[HN Gopher] I am using AI to drop hats outside my window onto Ne...
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I am using AI to drop hats outside my window onto New Yorkers
Author : jimhi
Score : 1277 points
Date : 2024-06-23 13:49 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (dropofahat.zone)
(TXT) w3m dump (dropofahat.zone)
| hammock wrote:
| This concept is great, it's also a brilliant idea for a webcam on
| a Bourbon St balcony in New Orleans to throw beads at parties
| below. I am friends with a guy who owns a multistory bar in the
| middle of the strip and would be open to this, so if OP or
| someone else is interested in developing an AI/remote control
| bead thrower, drop some contact info and I'll reach out
| soulofmischief wrote:
| I live in Louisiana, have done object recognition projects
| before, feel free to reach out. Email in bio.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| I live in New Orleans. Happy to help as well. contact in bio.
| edm0nd wrote:
| AI to recognize a pair of titties and then trigger the beads.
| Genius.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Just think of the adversarial attacks
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I will be honest, while the project is actually neat, it
| showcases some of the issues with technological advancements as
| related to society ( and happens to also touch on one's exposure
| in a big city ). One could easily imagine a scenario ( or
| scenarios ), where this could be misused.
| bogwog wrote:
| Right? I can already imagine the government doing this to drop
| nuclear bombs on dissidents.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| You seem to be making it unnecessarily dramatic for comedic
| effect and it does not have be government in attempt to
| dismiss genuine concern. The only reason I am not expanding
| on it is because I do not want to give people ideas.
| saltwatercowboy wrote:
| Perhaps it can be used to drop water balloons full of
| Gatorade on parched travellers. Or, to extend the earlier
| concept, miniaturised atom bombs on beatniks.
| lolinder wrote:
| As the saying goes, "ideas are cheap, execution is
| everything".
|
| I guarantee you that you haven't come up with any ideas in
| the few minutes you've been thinking as a casual and
| presumably non-criminal observer that haven't been thought
| of already by countless criminal and terrorist groups. The
| only thing you're accomplishing by being vague is making it
| hard for us to understand what you're getting at.
| james_marks wrote:
| People are influenced by what they read.
|
| Whether the idea has occurred to a bad actor and if they
| choose to act on it are very different.
|
| We effectively "promote" bad ideas with detailed public
| discussion; it's literally what influencers get paid to
| do.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Hmm. On this very forum you will often see me argue
| actions vs speech and how the two are very different from
| one another and how only one of those can actually be
| construed as violence.
|
| << I guarantee you that you haven't come up with any
| ideas [...]that haven't been thought of already by
| countless criminal and terrorist groups.
|
| It is likely. My imagination is somewhat limited, but
| this is kinda the point. If I can think it, a sizeable
| portion of the population can as well. The difference is
| that it just made it now is easier to deploy in non-
| benign manner. My concern is not with terror orgs. Those
| can and do their own thing. I am worried about a casual
| kid, who uses it for 'pranks' that will happen, as they
| seem to invariably eventually do, to go too far.
| IshKebab wrote:
| > The only reason I am not expanding on it is because I do
| not want to give people ideas.
|
| Well and because your ideas are either fantasy land or old
| hat.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| You realize anyone can throw a rock off an overpass and
| sometimes people actually do it right? People just choose
| not to.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| The two situations are not alike. People choose not to
| throw rocks directly as the action is direct, immediate
| and likely against the law with all the things that it
| would influence. On the other hand, we have a remote
| system capable of dropping things on unsuspecting heads
| in an automated manner.
|
| Do you really not see the difference?
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| One is easy an people don't do it, while one is
| complicated and people don't do it.
|
| You could drop stuff from a drone or have a drone shoot a
| gun too, but people don't want to hurt other people in
| general.
|
| What scenario is in your head that you think being able
| to drop something and hurt or kill someone is going to
| happen more if people can do it automatically?
|
| Who are these people that aren't hurting anyone but are
| suddenly going to do it once it becomes a science
| project?
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I had a longer post and deleted it. We disagree. Lets
| leave it at that.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| There is no evidence or explanation here, you seem to
| just be saying that if people can hurt other people with
| some sort of automation they will, but you're not
| explaining why that would be or giving any examples of it
| happening.
| bee_rider wrote:
| You don't need to aim that well with a nuclear bomb.
|
| This sort of tech could clearly be applied to the "last mile"
| problem in hand grenade deliveries as well, so close range
| jammer based solutions seem pretty hopeless (I think that's
| been pretty obvious for a while, but this hobbyist project
| really emphasizes the fact, right?)
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Like a gun?
| prepend wrote:
| Surely, if this got into the wrong hands evildoers could lower
| all sorts of things people order:
|
| Toupees
|
| Pianos
|
| Air conditioners
|
| Enriched yellow cake uranium
|
| Specially trained mice with machine guns
|
| Robert De Niro in Brazil
|
| Etc etc
|
| We must mobilize to stop this now before it's too late.
| Hopefully this will be addressed during next week's
| presidential election.
| m3047 wrote:
| I'm old enough to remember fishing poles hanging out of windows
| in Alphabet so you could buy drugs.
| op00to wrote:
| Yes, imagine if someone dropped a certain red cap with writing
| on it totally unbeknownst to you. People might form Opinions
| about you!
| causal wrote:
| I love this kind of project.
|
| A lot of states are working on legislation that includes
| requirements for watermarking AI generated content. But it seldom
| defines AI with any rigor, making me wonder if soon everyone will
| need to label everything as made with AI to be on the safe side,
| kinda like prop 65 warnings.
| tyingq wrote:
| I'm guessing we'll just end with every website has a button
| where you have to accept:
|
| [ all cookies and ai stuff ]
| omoikane wrote:
| This is not quite like the "AI" that's hyped in recent years,
| the key component is OpenCV and it has been around for decades.
| Few years ago, this might have been called Machine Learning
| (ML) instead of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
| rzzzt wrote:
| You have discovered a secret area of my personalized "pet
| peeves" level: just a few days ago I saw an article (maybe
| video) about how "AI" tracks you in a restaurant. Screenshot
| was from an OpenCV-based app with a bounding box around each
| person, it counted how many people are in the establishment,
| who is a waiter and who is a customer, and how long they have
| been there.
| level1ten wrote:
| Image recognition is AI.
| rzzzt wrote:
| Maybe it is easier to define what _isn 't_ AI? Toshiba's
| handwritten postal code recognizers from the 1970s? Fuzzy
| logic in washing machines that adjusts the pre-programmed
| cycle based on laundry weight and dirtyness?
| singpolyma3 wrote:
| Those both sound like AI to me
|
| An example of similar computer can do that isn't AI would
| be arithmetic
| rzzzt wrote:
| Adding two numbers, each having 100 digits? Reciting the
| fractional part of P on and on? I have only seen that
| done by talented people appearing in TV shows. Seems AI.
| ska wrote:
| Historically, we often call something AI while we don't
| really understand how it works. After that it quietly
| gets subsumed into machine learning or another area and
| called X algorithm.
| mysterymath wrote:
| There's an old saying: "Yesterday's AI is today's
| algorithm". Few would consider A* search for route-
| planning or Alpha-Beta pruning for game playing to be
| "Capital A Captial I" today, but they absolutely were
| back at their inception. Heck, the various modern
| elaborations on A* are mostly _still_ published in a
| journal of AI (AAAI).
| bitwize wrote:
| Apparently there was a big scare that AI would take
| programmers' jobs away... decades ago, when the first
| _compilers_ came out.
| 6510 wrote:
| Yes, no more machine code. Everything was to be written
| in BASIC. ...how we laughed at that outlandish idea. It
| was so obvious performance would be... well... what we
| have today pretty much.
| bitwize wrote:
| IKR? If you can't hand-pick where instructions are
| located on the drum, you may have to use separate
| constants, and if that's the case what is even the point?
| 6510 wrote:
| If you spend a few hours writing a bit of code that has
| to run for decades, millions or billions of times per day
| on hundreds of thousands or millions of machines it seems
| quite significant to use only the instructions needed to
| make it work. A few hundreds of thousands extra seems a
| lot. One would imagine other useful things could be done
| with quintillions or septillions of cycles besides saving
| a few development hours.
| level1ten wrote:
| We will likely develop more accurate names for the
| different shades of AI after the fact. Or the AI will.
| mrbombastic wrote:
| This is a fair point and maybe someone more well versed
| can correct me but pretty much all state of the art image
| recognition is trained neural networks nowadays right? A*
| is still something a human can reasonably code, it seems
| to me that there is a legitimate distinction between
| these types of things nowadays.
| Teleoflexuous wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect We got it named
| already, it just needs to be properly propagated until
| there's no value left in calling things 'AI'.
| singpolyma3 wrote:
| A* is definitely AI... Why would someone say it isn't?
| callalex wrote:
| As a data point in my early 2010s computer science
| bachelor program it was taught to me as the A* algorithm.
| ericd wrote:
| Right, in an AI class. For example, lecture 5 in 6.034:
| https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/6-034-artificial-
| intelligence-fa...
| callalex wrote:
| No, in an introduction to data structures and algorithms
| class. It's pretty odd behavior to disagree with someone
| who is simply sharing their lived experience.
| lukan wrote:
| Same class name with the same algorithm for me.
| ericd wrote:
| Yeah sorry, rereading, that came off as way aggressive
| for no reason. Rereading the chain, I think I just meant
| that it's an algorithm that was frequently taught in AI
| classes, so at least some profs think it counts, even
| though it was called an algorithm.
| serf wrote:
| same as parent, it was taught to me in an introduction to
| algorithms class, and no one during my academic stay ever
| referred to it as an AI.
|
| I don't disagree that it certainly meets certain AI
| criteria, just saying that particular phrasing (A* is AI)
| was never used.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Thank you! I was wondering how they managed to wedge an AI
| model into a RasPi. And I couldn't figure out what the AI was
| needed for.
| buffalobuffalo wrote:
| This has been going on for a while:
|
| https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/ai-9
| smus wrote:
| Looks like the key component is roboflow (a computer
| vision/ai platform) and the user trained and deployed a yolo
| deep-learning model.
| causal wrote:
| That's my point: legislation seldom defines AI rigorously
| enough to exclude work like OpenCV. I presume that leaves it
| to courts or prosecutorial discretion.
| autoexec wrote:
| So it doesn't actually drop hats onto heads and doesn't use
| what most people would consider AI... I think I could
| probably rig up something to gracelessly shove an item out of
| an open window too which is basically what we're left with.
| It'd take longer to create the app for booking appointments,
| and to set up everything for payment processing.
| jampekka wrote:
| Be it "AI" or not, these mostly fall under "AI" legistlation,
| at least in the new EU AI Act. Which is IMHO a better way to
| legislate than tying laws to specific algorithms d'jour.
| prepend wrote:
| It's going to be like those "made in a facility that processes
| nuts" warnings that are on most foods these days
| RheingoldRiver wrote:
| This comment is known to the State of California to contain
| text that may cause you to ignore warnings which may lead to
| cancer, reproductive defects, and some other shit that I can't
| remember because it's been almost a decade since I lived in
| California and weirdly I can't easily find the full text of one
| of these online through a quick search (emphasis: quick)
| yellow_postit wrote:
| I fear you're right -- cookie banners will soon also come with
| endless AI disclaimers that net net desensitize the end user to
| any consideration as they seek to skip poorly crafted
| regulation and get on with their lives.
| jampekka wrote:
| Poorly enforced regulation. Most of the cookie banners are
| illegal but businesses, especially large ones, have too much
| power to be effectively regulated.
|
| The nags are kind of malicious semi-compliance, partly in
| effort to make the regulation look bad.
| xnorswap wrote:
| If Big AI lobbyists get their way, this is exactly the kind of
| warnings we'll get.
|
| Flood users with warnings on everything and it'll get ignored.
| Especially if there's no penalty for warning when there isn't a
| risk.
|
| Big Tobacco must love Prop 65 warnings, because by making it
| look like everything causes cancer, smokers keep themselves
| blissfully ignorant at just how large the risk factor is for
| tobacco compared to most other things.
| rahidz wrote:
| Ok folks, how does this impact our AGI (Aerial Gear Installation)
| timelines?
| neontomo wrote:
| I think it has already propelled us ahead by 2 years.
| dmvdoug wrote:
| Propelled us a head, eh?
|
| I see what you did there.
| potatoman22 wrote:
| This is beautiful. Have you ever dropped a hat on someone's head
| a a surprise?
| parpfish wrote:
| will this create an organic HN meetup next under this dudes
| window?
| tmountain wrote:
| Finally someone accomplishes something meaningful with AI! /s
| saaaaaam wrote:
| This is ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS.
|
| I can't believe someone would spend the time and effort to do
| this.
|
| I love it. You're brilliant.
| WanderPanda wrote:
| looks like AGI has been achieved externally
| robofanatic wrote:
| Oh I could use this to deliver my home made lunch boxes to
| customers from my 15th floor apartment!
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| I'm no AI expert, but I think you could do that with some
| twine.
| surfingdino wrote:
| Twine would bias delivery to the right recipient whereas pure
| AI can send it anywhere with a high degree of inaccuracy.
| adregan wrote:
| I feel like such a killjoy, but the first thing I thought of is
| the ongoing lice "epidemic" among people with school aged
| children in NYC.
|
| I have never liked it when the ACs drip on me in midtown let
| alone a hat dropping on my head!
| jimhi wrote:
| My hats are completely new and unworn! Lice free since June 23
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| This is a consensual hat, not a villainous hat that attacks
| virgin tops.
| prepend wrote:
| Although I think the idea of nonconsensual hat drops is so
| fun and fantastic.
|
| I wish I could register myself as being up for any sort of
| serendipity like this. While I like the idea of a hat
| randomly dropping onto my head, some people may not.
| cchance wrote:
| you have to request the hat lol, you dont just walk buy and get
| shit dropped on you, you book a drop
| ddubski wrote:
| As a counter point, the hat is a great way to protect against
| AC water drips.
|
| My biggest fear about walking around any city (but NYC in
| particular) is an actual AC machine dropping onto my head.
| Maybe you could offer the choice to drop down a hard hat on
| streets with high AC unit density (and then pick it up when I
| leave the area).
| blorenz wrote:
| Love this! I play recreational ice hockey in an Adult league and
| for the past many years I've desired to use AI/Object recognition
| to recognize who was out on the ice during what times during the
| game to attribute who impacted goals and which players were
| taking longer than usual shifts ( every team has those one or two
| players!).
|
| This may be achievable for me with the current state of AI and
| GPT to help fill the gaps that my knowledge is lacking in. Thanks
| for showing what you made and how you did it. It's encouragement
| to me.
| GiorgioG wrote:
| If only LiveBarn feeds weren't such a pile of crap I'd have
| some hope.
| jimhi wrote:
| This would be interesting, feel free to email me if you get
| stuck. If you had a camera at eye level, you could try to train
| it on recognizing the player jersey numbers.
| MOARDONGZPLZ wrote:
| Facial recognition would be better. Don't forget that
| canonically in Mighty Ducks D2 Goldberg and Russ switched
| jerseys so that Russ could get his infamous "Knuckle Puck"
| shot off undisputed because everyone thought the puck was
| passed to Goldberg until the mask came off. So the ML
| training on jerseys would have missed this critical moment
| and potentially assigned the score to Goldberg, when really
| it was Russ (wearing Goldberg's jersey) who should have
| gotten the credit.
|
| One might argue that this sort of thing rarely happens so
| it's not worth doing more complex facial recognition vis a
| vis Jersey numbering. But I say that while it may be rare,
| when it does happen it's a major event, so no complexity
| should be spared to ensure we capture it accurately.
| oaththrowaway wrote:
| Typically beer league players wear full face cages so
| facial recognition is harder to do
| blorenz wrote:
| I would have multiple camera footage. One gopro would be just
| be a wide-angle of the bench behind the players, another
| would be on the game clock, and additional ones would be on-
| ice footage. Typically my gopro set-up has been behind the
| goalie (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCavsdzc-OY) and the
| rinks have Livebarn feeds (here's one on my YT from 2018
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WEE9y4cAHg) but there are
| challenges in quality abound.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| Iirc, LiveBarn offers this as a service if your local rink has
| it set up. Annoyingly, my local rink uses 30 minute video slots
| so it only ever captures half a game.
| pants2 wrote:
| I play in a rec soccer league and had a similar idea, except to
| also have everyone on the team wear a smartwatch that could
| intelligently buzz at you to sub out based on your heartrate
| and how long you've been in.
| prattatx wrote:
| should give this to the coach too - Texas players get heat
| exhaustion
|
| Trace and hudl use shirt number and person tracking. I bet
| they could add skin color and gait analysis to do this as
| well.
| lesuorac wrote:
| The NHL just sticks an airtag equivalent into the jerseys.
|
| Sometimes you can notice a little nob on the back/shoulder of a
| player.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=nhl+player+tracking+jersey
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/whatisthisthing/comments/u5707w/wha...
| seoulmetro wrote:
| This has already been possible for a decade.
| jimhi wrote:
| I am seeking neighboring stores! Sometimes I crave gum on the
| street, Gum drop anyone?
|
| To summarize, I used:
|
| 1. Low weight but very cool product (like Propeller Hats)
|
| 2. Raspberry Pi for controlling everything
|
| 3. Adafruit stepper motor for the dropping mechanism
|
| 4. Yarn for holding the hat
|
| 5. Roboflow for the AI
| rocauc wrote:
| i work on roboflow. seeing all the creative ways people use
| computer vision is motivating for us. let me know (email in
| bio) if there's things you'd like to be better.
| seanhunter wrote:
| This is legitimately awesome. Nice job sir.
| Uehreka wrote:
| > Sometimes I crave gum on the street
|
| My immediate response to this was "ew, there's already so much
| gum on the street". Then I realized you meant you want to chew
| gum while walking down the street and I became enlightened.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| What do you think happens after they have enough of the gum?
| :)
| garrettgarcia wrote:
| After gum on the street, there's gum on the street
| yreg wrote:
| There is always this option: https://youtu.be/vYrXLaU8guU
| prepend wrote:
| I dream of a world where I merely open my mouth and wish it and
| the gum just flies down into it, already unwrapped.
|
| You're working toward this world and I commend you.
| thfuran wrote:
| I'll hold out for the teleportation-based version so I don't
| have to go through the effort of opening my mouth.
| generic92034 wrote:
| I would hope that we have invented error-free software
| development by then, though. Otherwise, a small error
| leading to the wrong coordinates could really ruin your day
| (or head)... ;)
| ChainOfFools wrote:
| Or use lasers and tiny gum-shaped smoke bombs to sample and
| model the local air column currents, pre soften and flatten
| a portion of the gum paper-thin with some sort of
| wettimg/rolling assembly, stage, then let it drop and form
| its own miniature gum parachute or replica of one of those
| whirling propeller seeds that have a built-in wing to slow
| their fall.
| dmvdoug wrote:
| Startup opportunity: AI inside a small in-mouth implant to
| provide nerve stimulus to open mouth for you when it
| detects floaty inbound gum.
| thfuran wrote:
| That does sound convenient. Can it be hooked up to my
| eyes to detect flies and close my mouth to make sure I
| don't inhale bugs while biking?
| PlunderBunny wrote:
| What about a "we will remember it for you wholesale"
| version of the gum experience - you pay money and are then
| implanted with memories that are indistinguishable from
| chewing the gum. I kinda think this is the end goal for all
| capitalism - you pay money for nothing.
| tamimio wrote:
| At the speed of gravitational fall, it might choke you!
| prepend wrote:
| This is part of the challenge, as I want a pleasant
| experience. Not a terminal one.
| tamimio wrote:
| Perhaps small guided parachutes that receive an auto-
| correction location from the RPi and track the mouth? The
| issue is that the gum will be expensive.
| burnished wrote:
| Maybe a receiving chute? Small, portable, and a clearer
| indication (cannot be confused with a yawn), plus it'll
| open up the variety of comestibles you can purchase just
| s mouthful of. No more forks, no more spoons, just a
| little sloped thing to slow and guide
| moralestapia wrote:
| Pre-chewed, perhaps.
| prepend wrote:
| For a slight additional fee.
| dmvdoug wrote:
| CaaS (Chewed as a Service).
| medstrom wrote:
| SaaCS (Service as a Chewing Substitute).
| mapcars wrote:
| People still use gum in 2024? I thought it's a wide knowledge
| that it's bad for you in every single way
| moralestapia wrote:
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/1026426/global-
| chewing-g...
|
| Since you haven't seen someone chewing gum in a while, I'm
| now curious about where you live. North Korea? Singapore?
| tamimio wrote:
| I do, specifically Mastic gum.
| gaudystead wrote:
| Apparently the knowledge isn't wide enough, because this is
| the first I'm hearing of it... Why is gum bad for you? I
| knew it was in a downward sales trend, but I figured that
| was just consumer preferences changing over time.
| hanniabu wrote:
| Ingredients are poor for mouth and gut microbiome, but
| then again so is mostly everything else that's processed
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Gum with sugar is bad for your teeth. Gum without sugar
| has xylitol in it, which is good for your teeth, but may
| increase your risk of heart attacks and strokes due to it
| promoting blood clotting[1].
|
| 1: https://newsroom.clevelandclinic.org/2024/06/06/clevel
| and-cl...
| medstrom wrote:
| Wait... gum with sugar? That exists?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Yes? Bazooka, double bubble, and big league chew off the
| top of my head. As well as every gum ball I've ever seen.
| medstrom wrote:
| Not seen those brands in Sweden, but I checked the one we
| have that's for kids, a bubble gum named Hubba Bubba.
| Indeed, it has sugar! TIL.
| ChainOfFools wrote:
| Why does this remind me of something out of a certain old
| point and click adventure game, it was one that had the
| verb USE apply to every type of action.
|
| click>(GUM)
|
| click>(SELF)
|
| click>(USE)
|
| "You used the GUM on yourself.
|
| Nothing special happens.
|
| You now have 0 GUM."
|
| There was another game in the same genre that did the same,
| but with the verb OPERATE. As teenagers my friends and I
| used to laugh way too much at dialogue responses these
| games would craft, where you would get things like "OPERATE
| GUM on SELF"
| winternewt wrote:
| Well according to the gum brands it's good for your teeth.
| I've never heard of any evidence to the contrary, not even
| from my dentist.
| autoexec wrote:
| it's good for building up your jaw strength which can be
| pretty helpful.
| op00to wrote:
| I am pretty certain sugar-free gum is excellent for
| preventing cavities by increasing saliva production. That
| is one way it is not bad for you.
| anewhnaccount2 wrote:
| Then a seagull flies overhead ;)
| cpill wrote:
| the biggest thing he's overcoming is the rent?! how's he doing
| that while goofing off with projects like this?
| parthianshotgun wrote:
| Can you explain the intention behind your post?
| tamimio wrote:
| Slightly unrelated: Did the building owner/landlord complain
| about that? Is it legal?
|
| I know a friend of mine whom the building asked to remove a
| camera they had. It was a camera used only to record the hill
| view in front of the building, so it isn't violating any
| privacy, and it was attached with magnets, so no damage
| whatsoever.
| ChainOfFools wrote:
| I was also curious about this. a bunch of BASE jumping hats
| dropping off a building is exactly the sort of project I
| would momentarily think about doing and never seriously
| entertain due to being certain that sooner or later someone,
| somewhere is going to sue me for some marginally harm-like
| side effect.
| burnished wrote:
| I don't know how litigous your region is but of all the
| people you know who have been sued, how many of them got
| sued for something silly vs a more low effort scheme like
| the classic throw yourself onto someones car and have 'back
| pain'? You might be safe to do silly shit on the basis that
| there are easier and better targets available.
| radicality wrote:
| Also curious if they had any grounds for that. I was under
| the impression that if you have a camera within your
| apartment (looking through window), nobody should be able to
| tell you no.
|
| Unless perhaps the camera was attached outside their window
| (no longer their apartment), in a way that could be deemed
| unsafe and fall off and hurt someone, whereupon the building
| owner could be held liable? In that case I would find it
| reasonable to tell them to remove it.
| tamimio wrote:
| > Unless perhaps the camera was attached outside their
| window
|
| I remember it was on the balcony, securely attached. The
| building simply cited their policy, not any laws nor safety
| issues.
| op00to wrote:
| There's plenty of gum already on the street. Simply scrape it
| up and you can have all the gum you desire.
| reportgunner wrote:
| What if we had like a fridge with glass window and drinks or
| snacks organized in rows with identifiers for each. You could
| enter the identifier and make your payment to the fridge and it
| would drop the corresponding drink/snack to a slot on the
| bottom of the fridge.
| dkga wrote:
| Really, really liked it! Also, would be glad to hear where you
| got that helicopter heads. I've been looking for one for some
| time but my head is large sized so I can't find one that fits
| here where I live.
| amarcheschi wrote:
| Can you go a bit more in depth for the part regarding training
| the Ai to recognize the heads? Like what software(s) did you use
| ecc... I'm an undergrad who's seeking to do similar computer
| vision internships for his thesis and I find this kinda
| fascinating
| lobsterthief wrote:
| That would most likely be the OpenCV bit
| topherclay wrote:
| No the opencv was just to capture video frames and they were
| iediately passed to the roboflow model through the ssh
| client.
| seltzered_ wrote:
| Which is what many would also call 'Image Processing'
| epiccoleman wrote:
| Fantastic, I love this kind of silly stuff. The clear next
| iteration is a 4-prop hat, which can be guided to the target
| head.
|
| Of course, that starts to verge on what's spooky about the idea,
| but either way, this is really fun and cool.
| tcsenpai wrote:
| This is one of the most beautiful things made with AI
| hermannj314 wrote:
| Typical mid-western humor, spends almost as much time describing
| how to open a window as how to build an AI agent. Very fun
| project.
| rand1239 wrote:
| All experiences are equal. They all come and go. Its the ego
| which gives higher importance to building an AI agent over
| opening a window.
| hermannj314 wrote:
| Well now I feel bad for laughing and having a good time.
| voisin wrote:
| Typical mid-western Buddhist humor.
| aantix wrote:
| From a fellow midwesterner - was this great? "You betcha!"
|
| Finally some window shopping that interests me.
| xg15 wrote:
| That's a great idea! Did I tell you about my cousin and his
| flower pot/anvil/piano business idea btw?
| rendall wrote:
| I'm confused. The article describes a really cool project as if
| it were already implemented, but there is no video of it actually
| working? Am I missing something?
| hotpockets wrote:
| it's a conceptual art project / hoax.
| butterfi wrote:
| I can't wrap my head around how that hat drops in a straight
| line. Between the propeller and any wind, how is that hat not all
| over the place?
| riwsky wrote:
| That's because you aren't supposed to wrap your head around a
| hat, you're supposed to wrap the hat around your head.
| OkGoDoIt wrote:
| If you watch the video, it actually falls several sidewalk
| tiles away and he has to go pick it up. From the text of the
| blog, I had assumed he was using AI to actually land it
| directly on a person's head, which would've been crazy
| impressive.
| civilized wrote:
| Not your mistake, he does his best to imply that the hats are
| dropping on heads.
|
| He's got a future in marketing.
| surfingdino wrote:
| > He's got a future in marketing.
|
| ... of AI
| dauertewigkeit wrote:
| The whole blog post is genius from a marketing perspective.
| laeri wrote:
| Also the use of the words "dropshipping" and
| "windowshopping"
| throwaway290 wrote:
| And "AI" for OpenCV
| topherclay wrote:
| OpenCV was not the "AI" here, the "AI" was a computer
| vision model trained at the roboflow website that he
| mentioned multiple times and that he used in the line
| commented with "# Directly pass the frames to the
| Roboflow model".
| 6510 wrote:
| Ah right, a product with AI that doesn't work.
| EGreg wrote:
| Sounds a bit like this is the new Web3 LOL
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| You can scratch out the "with AI" part and it still is
| what marketing is about selling.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| I mean, the site is pretty blatant viral marketing for both
| his drop-shipped-hats-from-china side hustle and (I'm going
| to go out on a wild limb here and guess) his employer's ML-
| dataset-management-related startup.
|
| I wish cool stuff like this wasn't always sullied by the
| slimy feeling from it only being done to draw attention to
| some startup sitting smack in the middle of the trendiest
| buzzwords of the month.
| lupire wrote:
| Flag the scam spam submission
| Gigablah wrote:
| You'll have to flag a lot more submissions then. HN is
| submarine article central
| pcrh wrote:
| OP is well involved in marketing, it seems. See:
|
| https://mrsteinberg.com/
| biftek wrote:
| The government would probably be knocking on his door if he
| developed a guided hat dropping system
| cypherpunks01 wrote:
| Yes, there's truly huge interest in the technical ability
| to accurately place hats on people of all ages and
| backgrounds, across the globe.
| WJW wrote:
| I can assure you that if you develop a system to
| accurately place objects (bombs, say) on top of people
| and post the code on the open internet for everyone to
| see, the government will indeed have some critical
| question for you.
| GeneralMayhem wrote:
| Accurately placing heavy, aerodynamic objects onto people
| _when you start out directly above them_ is not very
| difficult. The hard parts are either placing the object
| on top of the person from a few hundred or thousand miles
| away, or - in this case - placing an object that tends to
| flutter rather than follow a ballistic trajectory.
| astrange wrote:
| One way to do it in this case would be to lower it on a
| rope instead of just dropping it. But maybe guidance fins
| would work too.
| lelandfe wrote:
| They are way ahead of you:
| https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire-guided_missile
| _carbyau_ wrote:
| The trick is knowing which one to place the thing upon.
| chris_wot wrote:
| Well, they might want to expand their markets.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Accurately placing heavy, aerodynamic objects onto
| people _when you start out directly above them_ is not
| very difficult.
|
| It's still difficult; to do that, you need to know the
| wind speed at every point between them and you.
|
| Or you need to be so close that the wind speed doesn't
| matter, but at that point nobody's going to be impressed
| that you can hit them.
| jb1991 wrote:
| I invite you to try it yourself to see if it is difficult
| or not.
| op00to wrote:
| The OP is clearly talking about hats here. Wildly
| different problem spaces. Styles, whimsy, and so on.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| I can assure you that you have no idea what you're
| talking about, starting with the fact that you obviously
| didn't watch the video.
|
| It isn't aiming anything. It isn't adjusting for
| anything. It's doing so from a stationary point.
|
| The ML isn't used for anything other than a simple "is
| there the thing I was trained to look for within this
| area?" It's basically a ML version of something one could
| pretty easily do in OpenCV.
|
| There's NOTHING about this useful for aerial bombing,
| which involves dozens of problems much harder than "this
| is the spot you should aim for."
|
| There are probably dozens of smartphone apps for helping
| marksmen calculate adjustments that are about a hundred
| times more complicated, and more useful for (potentially)
| hurting people, than this.
|
| And then there's this Stuff Made Here project where the
| guy makes a robotic bow that can track objects and hit
| them no matter where you're aiming: https://www.youtube.c
| om/watch?v=1MkrNVic7pw&pp=ygUTYm93IHRoY...
|
| I can't stand people who act like it's reasonable for the
| government to monitor and harass people for stuff like
| this. The second our government is harassing him or the
| SMH guy, I'm moving to Canada.
| vsuperpower2020 wrote:
| Ahh, the constant war between obviously bullshit articles
| and comments who didn't even look at the article they're
| commenting on.
| krisoft wrote:
| It is not that they haven't read the article but they are
| commenting on a thread which is mussing about how much
| the government would be interested in if (IF!) someone
| would develop what the article title implies they
| developed but hasn't in reality.
| swores wrote:
| You've replied to somebody talking about "if somebody
| developed (something not in this blog post)" with a long
| angry rant as if they had imagined the blog post claimed
| it had developed that thing.
| gumby wrote:
| Ai-augmented compulsory hat rules are the next hot
| market: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hat_Revolution
| nicbou wrote:
| The technology has great potential to blow some people's
| minds... up.
| JCharante wrote:
| The RC plane fandom on youtube has started to manufacture
| and drop fake bombs onto miniature targets. The bombs even
| have fins. I kinda wonder how long until they start adding
| electronics and flaps to start guiding the bomb, and how
| far they can get before they start to have feds knocking on
| their doors. I'd be interested in working on it but I'd
| prefer to keep my TSA precheck clearance.
| xsmasher wrote:
| C'mon, what could they possibly use a phase-conjugate
| tracking system for?
| Animats wrote:
| I was disappointed by that, too.
|
| Now if you had terminal guidance... Put flaps on the hat, and
| use shape-memory alloy wire and a coin cell to actuate them.
| The hats follow a laser beam projected by the drop unit.
| Minimal electronics required in the hat. This is how some
| "smart bombs" work.
| richardw wrote:
| Or using the propeller to chase you until it is satisfied
| that it's on your head.
| gumby wrote:
| The Ukrainians are going to corner the market for prank
| propellor hat drones once they win this war.
| flir wrote:
| He needs to put the AI in the hat. Hat-drones.
|
| Once he's done that, the military sector beckons.
| htrp wrote:
| Gotta raise a from a defencetech fund first
| dheera wrote:
| It looks like it has more to do with the aerodynamics of the
| hat than the wind. It also hits a ledge on its way down in
| the video.
|
| It seems like both of these are tractable issues.
|
| A round hat that is spun with a significant initial angular
| momentum would probably fair better in landing more
| predictably.
| oniony wrote:
| Or could just add a brick to the hat to give it some heft.
| sexy_seedbox wrote:
| Sir, that would be terrorism.
| lupire wrote:
| That's the interesting part of the hack, and not attempted
| at all.
| EGreg wrote:
| I know AI can do a lot but predict wind patterns? LOL
|
| Imagine using AI to drop an object and it falls perfectly
| where you want it.
| op00to wrote:
| It can pre-drop a pre-hat, and adjust for where the pre-hat
| lands.
| lupire wrote:
| The pre-hat would be a free hat?
| op00to wrote:
| Yes the first one is always free.
| randomdata wrote:
| But will it free Hat?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Imagine using AI to drop an object and it falls perfectly
| where you want it.
|
| There is a fantasy series that depicts this as a game that
| two young gods would play together when they were growing
| up. (Or rather, since one of them had vastly superior
| foresight to the other one, he'd bully his brother into
| playing with him.)
| skhr0680 wrote:
| Lunar Lander 2024
| xnx wrote:
| > he was using AI to actually land it directly on a person's
| head
|
| DARPA would definitely come knocking
| s0rce wrote:
| This is exactly what I was expecting and I Was disappointed.
| Still mildly interesting but I don't really get it.
| itskarad wrote:
| that's what I thought. What if there's a gust of wind?
| mvandermeulen wrote:
| Just use a weight on the string with a configured go fast
| length and go slow length for your motor to observe
| dheera wrote:
| Do it in a more dense city like Manila (4-6X NYC's density)
| and you're guaranteed to land the hat on _someone_.
| qustrolabe wrote:
| Is there video of any successful drops?
| gcheong wrote:
| I was hoping to get in on the ground floor of this investment
| opportunity but it looks like I'm too late.
| gsuuon wrote:
| Your check height may just be too low?
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| Throwing your money into a fire pit would be equally as
| effective.
| seanhunter wrote:
| I have a few qualms with this AI-assisted hat delivery
| service[1]:
|
| 1. For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself
| quite trivially by getting a kaggle account, learning by doing
| computer vision projects, and then using opencv to build the
| vision parts of the system. From Windows or Mac, you could build
| using a cloud system such as Amazon Bedrock.
|
| 2. It doesn't actually replace having a hat for the period from
| your own front door to OP's apartment. Most people I know own
| hats themselves or borrow from friends to be able to attend
| specific events, but they still carry a hat in case there are
| weather problems. This does not solve the availability issue.
|
| 3. It does not seem very "viral" or income-generating. I know
| this is premature at this point, but without charging users for
| the service, is it reasonable to expect to make money off of
| this?
|
| [1] Actually I don't. It's really awesome.
| lolinder wrote:
| For any of today's lucky 10k:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
| jf wrote:
| Thanks! I was one of the 10k and I've been a daily HN user
| for a long time!
| Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
| Just wait until some bozo walking down the street starts
| litigation about harassment and spinal injury.
| truetraveller wrote:
| Is this legal? Imagine everyone doing this.
| prepend wrote:
| Why would this be illegal?
|
| Like there would be a law against lowering hats on a string? I
| think it may be more funny to have a government create such a
| law.
|
| Everyone doing this seems wonderful.
| cantSpellSober wrote:
| You're asking why dropping things out of a window in midtown
| Manhattan might be illegal?
|
| It's a boring question anyway; this is HN.
| prepend wrote:
| Yes, that's what I'm asking.
|
| Dropping things shouldn't be illegal. Negligence that
| causes harm should be.
|
| Someone lowering a hat down on a string seems perfectly
| fine. Throwing a chair out a window seems bad. I think the
| details would affect whether someone is illegal, not just a
| blanket "thou shall not throw things out the window."
|
| There's already laws about littering and assault, so I
| don't think that would matter how many floors up we are.
|
| Why ask boring questions?
| fwip wrote:
| Well, it's not carefully lowered down on a string, it's
| dropped from the height of the window, which you can see
| in the video.
| cantSpellSober wrote:
| Oh man people will argue about anything. You had to
| change "dropping things out of a window in midtown
| Manhattan" (fairly high up as we see) to "dropping
| things" even to argue :)
|
| > _the details would affect whether someone_ [sic] _is
| illegal_
|
| Yep, that's how we apply laws.
|
| Who cares? I assume most people here are grey/blackhats
| (rainbow in this case).
| stenius wrote:
| The prop on the hat acts as a para-shoot slowing down the
| hat via auto rotation.
|
| It's the same behavior that a helicopter would have if it
| was doing an emergency landing as well.
| mdorazio wrote:
| This is almost certainly illegal. If the hats actually hit
| anyone, it's possible to be sued for reckless endangerment
| and/or assault. If they don't, it's littering.
|
| If you're asking dumb things like "how could a propeller hat
| dropped 50+ feet hurt someone?" then I encourage you to imagine
| getting hit in the eye by the spinning propeller if you happen
| to look up.
| truetraveller wrote:
| Is this legal?!
| consumer451 wrote:
| "Regulatory Entrepreneurship"
|
| https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...
| voisin wrote:
| Amazing. Hats _on_ to you!
| prepend wrote:
| This seems wonderful. I'm in New York next weekend and wanted to
| buy a hat, but sadly you're all booked up. Too bad.
|
| Although since it only takes a few seconds, I'd expect you to be
| able to sell thousands of these a day. If you don't mind me
| asking, how many slots do you release each day?
| bazil376 wrote:
| Mad hatter
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Next step: add EEG electrodes
| michael_michael wrote:
| Our team already uses cap.ly. How does this compare to that, or,
| say haberdash.er? Congrats on the launch.
| worldmerge wrote:
| This is so cool and just brings me a lot of joy :)
|
| Also, I've been working on a project (non-commercial) that looks
| down on people and have found existing models don't work super
| well from that angle so thank you for publishing your work on
| Roboflow.
| paulcole wrote:
| > I've been working on a project (non-commercial) that looks
| down on people
|
| TIL my dad's entire life has been a non-commercial project
| buggeryorkshire wrote:
| Amazing. Any chance of Top Hats as a premium upgrade?
| btown wrote:
| > Picture a world where you can walk around New York City and
| everything you need is falling out of windows onto you. At a
| moments notice, at the drop of a hat. That's a world I want to
| live in. That's why I'm teaching you how to do yourself. Remember
| this as the first place you heard of "Window Shopping."
|
| I truly love the concept of pun-driven development (PDD). As a
| motivating economic principle, a world where every human being
| has the resources, time, and personal safety to dedicate absurd
| amounts of their time to inane levels of pun-driven development
| is perhaps my favorite definition of utopia.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| That's the best justification of Universal Income I have seen
| so far
| DEADMINCE wrote:
| It can't be the best. It's only one of many positive
| consequences. Not even a main justification, but only a point
| of defense for those so irrationally against the concept.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| It's a bad idea, so it might well be the best.
| skrebbel wrote:
| Pyramid Scheme comes to mind. It's a scheme (as in, a lisp for
| purists) which compiles to Solidity, the language backing
| Ethereum.
|
| http://www.michaelburge.us/2017/11/28/write-your-next-ethere...
| joeyrideout wrote:
| "I Taught My Shrimp to Fry Rice" also comes to mind:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/shorts/upgdrBO02Gs
| duxup wrote:
| "Hot today, I could go for a cold drink. OH NO!"
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| Sometimes I feel we live in a simulation in a real world a few
| levels down with universal income or something like that. They
| got bored so had to forget their existence by creating a
| simulation (or nested simulations).
| seoulmetro wrote:
| This is probably a bottom of the barrel idea if you took it in
| that world where everyone can experiment and execute their
| ideas. Like, this would probably get you put in jail in that
| world, it's that lame.
| metadat wrote:
| What an unexpectedly cool post, I clicked the link thinking it
| would be "typical dumb", but it ended up being atypically dumb in
| the greatest way! Fascinating. The author overcame many
| challenges and wrote about them in a style as if he solved the
| hardest parts with only a little fiddling. Maybe he's already
| seasoned in the ML and robotics domains? So much fun to read.
|
| Regarding the Video Object Detection:
|
| Why does inference need to be done via Roboflow SaaS?
| ...(api_url="https://detect.roboflow.com", api_key="API_KEY")
|
| Is it because the Pi is too underpowered to run a fully on-device
| solution such as Frigate [0] or DOODS [1]? And presumably a Coral
| TPU wasn't considered because the author mostly used stuff he
| happened to have laying around.
|
| Can anyone comment contrasting experience with Roboflow? Does it
| perform better than Frigate and DOODS?
|
| Asking for a friend. I totally don't have announcement speakers
| throughout my house that I want to say "Mom approaching the
| property", "Package delivered", "Dog spotted on a walk", "Dog
| owner spotted not picking up after their beast", and so on. That
| last one will be tricky to pull off. Ah well :)
|
| [0]
| https://github.com/blakeblackshear/frigate/pkgs/container/fr...
|
| [1] https://github.com/snowzach/doods2
| yeldarb wrote:
| FWIW you can use roboflow models on-device as well.
| detect.roboflow.com is just a hosted version of our inference
| server (if you run the docker somewhere you can swap out that
| URL for localhost or wherever your self-hosted one is running).
| Behind the scenes it's an http interface for our inference[1]
| Python package which you can run natively if your app is in
| Python as well.
|
| Pi inference is pretty slow (probably ~1 fps without an
| accelerator). Usually folks are using CUDA acceleration with a
| Jetson for these types of projects if they want to run faster
| locally.
|
| Some benefits are that there are over 100k pre-trained models
| others have already published to Roboflow Universe[2] you can
| start from, supports many of the latest SOTA models (with an
| extensive library[3] of custom training notebooks), tight
| integration with the dataset/annotation tools that are at the
| core of Roboflow for creating custom models, and good support
| for common downstream tasks via supervision[4].
|
| [1] https://github.com/roboflow/inference
|
| [2] https://universe.roboflow.com
|
| [3] https://github.com/roboflow/notebooks
|
| [4] https://github.com/roboflow/supervision
| dmvdoug wrote:
| You are hereby put on notice that the undersigned intends to
| and henceforth will appropriate for his own further use without
| attribution to you the phrase "atypically dumb in the greatest
| way," and furthermore that the undersigned may modify said
| phrase by replacing "greatest" with "best." Any objection by
| you to said appropriation and/or modification by said
| undersigned will be and thereby is deemed waived by you,
| provided you do not respond to this notice within 48 hours.
| Please redirect your reply, if any, to /dev/null. Thank you.
| metadat wrote:
| Hilarious, your terms are acceptable. I'd actually edited
| "best" to "greatest", it was a tough call. Glad I could
| brighten your day, haha.
| surfingdino wrote:
| > ... "Dog spotted on a walk", "Dog owner spotted not picking
| up after their beast", and so on.
|
| How about hanging a London Tube-style yellow dot-matrix display
| showing estimated times of neighbours walking past your home?
| Something like:
|
| "1. Mrs Green towards Post Office 5min"
|
| "2. Mr Smith towards Bus Stop 7min"
|
| "3. Mr Snow towards Mrs Smith 9min"
| BaculumMeumEst wrote:
| I really want to use llama3 8B Q4_0 llama.cpp for some fun
| automation tasks so I tried following this guide:
| https://voorloopnul.com/blog/quantize-and-run-the-original-l...
| but all I get out of it is rambling nonsense. Glad ollama exists
| I guess, running that works fine for me.
| tamimio wrote:
| Pretty cool! Any info about the maximum height of AI head
| detections?
| stikit wrote:
| Love the creativity and humor which is often the spark for true
| innovation.This guy is a real life Kramer from Seinfeld. Reminds
| me of the episode where Kramer drops a ball of oil from his nyc
| apartment while testing a business idea.
| karaterobot wrote:
| This is visionary.
| atemerev wrote:
| Cool. Now replace hats with explosives and sell it to the
| military.
| lxgr wrote:
| This is so much nicer than the typical type of things that might
| fall onto your head in Midtown. Love it!
| deadbabe wrote:
| Maybe I'll try this
| metaph6 wrote:
| what a lots of free time to spare, creatw and joy...
| jaredhansen wrote:
| This is the best thing I've seen on HN or indeed on the internet
| in general for quite a long time. Excellent work and thank you
| for brightening my day.
| kulesh wrote:
| Go roboflow!
| Frieren wrote:
| > Picture a world where you can walk around New York City and
| everything you need is falling out of windows onto you.
|
| A funny way of criticizing something. Great commentary.
| Uptrenda wrote:
| I don't know what is more impressive: that someone thought of
| such a whacky idea or that they actually implemented it. It's
| very creative and I can see someone who thinks like this seeing
| opportunities others wouldn't.
| o999 wrote:
| That's nice, except it is very likely illegal
| timnetworks wrote:
| As another inhabitant of the same x,y plot -- please don't pivot
| to pianos.
| petermcneeley wrote:
| That hat seems familiar.
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| WHAT CORNER IS THIS ON I WILL GO THERE RIGHT NOW AND WAIT TO BE
| HATTED BY AN AI
| AustinDizzy wrote:
| Judging by the first picture in the article, it appears to be
| at Park Ave & E 33rd St.
| betaporter wrote:
| Tried to buy a hat and this person is... sold out. For a while!
| vedmed wrote:
| Now take this code and replace hats with bombs.
| tcsenpai wrote:
| Thanks, I am happy to notify you that I archived your post in my
| hall of fame (and in the internet archive). Kudos!
| https://archive.tunnelsenpai.win/archive/1719179282.959772/i...
| ajwin wrote:
| I wonder if anvils will be the breakout product for this
| technology. It seems like it should be.
| talldayo wrote:
| I know a guy at Acme Corp. who would pay top dollar to get this
| tech out to his customers.
| op00to wrote:
| Grand pianos.
| JFuzz wrote:
| "Fan" tastic
| geerlingguy wrote:
| > My dream is for all the city windows to be constantly dropping
| things on us all the time. You will need a Raspberry Pi...
|
| A Raspberry Pi would hurt quite a bit, depending on the floor!
| rashidae wrote:
| If this is used for the wrong reasons, so using something other
| than a hat... This could be lethal.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Won't be a problem if we scale up the mosquito zapping laser
| system...
| op00to wrote:
| What, like a toupee?
| chris_wot wrote:
| Only if the toupee created was from the head of another
| living person.
| pthreads wrote:
| Most underrated comment!
|
| Also, this would be contrary to GP's comment - it would be
| the right reason. Imagine if a bald person is walking by and
| a toupee happens to fall on their head and they can see
| themselves in a window reflection of a toupee shop that just
| so happens to be there.
|
| Use some ML/AI to choose the right fit, style, hair color
| etc., the drop orientation, and angle. Throw in some ChatGTP
| integration to suggest using scalp glue. Combined with OP's
| marking skills they will be in business in no time!
| op00to wrote:
| I love the way you think. Let's apply to YC.
| seoulmetro wrote:
| So could just dropping things out your window?
|
| wat.
| shultays wrote:
| Some powers are not to be trusted to AI
| rvnx wrote:
| Yes but here you have an unattended and scalable setup
| ruined wrote:
| people are already doing that manually
| Nimnimnim wrote:
| The vision of a world where you need a sandwich on your way to
| work and it just drops on your head is both hilarious and
| something I really need in my life.
| op00to wrote:
| I will pay $10 to have a hat drop on my head while standing in
| one spot for 3 seconds. Please contact me if you are interested
| in doing business.
| hettygreen wrote:
| Fake.. only one video clip where the hat disappears when it falls
| and then reappears on the guys head just as he re-emerges from
| view.
| jasongill wrote:
| He picks up the hat...
| tears-in-rain wrote:
| well, lads, may i ask a favor? never try this on fpv drone with
| shell.
| helsinki wrote:
| See you in August!
| lupire wrote:
| This is fake and an ad, right?
|
| Why 800+ votes for a thing that obviously doesn't do what it
| claims to be doing, and shows pictures and videos of it _not_
| doing the thing?
| fumeux_fume wrote:
| Because it's so wAcKy? I don't get it either.
| selimnairb wrote:
| Finally something useful from "AI."
| bonyt wrote:
| I was once on 25th street in Midtown, when I saw someone drop a
| tiny object with a little parachute from a window at least 8 or 9
| stories up. Once it had finished slowly gliding down to the
| street, someone picked it up and used it to enter the building.
| It was the key - I guess the buzzer didn't work! It was a
| delightful sight.
| selcuka wrote:
| It must have been dramatic, but from a practical point of view
| wrapping it inside a few layers of paper towel (so that it
| doesn't kill anyone) would be faster, and easier to target.
| skhr0680 wrote:
| Is it even possible for a a parachute-retarded key to
| directly hurt someone? I'd be more worried about it
| surprising someone driving a car or riding a bike and causing
| an accident
| sameerds wrote:
| I think the GP meant dropping the key wrapped in paper
| without the parachute. That's what makes it faster and
| easier to target. Which also answers your question about
| surprising someone driving a car, since the key won't drift
| with the wind anymore.
| chefandy wrote:
| I wouldn't say it's _impossible_ , but when you're
| driving/biking in dense, busy cities, you encounter all
| sorts of unexpected dangerous fast-moving obstacles all the
| time. I can't imagine this would be a bigger problem than
| any of the other random shit flying around Manhattan at any
| given moment.
| schwartzworld wrote:
| I biked as my only method of transportation in Boston and
| New York for years, and never did I have to dodge a
| projectile coming from above, parachute or otherwise.
| chefandy wrote:
| I didn't say cyclists constantly dodge projectiles-- I
| said fast=moving obstacles, like cars and car doors.
| Having dodged quite a few car doors in Boston myself, I
| have a hard time picturing someone who could do that
| being dangerously thrown off by a little key floating
| down on a little parachute.
| ajot wrote:
| A friend of mine used to throw us his keys inside a pack of
| socks
| d--b wrote:
| I've seen people use an electric whisk to unreel a string to
| which the key was attached. Seems less risky than the parachute
| thing.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> when I saw someone drop a tiny object with a little
| parachute from a window at least 8 or 9 stories up.
|
| I was 90% sure the next sentence was going to mention drugs.
| wsdookadr wrote:
| Possibly the most important tech project of 2024.
| riwsky wrote:
| Hats off to you!
| LikeBeans wrote:
| It would be cool to make something similar for a pet feeder.
| Imagine having two cats (like we do). A skinny one and a fat one.
| AI would recognize them and dispense more food for the skinny one
| throughout the day. Hmm... :-)
| c22 wrote:
| I made my pet feeder do this! No ai necessary, though--they
| just stand on a scale to activate it.
| LikeBeans wrote:
| Clever!
| matsemann wrote:
| Our bowls uses the chip to recognize the cats (and open only
| for the correct cat, so we can give each cat the correct amount
| of food, called SureFeed)
| shiroiushi wrote:
| Have the cats figured out that the skinny one gets more food?
| yaky wrote:
| Title is very misleading. I initially thought this is a high-tech
| prank.
|
| TLDR: Not just any "New Yorkers", but specifically "customers who
| want to buy a propeller hat". And hats are dropped not "onto",
| but "somewhere on the sidewalk next to" these New Yorkers. And
| sure, this might be "using AI", but AI seems like an overkill to
| recognize that a person is standing longer than three seconds
| under the window.
|
| So a guy sells hats by dropping them out of the window. Not sure
| why there are so many comments praising this. Is it because of
| the pun? Am I missing something?
| yellow_postit wrote:
| It's a fun little project that's well written prose. In some of
| the best hacker traditions it does almost nothing.
| vijucat wrote:
| Once superintelligence takes over all jobs, as it is claimed will
| happen (, and there is an AIBI : AI Basic Income), I hope we are
| free to do more such projects :)
| stevage wrote:
| Reminds me a bit of jafflechutes:
| http://jafflechutes.com/whatis.html
| natch wrote:
| Is roboflow in the picture because the Pi doesn't have the power
| to do object recognition?
| schneems wrote:
| This is cool. It reminded me of a dream project in my backlog: I
| want to build a fan that tracks my head when I workout and always
| blows at my face.
|
| Do y'all think a similar stack/setup (raspberry pi and python3
| and this model thing he linked to) would be a good starting
| point? I prefer to use a more "algorithm" solution than a full
| blown model (I mean cameras have had face detection since what,
| the early 2000s?).
|
| Anyway, curious to hear any suggestions.
| memocopycat wrote:
| I have build something similar as an entry for the Hackaday
| prize in 2016:
|
| https://hackaday.io/project/12384-autofan-automated-control-...
|
| I used Viola-Jones for face detection on a Raspberry Pi 2 and
| built a fan with servo-actuated lamellae from plywood using my
| CNC-Router. It almost landed me a job at a local engineering
| company but chose to stay in academia back then. I still have
| the hardware somewhere in a drawer in my workshop. It
| definitely was a fun project.
| ivanb wrote:
| If the goal is to make a window-based store, then why do you need
| AI at all? Just release the hat once payment goes through.
|
| This reminds me of thousands of blockchain projects that used the
| technology to flip on light switch.
| foo42 wrote:
| I believe the whole project, and the talk of stores in
| particular, is humour. At least that's how I read it. I
| appreciate not everyone has the same sense of humour so that
| may have passed you by.
| beacon294 wrote:
| This is a clever use of AI marketing. I'd still be interested in
| "I'm using computers to drop hats outside my window onto New
| Yorkers."
| sim7c00 wrote:
| This seems to only support windows :(
| mojo74 wrote:
| I can't believe this comment didn't get the attention it
| deserves.
| simianparrot wrote:
| This isn't reddit and it's generally frowned upon to quip or
| make puns without any additional substance.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Everyone loves a joy vacuum.
| gwill wrote:
| if i am curious about something and want to learn, i
| don't want to need to sift through jokes and sarcastic
| comments. i find joy in learning and people can still be
| informative and use humor.
| thruway516 wrote:
| The humorlessness is really strong with this one. I
| caution you not to read the other comments further down
| lest you catch a hissy fit.
| digging wrote:
| I'm frustrated this is getting so much pushback - puns
| are noise. HN is more enjoyable than reddit precisely
| because of the higher signal-to-noise ratio. But a
| significant part of the comments of this post are arguing
| about how much fun to have in the comments, a complete
| waste of my time.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| We are debating, with hushed academic rigour (well some
| of us are) an article where the author is talking about
| how they designed and implemented a system to _drop hats
| out of a window_ at passers by.
|
| Hats.
|
| Out of a Window.
|
| For a joke.
|
| Not a cure for cancer.
|
| Not a peace proposal
|
| Not a way to get people out of poverty
|
| Hats. Out. Of. A. Window.
|
| This hushed "no we mustn't pun or mock" type attitude is
| one of the main drivers of stupid tech fads
|
| It leads to people in positions of power to write down
| phrases like "This product isn't seen by our customers as
| a bridge to the metaverse". The product being a fucking
| chat app with bulletin board built in. At no point did
| anyone in the room mercilessly rip the piss out of them.
| And it shows.
| digging wrote:
| This doesn't respond to my previous comment, making it
| more noise...
| sim7c00 wrote:
| I _am_ very sorry. I just couldn't help myself :). loved to
| read this blog though haha. Took it much too serious for
| the most part :')
| Tao3300 wrote:
| A minority opinion. Codified and occasionally enforced by
| moderation, but still a minority opinion.
| Suppafly wrote:
| Is there also a rule specifically against making "this
| isn't reddit" comparisons too though?
| simianparrot wrote:
| I was contemplating whether to write this for quite a
| while and in general I wouldn't, because it contributes
| to a bad signal/noise ratio. And I'm not immune to making
| some semi-snarky remarks that might not contribute too
| much, myself. But there's a certain... shall we say
| _behavior_ I recognise from reddit that made me feel it
| was warranted.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| Why? Is that your job? Why do you feel it's your
| responsibility to inform people when they have strayed
| from your idea of what someone else's vision of HN is
| supposed to be? Do you think it's a useful thing to do or
| that it brings you some benefit?
| Y-bar wrote:
| That's just for emulation, dropping hats using ARM and RI
| (regular intelligence) should be natively supported on your
| wetware.
| rexreed wrote:
| Looks like Red hat might be soon coming.
| scottmcdot wrote:
| The next drop shipping?
| mnw21cam wrote:
| And there I was, hoping for a Flanders and Swann reference.
| defrost wrote:
| Like _The Gnu Song_ from _At the Drop of a Hat_?
|
| Pretty much writes itself really.
| meigwilym wrote:
| Thanks OP, a great intro to drop shipping.
| zxcvbnm wrote:
| It seems I'm in a minority thinking this is not that great...
| wind can blow the hat (or the thing from the generalized idea)
| into traffic, or onto a baby, or any other place to upset people.
| Also, if the recipient can't/doesn't pick the thing up, then it's
| littering. From the technical perspective finding heads in a
| video is not that impressive nowadays... So, I don't get all the
| excitement...
| askl wrote:
| The author mentioned AI, so of course it's exciting. /s
| simianparrot wrote:
| And yet again it's an existing technology (image recognition)
| with a lick of AI paint
| codingdave wrote:
| Image recognition _is_ AI. LLMs are the latest flavor of
| AI, but that doesn 't invalidate the term for everything
| that has been around before.
| simianparrot wrote:
| No it is a _component_ of AI. The ability to react to
| optical stimuli does not make a plant intelligent, but it
| is a component of intelligence.
| rrgok wrote:
| He should've have said "Blazingly fast AI hat dropper, in
| Rust"
| Narishma wrote:
| "running on a M4 macbook and controlled by a raspberry pi"
| octocop wrote:
| you must be great at parties
| armada651 wrote:
| Sometimes someone has to tell the party when they've come up
| with a potentially deadly idea no matter how much of a
| killjoy that may be.
| the-chitmonger wrote:
| Case in point - my friends wanted to imbibe a certain white
| powder with alcohol and I had to let them know that it is
| magnitudes more toxic to take them together. Did they have
| a less fun time? Probably. But I won't have their premature
| deaths on my conscience.
| jjulius wrote:
| So, now we're comparing a hat dropping one or two stories
| to overdosing on a combination of drugs and alcohol?
|
| It'd be nice if we could all just chill the hell out and
| let someone's fun, stupid, kinda pointless project _just
| be_ someone 's fun, stupid, kinda pointless project.
|
| Edit: I don't mind the downvotes, but do feel free to
| tell me if I'm off base for thinking comparing this
| project to overdosing is a hell of a stretch.
| rob74 wrote:
| Imagine walking (or in this case, standing around) on a
| sidewalk just going about your business. Then, imagine
| something drops on your head, literally out of the blue.
| In a city littered with scaffolding designed to prevent
| pedestrians being injured by stuff dropping from
| buildings. Further, imagine you are easily scared and/or
| have a weak heart. So, I think it's not a huge stretch to
| say that, with enough unlucky coincidences, this also
| might kill someone.
| cutemonster wrote:
| I think it'd almost certainly eventually kill someone
| with a pacemaker and a weak heart.
|
| (Or maybe cause someone to take a sudden step away from
| the sidewalk)
|
| (I wonder if the title is a bit clickbait and the hat
| dropper in fact tries out this new tech only on friends
| who are prepared already, not random strangers?)
| mv4 wrote:
| if it kills someone you can always just say "it's just a
| prank bro"
| borski wrote:
| It is opt-in. You have to "order" a hat.
| armada651 wrote:
| I don't think he was making that comparison. I think this
| he was more referring to the mentality of "you must be
| fun at parties" whenever someone speaks up with some
| concerns about an idea.
| the-chitmonger wrote:
| Thanks for getting where I was coming from, haha.
| barber_the_dope wrote:
| Another fucking twat. No one likes this.
| the-chitmonger wrote:
| I was responding with an anecdote to the comment that
| sometimes it's important to communicate concerns, even if
| it means being a killjoy. Didn't mean for it to sound
| like I was trying to equate the AI hat-dropper to
| potentially overdosing, just a recent occurrence that I
| was reminded of when I saw the parent comment.
| mhb wrote:
| Deadly? More like the music's too loud.
| maxlin wrote:
| Most parties serve alcoholic drinks. Alcohol is a common
| reason for sudden and early deaths. Do you go around saying
| that in every party you attend?
| HPMOR wrote:
| Yes, you don't?
| CleanRoomClub wrote:
| I think it's more akin to telling someone at the party
| that it'd be stupid to chug that whole bottle of liquor
| on a dare.
| badRNG wrote:
| Is dropping a hat really comparable to chugging a whole
| bottle of liquor?
| solsane wrote:
| It is a hat. Chugging a bottle of liquor has way more
| harm potential.
| Retric wrote:
| Only if you're focused on the individual instead of risk
| to unrelated 3rd parties.
| alex_lav wrote:
| Yes, think of how dangerous it is to have a hat land
| nearby...
| Retric wrote:
| You mean how dangerous is tossing something vision
| blocking where people drive...
| alex_lav wrote:
| Yes, how dangerous is it? Please enlighten me.
| Retric wrote:
| > Yes, how dangerous is it?
|
| Lethality dangerous
| addicted wrote:
| Drinking alcohol is almost certainly more dangerous than
| dropping hats.
|
| This is not even close.
|
| Heck, pick any one negative impact of drinking alcohol at
| parties (impaired driving, or long term health effects,
| or impaired judgment, etc) and that individual impact
| would probably be orders of magnitude worse than the
| total negative impact of dropping hats.
| abirch wrote:
| If someone spikes the punch with alcohol that's bad. If
| everyone is consenting: drop away. If they don't consent
| please leave them alone.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Do you go around qualifying every point with a hyperbolic
| example to show that it doesn't generalize at every party
| that you attend?
| ertgbnm wrote:
| Eh, it's cute and I seriously doubt he is using this when not
| at home since it is a single use device.
|
| But also I am shocked that there is a New Yorker that would
| pick up a hat from the street and put it on their head. My
| first thought would be, "how much lice is in this thing?"
| sandworm101 wrote:
| As opposed to the hat in the store that has been tried on by
| a dozen tourists?
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Babies with _hats_?! Won 't somebody think of the children!
| iamleppert wrote:
| Also no permitting, especially in NYC! Eeek!
| karolist wrote:
| This perspective is being on the right side in the bell curve
| meme graph. Also why did they copy Noogler hat design?
| fcarraldo wrote:
| Google didn't invent the propeller hat.
| rvnx wrote:
| They just popularized it for humiliating new employees.
| karolist wrote:
| Strange perspective, it's not like they make employees
| wear them around the office, it's more so a message that
| you're new and it's ok, relax and take your time to
| onboard -\\_(tsu)_/-
| dleslie wrote:
| I'm thinking it's assault.
|
| Imagine being on the sidewalk and someone just hucks a hat at
| your head, how would that feel? More than a little alarming for
| many, I should think.
|
| How is it not clear that it's inappropriate to be violating
| others' personal space without their consent and without
| warning, to force clothing upon them no less?
| s3p wrote:
| If a hat falls on me when I'm outside I promise you my first
| thought will not be about how the wind assaulted me without
| consent...
| julesallen wrote:
| If you actually read the article all will be much clearer.
| borski wrote:
| Read the article. It is opt-in.
| julesallen wrote:
| "Here a busy New Yorker *can book a 5 minute time slot*, pay
| for a hat, stand in a spot under my window for 3 seconds, have
| a hat put on their head, and get on with their extremely
| important, extemely busy day all within a single New York
| minute."
| aiauthoritydev wrote:
| Exactly my thoughts. I dont want anything being dropped on me
| when I am riding my bike or walking with an infant in a
| stroller. But I am hoping the guy did this just to solve
| problems and not actually dropping hats on others.
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| That project could become a really nice military startup. You
| could use it in order to drop bombs on the heads of Russian
| fascist soldiers in Ukraine.
| classified wrote:
| If this isn't domestic terrorism, I don't know what is.
| mdrzn wrote:
| Very cool idea and project :)
| Sardtok wrote:
| I'm looking into starting a piano or anvil store. This is just
| the thing I need to make my dream come true.
| boffinAudio wrote:
| Hats or Bombs? You decide. The AI doesn't have the ability to do
| so.
| kozak wrote:
| This tech will definitely find some good use here in Ukraine.
| codesnik wrote:
| damn, I really hoped it'd autorotate.
| oblio wrote:
| AI is the new random()
| snaeker58 wrote:
| I can't believe I watched a story of using AI to drop hats on
| people and calling it drop shipping turn into a debate about
| parties, buzzkills and the risk of addictive substances vs
| "annoying" people against hat drop shipping and similar ideas, a
| discussion on the legal bounds of unwanted hat drop shipping, the
| effect of stray hats on babies and a quantitative analysis on the
| environmental impact of objects dropped from apartment windows in
| NYC. Followed by another debate on the mental effect of objects
| dropping from apartments in cities with skyscrapers. This is
| amazing.
| chrisfosterelli wrote:
| Hacker news was traditionally an audience that's very hacker
| orientated. Over the years it's gained a significant portion of
| audience that are just 'in tech'. Some threads really show the
| clash between the two IMO.
| snaeker58 wrote:
| I agree (though I don't know if you agree with me)!
|
| I think this post captures what I'd expect from hacker news
| quite well. A cool single person project messing around,
| creating something a community can enjoy.
|
| What I don't like are these weird doom mentality discussions
| over AGI (as an example), they just make me cringe really
| badly.
|
| Then again I really can't complain, all in all I love Hacker
| News, great topics, great comments!
| zmgsabst wrote:
| There's always been a sharp divide in ethos when it comes to
| involving others without their express consent and when you
| leave remnants behind.
| snaeker58 wrote:
| But we don't know that and call me naive, but I see this as
| something that is done on a very small scale, by people who
| booked a "dropship" on his website. I don't think you'll find
| even a single of those hats in streets around his apartment.
| The humor is my flavor, and most of the imagine this as a
| viable product I take as such humor.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > This is amazing.
|
| Just another day on your average know it all message board.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| The opportunity for vertical integration here is incredible.
| carabiner wrote:
| Site is down. What did it show?
| kelnos wrote:
| Fun demo, but it would work just as well for the customer to tap
| something on their phone (or even send/reply to an SMS) to
| trigger the hat-drop, and be much, much simpler, and likely more
| reliable. It looks like it isn't capable of actually placing the
| hat on the customer's head (it lands on the ground nearby), so
| the camera and AI stuff is only acting as a trigger, not a guide.
|
| And presumably if another random person happens to stop inside
| the right sidewalk tile for at least 3 seconds during the
| 5-minute window, before the actual customer gets there, they'll
| get the hat instead!
| coderustle wrote:
| anyone know the cross streets?
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