[OkGoDoIt]

If 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]

Not your mistake, he does his best to imply that the hats are dropping on heads.

He's got a future in marketing.

[6510]

Ah right, a product with AI that doesn't work.

[TeMPOraL]

You can scratch out the "with AI" part and it still is what marketing is about selling.

[EGreg]

Sounds a bit like this is the new Web3 LOL

[KennyBlanken]

I mean, the site is pretty blatant viral marketing for both his drop-shipped-hats-from-china side hustle and (I'm going to go out on a wild limb here and guess) his employer's ML-dataset-management-related startup.

I wish cool stuff like this wasn't always sullied by the slimy feeling from it only being done to draw attention to some startup sitting smack in the middle of the trendiest buzzwords of the month.

[lupire]

Flag the scam spam submission

[Gigablah]

You’ll have to flag a lot more submissions then. HN is submarine article central

[dauertewigkeit]

The whole blog post is genius from a marketing perspective.

[laeri]

Also the use of the words "dropshipping" and "windowshopping"

[throwaway290]

And "AI" for OpenCV

[topherclay]

OpenCV was not the "AI" here, the "AI" was a computer vision model trained at the roboflow website that he mentioned multiple times and that he used in the line commented with "# Directly pass the frames to the Roboflow model".

[pcrh]

OP is well involved in marketing, it seems. See:

https://mrsteinberg.com/

[surfingdino]

> He's got a future in marketing.

... of AI

[biftek]

The government would probably be knocking on his door if he developed a guided hat dropping system

[cypherpunks01]

Yes, there's truly huge interest in the technical ability to accurately place hats on people of all ages and backgrounds, across the globe.

[WJW]

I can assure you that if you develop a system to accurately place objects (bombs, say) on top of people and post the code on the open internet for everyone to see, the government will indeed have some critical question for you.

[GeneralMayhem]

Accurately placing heavy, aerodynamic objects onto people when you start out directly above them is not very difficult. The hard parts are either placing the object on top of the person from a few hundred or thousand miles away, or - in this case - placing an object that tends to flutter rather than follow a ballistic trajectory.

[thaumasiotes]

> Accurately placing heavy, aerodynamic objects onto people when you start out directly above them is not very difficult.

It's still difficult; to do that, you need to know the wind speed at every point between them and you.

Or you need to be so close that the wind speed doesn't matter, but at that point nobody's going to be impressed that you can hit them.

[astrange]

One way to do it in this case would be to lower it on a rope instead of just dropping it. But maybe guidance fins would work too.

[lelandfe]

They are way ahead of you: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire-guided_missile

[jb1991]

I invite you to try it yourself to see if it is difficult or not.

[_carbyau_]

The trick is knowing which one to place the thing upon.

[chris_wot]

Well, they might want to expand their markets.

[op00to]

The OP is clearly talking about hats here. Wildly different problem spaces. Styles, whimsy, and so on.

[KennyBlanken]

I can assure you that you have no idea what you're talking about, starting with the fact that you obviously didn't watch the video.

It isn't aiming anything. It isn't adjusting for anything. It's doing so from a stationary point.

The ML isn't used for anything other than a simple "is there the thing I was trained to look for within this area?" It's basically a ML version of something one could pretty easily do in OpenCV.

There's NOTHING about this useful for aerial bombing, which involves dozens of problems much harder than "this is the spot you should aim for."

There are probably dozens of smartphone apps for helping marksmen calculate adjustments that are about a hundred times more complicated, and more useful for (potentially) hurting people, than this.

And then there's this Stuff Made Here project where the guy makes a robotic bow that can track objects and hit them no matter where you're aiming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MkrNVic7pw&pp=ygUTYm93IHRoY...

I can't stand people who act like it's reasonable for the government to monitor and harass people for stuff like this. The second our government is harassing him or the SMH guy, I'm moving to Canada.

[swores]

You've replied to somebody talking about "if somebody developed (something not in this blog post)" with a long angry rant as if they had imagined the blog post claimed it had developed that thing.

[vsuperpower2020]

Ahh, the constant war between obviously bullshit articles and comments who didn't even look at the article they're commenting on.

[krisoft]

It is not that they haven't read the article but they are commenting on a thread which is mussing about how much the government would be interested in if (IF!) someone would develop what the article title implies they developed but hasn't in reality.

[gumby]

Ai-augmented compulsory hat rules are the next hot market: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hat_Revolution

[JCharante]

The RC plane fandom on youtube has started to manufacture and drop fake bombs onto miniature targets. The bombs even have fins. I kinda wonder how long until they start adding electronics and flaps to start guiding the bomb, and how far they can get before they start to have feds knocking on their doors. I'd be interested in working on it but I'd prefer to keep my TSA precheck clearance.

[nicbou]

The technology has great potential to blow some people's minds... up.

[xsmasher]

C'mon, what could they possibly use a phase-conjugate tracking system for?

[richardw]

Or using the propeller to chase you until it is satisfied that it’s on your head.

[gumby]

The Ukrainians are going to corner the market for prank propellor hat drones once they win this war.

[dheera]

It looks like it has more to do with the aerodynamics of the hat than the wind. It also hits a ledge on its way down in the video.

It seems like both of these are tractable issues.

A round hat that is spun with a significant initial angular momentum would probably fair better in landing more predictably.

[oniony]

Or could just add a brick to the hat to give it some heft.

[sexy_seedbox]

Sir, that would be terrorism.

[lupire]

That's the interesting part of the hack, and not attempted at all.

[xnx]

> he was using AI to actually land it directly on a person’s head

DARPA would definitely come knocking

[Animats]

I was disappointed by that, too.

Now if you had terminal guidance... Put flaps on the hat, and use shape-memory alloy wire and a coin cell to actuate them. The hats follow a laser beam projected by the drop unit. Minimal electronics required in the hat. This is how some "smart bombs" work.

[EGreg]

I know AI can do a lot but predict wind patterns? LOL

Imagine using AI to drop an object and it falls perfectly where you want it.

[thaumasiotes]

> Imagine using AI to drop an object and it falls perfectly where you want it.

There is a fantasy series that depicts this as a game that two young gods would play together when they were growing up. (Or rather, since one of them had vastly superior foresight to the other one, he'd bully his brother into playing with him.)

[op00to]

It can pre-drop a pre-hat, and adjust for where the pre-hat lands.

[lupire]

The pre-hat would be a free hat?

[op00to]

Yes the first one is always free.

[randomdata]

But will it free Hat?

[flir]

He needs to put the AI in the hat. Hat-drones.

Once he's done that, the military sector beckons.

[htrp]

Gotta raise a from a defencetech fund first

[skhr0680]

Lunar Lander 2024

[s0rce]

This is exactly what I was expecting and I Was disappointed. Still mildly interesting but I don't really get it.