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I am using AI to drop hats outside my window onto New Yorkers
- rendall 2y agoI'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 2y agoit's a conceptual art project / hoax.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Justin_K 2y ago[flagged]
- Nevin1901 2y agoHe uses an image segmentation model to detect if a person is standing under his apartment.
- thevidence 2y ago[dead]
- dualogy 2y agoComputer vision _was_ a legit AI field until "only LLMs are AI now" came around, no?
- CyberDildonics 2y agoYou have it reversed, no? Computer vision was just called computer vision and computer graphics until "AI" became the new headline grabber, then computer vision somehow became "AI". Even optical flow from 30 years ago is now being called "AI" by some people even though it has been around for decades and doesn't work off of any training, it just tracks every pixel to get motion vectors.
- dualogy 2y agoAh fair enough, good points on further consideration =)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- hammock 2y agoThis 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 2y agoI live in Louisiana, have done object recognition projects before, feel free to reach out. Email in bio.
- selimthegrim 2y agoI live in New Orleans. Happy to help as well. contact in bio.
- edm0nd 2y agoAI to recognize a pair of titties and then trigger the beads. Genius.
- selimthegrim 2y agoJust think of the adversarial attacks
- Hemagowda 2y ago[flagged]
- A4ET8a8uTh0 2y agoI 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.
- mensetmanusman 2y agoLike a gun?
- bogwog 2y agoRight? I can already imagine the government doing this to drop nuclear bombs on dissidents.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 2y agoYou 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 2y agoPerhaps 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.
- IshKebab 2y ago> 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.
- lolinder 2y agoAs 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.
- causal 2y agoI 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 2y agoI'm guessing we'll just end with every website has a button where you have to accept: [ all cookies and ai stuff ]
- omoikane 2y agoThis 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 2y agoYou 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.
- rahidz 2y agoOk folks, how does this impact our AGI (Aerial Gear Installation) timelines?
- potatoman22 2y agoThis is beautiful. Have you ever dropped a hat on someone's head a a surprise?
- parpfish 2y agowill this create an organic HN meetup next under this dudes window?
- aantix 2y agoFrom a fellow midwesterner - was this great? “You betcha!” Finally some window shopping that interests me.
- tmountain 2y agoFinally someone accomplishes something meaningful with AI! /s
- testy_mctest 2y ago[flagged]
- jimhi 2y agoYou will need to book a spot first
- GTP 2y agoHe seems to be already fully booked until the 13th of August, must have been really successful, or maybe just the result of the exposure on HN? Hopefully people aren't booking spots just to troll.
- parpfish 2y agoThe exterior photos provide enough info that you can figure out the intersection/building if you’re curious
- I___am___ejajul 2y ago[flagged]
- saaaaaam 2y agoThis is ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS. I can’t believe someone would spend the time and effort to do this. I love it. You’re brilliant.
- WanderPanda 2y agolooks like AGI has been achieved externally
- robofanatic 2y agoOh I could use this to deliver my home made lunch boxes to customers from my 15th floor apartment!
- CyberDildonics 2y agoI'm no AI expert, but I think you could do that with some twine.
- surfingdino 2y agoTwine would bias delivery to the right recipient whereas pure AI can send it anywhere with a high degree of inaccuracy.
- adregan 2y agoI 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 2y agoMy hats are completely new and unworn! Lice free since June 23
- mensetmanusman 2y agoThis is a consensual hat, not a villainous hat that attacks virgin tops.
- prepend 2y agoAlthough 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 2y agoyou have to request the hat lol, you dont just walk buy and get shit dropped on you, you book a drop
- ddubski 2y agoAs 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 2y agoLove 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 2y agoIf only LiveBarn feeds weren’t such a pile of crap I’d have some hope.
- jimhi 2y agoThis 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 2y agoFacial 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 2y agoTypically beer league players wear full face cages so facial recognition is harder to do
- jimhi 2y agoI 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 2y agoi 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 2y agoThis is legitimately awesome. Nice job sir.
- Uehreka 2y ago> 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 2y agoWhat do you think happens after they have enough of the gum? :)
- garrettgarcia 2y agoAfter gum on the street, there's gum on the street
- yreg 2y agoThere is always this option: https://youtu.be/vYrXLaU8guU https://youtu.be/vYrXLaU8guU
- prepend 2y agoI 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.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- dkga 2y agoReally, 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.
- mugivarra69 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- amarcheschi 2y agoCan 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 2y agoThat would most likely be the OpenCV bit
- topherclay 2y agoNo the opencv was just to capture video frames and they were iediately passed to the roboflow model through the ssh client.
- seltzered_ 2y agoWhich is what many would also call 'Image Processing'
- epiccoleman 2y agoFantastic, 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.
- hermannj314 2y agoTypical 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 2y agoAll 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 2y agoWell now I feel bad for laughing and having a good time.
- voisin 2y agoTypical mid-western Buddhist humor.
- tcsenpai 2y agoThis is one of the most beautiful things made with AI
- xg15 2y agoThat's a great idea! Did I tell you about my cousin and his flower pot/anvil/piano business idea btw?
- butterfi 2y agoI 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?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- riwsky 2y agoThat’s because you aren’t supposed to wrap your head around a hat, you’re supposed to wrap the hat around your head.
- OkGoDoIt 2y agoIf 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 2y agoNot your mistake, he does his best to imply that the hats are dropping on heads. He's got a future in marketing.
- surfingdino 2y ago> He's got a future in marketing. ... of AI
- dauertewigkeit 2y agoThe whole blog post is genius from a marketing perspective.
- laeri 2y agoAlso the use of the words "dropshipping" and "windowshopping"
- qustrolabe 2y agoIs there video of any successful drops?
- gcheong 2y agoI was hoping to get in on the ground floor of this investment opportunity but it looks like I'm too late.
- gsuuon 2y agoYour check height may just be too low?
- IAmGraydon 2y agoThrowing your money into a fire pit would be equally as effective.
- seanhunter 2y agoI 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.
- Simon_O_Rourke 2y agoJust wait until some bozo walking down the street starts litigation about harassment and spinal injury.
- truetraveller 2y agoIs this legal? Imagine everyone doing this.
- prepend 2y agoWhy 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 2y agoYou'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 2y agoYes, 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 2y agoWell, 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 2y agoOh 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).
- truetraveller 2y agoIs this legal?!
- consumer451 2y ago"Regulatory Entrepreneurship" https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3559&context=faculty_scholarship https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...
- voisin 2y agoAmazing. Hats on to you!
- mextex 2y ago[flagged]
- prepend 2y agoThis 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?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- bazil376 2y agoMad hatter
- 29athrowaway 2y agoNext step: add EEG electrodes
- michael_michael 2y agoOur team already uses cap.ly. How does this compare to that, or, say haberdash.er? Congrats on the launch.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- worldmerge 2y agoThis 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 2y ago> 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 2y agoAmazing. Any chance of Top Hats as a premium upgrade?
- btown 2y ago> 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 2y agoThat's the best justification of Universal Income I have seen so far
- DEADMINCE 2y agoIt 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 2y agoIt's a bad idea, so it might well be the best.
- skrebbel 2y agoPyramid 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-ethereum-contract-in-pyramid-scheme.html http://www.michaelburge.us/2017/11/28/write-your-next-ethere...
- joeyrideout 2y ago"I Taught My Shrimp to Fry Rice" also comes to mind: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/upgdrBO02Gs https://www.youtube.com/shorts/upgdrBO02Gs
- metadat 2y agoWhat 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/frigate https://github.com/blakeblackshear/frigate/pkgs/container/fr... [1] https://github.com/snowzach/doods2 https://github.com/snowzach/doods2
- yeldarb 2y agoFWIW 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 https://github.com/roboflow/inference [2] https://universe.roboflow.com https://universe.roboflow.com [3] https://github.com/roboflow/notebooks https://github.com/roboflow/notebooks [4] https://github.com/roboflow/supervision https://github.com/roboflow/supervision
- BaculumMeumEst 2y agoI 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-llama3-8b-with-llama-cpp/ 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 2y agoPretty cool! Any info about the maximum height of AI head detections?
- stikit 2y agoLove 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.
- zombiwoof 2y ago[flagged]
- bradly 2y agoOof. Are we not to enjoy life until all are fed?
- cantSpellSober 2y agoStrange article to be so offended by. Do you work or develop things that don't "feed the world?"
- blharr 2y agoThis is a lame criticism. One guy doing a silly little project to entertain himself (and also developing useful skills along the way) is far better than the millions of people who work in politics, industry, etc. that also aren't actively fixing the world and are instead actively worsening it.
- wonderwonder 2y agoHow could you possibly hate on this? Not everyone has to spend every second saving the world. People can just have fun and bring small amounts of joy. Hope you feel better friend, its going to be alright.
- astrange 2y agoYou could easily feed the world under your window by doing this. Except it's probably illegal.
- throwaway290232 2y ago[dead]
- karaterobot 2y agoThis is visionary.
- atemerev 2y agoCool. Now replace hats with explosives and sell it to the military.
- lxgr 2y agoThis is so much nicer than the typical type of things that might fall onto your head in Midtown. Love it!
- deadbabe 2y agoMaybe I’ll try this
- metaph6 2y agowhat a lots of free time to spare, creatw and joy...
- jaredhansen 2y agoThis 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.
- seoulmetro 2y ago[flagged]
- Loughla 2y agoIt's funny, and it's vaguely advanced technology. Sometimes joy is a good enough reason for something.
- seoulmetro 2y agoI asked why they liked it. Presumably people like and dislike things for actual reasons.
- kulesh 2y agoGo roboflow!
- Frieren 2y ago> 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 2y agoI 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 2y agoThat's nice, except it is very likely illegal
- timnetworks 2y agoAs another inhabitant of the same x,y plot -- please don't pivot to pianos.
- petermcneeley 2y agoThat hat seems familiar.
- IIAOPSW 2y agoWHAT CORNER IS THIS ON I WILL GO THERE RIGHT NOW AND WAIT TO BE HATTED BY AN AI
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- AustinDizzy 2y agoJudging by the first picture in the article, it appears to be at Park Ave & E 33rd St.
- betaporter 2y agoTried to buy a hat and this person is... sold out. For a while!
- vedmed 2y agoNow take this code and replace hats with bombs.
- tcsenpai 2y agoThanks, 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/index.html https://archive.tunnelsenpai.win/archive/1719179282.959772/i...
- ajwin 2y agoI wonder if anvils will be the breakout product for this technology. It seems like it should be.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- geerlingguy 2y ago> 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!
- JFuzz 2y ago“Fan” tastic
- rashidae 2y agoIf this is used for the wrong reasons, so using something other than a hat… This could be lethal.
- giantg2 2y agoWon't be a problem if we scale up the mosquito zapping laser system...
- op00to 2y agoWhat, like a toupee?
- chris_wot 2y agoOnly if the toupee created was from the head of another living person.
- pthreads 2y agoMost 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 2y agoI love the way you think. Let’s apply to YC.
- seoulmetro 2y agoSo could just dropping things out your window? wat.
- shultays 2y ago
- Nimnimnim 2y agoThe 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.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- op00to 2y agoI 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.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- hettygreen 2y agoFake.. 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 2y agoHe picks up the hat...
- tears-in-rain 2y agowell, lads, may i ask a favor? never try this on fpv drone with shell.
- helsinki 2y agoSee you in August!
- lupire 2y agoThis 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 2y agoBecause it’s so wAcKy? I don’t get it either.
- avidphantasm 2y agoFinally something useful from “AI.”
- bonyt 2y agoI 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 2y agoIt 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 2y agoIs 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 2y agoI 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 2y agoI 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 2y agoI 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.
- wsdookadr 2y agoPossibly the most important tech project of 2024.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- riwsky 2y agoHats off to you!
- LikeBeans 2y agoIt 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 2y agoI made my pet feeder do this! No ai necessary, though--they just stand on a scale to activate it.
- LikeBeans 2y agoClever!
- matsemann 2y agoOur 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 2y agoHave the cats figured out that the skinny one gets more food?
- yaky 2y agoTitle 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 2y agoIt’s a fun little project that’s well written prose. In some of the best hacker traditions it does almost nothing.
- vijucat 2y agoOnce 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 2y agoReminds me a bit of jafflechutes: http://jafflechutes.com/whatis.html http://jafflechutes.com/whatis.html
- natch 2y agoIs roboflow in the picture because the Pi doesn't have the power to do object recognition?
- schneems 2y agoThis 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 2y agoI have build something similar as an entry for the Hackaday prize in 2016: https://hackaday.io/project/12384-autofan-automated-control-of-air-flow 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.
- schneems 2y agoThis is great thanks!
- ivanb 2y agoIf 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 2y agoI 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 2y agoThis 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 2y agoThis seems to only support windows :(
- mojo74 2y agoI can't believe this comment didn't get the attention it deserves.
- simianparrot 2y agoThis isn't reddit and it's generally frowned upon to quip or make puns without any additional substance.
- KaiserPro 2y agoEveryone loves a joy vacuum.
- gwill 2y agoif 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 2y agoThe humorlessness is really strong with this one. I caution you not to read the other comments further down lest you catch a hissy fit.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- digging 2y agoI'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.
- mnw21cam 2y agoAnd there I was, hoping for a Flanders and Swann reference.
- defrost 2y agoLike The Gnu Song from At the Drop of a Hat? Pretty much writes itself really.
- meigwilym 2y agoThanks OP, a great intro to drop shipping.
- zxcvbnm 2y agoIt 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 2y ago[flagged]
- simianparrot 2y agoAnd yet again it’s an existing technology (image recognition) with a lick of AI paint
- codingdave 2y agoImage 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 2y agoNo 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 2y agoHe should've have said "Blazingly fast AI hat dropper, in Rust"
- Narishma 2y ago"running on a M4 macbook and controlled by a raspberry pi"
- 2y ago
- cynicalsecurity 2y agoThat 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 2y agoIf this isn't domestic terrorism, I don't know what is.
- mdrzn 2y agoVery cool idea and project :)
- Sardtok 2y agoI'm looking into starting a piano or anvil store. This is just the thing I need to make my dream come true.
- throwawaypm 2y ago[flagged]
- boffinAudio 2y agoHats or Bombs? You decide. The AI doesn't have the ability to do so.
- kozak 2y agoThis tech will definitely find some good use here in Ukraine.
- codesnik 2y agodamn, I really hoped it'd autorotate.
- oblio 2y agoAI is the new random()
- snaeker58 2y agoI 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.
- zmgsabst 2y agoThere’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 2y agoBut 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.
- chrisfosterelli 2y agoHacker 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.
- Sohcahtoa82 2y agoI feel like we've entered a new era of HN. First there was the excessively dismissive era that spawned the infamous Dropbox comment (Which was widely misunderstood). Then came the functional programming era, where people worshipped Haskell and frequently got posted to /r/ProgrammingCirclejerk. Eventually we got past that one as people discovered that Haskell isn't really useful for anything besides showing off how you can implement Quicksort in a single line or starting arguments over what the hell a Monad is. Then there was the needlessly pedantic era, which basically spawned the "ACKCHYUALLY" meme. The pedantry was often a huge distraction, never added anything to the conversation, and often was actually incorrect. If you've ever said "Actually, that's not ray tracing, that's ray casting!", then congrats, you're part of this era. We're now in the era of being dismissive, not for technical merits like the previous dismissive era, but for being unproductive. Any time a project is done purely for fun or personal reasons (ie, nostalgia), there's someone in the comments talking about how useless it is, and that the time could be better spent Making The World A Better Place(tm)[0]. [0] https://youtu.be/B8C5sjjhsso https://youtu.be/B8C5sjjhsso
- micromacrofoot 2y agoThe opportunity for vertical integration here is incredible.
- carabiner 2y agoSite is down. What did it show?
- kelnos 2y agoFun 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 2y agoanyone know the cross streets?
- 4oo4 2y agoThis makes me really miss the Stupid Shit hackathon, this seems like a perfect project for it. https://stupidhackathon.com/ https://stupidhackathon.com/
- emsign 2y agoA coin on a string would be funnier. Just when someone wants to yoink it, up up up it flies.
- emsign 2y agoOh, I just realized that will never work. Nobody pays in cash anymore.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]