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Remember the wave of all those "smart" Silicon Valley CEOs who were so convinced they could build a better ventilator at the height of the COVID ventilator shor
by rexreed 6y ago
Remember the wave of all those "smart" Silicon Valley CEOs who were so convinced they could build a better ventilator at the height of the COVID ventilator shortage? All those folks who thought they could just throw together their engineering knowledge and hacking skills without ever having experience building a medical device?
This sort of tech hubris is all over the tech ecosystem. Folks who believe their startup prowess means they can tackle any medical device with fake-it-till-you-make-it or fail-fast-break-often mentality that often fails in reality.
- mnky9800n 6y agoLike when moocs were going to replace the University and now that University has been online everywhere for more than a year nobody even mentions the old moocs that were supposed to cause this shift when instead a pandemic did it.
- treis 6y agoThey have to a certain extent. As an example, half of med students attend class "rarely" or "never" preferring online prep material. The fundamental problem is that the utility of universities is more about credentialing and signalling than actual learning. The Moocs are fine for learning but have 0 credential value. Until that changes they won't replace universities.
- dd36 6y agoI learned a lot in university. My professors were amazing.
- dgellow 6y agoI learned a lot via MOOCs, professors (who are often also university professors) are amazing.
- ThisIsTheWay 6y agoSure, but there is a lot more going on in a university setting - particularly one one campus and learning in person - that results in learning beyond the curriculum of a student's major. While I dreaded the prospect of taking a class on feminism, which was a requirement for my degree, that class pushed me outside my comfort zone and I learned far more about the world than I did in my upper div classes. The downside of MOOCs is being able to pick and choose the classes that you want to take instead of a full curriculum that lends itself to developing a more well rounded student.
- andreilys 6y agoI’m not sure that 5-6 figures of debt is worth pushing you “out of your comfort zone”. You can get that for a lot cheaper by traveling and staying in hostels (and also become more well rounded!)
- ClumsyPilot 6y agoIn some countries Education is a human right and universities are free. Unless you are going to outproduce China and Vietnam, or are sitting on top of natural resources, the only path is through very skilled population working in high-skill industries. Its fine if to occasionally pay for some random irrelevant degree, because the cost of uneducated and unproductive population is much higher.
- exdsq 6y ago> Its fine if to occasionally pay for some random irrelevant degree, because the cost of uneducated and unproductive population is much higher. Is it? Imagine if everyone got a 4-year degree - you’d see a dip in productivity (due to less working years per adult), a dip in spending (due to debts), and little productivity gains due to a lack of degree-related work in general.
- imtringued 6y ago
- duxup 6y agoA few years ago I went to a coding bootcamp. I had very mixed feelings at the experience. It was 'run' by the local university, but really was just a package deal they bought from another company. I gave the university some feedback that they have all the resources at the university to do WAY better than these commercial bootcamps... but the folks involved bought the package deal and are invested in it. It's sad, the university IMO could do better, if they tried. Meanwhile the traditional unversity system does work, but is a huge time investment, and the bootcamp system works 'kinda' for some folks ... but fails most IMO.
- willhinsa 6y agoIt's the innovator's dilemma[0][1], plain and simple. They generally can't innovate a new model that will cannibalize their existing business to a large extent, without intentionally creating a sub entity that is completely outside of the jurisdiction of the existing business. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma [1] https://www.wired.com/insights/2014/12/understanding-the-innovators-dilemma/ https://www.wired.com/insights/2014/12/understanding-the-inn...
- andy_ppp 6y agoWhen I was involved in rebuilding the Yahoo! Homepage back in the day we had loads of widgets (Mail, Facebook, TV Guide etc etc.) and we were told to remove them because people were staying on the homepage and using them rather than being a funnel to go to other Y! products. The Facebook widget I wrote was better than being on Facebook and it still fills me with irritation to this day they shitcanned it :-)
- hypersoar 6y agoA book, "Failure to Disrupt Why Technology Alone Can’t Transform Education", recently came out about exactly this. In an interview, the author, Justin Reich, explained that schools perform so many different functions in so many different ways that MOOCs neve had a shot at replacing it. Instead, it got swallowed up and and integrated with our existing educational system. [0]https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674089044 https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674089044
- rchaud 6y agoIt's never been about "disrupting" anything, least of all education and healthcare. It's about convincing enough investors that you can, and pulling in as much money as possible before the whole thing collapses. Not true for all startups, but increasingly common among the moonshot ones.
- stordoff 6y agoThey're useful, but I could never see them replacing small-group teaching (1 PhD student/faculty member to 2-3 students), a standard feature of my university. It lets them focus on exactly what _you_ need at that time, and can pick up on weaknesses and misunderstandings you might not have even realised yourself.
- shp0ngle 6y agoDon't hate MOOCs. They did not break the traditional learning way, but they help a LOT of people, me included, to learn new things. Could I learn them otherwise, from books and web pages? Sure, but MOOCs help. Did I already attend a university before, so I can guess what MOOC is good and which one is BS? Sure. Are they much less effective than traditional university? Yes. Of course. But, they are not useless and I am glad they exist, even when they were a bit overhyped in the past.
- freewilly1040 6y agoI suspect that has more to do with the University’s role as gatekeeper to good jobs than any shortcoming in the tech.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- giantrobot 6y agoBut they'll 3D print some blockchain IoT NoSQL! Made with ♥ in SF. It will disrupt Big Ventilator.
- raverbashing 6y agoAnd the patient will die if their wifi goes down because it's a piece of crap that listens on a websocket for a stream of commands to inflate or deflate.
- duxup 6y agoWell that's just <insert open source package>'s fault!
- ljm 6y agoPowered by Kafka so if the patient dies they can just open up Kibana to scour the logs, patch the life support microservice cleverly nicknamed Lazarus by the engineers, and then replay the state with the fix in place to bring them back online. I mean back to life.
- Zhenya 6y agoLazarus. Amazing.
- pvarangot 6y agoI daydream about starting a vegan coop of software developers to sell vegan software to those kind of companies.
- jonnycomputer 6y agoForget that. You'll be better off selling paleo-inspired meat-bots.
- exdsq 6y ago“Ethical Engineering” - artisan code written with a conscious
- duxup 6y agoThe ventilator thing was kinda scary. Like ventilators I assume are kinda expensive more than just say that the medical system is wonky ... It was kinda terrifying the idea that we'd run through COVID with hordes of people hooked up to equipment someone came up with by dorking with a 3D printer and some old parts from a vacuum... It was telling when you didn't see established ventilator makers coming up with their own ad hoc cheap-o designs... much like you didn't see Theranos's competitors make wild claims of their own similar device ... probably for reasons.
- serf 6y ago>came up with by dorking with a 3D printer and some old parts from a vacuum... I get the point : it's a scary proposition to have 'hacked' solutions to life-and-death medical struggles that have not yet had the time to be properly vetted for errors or bugs.. BUT 1) Most invention came about the same way, with a rough idea of the goal while attempting to use off-the-shelf/available techniques to attain it. 2) The COVID-19 pandemic was out-of-the-ordinary. If truly worst had come to the worst and there was a total break-down of society and medical care, things like 3d printers and old vacuum parts could have been appropriately re-engineered into appropriate medical care devices by those with the professional know-how to do so. In other words : even if a "3d printed ventilator", for the sake of argument, is a somewhat hazardous idea in the hands of non-professionals, in the event of cataclysmic world-collapse i'd rather there be , even if simple and preliminary, a mediocre set of tools available for professionals to continue their work where possible. In my opinion the benefit of these designs being available outweighs the disadvantage that Joe-Bob down the road may try to practice self-tracheostomy procedures. >It was telling when you didn't see established ventilator makers coming up with their own ad hoc cheap-o designs... the only thing that tells me is that the profit margins weren't 'right enough' to interest large corporate backers into helping -- especially during a time of economic recess and beginning of thrift strategies from the worlds' corporations in expectation of economic problems down the line until the pandemic is over. The British NHS pay Mercedes F1 for 10,000 units of some whizz-bang CPAP machine during the pandemic.[0] CPAP machines certainly aren't ventilators, but Mercedes F1 certainly isn't an established ventilator maker, either.
- 6y ago
- ljm 6y agoProbably a good thing when you look at the prior art. Imagine a Juicero style ventilator that only accepts DRM'd oxygen tanks on a monthly sub and barely works better than a foot pump for an air bed. Or another medical device sold to an advertising heavyweight, like Fitbit.
- closeparen 6y agoRemember the context. We were staring down mass casualties due to dramatically greater need for ventilators than available supply. Something that maybe kinda worked a little bit 1 in 100 times could have preserved a lot of life. We got away with being picky because the situation got intercepted by other mechanisms before becoming that desperate.
- SamBam 6y agoDamn, I had forgotten all about those ventilators. Did anything come of any of them? In my recollection, it was far less Silicon Valley CEOs, and more open-source hardware enthusiasts crowdsourcing 3D printer designs. Some of them looked as if they could potentially work, but, of course, it also seemed potentially an incredible amount of hubris.
- HideousKojima 6y agoNothing came of them because it turned out that ventilators weren't as important as the initial Wuhan outbreak had led everyone to believe
- rexreed 6y agoThe fraud goes deep in the Silicon Valley Tech CEO pretending-to-be medical device manufacturer / ventilator hero world: > "Yaron Oren-Pines, who is listed as CEO 0f InCommon in San Jose on both Twitter and LinkedIn, responded to a tweet sent by President Donald Trump on March 27 calling for General Motors and Ford to immediately begin making ventilators. Oren-Pines responded to the president's tweet, saying, "We can supply ICU Ventilators, invasive and non-invasive. Have someone call me URGENT." Oren-Pines has not tweeted since. Three days later, according to BuzzFeed, New York apparently paid Oren-Pines $69,102,000 for 1,450 ventilators, or $47,656 per ventilator. It was the second-largest purchase made by the state of New York for coronavirus-related medical supplies, according to an analysis by the Albany Times-Union. To date, New York has received no ventilators from Oren-Pines. A state official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told BuzzFeed that New York made the deal with Oren-Pines on the recommendation of the White House coronavirus task force. The state has since ended the contract, and is attempting to recover the money." * https://www.sfgate.com/news/editorspicks/article/NY-paid-Bay-Area-CEO-69M-for-ventilators-but-15235828.php https://www.sfgate.com/news/editorspicks/article/NY-paid-Bay... * https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/silicon-valley-engineer-tweeted-to-trump-promising-ventilators-to-ny-then-scored-86m-contract-but-the-ventilators-never-came/ar-BB13QzeE https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/silicon-valley-engineer-tw... And there's more Silicon Valley Tech CEO medical device wanna-be pretenders: * https://abc7.com/california-coronavirus-cases-ventilators-medical-supplies-hospital/6060497/ https://abc7.com/california-coronavirus-cases-ventilators-me... And here's ya boy Elon Musk faking-it and never making-it: * https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/editorials/article241982586.html https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/editorials/article241982586.h... * https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/04/16/newsom-not-personally-aware-of-elon-musk-ventilator-deliveries-1277318 https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/04/16/...
- sjg007 6y agoIt's like all the folks here who disbelieve the experts about covid. Same thing.
- fallingknife 6y agoSo what? One of those CEO's was convinced he could build a better rocket without having any experience with rocket science, and he did. Why not ventilators?
- rexreed 6y agoHere's ya boy Elon Musk faking-it and never making-it: * https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/editorials/article241982586.html https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/editorials/article241982586.h... * https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/04/16/newsom-not-personally-aware-of-elon-musk-ventilator-deliveries-1277318 https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/04/16/... He delivered CPAP machines that weren't even of the right type for COVID ventilator use.
- fallingknife 6y agoDid you even read your link? > The apparent slight prompted Musk — one of numerous Silicon Valley entrepreneurs with whom the governor has a long-standing relationship — to lash out at the media and implore Newsom in a tweet to “please fix this misunderstanding.” Musk shared screenshots that appeared to show a hospital executive and a Los Angeles County health department official confirming they’d received medical equipment. > When asked Thursday about the discrepancy, Newsom said he had not yet seen the information Musk shared on Twitter. > “I was not personally aware of that list,” Newsom said, adding that “I look forward to learning more about where they went and I’m grateful for his support.” > Later Thursday, Los Angeles County Department of Health Services Director Christina Ghaly said in an emailed statement that Tesla had provided 100 bilevel positive airway pressure units in March — devices that can reduce “the need for certain patients to be placed on mechanical ventilation,” Ghaly said. The company also provided 200 gallons of hand sanitizer and 860 face shields.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- rexreed 6y agoI sure did! Those CPAP ventilators were the wrong type, so Tesla had to turn around and send 100 ventilators made by someone else. That's the point, right? Tesla thought they could make ventilators. They couldn't. So they just got someone else's ventilators. It proves the point. Tech CEOs, even as fabulous as ya boy Elon can't just hubris their way into medical devices. From the article linked above: "According to The Week, after CEO Elon Musk tweeted March 31st that he had “extra FDA-approved ventilators” ready to ship out, Tesla didn’t ship out actual ventilators, it sent machines more closely related to C-PAP devices called BiPAP or B-PAP machines, made by ResMed. C-PAP and Bi-PAP devices are indeed used in hospitals for medical breathing issues, as well as in homes for ailments such as sleep apnea. They use a mask that covers the users entire face or just the nose and mouth, but they are not effective for the critical symptoms of COVID-19, which requires ventilators that include intubation, or the insertion of tubes into the lungs of the patient."
- cwhiz 6y agoA better example is the Bluetooth contact tracing from Apple and Google. Laughably flawed from the beginning, and yet hailed as an incredible innovation on this very forum. People prefer to believe positive news.
- cecja 6y agoThe technology is flawed but the google and apple coming together in short notice to do something positive(tm) for the world was something new.
- creddit 6y agoOther than the opt-in nature preventing critical mass of adoption, what would you describe as the laughable flaw(s)?
- cwhiz 6y ago15-20% of Americans don't own a smart phone. An additional X% don't religiously carry their phone around with them constantly, or at all. The plan required nearly every single smartphone owner in the country to voluntarily use the tracing app, and keep their phone on them at all times in any public setting. Short of that, the results weren't actionable. If the results aren't actionable, people won't opt-in, and the results will be even less actionable. ...and oh yeah it fails in vehicle traffic, or any scenario where people are on the other side of a piece of glass or wall. Hello false flags. These flaws were obvious before any company wrote a single line of code. It was silicon valley hubris, and a textbook example of a hammer seeing everything as a nail. It predictably failed, and did nothing but distract from actual efforts. But the worst part is that now all of our smartphones have this insidious BT tracing technology built into the operating system. I am sure Google and FB would LOVE to know all the people we're near, in real time. This technology, brought about under the absurd false pretense of trying to help covid, is here to stay, baked right into the operating system.
- cmrdporcupine 6y agoYep, or Elon Musk's daring techno-rescue of the kids trapped in the cave.