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But it was a teenage girl who "solved" something you engineers couldn't, so take that! I always found it funny, how journalists manage to take something a kid

But it was a teenage girl who "solved" something you engineers couldn't, so take that! I always found it funny, how journalists manage to take something a kid did, without knowing the specifics, and inflate the story, just because a kid did it. Even if it's useless in real world, and the people working on that professionally, could already tell you that... Sometimes it's even a direct scam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otjvUz7qKXc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otjvUz7qKXc

xwdv 4y ago
I’m not surprised someone wrote this article, I’m just disappointed it managed to get upvoted so highly on HN. I will flag it.
- remram 4y ago
  Sure, break two HN guidelines in one go. > If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it > If you flag, please don't also comment that you did
  - swayvil 4y ago
    To be fair, accusing people of breaking guidelines also breaks guidelines. Better to insert your concerns into inscrutable flaghole.
- rvz 4y ago
  Exactly. Garbage articles only intended for ad money and clickbait for the naive on read as far as the headline and it turns out the solution is worse than projected. Even this article was posted a day late for slow news day.
throw__away7391 4y ago
This kind of behavior puts a lot of pressure on kids for the amusement of adults as well.
orangepurple 4y ago
The worst one I know of is the free energy kid featured on an episode of Elecroboom (YouTube). The parents are clearly supporting the kid's delusion which makes it even worse.
sieabahlpark 4y ago
giarc 4y ago
I wouldn't say the story is inflated. She won a few awards at the "Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair, the world’s largest international pre-college STEM competition". I assume the judges and the people running that are not just some nobodies.
raman325 4y ago
Wow, have a little heart why don't you. Sure, this isn't going to revolutionize anti-poaching, but it shows two things: 1. Teenagers can build cool things too! We need more kids interested in STEM and females are underrepresented, so these "puff" pieces are great inspiration for the next kid who happens to come across it. 2. All that was needed for her solution was a cheap FLIR camera connected to an iPhone 6, meaning you don't have to be rich/VC funded to experiment with hardware solutions. This is Smithsonian Magazine, not the Wall Street Journal. I say bring on more stories like this!
- yarg 4y ago
  Sure, so first place at the science fair? There's not a hell of a lot of value in a constant barrage of hyperbolic articles telling us that the world has changed. It's about as useful as parents telling their kids that they're the best and smartest that the world has ever seen, only to have reality tear the carpet from under their feet. You can be encouraging and realistic at the same time.
- fennecfoxy 4y ago
  They're not denigrating the kid, they're denigrating hapless journalists looking for clicks. However as opposed to most articles of this type, this one isn't as "THIS IS GONNA BE WORLD CHANGING!!!!!" and more "look at this cool thing this kid did" which is so much more acceptable, especially if it helps get more _people_ (no matter who they are) into STEM.
kzrdude 4y ago
At the same time, I think it's ok if news stories are not about only world-changing stuff. It can be about “mundane” stories of “this young person did something” too. We can read the story and give it space on the page, even if someone else is already doing the same thing better (?)
- elp 4y ago
  This. The world needs more feel good stories. Also if she's doing AI on infrared images at 17 she's probably going to be really impressive work later on.
  - GuB-42 4y ago
    It depends, the followup is often unimpressive. Many people who did really impressive things in their youth ended up with quite mundane lives. I mean it along the lines of "at 17, she is doing AI on IR images, at 30 she will be fixing bugs in traffic sign detection code for a big car company, with no mention of her name except in commit logs". And it is not a bad thing! We need people to fix bugs in traffic sign detection code, and she may have a nice pay, in a reputable company, with a good work-life balance. It may not be impressive work, but it is work that needs to be done. It may not be a feel good story for the press, but I believe living a mundane life certainly feels good to the one living it.
  - Arisaka1 4y ago
    I'm somewhat confused by statements like these because they imply that the reason why we're mostly excited about it is not what she achieved but where she could potentially achieve many years later. Are these "years later" something exclusive to young people? I mean, if you're 40 years old doing exactly the same thing, and you're not retiring anytime soon it's safe to assume that you'll be working until your 50's and maybe beyond. So then, are we celebrating the potential growth of a teenager more than that of the potential growth of a middle-aged person, on the grounds of potential, or are we celebrating that she managed to achieve this at 17? I'm trying really hard to see beyond age. I don't care if someone is 16 or 36. Both can have the same years of experience (say 8-10 years of programming), and yet the former sounds more romantic and sellable to headliners because it's easier to dream big about achievements someone in their 25 will do than someone in their 45. Why?
OrangeMonkey 4y ago
This one small trick that will make your poachers super-mad!
- swayvil 4y ago
  Genius girl engineer shows all the boys what's what. Her future is so $&#$# bright.
akudha 4y ago
That is what happens when they have to constantly write stories for traffic and eyeballs. Your story’s life is a few hours at best. So why bother being accurate? Being first and clickbaity pays the bills, not being accurate. The whole system needs a reboot. Without good journalism, democracies can’t survive
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
xiphias2 4y ago
While it's often true what you write, there are real problems with real impact with not enough commercial value that people can do to improve the world. I think it's much more interesting than a guy in yesterdays HN home page making a lisp machine that almost nobody uses for RISC-V which is missing a lot of more important software that needs to be written by somebody.
alt4839483 4y ago
Take an existing problem ("Track poachers"). Notice that elephants walk differently to humans, and that movement difference can be used to identify the difference even in lower res videos (surely there's simpler ways, like size and shape? It's plausible that gait is actually a better way though). Take an existing dataset, plug it into your favourite machine learning library, and run your model over a drone feed somebody else did 99% of the work for. Handwave away that most of the cost in the drone is going to be in getting it decent range, not a decent FLIR camera. Add in a 5x bonus to media coverage because you're young, 5x bonus because you're a woman in STEM, say something about how important skin colour, demographics, and chromosomes are for doing some mediocre programming: > “What I really realized from this is how important it is that women, people of color, all sorts of minorities in the field of technology are at the forefront of this kind of groundbreaking technology.” And you've got some journalists writing about you and not something far more interesting and useful, because A. The journalists can somewhat understand it, B. You're under the age of 20, C. You're a girl in STEM, D. You're a minority, and E. It's about good animals being protected from evil poachers, giving it a nice simple narrative. And I'm sure her winning that competition was totally about merit and not because they've got a mandated 50% women winning (and she's a minority, extra points!) and probably 5% of submissions are by women. Or maybe it's not? Maybe it was merit. Either way, implicit and explicit quotas mean that it's more likely than not, and my knee-jerk reaction to this is one of "she's there because she's a girl" and not "she's there because of merit". What fantastic efforts to get rid of stereotypes, right? I'm around her age, I'm tempted to try to send something similarly useless to that competition and get $10 000. But why bother, when the first, second, and third place will inevitably be taken up by girls with useless projects going "It was so difficult to get here, all I had was exclusive help in the form of courses, programs, special treatment, and mentors all along the way and competing against 10% of the people for 50% of the spots"
jokethrowaway 4y ago
It's definitely poor journalism but it's good for encouraging this girl to keep on going. It doesn't cost much and can be helpful for society in 10 years when she's going to be the next Elizabeth Holmes.
- peterhalburt33 4y ago
  Wait, what? The last thing we want is more Elizabeth Holmes types…
- llanowarelves 4y ago
  You had me in the first half

xwdv 4y ago

I’m not surprised someone wrote this article, I’m just disappointed it managed to get upvoted so highly on HN. I will flag it.

remram 4y ago
Sure, break two HN guidelines in one go. > If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it > If you flag, please don't also comment that you did
- swayvil 4y ago
  To be fair, accusing people of breaking guidelines also breaks guidelines. Better to insert your concerns into inscrutable flaghole.
rvz 4y ago
Exactly. Garbage articles only intended for ad money and clickbait for the naive on read as far as the headline and it turns out the solution is worse than projected. Even this article was posted a day late for slow news day.

throw__away7391 4y ago

This kind of behavior puts a lot of pressure on kids for the amusement of adults as well.

orangepurple 4y ago

The worst one I know of is the free energy kid featured on an episode of Elecroboom (YouTube). The parents are clearly supporting the kid's delusion which makes it even worse.

sieabahlpark 4y ago

giarc 4y ago

I wouldn't say the story is inflated. She won a few awards at the "Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair, the world’s largest international pre-college STEM competition". I assume the judges and the people running that are not just some nobodies.

raman325 4y ago

Wow, have a little heart why don't you. Sure, this isn't going to revolutionize anti-poaching, but it shows two things: 1. Teenagers can build cool things too! We need more kids interested in STEM and females are underrepresented, so these "puff" pieces are great inspiration for the next kid who happens to come across it. 2. All that was needed for her solution was a cheap FLIR camera connected to an iPhone 6, meaning you don't have to be rich/VC funded to experiment with hardware solutions. This is Smithsonian Magazine, not the Wall Street Journal. I say bring on more stories like this!

yarg 4y ago
Sure, so first place at the science fair? There's not a hell of a lot of value in a constant barrage of hyperbolic articles telling us that the world has changed. It's about as useful as parents telling their kids that they're the best and smartest that the world has ever seen, only to have reality tear the carpet from under their feet. You can be encouraging and realistic at the same time.
fennecfoxy 4y ago
They're not denigrating the kid, they're denigrating hapless journalists looking for clicks. However as opposed to most articles of this type, this one isn't as "THIS IS GONNA BE WORLD CHANGING!!!!!" and more "look at this cool thing this kid did" which is so much more acceptable, especially if it helps get more _people_ (no matter who they are) into STEM.

kzrdude 4y ago

At the same time, I think it's ok if news stories are not about only world-changing stuff. It can be about “mundane” stories of “this young person did something” too. We can read the story and give it space on the page, even if someone else is already doing the same thing better (?)

elp 4y ago
This. The world needs more feel good stories. Also if she's doing AI on infrared images at 17 she's probably going to be really impressive work later on.
- GuB-42 4y ago
  It depends, the followup is often unimpressive. Many people who did really impressive things in their youth ended up with quite mundane lives. I mean it along the lines of "at 17, she is doing AI on IR images, at 30 she will be fixing bugs in traffic sign detection code for a big car company, with no mention of her name except in commit logs". And it is not a bad thing! We need people to fix bugs in traffic sign detection code, and she may have a nice pay, in a reputable company, with a good work-life balance. It may not be impressive work, but it is work that needs to be done. It may not be a feel good story for the press, but I believe living a mundane life certainly feels good to the one living it.
- Arisaka1 4y ago
  I'm somewhat confused by statements like these because they imply that the reason why we're mostly excited about it is not what she achieved but where she could potentially achieve many years later. Are these "years later" something exclusive to young people? I mean, if you're 40 years old doing exactly the same thing, and you're not retiring anytime soon it's safe to assume that you'll be working until your 50's and maybe beyond. So then, are we celebrating the potential growth of a teenager more than that of the potential growth of a middle-aged person, on the grounds of potential, or are we celebrating that she managed to achieve this at 17? I'm trying really hard to see beyond age. I don't care if someone is 16 or 36. Both can have the same years of experience (say 8-10 years of programming), and yet the former sounds more romantic and sellable to headliners because it's easier to dream big about achievements someone in their 25 will do than someone in their 45. Why?

OrangeMonkey 4y ago

This one small trick that will make your poachers super-mad!

swayvil 4y ago
Genius girl engineer shows all the boys what's what. Her future is so $&#$# bright.

akudha 4y ago

That is what happens when they have to constantly write stories for traffic and eyeballs. Your story’s life is a few hours at best. So why bother being accurate? Being first and clickbaity pays the bills, not being accurate. The whole system needs a reboot. Without good journalism, democracies can’t survive

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

xiphias2 4y ago

While it's often true what you write, there are real problems with real impact with not enough commercial value that people can do to improve the world. I think it's much more interesting than a guy in yesterdays HN home page making a lisp machine that almost nobody uses for RISC-V which is missing a lot of more important software that needs to be written by somebody.

alt4839483 4y ago

Take an existing problem ("Track poachers"). Notice that elephants walk differently to humans, and that movement difference can be used to identify the difference even in lower res videos (surely there's simpler ways, like size and shape? It's plausible that gait is actually a better way though). Take an existing dataset, plug it into your favourite machine learning library, and run your model over a drone feed somebody else did 99% of the work for. Handwave away that most of the cost in the drone is going to be in getting it decent range, not a decent FLIR camera. Add in a 5x bonus to media coverage because you're young, 5x bonus because you're a woman in STEM, say something about how important skin colour, demographics, and chromosomes are for doing some mediocre programming: > “What I really realized from this is how important it is that women, people of color, all sorts of minorities in the field of technology are at the forefront of this kind of groundbreaking technology.” And you've got some journalists writing about you and not something far more interesting and useful, because A. The journalists can somewhat understand it, B. You're under the age of 20, C. You're a girl in STEM, D. You're a minority, and E. It's about good animals being protected from evil poachers, giving it a nice simple narrative. And I'm sure her winning that competition was totally about merit and not because they've got a mandated 50% women winning (and she's a minority, extra points!) and probably 5% of submissions are by women. Or maybe it's not? Maybe it was merit. Either way, implicit and explicit quotas mean that it's more likely than not, and my knee-jerk reaction to this is one of "she's there because she's a girl" and not "she's there because of merit". What fantastic efforts to get rid of stereotypes, right? I'm around her age, I'm tempted to try to send something similarly useless to that competition and get $10 000. But why bother, when the first, second, and third place will inevitably be taken up by girls with useless projects going "It was so difficult to get here, all I had was exclusive help in the form of courses, programs, special treatment, and mentors all along the way and competing against 10% of the people for 50% of the spots"

jokethrowaway 4y ago

It's definitely poor journalism but it's good for encouraging this girl to keep on going. It doesn't cost much and can be helpful for society in 10 years when she's going to be the next Elizabeth Holmes.

peterhalburt33 4y ago
Wait, what? The last thing we want is more Elizabeth Holmes types…
llanowarelves 4y ago
You had me in the first half