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Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal recent technology you have seen?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal recent technology you have seen?

#81

Post by guerrilla »

Ftuuky wrote: post #35

Seeing a dude grow human neurons directly connected to a computer chip to make a "human AI", all from his garage [0]. It showed me what is possible with science these days if you have enough dedication and know-how. Made me feel deeply excited and scared for the incoming future. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2YDApNRK3g

Oh yeah this one... This really disturbs me. I can't shake the feeling that it might be conscious somehow; trapped, enslaved and tortured like some kind of Black Mirror episode.

Re: Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal recent technology you have seen?

#82

Post by lm28469 »

mtmail wrote: post #3

Compost bin that requires a subscription. You send the compost via mail to a processing facility https://www.fastcompany.com/90834481/nests-co-founder-design...

Sometimes (often these days) i can't tell if these things are parodies or real products. It reminds me of Juicero: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juicero

In Europe many countries have specific trash bins for food waste, they're collected by the city and reused for compost and biogas. No subscriptions, no investors, no soon to be e-waste wifi and bluetooth connected trash can, no shipping dirt in box

Re: Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal recent technology you have seen?

#83

Post by hedora »

smallerfish wrote: post #15
mtmail wrote: post #3

Compost bin that requires a subscription. You send the compost via mail to a processing facility https://www.fastcompany.com/90834481/nests-co-founder-design...

Wow - they raised $100 million. They're expecting people to pay $33/mo for the service, which includes the grinder/dehydrator bin, plus the cost of mailing the dense milled organics back to their processing facility. Figure that actual physical expenses cost $18/mo, leaving $15/mo profit per household; on top of that, they'll have extensive marketing costs - let's say marketing & employee costs take another $10/mo, l…

I'd pay $100-200 for the trash can thing. There is a company making a smaller one, with the idea that you toss the output into your own compost pile. It cuts down on odor, rodents and time to compost completion.

What happens to the trash can if I stop paying the subscription fee?

(Fast forward a few years, and someone will rewrite the above as a postmortem.)

Re: Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal recent technology you have seen?

#85

Post by super256 »

hannob wrote: post #23
super256 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this was the case a few years ago, maybe not anymore? I'm not sure what happens with the plastic in SE Asia, but we still send most of our plastic there. https://de.statista.com/infografik/25368/wichtigste-abnehmer...

Bullshit. This statistic is listing the share of exported plastics that are exported to certain countries. But that's not "most of our plastic", because overall exports are around ~10%. So "most of our plastic" is either recycled or burned within Germany. (Not saying any of this is ideal, but it's not helping to spread false information.)

I apologize. I chose poor wording to the point where my sentence it is becoming untrue.

I meant something like: “The majority of plastic we export to other countries is still being exported to SE Asia”.

Re: Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal recent technology you have seen?

#86

Post by jcims »

Ftuuky wrote: post #61
wil421 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do a lot of kayaking (not white water kayaking) and fishing off my kayak in lakes, rivers, and the ocean on calmer days. Does your style drone have any following features? Looking for something to fly around looking for fish and something that will follow me or do fly-bys when I’m doing something with the family.

Not OP but Skydio might have the drones you need?

DJI is a juggernaut and i imagine will catch up, but when i last looked about a year ago Skydio autonomous tracking was dramatically better. It was the first thing that popped into mind when reading that question.

Re: Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal recent technology you have seen?

#87

Post by twosdai »

hedora wrote: post #83
smallerfish wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow - they raised $100 million. They're expecting people to pay $33/mo for the service, which includes the grinder/dehydrator bin, plus the cost of mailing the dense milled organics back to their processing facility. Figure that actual physical expenses cost $18/mo, leaving $15/mo profit per household; on top of that, they'll have extensive marketing costs - let's say marketing & employee costs take another $10/mo, l…

I'd pay $100-200 for the trash can thing. There is a company making a smaller one, with the idea that you toss the output into your own compost pile. It cuts down on odor, rodents and time to compost completion. What happens to the trash can if I stop paying the subscription fee? (Fast forward a few years, and someone will rewrite the above as a postmortem.)

I used a local version of this type of product in a city I used to live in.

Main positive is as you mentioned, food waste smell is gone, and no rodents/animals in the trash either inside or outside.

Re: Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal recent technology you have seen?

#88

Post by sumtechguy »

kevstev wrote: post #62
lqet wrote: post #42

ChatGPT. This is the only technology that truly freaked me out in my lifetime (I am 35). It competently explained to me the difference between Dijkstra's algorithm and A* in a psalm-like poem [0]. It was able to find misspelled words in a long text I just made up, list them in alphabetical order, and explain to me why I misspelled them. It correctly simulated a ChatGPT instance which was accessible via a HTTP API, an…

Agree- so many are dismissing it because its not perfect, but this is an absolutely enormous leap from anything else I have seen in my lifetime, and this crosses the chasm IMHO between "AI is unlikely to really be able to have general applicability" to "AI is probably going to upend life as we know it in our lifetimes." Maybe it will just peter out at this level like self driving car technology did, but I really doub…

One of them I used was supposed to be 'pick-a-path' style fantasy fight the dragon sort of thing. I decided to throw the A-Team into it. It integrated them in and even knew the correct names and their context of what each char tended to do. By far not perfect. But the fact it could do even 'kind of' that. Is very interesting. 'kind of' is for some things is perfectly fine. The generated art ones are very interesting too. It reminds me a lot of early emulation discussions. Where people were arguing unless you had cycle perfect emulation nothing would work. Turns out 'kind of' close works for like 95% of the cases. Some things did need that sort of detail. But most didnt.

Re: Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal recent technology you have seen?

#89

Post by jcims »

lm28469 wrote: post #82
mtmail wrote: post #3

Compost bin that requires a subscription. You send the compost via mail to a processing facility https://www.fastcompany.com/90834481/nests-co-founder-design...

Sometimes (often these days) i can't tell if these things are parodies or real products. It reminds me of Juicero: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juicero In Europe many countries have specific trash bins for food waste, they're collected by the city and reused for compost and biogas. No subscriptions, no investors, no soon to be e-waste wifi and bluetooth connected trash can, no shipping dirt in box

AVE did a great teardown of one a couple years ago, impressive machine with a stupid purpose.
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