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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?

#471

Post by guerrilla »

wruza wrote: post #465
guerrilla wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I don't believe you at all. If you hurt the baby, it suffers. Inability of most people to remember those times, doesn't make that not the case.

It signals danger and performs a mechanical avoidance procedure. You react to it by feeling a protective emotion. To know if it suffers, first you have to understand what suffering is, in scientific terms, and make sure you detach your builtin empathy from an actual process, because it’s only yours own.

We literally have shittons of scientific research on exactly that. Not only that but many people can remember being babies.

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

#472

Post by Schroedingersat »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #466
greggsy wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perpetual motion and free energy stuff was interesting things to read about back in early 2000’s internet (around the time when conspiracy theories were kind of niche). The only thing of interest recently has to be the EmDrive [1] - only because the rigorous testing it was put through finally put the mail in the coffin of backyard free energy nuts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EmDrive

Nuclear fission energy is for practical purposes as good as perpetual motion

Most Uranium ore is roughly as energy dense as anthracite.

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

#473

Post by another2another »

rsync wrote: post #182
eitland wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a kid who grew up on a small (by Norwegian standards) dairy farm I remember it confused me that food waste couldn't be sold to farms. As a grown up, seeing all the stuff people put into food waste I can understand it. What I still can't understand though is how many people mistake food wrapping for food..!

Agreed. I am a compost consumer and I have no desire to plasticize my pastures and fields the same way we’ve filled the oceans with plastic. You can see this for yourself: just go to Home Depot and buy a bag of dirt … it’s not even micro plastics … whole objects like ballpoint pens and so on.

People used to throw their teabags in the compost, but now it seems that they've started adding a plastic mesh around some teabags (to increase the strength I guess?) so now it's basically a micro-plastics bomb.

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

#474

Post by ubermonkey »

fuzzfactor wrote: post #459
ubermonkey wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Houston. We have shitty weather in the summer, and the landscape is so flat as to make pancakes look topographically interesting, but if you have cancer or need orthopedic surgery it's hard to find a better place to go.

>Houston. A place that has hospitals the size of skyscrapers.

Well, I mean, some of the hospitals ARE skyscrapers.

Houston is weird because of its lack of zoning (well, it's weird for lots of reasons, but that's one of them). This contributed to the fact that there is no single "skyline" here.

Certainly downtown has prominent towers, but there are also towers in the "Galleria Area", in the Greenway area, and of course in the Medical Center.

However, my actual procedure was done in a fairly short (4 or 5 story) dedicated orthopedic facility not in any of those areas, but associated with Memorial Herman.

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

#475

Post by gwbas1c »

dcminter wrote: post #463
gwbas1c wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it has anything to do with telepresence. It looks like a robotic receptionist, or a robotic concierge.

Well, clearly they agree with you. To me, however, interacting with this thing would be a lot more intimate than a tablet on a stick, so it's an obvious direction to take the technology.

Case in point: A few hours ago I went to get a routine blood test. The last time I went to the lab, I wrote my name on a clipboard.

Today, there was just a touchscreen computer. Someone was trying to check in and was CLEARLY having trouble.

After he gave up, I walked up to check in. The check-in "application" was a browser opened up to a full screen. Someone had opened up the F12 debug screen and screwed up the whole page. Because I actually use the F12 screen professionally, I knew to close it and refresh.

All the page did was ask me for my name and put me in a queue.

This is the exact use case for a Furhat.

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

#476

Post by ubermonkey »

jdmcnugent wrote: post #455
ubermonkey wrote: post #290

Well, this is far afield from the normal discussions here, but: 8 years ago, I had a pretty bad cycling crash and broke my hip -- which, if you're not aware, means I broke the "femoral neck", or the narrow bit of bone between the long part of the femur and the "ball" that goes into your pelvis. Post-repair, my x-ray looked like this: http://i.imgur.com/gRqg50J.png Anyway, with that much hardware in a repair, you're p…

Orthopedic surgeon here. Outpatient total joint replacements have taken off like a rocket in the last few years, in part due to advances in due to pain control (pre operative peripheral nerve blocks, etc), accelerated physical therapy, and all around better management and prevention of all the common postop complaints (nausea, opioid induced constipation, etc), but I would say the number one driver has been that insu…

That's really interesting. I would have assumed that it was the insurers providing at least some of the push for an outpatient process here in order to keep costs down, but that would've been pure speculation.

I was under by 7am, and aware of enough to look at the clock on the wall in the recovery area by 1030 or so. Time is weird for a bit, but by 1230 I was in a room still a little dazed, but eating.

At that point it was a checklist party. I had to see several specialty providers -- PT, OT, respiratory person for the incentive spirometer lesson -- plus eat, drink, walk and pee. As I had been a very compliant patient the night before, and had peed BEFORE the procedure, it was the last one that took the longest despite drinking a ton of water.

It seemed clear there were several "offramps" that I could've needed that would have resulted in an overnight stay, like the postoperative nausea you mention, but I was fine.

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

#477

Post by dcminter »

gwbas1c wrote: post #475
dcminter wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, clearly they agree with you. To me, however, interacting with this thing would be a lot more intimate than a tablet on a stick, so it's an obvious direction to take the technology.

Case in point: A few hours ago I went to get a routine blood test. The last time I went to the lab, I wrote my name on a clipboard. Today, there was just a touchscreen computer. Someone was trying to check in and was CLEARLY having trouble. After he gave up, I walked up to check in. The check-in "application" was a browser opened up to a full screen. Someone had opened up the F12 debug screen and screwed up the whole…

Uh, I don't think you're hearing me. I'm not saying "don't do this", I'm saying "why not also that?"

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

#478

Post by jaclaz »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #444
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...

Have I got this right? I pay $0/m, I chuck my food scraps in the garbage. OR I pay $33/m, I fart around with some device in my kitchen, then send them by post to some company and get nothing in return. And from an environment point of view, it is a device that needs high energy to produce. I actually compost. It cost say $33 one off for the bin, which sits on soil, and can take probably couple years worth of waste. I…

>I pay $33/m, I fart around with some device in my kitchen, then send them by post to some company and get nothing in return.

I think you also pay for the electricity the device uses, and for replacement filters. No idea what happens in case of issues (need of repair/replacement parts/etc.), i.e. if it is included in the subscription or if it malfunctions it is on you.

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

#479

Post by agent281 »

nuphonenuacc wrote: post #263
agent281 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point I feel like people must also be trying to modify their DNA in secret. I wonder if we'll hear some horror stories in the next few years.

Search for lactose intolerance in the linked channel. Not completely secret.

Kind of proves my point: what percentage of practitioners are content creators in most fields? How many more people might be doing this out of sight?

That said, thanks for pointing the video out. I watched the update video and it's pretty incredible.

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

#480

Post by omginternets »

simonwingtips wrote: post #397
omginternets wrote: post #101

I remember hearing about an GAN-based tool that would transform clothed pictures of women into nudes. That was depressingly surreal.

And oddly enough, there's also a new browser plug-in that uses AI to auto-censor images client-side. https://pury.fi/

I find this just as baffling, tbh. There are two kinds of excesses: anorexia and compulsive overeating...
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