Live data from Hacker News

Fable turned reMarkable into Tom Riddle's diary from Harry Potter

github.com

321–330 of 450 posts

Re: Fable turned reMarkable into Tom Riddle's diary from Harry Potter

#321
post #192
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale. Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus.

Sci-fi author: in my book I invented the idea of inserting human dna into a bacterium and it killing us all Tech company: by inserting human DNA into a bacterium we can make very good insulin that will help diabetics Online Commenter: this is just like that book where the insulin kills us all! My take on this entire genre: https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Story-Logic_Bias And Eliezer Yudkowsky’s more eloquent precurso…

To be more accurate to what we've been seeing for a decade, it would have to be something like

     Sci-fi author: in my book I invented the idea of inserting human dna into a bacterium and this GeneKiller bacteria killing protesters to the regime

     Tech company: by inserting human DNA into a bacterium we can make very good insulin that will help diabetics. We call it GeneKiller and we offer it to the regime to start testing on protesters first

     Online Commenter: this is just like that book where the insulin kills us all!

Re: Fable turned reMarkable into Tom Riddle's diary from Harry Potter

#322

Why so many negative comments on this? I find it cool. I showed this to my son and he absolutely loved it. The author is clearly a fan and this by no means is a production-grade product. Just someone tinkering in their free time and gave the DIY guide away for free. I just don’t understand the negativity.

o_O am I missing something? Did you show them the github repo, or the disappointing 5 second video of chat gpt from twitter? I was excited too until I saw it actually running and was like… huh. ChatGPT for tablet. Righto. What was your son so impressed by?

How have we so rapidly got to the point where a self-writing tablet is no longer impressive technology?

Re: Fable turned reMarkable into Tom Riddle's diary from Harry Potter

#323
post #246
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sci-fi author: in my book I invented the idea of inserting human dna into a bacterium and it killing us all Tech company: by inserting human DNA into a bacterium we can make very good insulin that will help diabetics Online Commenter: this is just like that book where the insulin kills us all! My take on this entire genre: https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Story-Logic_Bias And Eliezer Yudkowsky’s more eloquent precurso…

The problem I have with this is not that I disagree with it, it's a good observation, it's that it ignores humans are very example biased and we really don't have many good positive examples, there's a dearth of positive / utopian perspective in fiction and it's absence sets the overton window handily I mean the Jetson's is one of the examples that comes to mind when I'm reaching for a positive example of future robo…

Off the top of my mind right now:

- the kid from the AI movie

- the Sentient Intelligence from the Peter F Hamilton books

I think there are quite a few positive examples if you dig enough. It's just that (a) none of those examples are being used as the mold for what large tech companies are set to achieve, because (b) none of those examples imply the sort of capital or power-concentration incentive that a capitalist company would look for.

If it requires huge capital/power to bring the utopian story into reality and there is no capital/power incentive to do so, these stories will remain on paper.

Whereas, if the Torment Nexus story details how its inventors got to rule the world for a millenium, you can see how it's more interesting for a certain type of person to gather the resources to build it if they have/can acquire the relevant skillset.

Re: Fable turned reMarkable into Tom Riddle's diary from Harry Potter

#324
post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Que? Did you reply to the wrong thing? Or are you accusing me of being a bot? Sorry, just really having difficulty working out how your response is linked to my message

Only… Rust bots use Xcancel. Maybe GP only posts about Rust bots, and every now and then they’re right.

Re: Fable turned reMarkable into Tom Riddle's diary from Harry Potter

#325
post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I speak as I think and I type and as I speak, so I do uses em-dashes. It’s a shame that it’s now a brand of low quality AI-generated content.

How do you even do an em dash? I don't even thing I've got that on my keyboard

I, at least, literally made my own keyboard layout some years ago, to be able to type all the characters I want. Got versions both for Linux and Windows (haven't had a need to use Mac yet).

It's basically an extension of US International which can type every letter in all the Latin based alphabets and most of the common punctuations, including hyphens, hyphen-minuses, en-dashes, and em-dashed.

Never found room for all the Greek letters, though.

Re: Fable turned reMarkable into Tom Riddle's diary from Harry Potter

#326
post #15
post #9

I understand that this is kind of beside the point, but it seems like a bad thing to compare inventions to haunted artifacts that mind controlled their users into betraying their friends to a powerfully evil being. (Though since it is being powered by GenAI, which has also driven people to do bad things, perhaps it is an apt comparison.)

Why would that comparison be bad if it's accurate? Also, "sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". Both can be made good and evil.

Perhaps I’m misunderstanding what you’re asking, but your parent comment isn’t saying the comparison is bad in the sense of being inaccurate, but bad in the sense of being ill-advised.

Re: Fable turned reMarkable into Tom Riddle's diary from Harry Potter

#327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

could be regional cuz that don't happen in the US. they play right away regardless of log in status

I'm in the US and twitter videos don't play for me. I see what looks like a video control when I view the post, when I click it, it throws up a modal log in/sign in dialog. No way to view the video while logged out.

I don't have a twitter or x account. I clicked the link, a log in modal popped up, I dismissed it, then was able to play the video. Firefox on iPhone if it matters.

Re: Fable turned reMarkable into Tom Riddle's diary from Harry Potter

#328
post #9

I understand that this is kind of beside the point, but it seems like a bad thing to compare inventions to haunted artifacts that mind controlled their users into betraying their friends to a powerfully evil being. (Though since it is being powered by GenAI, which has also driven people to do bad things, perhaps it is an apt comparison.)

I had to do a double take. They’re framing this comparison as a positive thing?!? (On second thought, the LLM probably made up this analogy on its own, which... in a way, is even worse.)

There’s a long tradition in media of people completely missing the obvious and taking the opposite lesson from what was intended. One example is finance bros idolising Patrick Bateman (American Psycho).

https://nypost.com/2025/04/16/entertainment/american-psycho-...

Re: Fable turned reMarkable into Tom Riddle's diary from Harry Potter

#329
post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you even do an em dash? I don't even thing I've got that on my keyboard

I was downvoted a few weeks ago for making this exact point. Humans can and do use em-dashes occasionally, but given that you have to go digging for the key combination, you're not using it every 3rd sentence like every AI model does.

> but given that you have to go digging for the key combination

Except you don’t. If you’re on an Apple OS, by default doing -- (two hyphens) auto-substitutes for an em-dash.

Also, the key combination isn’t even hard. Depending on the layout you’re using, it’s either ⌥- or ⌥⇧-. My fingers press that (and the appropriate combination for apostrophes too) without me having to think. Those ⌥ and ⇧ symbols (and many more) I have mapped to text snippets.

We’re using computers, these things are trivial to do and customise, you don’t have to “hunt” for anything.

Re: Fable turned reMarkable into Tom Riddle's diary from Harry Potter

#330
post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

okay squidward, stuff from 20 years ago that seemed magic being replicated today with technology is unremarkable and children are just too dumb to understand how boring this is, we get it

Whatever man. If you slap chat GPT on a tablet or a website or a watch or a smart fridge you can make a song and dance about how great it is. …but bluntly, it would have been impressive 20 years ago. It is not impressive today; at least, not to me. I’m not 6.

You're entitled to your opinion just like any other hacker here, however for the sake of others please just keep your negative comments that provide 0 value to yourself.
Post reply on HN