Limit posts to one tech per post to make it easier for votes to reflect HN’s voting patterns and make it easier to filter related comments.
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Here are some examples from CES:
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 probably starting the clock on needing a full replacement. I think they were hoping for 10-15 years, but I got only 8 before joint pain and bone loss forced the issue.
Last Monday -- so, 15 days ago -- I went in at 5AM for a total hip replacement.
Which was done on an OUTPATIENT basis. I walked out of the hospital (with a walker, granted) on the new joint, and was at home in a lounge chair by 5PM. By the end of the week, I was off the walker entirely and using a cane. By day 9, I was routinely moving around the house without even the CANE, though I need it for any meaningful walk.
The main thing I'm supposed to be doing is walking. I could manage a half mile within a week. Last night I walked 1.2 miles at a 30% faster pace than my first half-mile walk. I should be shut of even the cane in another week or two.
To me, this kind of objectively major SKELETON EDIT being effectively banal from a medical POV is pretty surreal. I mean, it's not "put Luke in the bacta tank" surreal, but it's a whole lot closer to that I realized was realistic.
(Now: I'm completely willing to note that the ease I've had with this is tied to a number of factors, including probably first the fact that I live in a top-tier city for this kind of medical attention, and I have excellent health insurance. But still.)
The one that really freaked me out, though, was learning about organoids - lab-grown clusters of organ cells used to research the effects of genetic disorders. Liver, kidney, and heart organoids are fine, but these are also used to study brain disorders, in which brain organoids - clusters of neurons - are grown from the stem cells of affected individuals. These clusters of neurons have been known to start firing and even display synchronized patterns...
All of this in one session, as part of a pleasant conversation, basically indistinguishable from a conversation with a real human.
[0]
> Could you explain the difference between A* and Dijkstra's algorithm in the style of a Psalm?
< Sure, here is a Psalm-style explanation of the difference between A* and Dijkstra's algorithm:
Hark, ye seekers of the shortest path,
And listen well to what I say:
There are two algorithms that ye may use,
To guide ye on your way.
Dijkstra's algorithm is a general one,
That can be used in any case,
It explores the graph from the source node,
To find the path with the least amount of space.
But A* is a more specialized tool,
With a heuristic function to guide,
It searches more efficiently,
And helps ye reach the other side.
So choose wisely, oh seekers of the path,
And let these algorithms be your guide,
For they will lead ye to your destination,
And help ye avoid the pitfalls on the side.It's just amazing that I could easily fly a kilometer away whilst having a live feed of the footage being streamed back to my controller.
I have a sub 250g drone, so it's so light yet easily able to withstand pretty strong winds and the videos look great on a big 4K TV afterwards!
This is a mind blowing level of miniaturization, especially considering that this was assembled by someone at home with commercially available off-the-shelf parts! The fact that he used a cheap, readily available 3D printer to manufacture the jigs and mould parts is the icing on the cake.
When I grew up, computer monitors were heavy and had big vacuum tubes in them made out of thick glass. At the scale of a LEGO brick, it was already amazing having a single LED light instead of an incandescent light bulb!
A working computer!? With a display? Madness!
Plant and animal body shapes (morphology) are determined from memories stored as voltage gradients) inside cells, not from the DNA. Just like neurons are good at allowing the body to navigate in 3D space (our world), other cell networks are good at creating 3D shapes (leaves, fingers, legs, livers, etc.)
You can decouple them, provide your own voltage gradients and get new body shapes using the same DNA.
https://www.xenobot.group/ https://www.drmichaellevin.org/ https://twitter.com/Kriegmerica
- 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 revived 50s~ ideas with gap junctions and cell levels "information processing" .. he ended up regrowing a second head on a larva after reprogramming cell messaging to alter the natural regeneration process. He was in a lot of interviews/podcasts in the last months.
I think that this technology will evolve rapidly based on what I have seen so far:
- drone picking a dropped radio
- the usual fire correction of
- race drones with explosives
- dropping ordinance from 3d printed attachments
- machine gun drone (prototype)
The above are just off the shelf drones modified or built from scratch racing drones.
The military drones used (that I have seen video of) are both expensive and give a large explosion) but not very creatively designed.
It's just a question of time before autonomous systems will be able clear up a trench by dropping smaller drones which only kill humans. The technology to detect specific range of temperaturs generated by our skin is already available and used in alarms.
people in the comments have no idea it's a deepfake. Without knowing beforehand, I wouldn't recognize it too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB97hQWZ1Oo
I guess they'll regulate it to death. This one maybe will be more accesible:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gq_lvCdRRe4
Also this one seems to be old news, but it's dreamy:
It's just amazing
> Yaybahar is an electric-free, totally acoustic instrument designed by Gorkem Sen. The vibrations from the strings are transmitted via the coiled springs to the frame drums. These vibrations are turned into sound by the membranes which echo back and forth on the coiled springs. This results in an unique listening experience with an hypnotic surround sound.
The tech is simple, but seeing someone go from not being able to walk without leaning against everything to walking as if nothing is wrong - within 30 minutes - felt like a miracle. The haptic feedback is processed in a very old part of the brain, which makes learning to process and use it fast.
How many billions spent? How much e-waste was generated?
Veritasium video https://youtu.be/vS0TuIPoeBs?t=640
Lot's of surreal stuff out there, but these two ... there is no question. Not one.
Living in exponential times.
https://hms.harvard.edu/news/loss-epigenetic-information-can...
Surprised to see that this is close to mainstream, can’t wait to turn on my monitors while at a bench by the river.
https://www.emergingtechbrew.com/stories/2023/01/12/some-and...
The first time FaceID succeeded in the dark, with my grizzled, bearded, asleep, partially obscured face I remember the flicker of amazement that I used to feel all the time thirty years ago when everything was new.
I sometimes think about my phone the way I think about a blank piece of paper before I write in it, just the sheer magnitudes of magnitudes of possibilities inside it’s tiny little electric chassis.
The power of my phone rivals total computing power of industry giants just a few decades ago, huge computers that people built large container rooms for, poured over schematics, organized millions of dollars for.
For what I make in a month, I could have more than a dozen of my iPhone just laying around if I wanted to. Half the size of a proper table coaster.
Also, SIMD. Like, wow. That was a brainmelter when I learned about it. I’m not quite punchcard programming old, but all the people that I worked with when I started would talk at length about it. Now you can just vectorize… whatever… basically for free.
I claimed that they vibrated at the "brown note" which is (South Park Reference) the resonating frequency of your bowels. This frequency would make you go.
I claimed that I had bootstrapped the entire thing by selling it to little old ladies who didn't like eating prunes.
They're definitely a bit different to your typical bear (I cannot help but wonder why they don't pursue the more obvious telepresence possibilities of the device for example)
https://www.gearpatrol.com/outdoors/a648024/coalatree-whistl...
One I saw in December called Container, I felt I was in the room with various scenes of realistic 3D people.
It's apparent in the future machines will have a deep level of understanding and it will be easy to extend/build upon and also affordable
[1]https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/01/24/1067226/an-als-p...
It's been really valuable as well not just a novelty. I'm certain it will change almost every aspect of our lives, starting with our children and how they learn in our current education pipelines. The bubble don' popped!
It started off with mundane stuff with a great message: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ54GDm1eL0
Then South Park guys, Trey Parker, doing absolutely hilarious deep fake video. They make Al Gore and Trump say poop. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WfZuNceFDM
But then basically the same time I saw deep fakes presented as true. Trump saying dumber things than normal. Biden appearing like he has late stage dementia. None of it true. As an outside observer of american politics... pretty damned concerning.
But then I read a real statistic. 95% of deep fakes... are to make fake porn. Women who have never done porn now have tons of porn made of them. Worse yet, you can't do anything about it. You dont own the copyright. There is no copyright infringement. You cant sue for royalties because they assert its not you and you never did porn.
So the USA/DHS decided they would try to police this. Try to get this all under control. They proceed to put a registered spy in charge of it who only policed 1 side of the aisle.
So this technology is destabilizing the USA and heading directly toward... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_American_Civil_War
Specifically:
Minecraft running in Minecraft https://youtu.be/-BP7DhHTU-I
or
Game of Life running in Game of Life https://youtu.be/xP5-iIeKXE8
Bonus: Digital clock implemented in Game of Life https://youtu.be/3NDAZ5g4EuU
Surreal because it makes it apparent that our universe could really be emergent behavior from a simple set of rules.
Disclosure: this is my own pet project. Discussed here previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33898421
* Developing logo concepts - the rendered text is usually wrong but the layout and design can be used to "hand build" a final concept
* Developing UI and web page designs
* Architectural designs and renderings
* Packaging design
Personally I'm using it to develop very niche imagery for a roleplaying game (Welcome to Grimsbury). Everything from postcards, postage stamps, posters, signage and illustrative imagery is coming out of Midjourney. The amount of control I have over the final product, the detail and unexpected "awesomeness" is mind blowing. I just generated a set of vintage postage stamps in the gravure style of scientists opening otherworldly portals. I could print them out and use them to mail a letter.
Artists and illustrators are very concerned about this technology - and rightly so. I was budgeting almost $2,000 to pay for art for my game - now - I spend $10-$20 a month to get hundreds of images that I 100% own the commercial rights to use. This will get me to the Kickstarter phase where I will then use kickstart $$$ to pay an illustrator to help with the final product - but Midjourney gets me launched.