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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?

#121

Post by tunapizza »

coldpie wrote: post #43
dtx1 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Germany we have to split our garbage and one "bucket" so to speak is compostable and gets taken by the regular garbage trucks and I assume is composted in large facilities. That seems like a more reasonable approach because it scales to a whole city doing it

Here in Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA, they are planning to ship compostable plastic bags to homes, which you can use to put organics into the normal metal/paper/plastic recycling stream. Those bags get picked out at the recycling center and used for compost to sell to local farms/etc and (hopefully) at least pay for the program, and maybe even bring in some extra funds. No extra cost to users or hassle mailing packages…

Same here — I live in Eastern Canada and my municipality is rolling out a program where you'll put compostables in a separate bag, but the sorting is done by the trashman.

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

#122

Post by jvanderbot »

lqet wrote: post #107
jvanderbot wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dijkstra's cannot be used as generally as described. A-star can potentially be more general, but that's highly dependent on heuristic. Dinkstras is a-star with a "min weight on shortest path first" heuristic. Because a star doesn't expand shortest paths first necessarily, it cannot necessarily find the shortest path to any node except the prescribed endpoint. Dijkstra's will find all shortest paths with cost less tha…

What is your definition of "general" here? The classic shortest path problem (which the psalm addresses) is described as finding the shortest path between two nodes, and given non-negative edge weights, Dijkstra's algorithm is perfectly general here. It will find such a shortest path in any graph, no further restrictions. For A*, everything depends on the heuristic, as you said. If h(v) = 0, A* is equivalent to Dijks…

> Dijkstra's algorithm is a general one, That can be used in any case,

I take issue with this statement. "any case" implies it's more general than A star, which is not true, it's a specialization of A star with (ok you win) h(v) set to nothing. It necessarily cannot solve as many problems as a star.

And Dijkstra's won't work in "any case" at all, esp graphs with negative edge weights.

The explanation struck me as glossing over too much, to the point of being misleading. Perhaps I'm being too pedantic, fine, but a more enlightened comparison would read more like our discussion than what was given.

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

#123

Post by quanto »

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…

could you provide some examples of your prompts leading to simulation of Linux within ChatGPT?

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

#124

Post by causi »

Rastonbury wrote: post #108
pxue wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"confidently wrong" That's chatgpt right now. To get it to confidently right will take years and years more

I saw dallE and GPT-2 demos and though 'oh pretty cool' about a year later we've got stable diffusion that can run on phones and ChatGPT which can remember context. I thought these things would be 3-5 years out or more. The speed of development is so quick, I think confidently right LLM is around the corner In less than a decade, I believe front line support chat support jobs and even graphic artist jobs will be made…

In less than a decade, I believe front line support chat support jobs and even graphic artist jobs will be made obselete

We can finally get the eighty hour long book-accurate Lord of the Rings adaptation we deserve.

But seriously, I can't wait to feed a novel into one of these things and get a comic book version in return.

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

#125

Post by HideousKojima »

jvanderbot wrote: post #48
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…

That's wrong. It's poetic, but incorrect. These tools are about as good as a non specialist with time to undertake some bullshitting.

Also psalms don't rhyme, even in the original Hebrew. Also even if it is supposed to be a poem with rhyme and meter, ChatGPT's poem doesn't have correct meter.

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

#126

Post by agumonkey »

leesec wrote: post #100
agumonkey wrote: post #50

not sure if it qualifies as technology: - nicolas schabanel team works on molecular DNA programming, they had game of life capable structures made of DNA tiles. The mentioned being capable of transpiling tiny lambda calculus expressions but were stuck (this was in 2013~) due to thermal degradation on long programs. His courses are on dailymotion. - michael levin morphogenesis / developmental biology research: dude re…

Seconding Michael Levin, that guy is doing some incredible stuff

It made me feel something very very new, a blend of infinite "power" at reach and at the same time something that could really break sanity and ethics forever.

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

#127

Post by lopis »

jeffwask wrote: post #106

The Mobility Scooter craze. South Park nailed it. One day there were a couple scooters and you went oh interesting. A moth later there were thousands clogging every sidewalk with no discernible method of managing these devices. Then just like they came they were gone. How many billions spent? How much e-waste was generated?

I think we're well past the craze curve. I see way less scooters nowadays. Somewhere there is a mile high mountain of old scooters.

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

#128

Post by agumonkey »

jcims wrote: post #91
agumonkey wrote: post #50

not sure if it qualifies as technology: - nicolas schabanel team works on molecular DNA programming, they had game of life capable structures made of DNA tiles. The mentioned being capable of transpiling tiny lambda calculus expressions but were stuck (this was in 2013~) due to thermal degradation on long programs. His courses are on dailymotion. - michael levin morphogenesis / developmental biology research: dude re…

I truly feel there’s going to be some kind of industrial revolution with DNA or derivative based manufacturing.

A lot of trends are showing nanotech reaching mainstream. Just two days ago there was a veritasium video about gecko skin like thin film that could hold smooth objects passively.

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

#129

Post by HideousKojima »

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

In the US too, plenty of cities (even small ones) offer compost collection as part of standard trash and recycling collection.

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

#130

Post by FeistySkink »

jeffwask wrote: post #106

The Mobility Scooter craze. South Park nailed it. One day there were a couple scooters and you went oh interesting. A moth later there were thousands clogging every sidewalk with no discernible method of managing these devices. Then just like they came they were gone. How many billions spent? How much e-waste was generated?

Unfortunately it's still a thing almost everywhere in EU.
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