ewjt (u/ewjt) - Readit News

ewjt commented on US businesses and consumers pay 90% of tariff costs, New York Fed says ft.com/content/c4f886a1-1... · Posted by u/mraniki

culi · a day ago

What if, instead of all of us paying in order to have a car industry, we take that tax money and pay to an ecological restoration industry or functioning healthcare industry or whatever. Have you seen the map of superfund sites? Statistically speaking, you are almost certainly living within 10 miles of a superfund

https://epa.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=...

There is a LOT of other work we could be doing if we stopped trying to uphold existing uncompetitive industries

ewjt · a day ago

Transportation is like farming and yielding ownership of critical industries gives foreign adversaries too much leverage.

I’m with you though. If humans could just get along we could build an amazing world.

ewjt commented on Helix: A vision-language-action model for generalist humanoid control figure.ai/news/helix... · Posted by u/Philpax

abraxas · a year ago

Yeah, except that future doesn't need us. By us I mean those of us who don't have $1B to their name.

Do you really expect the oligarchs to put up with the environmental degradation of 8 billion humans when they can have a pristine planet to themselves with their whims served by the AI and these robots?

I fully anticipate that when these things mature enough we'll see an "accidental" pandemic sweep and kill off 90% of us. At least 90%.

ewjt · a year ago

Oligarchs would use the robots to kill people instead of a pandemic. A virus carries too much risk of affecting the original creators.

Fortunately, robotic capability like that basically becomes the equivalent of Nuclear MAD.

Unfortunately, the virus approach probably looks fantastic to extremist bad actors with visions of an afterlife.

ewjt commented on Ask HN: How close are we to replace animal models with software? · Posted by u/JPLeRouzic

the_real_cher · a year ago

Biology is a borderline infinite system depending on how deep you go.

We need to be able to model molecular forcefields to be able to model DNA expression to be able to model protein expression to be able to model, layers and layers of higher order molecules just to represent a cell.

Then...you have combining cells to make an organism and the interaction of the organism with its environment which affects all of the above.

I think a monkey will be able to understand how to use a cell phone before humans understand how biology works.

ewjt · a year ago

Do you actually need to simulate at that minuscule level of detail?

Or is it possible for a system to be built that can approximate biology similar to how LLMs approximate cognition without true understanding and reasoning?

ewjt commented on Google DeepMind's Aloha Unleashed is pushing the boundaries of robot dexterity twitter.com/tonyzzhao/sta... · Posted by u/modeless

lyapunova · 2 years ago

I can appreciate that, but also they are recording and replaying motor signals from specific teleoperation demonstrations. Something that _was_ possible in the 1950s. You might say that it is challenging to replay demonstrations well on lower-quality hardware. And so there is academic value in trying to make it work on worse hardware, but it would not be my goto solution for real industry problems. E.g. this is not a route I would fund for a startup, for example.

ewjt · 2 years ago

This is not preprogrammed replay. Replay would not be able handle even tiny variations in the starting positions of the shirt.

ewjt commented on Private company landing on the moon today intuitivemachines.com/im-... · Posted by u/SigKill9

austinjp · 2 years ago

How dare they put an ad on the moon.

We are truly spreading the worst of humanity into the cosmos. Good job it's only us that appear able to witness it.

Defraying costs by using ads is a strawman. If you can't afford to do something, maybe don't do it. If you really, really want to do it, maybe ask yourself if the world genuinely needs what you're doing. If it does, find a way. If the only way you can do it is by selling advertising, you've taken as mis-step.

ewjt · 2 years ago

That's an extreme position to take that rests on the claim that sponsorship/advertising is objectively bad.

Media & journalism have been underpinned by advertising for over a century. Tons of educational and informative services are available to the public for free because of advertising. Sponsorship has built art galleries, hospital wings, research centers, etc.

In this case, there's a relatively innocuous logo on a robotic lander that is 230k miles away on a desolate rock. It's not like this is a billboard in a nature preserve.

ewjt commented on Comparing Adobe Firefly, Dalle-2, and OpenJourney blog.usmanity.com/compari... · Posted by u/muhammadusman

kouteiheika · 3 years ago

For reference, here's what you can get with a properly tweaked Stable Diffusion, all running locally on my PC. Can be set up on almost any PC with a mid range GPU in a few minutes if you know what you're doing. I didn't do any cherry picking; this is the first thing it generated. 4 images per prompt.

1st prompt: https://i.postimg.cc/T3nZ9bQy/1st.png

2nd prompt: https://i.postimg.cc/XNFm3dSs/2nd.png

3rd prompt: https://i.postimg.cc/c1bCyqWR/3rd.png

ewjt · 3 years ago

Can you elaborate on “properly tweaked”? When I use one of the Stable Diffusion and AUTOMATIC1111 templates on runpod.io, the results are absolutely worthless.

This is using some of the popular prompts you can find on sites like prompthero that show amazing examples.

It’s been serious expectation vs. reality disappointment for me and so I just pay the MidJourney or DALL-E fees.

ewjt commented on Cormac McCarthy has died nytimes.com/2023/06/13/bo... · Posted by u/benbreen

Xenoamorphous · 3 years ago

Is that where the movie with Viggo Mortensen came from? I didn’t know it was based on a book, the movie was soul crushing.

ewjt · 3 years ago

It is the only book I wish I could forget completely.

Serious advice: think twice before reading The Road if you’re susceptible to doom and gloom about the human race.

ewjt commented on IPCC climate crisis report delivers ‘final warning on 1.5C’ theguardian.com/environme... · Posted by u/m1

johnnymorgan · 3 years ago

The point he is making is the disconnect between models and reality.

Also when are people held accountable for their models being wrong and the output that comes from that.

Climate models has a terrible track record and have failed to materialize over and over again.

We have environmental crises all over the place which we should be focused on. The two are not the same thing and climate activism seems to not care about that at all, ie the issue of EVs and their super non green batteries or the near slave labor in terrible conditions resource extraction.

There is a good reason to be skeptical of the regulations derived from these models when they are wrong all the time.

ewjt · 3 years ago

Please back up the claim "climate models has a terrible track record" and qualify the word 'terrible'.

Casting blame is a common denier tactic [1] used despite the models being useful and accurate [2].

The "whataboutisms" you mention are another common tactic. [3] Blaming EV batteries is a red herring; they have much lower lifecycle emissions than gas-based engines. [4]

[1] https://skepticalscience.com/climate-models.htm [2] https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2943/study-confirms-climate-mo... [3] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/global-sustainabilit... [4] https://arstechnica.com/cars/2021/07/electric-cars-have-much...

ewjt commented on Ask HN: Science fiction movies that are appropriate for 12 year olds? · Posted by u/tarunupaday

ewjt · 3 years ago

These are all generally highly reviewed can lead to interesting discussions:

Gattaca - interesting take on genetics/DNA discrimination

Europa - hard science fiction, maybe a bit slow for a 12 year old

The Net - older movie but the concept of digital exile resonates today

City of Ember - post apocalyptic civilization that lives deep underground

First Man - dramatization of Neil Armstrong and the first moon landing (not realy "fiction")

Arrival - first contact situation, tastefully done

Contact - another first contact situation that explores how politics, skepticism, and fanaticism react

The Martian - easily as fun as the book

The Prestige - competing magicians in an industrial age setting

The Hunger Games - extreme class divide in a future setting

Jurassic Park - the original not the sequels

Stargate - wormhole travel to another planet (be careful with the TV shows though, SG1 on streaming has full frontal nudity and "not ok" scenes which were obviously not on the broadcast version and a total shock when we watched it as a family)

District 9 - has some graphic gore and language, so it might be 14+, but is an interesting look at aliens as refugees

Contagion - a look at how a pandemic could play out. Premiered before COVID.

The Maze Runner - interesting setting and look at group dynamics

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids - fun setting

The Village - scary movie with a sci fi twist

Galaxy Quest - comedy

Short Circuit - old movie that deals with AI sentience

Innerspace - another old one, but has some fun concepts

ewjt commented on Show HN: I made a tool that turns screenshots into dramatically angled photos screenstab.com/editor/... · Posted by u/mikaelaast

ironlake · 3 years ago

I clicked the link because it sounded interesting and maybe useful. But then I wasn't quite sure what it did.

I wanted a before and after photo. It's a simple concept. The landing page should be equally simple.

ewjt · 3 years ago

Based on the GIF, I thought it created an animated video.

Even when the .PNG downloaded I thought for sure it’d be an animated PNG.

If I’m doing some content creation, I probably already have an image editor, in which case I can create this effect myself or would prefer an integrated plugin to do it.

Motion graphics is much harder, and there’s more demand there to add some sparkle to a static image. OP, have you considered that angle?