curiouscavalier (u/curiouscavalier)

curiouscavalier commented on The only moat left is money? elliotbonneville.com/the-... · Posted by u/elliotbnvl

neom · 24 days ago

I worked during the digital revolution in film, I've told the story a zillion times on HN but basically, I went through the first pure digital film program in Canada, by the time I graduated 70% had dropped out, as far as I know I'm the only one who made a proper go at it, and even then when my startup was taking off, a new hot shot would show up every month and be gone the next when they got bored or frustrated when nobody thought they were special. Tools are tools.

curiouscavalier · 24 days ago

yeah this is really a part of it. Both founders and investors get spooked by the rapid entries into a market but persistent not just when it’s hard but when it’s boring goes so much farther.

curiouscavalier commented on Fei-Fei Li: Spatial intelligence is the next frontier in AI [video] youtube.com/watch?v=_PioN... · Posted by u/sandslash

ryeguy_24 · 8 months ago

Agree. Also, with respect to training, what is the goal that we are maximizing? LLMs are easy, predicting the next word and we have lots of training data. But what are we training for in real world? Modeling the next spatial photograph to predict things that will happen next? It’s not intuitive to me what that objective function would be in spatial intelligence.

curiouscavalier · 8 months ago

Or that there is a sufficiently generalizable objective function for all “spatial intelligence.”

curiouscavalier commented on Ask HN: Anyone using augmented reality, VR, glasses, helmets etc. in industry? · Posted by u/NewUser76312

curiouscavalier · 9 months ago

The adoption of it in various industries for training is larger than most people might suspect. First responders and retailers have some of the largest internal deployments out there, but they aren’t massively publicized (most people would never guess who’s fielding the largest fleet of headsets right now). That said, it’s still not mass adoption.

At the end of the day, you are asking someone to put something on their face that is still very different ergonomically than glasses (and I’m not sure even glasses would overcome enough friction). The ROI has to overcome the business (or personal) friction of buying the hardware, the friction of the form factor plus any friction from changed workflows.

Now put that in an operational workflow instead of training and the risks go up. Most are still skeptical of device reliability (not to say there aren’t suitable devices for operational roles but the perception is still a hurdle, and the applicability is often device-specific). Now add on to that limited experience with devices (many decision makers have never put one on), added security complications, specialized software development skills, limited content libraries and very real accessibility concerns and a lot of enterprises can never get past an “innovation center demo.”

For many industries the value proposition just isn’t there yet. But that said, I’d recommend digging a little deeper as there’s a lot of existing use-cases and deployments, both failed and successful, outside of IVAS.

curiouscavalier commented on The wake effect: As wind farms expand, some can ‘steal’ each others’ wind bbc.com/future/article/20... · Posted by u/JumpCrisscross

glkindlmann · 9 months ago

The word "rights" surprisingly didn't come in that piece. By analogy to "water rights" [1], "wind rights" are a thing, both in the basic sense of permission to extract wind power from some chunk of land [2] and the messier sense of that article: conflicts between upstream and downstream users of the wind [3] (recent article and fascinating read)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riparian_water_rights

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_rights

[3] https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wind-wakes-and-the-right-to-win...

curiouscavalier · 9 months ago

Thanks for posting this. Water rights and who gets priority was the first thing that came to mind. The thought of “wind augmentation plans” is fun to think about.

curiouscavalier commented on Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte reuters.com/world/us/pent... · Posted by u/oldprogrammer2

calvinmorrison · a year ago

they're a order of magnitude higher for some reasons though. I work in consulting, and occasionally larger enterprises approach our firm. We almost always decline because their requirements from vendor screening, to change review boards, to just the amount of sheer meetings it takes to enact a change to a title change on the website home page - its not worth it.

A couple times we made the mistake of giving a 'go away' number and they took it, and then i had to deal with the insanity of F500 business...

curiouscavalier · a year ago

Yep, the procurement process (and related) requires a lot be baked into pricing. I’d also be curious what the fully burdened rate of in-house staff is compared to consultants. I’ve seen situations in the gov (not DoD) where despite high consulting rates, the full cost of hiring was even higher per hour.

But I’m loath to defend the big firms. Generally, quality plus the ever push for expanding scope leaves a sensation of waste. The solution is just going to need more than simply tossing them out.

curiouscavalier commented on Supply constraints do not explain house price, quantity growth across US cities nber.org/papers/w33576... · Posted by u/pessimizer

wat10000 · a year ago

Sure. There’s no objective value of a house, so they have to go off of recent sales of similar properties. If prices go up, appraisals go up. But I don’t see how the reverse would be true, as suggested above.

curiouscavalier · a year ago

Appraisals also act as a gate for prices due to lender requirements. A bit round about, but I can see how looser appraisals can enable inflated prices. Imagining the opposite extreme is interesting: What if appraisals never returned with higher prices than the last sale of that house? Some markets would see increases from people paying the difference out of pocket, but I’d guess the rate of price increase would be much lower. (plus other effects, of course).

curiouscavalier commented on US Judge invalidates blood glucose sensor patent, opens door for Apple Watch patentlyapple.com/2025/02... · Posted by u/walterbell

survirtual · a year ago

It is not complicated. Patents are regressive instruments of the rich to shackle minds and generate artificial scarcity over abundant goods.

It is a mechanism of slavers and connected lineages, and completely puts of a boot on the neck of unconnected innovators, which are abundant in today's age.

They must be abolished.

curiouscavalier · a year ago

I’m not following the “unconnected” part. There are definitely problems with our patent system (referring to US), especially around software, but in my experience examiners are indifferent to your background and lineage (though not indifferent to their own status at USPTO). There is absolutely a monetary barrier to entry on using a lawyer to draft your patent application, but I feel like that’s more an issue of private law firms than patents in general. Though I’m sure others might have comments on how those intertwine.

But filing fees, etc (ie those things set by the USPTO) are really quite reasonable imo. Strictly speaking you don’t have to use a lawyer to file (I know that can be a minor concession in the landscape of practical success). Maybe you can clarify what you mean by “connected” vs “unconnected”in this case? I’m missing how patent law directly related to connections/lineage beyond what sister comments have said re: ability to litigate or be patent trolls. But I think that’s the point of the sister comment on it (at least ideally) cutting both ways.

curiouscavalier commented on “A Course of Pure Mathematics” – G. H. Hardy (1921) [pdf] gutenberg.org/files/38769... · Posted by u/bikenaga

curiouscavalier · a year ago

One of my favourite texts. One of those that I found influential early in academics as well as when re-reading later in my career. Even for younger students I think it can be great introduction to more formal approaches, as well as a taste for the austere.

curiouscavalier commented on Blackmagic Debuts $30K 3D Camera for Capturing Video for Vision Pro macrumors.com/2024/12/16/... · Posted by u/tosh

dannyw · a year ago

There was the Newton, PDAs, and Symbian phones before the iPhone.

The technology might need another decade (or two), but I think it’s very shortsighted to think VR/AR is close to its maximum user base.

curiouscavalier · a year ago

Agreed. There’s a lot of variables (and I think price is a big one). But, while slow, adoption in enterprise is showing signs that the basic concept has some legs. Even if the tech today needs some time to marinate.

That said I also don’t think we’re are a time-local maxima of users either.

curiouscavalier commented on Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations bloomberg.com/news/featur... · Posted by u/JumpCrisscross

_ea1k · a year ago

This really can't be emphasized enough. Universities and the initial hiring process really optimize for a score and not for learning. Those could be, and sometimes are, correlated, but it isn't necessarily the case.

Really focusing on stretching yourself necessarily means lower grades. Why is that penalized? TBH, in software engineering a lot of people with lower grades tutor the ones with 4.0 averages. The skillsets required to code and the skillsets required to get a good grade on a test are different.

curiouscavalier · a year ago

And it penalizes in many ways. Focusing too much on grades can be detrimental in graduate studies, despite graduate admissions focusing on GPA and test scores. I remember seeing 4.0 undergrads really struggle with research in grad school, sometimes to the point of dropping out. Certainly not always the case, but for the ones that did I think it speaks to your point about different skillsets.

Maybe worse was seeing the undergrads who passed on research opportunities out of fear it would distract them from keeping a high GPA.