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num42

606 karma · joined December 1, 2025

I like:

Unthinkables,Unknowables,Unknown Unknowns,Rums field matrix,OODA loop, scientific method, TRIZ method, design thinking, paradoxes,contradictions, negative knowledge,...so on

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num42··on Superhuman Hardware Design Is the Easy Part
Hardware is Hard! - Popular quote

There are so many processes involved in making a high-precision bolt that goes into an F1 racing car. Well, hardware is always limited by laws of physics, it's hard to accelerate. Maybe in the future, AI will do this too, through robotics. I am still waiting for the robotics ChatGPT moment.

Life of Bolt(2016): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iptAkpqjtMQ

Dan Gelbart recently appeared on a podcast where he shared valuable insights into precision engineering. It was really great!

Title: Solving Impossible Problems for Fun and Profit - Dan Gelbart

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTgrWmOk4q8

num42··on Zippy: The smallest power-autonomous bipedal robot(2025)
Relevant article:

https://engineering.cmu.edu/news-events/news/2025/05/12-smal...

num42··on Roboto 01: Full-stack Open-source humanoid robot
Github Link:

https://github.com/Roboparty/RP1

num42··on Tesla Roadster
It reminds me of Lockheed Martin's Multiple Kill Vehicle (MKV-L).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBMU6l6GsdM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC97wdQOmfI

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_Kill_Vehicle

num42··on Ask HN: Where has creativity in software gone?
For no particular reason, I've been browsing HN posts from before November 30, 2022. There's a treasure trove of content from that era. Maybe I've just been hit by a wave of nostalgia.
num42··on Motor Characterization for Small Running Robots (2016)
[1] The author of the posted article, Ben Katz, designed the MIT Mini Cheetah during his master’s program. His thesis has become very popular in the robotics community as a reference for actuator design, and it is freely available online.

Thesis: A low cost modular actuator for dynamic robots

https://dspace.mit.edu/entities/publication/b85069e2-f1cd-47...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmViQ1T03Rk

[2] Unitree, LIMX Dynamics, and other Chinese robotics companies may also have referenced or been influenced by his actuator design in the evolution of their own actuators.

https://www.militarytimes.com/industry/techwatch/2026/08/18/...

[3] Ben, tear down a Chinese version of the Mini Cheetah.

https://robot-daycare.com/posts/2022-11-02-mini-cheetah-clon...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5SHUWb6kH4&list=PL8H6WijZPO...

num42··on Motor Characterization for Small Running Robots (2016)
Yes, Ater BD,MIT mini cheetah is starting point for many robots that we see today.

https://www.militarytimes.com/industry/techwatch/2026/08/18/...

num42··on OpenArm: An open-source 7DOF humanoid arm
Off-topic, but even though it was 16 years ago, the robot looks so beautiful and well-designed. It looks so aesthetic!
num42··on Navier-Stokes Announcement
"In recent years there has been an increasing sense of anticipation as breakthroughs in the surrounding field (some recognised by the Clay Research Award) have raised hopes that the Navier-Stokes problem might soon be resolved. The increasing ability of new technologies to accelerate mathematical research has heightened this sense of anticipation."

Keyword: New Technologies

num42··on A misalignment of AI in mathematics
>Maybe mathematics just becomes a little more like other fields--relying on labs with lots of money for compute, digging through a corpus of AI-generated proofs, etc.

Dr. Tao said the same thing. Somehow, this letter came through. He wants to conduct Math competitions where participants who don’t have formal credentials can contribute to mathematical research through AI.

Title: Terence Tao - SAIR Competitions and the Future of Experimental Mathematics

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB9YOi3lb7w

and this:

Daniel Litt - Working with LLMs to do high quality math

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wL8NlhxXcU

num42··on A misalignment of AI in mathematics
Title: Terence Tao - SAIR Competitions and the Future of Experimental Mathematics

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rB9YOi3lb7w&pp=ygUSVGVycmVuY2U...

num42··on OpenAI shares they have made substantial progress on another Millennium problem
Probably, P vs NP would be the last one to be solved, said by Terrence Tao in 2009.

source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtsrAw1LR3E&t=2727s

num42··on OpenAI shares they have made substantial progress on another Millennium problem
I don’t know how true it is, but there are a lot of rumors on social media that progress is being made on the BSD or Hodge conjecture. If this is true, it could set off a Millennium benchmark race and raise the bar significantly. Everyone would have to recalibrate their benchmarks around mathematical problems.
num42··on On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem
I think it would be better for the proof to go through the peer-review process.
num42··on Fiber-immersion microfabrication with sub-10µm resolution for under $300 [video]
Along with Cylos Garage, Breaking Taps, Diffraction Limited is great YouTube channel, host lot of precision engineering related stuff.
num42··on Private German rocket makes history, reaches orbit from European soil
Congrats! How come European companies still haven't managed to match SpaceX's capabilities? Europe has an incredible talent pool, especially in aerospace, and some of the world’s best expertise in precision engineering, instrumentation, sensors, avionics, and other hard-tech subsystems. A huge amount of the expertise and supply chain for these components is concentrated in Europe.

So what are we missing? Is it mainly systems integration, manufacturing scale, risk tolerance, organizational structure, or the willingness to iterate as aggressively as SpaceX? It feels like Europe has many of the pieces needed to build world-class launch systems, but hasn't yet put them together at the same scale and speed.

num42··on Ask HN: What Is AGI?
I might be wrong, but as far as I know, the definition of AGI is still evolving and remains somewhat ambiguous.

My idea of AGI is a system that can make novel discoveries, invent new mathematics and physics, solve Millennium Prize level problems, and think originally.

Perhaps a better definition would be a system that can systematically tackle and solve problems from lists such as the following:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_problems

num42··on Invisible Companies
https://ricor.com/product/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_champions

num42··on Microduck
I found a few open-source small bipedal robots on the internet. There are actually many open-source robots available:

[1]. https://robotics.umich.edu/news/2024/a-smaller-simpler-biped...

https://github.com/daviddoo02/Legolas-an-open-source-biped

[2].https://github.com/MuShibo/Micro-Wheeled_leg-Robot

[3].https://github.com/Yuexuan9/Tinker

Quadruped:

[1].https://github.com/stanfordroboticsclub/StanfordQuadruped

[2].https://open-dynamic-robot-initiative.github.io/

num42··on Anna's Archive Owes $340 Million, Lost Several Domains, but It's Still Online
Long live Anna’s Archive. I stand on the shoulders of the Internet, Wikipedia, Anna’s Archive, Z-Library, LibGen, YouTube, Hacker News, Reddit, and Sci-Hub.

I deeply admire the people who are obsessed with their passions and strive to build things that will lay the foundations for others.

num42··on Meteoric – Drones that clear clouds over solar farms
Interesting, but off topic: What could go wrong if it’s done in the long term? What are the possible edge cases for this application? Will it work in complex weather conditions?
num42··on A Kantian Critique of "Sorry" by Justin Bieber
Good article! Off topic, It reminds me of this:

https://www.bensparks.co.uk/talk/the-sacred-geometry-of-chan...

num42··on Geolocating a random island using geometry and CUDA programming
Good article! Off-topic, Is Palantir doing the same thing with its internal software to geolocate?
num42··on We're not done with point clouds
In my opinion, it's not just robotics, there are so many processes involved in manufacturing a single high-performance bolt used in an F1 racing car.

Life of Bolt(2016)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iptAkpqjtMQ

Most high quality systems performance relies heavily on high-quality subsystems to achieve optimal performance.

num42··on How I use LLMs to learn complex topics
There is something called tacit knowledge that cannot be easily learned through LLMs. LLMs are currently very good for research and theoretical knowledge. For example, learning how to make mechanical watches involves a lot of hands on, tacit knowledge. That skill would also be transferable to building other precision instruments. I don’t think we can currently learn these kinds of skills easily with the help of LLMs.

Even if you know everything about bicycles their mechanics, components, and how they work you still have to learn how to actually build, repair, or ride one through practice. Knowing, understanding, learning, and practicing are completely different things.

There are also niche areas of expertise that can take years to develop,not just to the point where you know the terminology and jargon, but where you understand the nuances of the field, can recognize the "unknown unknowns", and eventually have the ability to push the boundaries of existing knowledge. Maybe that is what we should really call learning: not simply acquiring information, but developing enough understanding and practical experience to contribute something new to the field.

Ironically, on the same front page of HN, there is a post about Andrew Wiles and this. I don’t think I would be able to comprehend Fermat’s Last Theorem, the Poincaré Conjecture, or Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems, even with the availability of LLMs.

num42··on Four simple rules behind Japan's most liveable cities
> 4. Maintain manners in shared spaces

Before reading the article, I guessed that it would ultimately be about human cooperation. Most discussions about human activities seem to come back to how people work together and respect shared spaces.

I also think this idea extends to environmental problems. In the end, they still boil down to human cooperation. If we want to solve environmental problems, we first have to solve problems of human cooperation. Simply put, to reduce conflict between humans and nature, we must first reduce conflict among humans.

num42··on AMD acquires Taalas to boost inference performance by etching models in silicon
I have used chatjimmy before, it is incredibly fast, waiting for latest SOTA model on the chips in future. Great!
num42··on Learn how chips are made with this Rollercoaster Tycoon-inspired animation
Great Work! I always wanted to make this kind of thing but targeted for ASML EVU machine! This is so great.
num42··on Four Time Scales for Technology Development and Deployment
This reminded me of NASA's Technology Readiness Levels.

https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/somd/space-communications-...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_readiness_level

num42··on Firefighter arson a long-standing issue – expert
Maybe politicians. They try to stage violent attacks against themselves and then accuse other parties for their own political gain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_flag

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