Hacker News Reader

robgon US Copyright Office wants to hear what people think about AI and copyright

These calls for public comment are really important to good government. If you or someone you know will be affected by the potential for new regulations, get the word out to leave comments. All are read, considered, and become part of the public record. Best if concerns and potential remedies are stated in a neutral tone. Write like you’re talking to someone at a government desk.

robgon NYC Lost 100K Homes in Apartment-to-House Conversions

I was struck by the home / house contrast in the original headline but left as is because, in American English, home is a nice way of saying where someone lives regardless of the type of structure, apartment or house or even a houseboat. The flip side is someone can be homeless and living in their car or a shelter, neither would typically be thought of as homes.

robgon Screen Apnea

Possible for Apple to readily roll up the data for Watch and iOS users, but what’s the product angle? Take a break to meditate / breathe / do yoga is just another recommendation to use another app?

robgon Growing scientific interest in vagus nerve stimulation

The automatic feedback loop between heart and lungs is really cool. The more you slow your breathing the more you slow your heart. You are choosing to breathe slower via your vagus nerve. The heart responds accordingly.

By contrast the adrenal cortex, a little brain on top of the kidneys, automatically triggers fight or flight with threat detection. By the time you realize it your heart rate is already increasing. Breathing slowly, preferably through your nose, counteracts that physiological stress.

See also the last 100 years of research on the autonomic nervous system.

robgon 1919 cartoon depicting the use of a ‘pocket telephone’

Link wasn’t working for me, here’s the original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6a4T2tJaSU

robgon An airline said her bag was lost, her tracker said otherwise. She flew to get it

Pro-tip: You can reach the baggage offices by calling the airport and asking them to connect you.

robgon fMRI-to-image with contrastive learning and diffusion priors

Awesome, predicting words from fMRI has been around for a while and visual cortex can be mapped well.

That said, and coming from a background in neuroimaging 20 years ago, what’s the applicability? MRI hasn’t gotten that much more cost effective for more widespread uses. Magnets are expensive.

robgon Apple plans a slow, appointment-only rollout of Vision Pro

1000%. I’ve worked for almost 15 years in empathic computing, what we have now for screen time is already deeply dystopian. So the question remains how next generation computing experiences can make our connected lives better. Because connectivity isnt going away, and maybe if we’re strapping it to our face we’ll be much more conscious of the times we choose not to.

robgon Apple plans a slow, appointment-only rollout of Vision Pro

Better context switching from work to meditation to entertainment then sleep. Anything health serious in that direction with biomarkers would be far better than what we have now for screen time.

robgon Apple plans a slow, appointment-only rollout of Vision Pro

To scale into the mass market…

robgon Apple plans a slow, appointment-only rollout of Vision Pro

Bespoke = luxury. Someone else mentioned the Watch fittings and clearly that wasn’t needed to scale. This might be - but only one way to find out.

robgon Apple plans a slow, appointment-only rollout of Vision Pro

Love this so much - doing things that don’t scale well.

robgon Show HN: Generate your YC application with GPT-4

There are a bunch of different expectations depending on the types and agencies. I suggest starting at SBIR.gov then really happy to help in any way. Most time consuming part is tailoring the answers to all of the sections.

robgon Apple plans a slow, appointment-only rollout of Vision Pro

Some examples:

- Game play that changes with your heart rate

- Switching easily from work mode to a meditation

- Getting ready for bed by watching a VR sunset

Imagine walking into an Apple Store and seeing as new customers are getting fitted and exploring these experiences on 100” OLEDs. Converting the masses requires displaying entirely new experiences, from work to play.

robgon Show HN: Generate your YC application with GPT-4

Love this! Have you looked at a service for completing grant applications?

robgon Apple plans a slow, appointment-only rollout of Vision Pro

Wow, imagine if Apple starts integrating their stores with their products into connected life experiences. The stores become showcases for personalized experiences for life, work, and play. Companies are already integrating Watch and VisionPro with biofeedback. Might be something consumers need to deeply experience to believe, from the spatial desktop to music, games, and movies, desk to couch to bed.

robgon Threads already has over 95M posts

If only it wasn’t Facebook as the owner, I’d be interested.

robgon New Zealand teachers shocked at leaked curriculumn – 'Where's the science?'

Anyone know of a school district that teaches neuroscience from a young age? Basically a user’s guide to the brain? There’s so much emphasis on mental health, shocked schools aren’t teaching how brains work best. The neurosciences have been clear on that topic for at least 30 years.

robgon Irregularities found during FDA inspection of Intas Pharmaceuticals

So instead of manufacturers bearing the cost of quality control during manufacturing you expect every single import to be tested for all potential contamination? How would that work exactly? And without documentation of quality assurance, how would any contamination be traced by the manufacturer?

robgon Irregularities found during FDA inspection of Intas Pharmaceuticals

So you treat each subsequent container load as a new batch without a potential common cause, like manufacturing defects? Testing every single batch for any possible harmful defects?

robgon Irregularities found during FDA inspection of Intas Pharmaceuticals

A random sample by definition isn’t the entire batch, so how would you define ‘batch’ without documentation? The FDA would force recall on the entire product entering the country? Until how many samples are cleared?

robgon Irregularities found during FDA inspection of Intas Pharmaceuticals

You don’t mention quality controls. What should FDA do if upon said random testing there are concerns? How can they and/or the manufacturer trace the causes without documentation?

robgon Neural networks in the 1990s

Highly recommend the exercises in Rumelhart and McClelland - Parallel Distributed Processing: Explorations in the Microstructure of Cognition from 1986-1987 (two volumes)

https://direct.mit.edu/books/book/4424/Parallel-Distributed-...

robgon The WFH future is destroying bosses' brains (2021)

Please tag with [2021]

robgon Police got called to an overcrowded presentation on “rejuvenation” technology

Click for bait, stay for the science.

robgon Rick Rubin’s creative genius

*On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.*

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

robgon Rick Rubin’s creative genius

I’ve been on HN since 2007. It has always been general interest.

robgon Rick Rubin’s creative genius

He was there at the beginning with Run DMC then the Beastie Boys, the latter was a punk rock band until he started to push them and as a member.

robgon Rick Rubin’s creative genius

Loved this podcast with Rubin and him being asked right up front what a music producer does.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/1sMxk3DfydYWasJVZ4Nqy5?si=J...

robgon Rick Rubin’s creative genius

Great example of the technicians and the artists dismissing the business development guy understanding users.

https://www.loudersound.com/features/walk-this-way-run-dmc-a...