how to filter them, so what is your hard, best problem?

Example:

A previous problem I was working on was to reduce the cognitive overload of everyday tasks on desktop users [4] by capturing user input and only displaying information that is important now or in the immediate future. Using combinations of NLP, integration with desktop tools and novel user interaction taking cues from Adventure games. [5]

Reference

[0] I was going to title it 'what's the hard problem you're currently working on?' but this title from pg's article 'good & bad procrastination' is better.

[1] pg, 'Good and bad procrastination'

http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

[2] arasakik, 'How do you come up with your ideas for startups?'

http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=12995

[3] amichail, 'What is your idea filter? How can you tell if one of your ideas is worth pursuing?'

http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=13035

[4] Using word processor, email, hand written notes, calendar, phone. It's based on the idea that if you capture lots of small bits of important information, work out what they contain, phone numbers, peoples names, you can get the machine to do the hardwork & spit out the necessary information just in time as it's needed.

[5] But things have changed since then and I've moved on to some different hard problems after the bloke I was working with decided to take the safe route and do his PhD on the same topic.

juwo!

I am working to release the beta (soon!) after all your comments one month ago.

Unfortunately, I work on it only weekends and some weeknights - I now have a day job.

Simple:

The cost of pursuing the idea outweigh the benefit, considering risk.

More directly: burn money, cost of leaving present occupation.

Winning games on iilwy and who says I'm not?

can I get an invite?

kfischer at gmail dot com

as soon as i get my invites i'll post something on here.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com