This story is a part of Hacker Noon's Meet the Writer series of interviews. The series is intended for tech professionals contributing the most insightful Hacker Noon stories to share more about their writing habits, ideas, and professional background (and maybe a hobby or two). If you too would like to start contributing to Hacker Noon, you can do so here.
So let’s tell us a bit about yourself. For example, name, profession, and personal interests.
Hello, dear Hackernoon readers. My name is kinda weird Slavic one. Ladislav. Weird in a sense that neither I nor any fellow Slavic has any idea what the hell short form of Ladislav is. As for interests. I love anything creative.
My biggest success perhaps is my behavioral zero-day exploit blocker that protects hundreds of millions of computers as we speak ever since ESET nod antivirus v 5. I wrote the patent worked hard to implement and release it safely to the world on millions of computers without bluescreens. Yet my patent was stolen by the company while I was nearly dead in hospital after a paragliding accident. Yes… East Europe is definitely not a Silicon Valley.
Yet. I don’t believe that there is such a thing as bad people. Just bad software. I.e way too many generations had been raised in an environment without moral examples. But recently, luckily, Covid made me unemployed, and shackles of my creativity were (unfortunately for you, my dear readers ;D) finally released. Yay.
In a sense, this Covid period opened my eyes. Now I finally understand why so much of math or philosophy was discovered in ancient Greece. Creative new ideas are now are swirling in my head pretty much every day. Ideas that I had never time to think about due to exhaustive daily jobs occupying my brain potential on boring and repetitive tasks.
Don’t you ever wonder why is it that most of mathematics physics philosophy cornerstones were invented in this ancient but relatively short part of our history? Followed by pretty much just a few blips here and there?. I believe that the key to this was to allow extremely large population freedom to occupy their brain with other things than just delivering food and shelter.
The majority of Ancient Greece was essentially a bunch of unemployed folks contemplating the universe’s inner workings and such since someone else did the boring repetitive work for them.
Why I am mentioning this.? I feel like humanity’s second renaissance is coming. Why? Well, every time a major event like Covid or AI and automation taking the majority of repetitive boring jobs happens.
The universe splits into many but usually just two major branches depending on how clear-cut the nearest probabilities for other outcomes were. I suppose in 50/50 like cases Kazimir effect tips the scales causing the butterfly effect.
So. Let’s pretend that we will continue for a bit in this optimistic fork of this universe. A fork where we soon will have AI and robots doing most of our manual, repetitive work, with us being all on universal income finally using our brains in more creative ways like in ancient Greece. Covid, in a sense, accelerated this transition with another payment from the government coming soon. And as for the less optimistic branch of this universe’s fork. Luckily we have Elon for scaring the doors from us.
Interesting! What was your latest Hackernoon Top story about?
My last story was a crazy idea that I got one night and was super excited about, and immediately messaged to like half of SpaceX and asked them what they think about it. As you do. (So now I have like 10 SpaceX connections that can’t talk to me due to either NSA orders or the idea being too stupid). With both being equally probable.
But In short. It just baffled me why we still keep building thin 130m tall and unstable rockets and then wait for good weather or government approval. So I proposed a starship transformer. The ship has the same volume but height of just 10m during start or landing. It, therefore, does not require any special towers not is it any longer fixed to time(weather) or place. Essentially, It could transform to a tall falcon-heavy-like upright supersonic configuration on demand.
Do you usually write on similar topics? If not, what do you usually write about?
It’s hard to say since I am fascinated by so many things. Take, for example, our recent rapid advancements in the understanding of the genome of every living thing around us. And gene editing with Omega in particular. Did you know that 70% of mosquitos’ DNA is the same as yours and it is not a coincidence? Thing is. Life is pretty much a bunch of so far 3 types of programable nanobots (cells) with mostly the same code over and over.
So right now, I am writing a new story about how radically we can change the world by flipping a few homeobox-like gene bits in the DNA of Bamboo to control its size, shape, and direction. Why Bamboo? Well, Bamboo has strength and weight rivaling carbon fiber and, more importantly, can grow 1m a day even without tweaks. Unfortunately still has hardwired dimensions. ;D
So with that little DNA tweak, you can essentially not build but grow green-sustainable, recyclable houses skyscrapers, and due to the parallel nature, even whole cities in a week. Branches solve traffic congestion by moving in the dense 3D mazes without the high energy cost of flying, and energy collection is already built-in in a pretty large surface of ever-present leaves. Engineer nets will grow even thru the strongest granite via an unstoppable army of strong roots. And all of that with just a flip of a few bits.
Great! What is your usual writing routine like (if you have one?)
For me, I usually get super excited about something. Then it pretty much goes downhill with this weird drive of mine to share emotions and excitement and such. You know … Of the magic moment. And. If the procrastination monkey is not at that particular moment at the wheel, then I start immediately to write everything down. I keep adding a lot of ideas in pure, unfiltered flow. You never know what branches lead where. Then I filter them thru good old google to see how much of a wheel I am just reinventing.
In reality, a lot of these secondary ideas are usually either similar ideas with different wording or just way too much noise about nothing. So finally, my favorite Occam's razor jumps in, helping to distill just the best parts in the most succinct way possible since people rarely read past 3rd minute. And since English is not my first language In the final phase, I try to do my best to hide it ;)
Being a writer in tech can be a challenge. It’s not often our main role, but an addition to another one. What is the biggest challenge you have when it comes to writing?
According to famous Professor and Neuroscientist at Stanford University Andrew Huberman, It’s quite simple actually. The creativity of our brains is essentially a bunch of hamsters on wheels. And they pretty much run on dopamine. Rare stuff that is naturally produced when you are in an equally rare state of happiness. Especially rare if you are stuck in east Europe. Luckily there are a few other ways to get it. I don’t do drugs obviously. Then there is sex. But that is out of the question since I am butt ugly. Still, I wish to have children one day and watch them grow. I guess my next respawn in this simulation.
So what is left for me is pretty much dopamine cheap offshoot adrenaline. Stuff I get from motorcycles paragliding or being broke and not filing tax reports in time. Endorphins I get from exercise or running. Or if you are not spoiled, a jam or Nutella will do wonders too and lasts ages. Thankfully I am getting crazy new ideas once a week, which produces a day or two of excitement and endorphins too.
What is the next thing you hope to achieve in your career?
Exploring crazy and fun ideas and hoping one day to implement them is fun and all. But what I really hope for right now. Is to find someone who will help finish the reusable particle-based covid test I passed to the semifinals in XPrize; Without filters or advice, I am stuck. Considering what I am trying to do and that so far, even a panel of respected judges and virologists didn’t find a major reason why it wouldn’t work; it still baffles me that nobody wishes to help.
It’s times like these when I am starting to believe I am in some kind of weird simulation. I mean, the cost of filters I need is out of my reach yet it is way less than someone pays for breakfast daily. The optimist in me says that perhaps I am just struggling to get a word around.
Why I am so focused on that covid test so much now over a year?. To be frank, considering the state we are in, not many things make more sense to me as having higher priority.
Wow, that’s admirable. Now, something more casual: What is your guilty pleasure of choice?
No Idea. I have always been poor. I always dreamed about traveling the world though. Or have money to start building my own variant of 12m wide foldable hydraulic wings and fly. And by flying, I mean really fly. Like with moving powerful hydraulics copying every slightest move or even hint of your arms or hands. So you can clearly see now that my biggest guilty pleasure is that with my brain being free again I started dreaming again ;)
Do you have a non-tech-related hobby? If yes, what is it?
I am fanatically attracted to the ancient history of DNA and life in general. I traveled a bit too. Then I am way too often attracted to new papers in fields I am not supposed to. I know. I know. Hereby dragons. Not that I understand a thing. But curiosity knows no boundaries. Like the very recent fascinating new OMEGA gene editing advancements. And despite not being able to absorb or grasp all their content. There is still a lot of fancy pictures too. A lot of fun.
If I oversimplify it a bit. The scientists are, in a sense, writers too and are usually preparing their papers for the most efficient consumption. So the well-written paper usually has a very short but punctual condensed intro, and conclusion sections with plenty of fancy self-explanatory charts sparkled throughout. Yes, you need to possess at least a basic engineering decoding toolkit for something to stick. And something what Stanford psychology professor Carol Dweck calls a growth mindset--The belief that you can grow and develop skills and abilities you didn't have before.
But in my humble opinion, in this age, where every major educational information is public and found in seconds. An engineer is perhaps no longer only defined by which prestigious school he had taken but by his mindset. I.e., how he searches, processes, filters, and absorbs and combines that information with what he already knows. Especially how often he seeks and absorbs new information. And there are so many fascinating things happening as we speak in neural networks biology, genetics, computer graphics, or covid related info.
What can the Hacker Noon community expect to read from you next?
I am in the middle of a Bamboo software hacking article. To search for this elusive homeobox gene location, I currently have a lot of fun with searching DNA on GPU via 10 lines of Webgpu. Why Webgpu? First. Webgpu is HOT. I mean common. WebGL is so yesterday. Second. So article readers who are on HN, mostly programmers, will be able to do it themself in a browser too. And let’s face it. Which programmer would resist being able to massively accelerate their code in the 10 lines? The world of biology and genetics (or the world of nanobots as I call it) is so exciting. So much fun.
Thanks for taking the time to join our “Meet the writer” series. It was a pleasure. Do you have any closing words?
Thanks for stopping by. And those of you who wish to join forces and help with stopping this covid nightmare with the reusable test, especially before spring starts. 80nm-120nm Filters and Filter sealing design advice would be helpful. I am also pretty sure my design has a lot of flaws. But that is not the point. Nothing exists in v 1.0. We need to keep working on hourly reusable decentralized cheap test iteration after iteration. Since vaccinating the whole world is currently financially, politically, and logistically pretty much impossible. The More brains and hands-on-deck, the faster the progress. Let’s find a way to stop Covid together.