[zxcvbnm]

It 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...

[octocop]

you must be great at parties

[dang]

Please don't cross into personal attack and please don't do drive-by internet tropes.

This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

[armada651]

Sometimes someone has to tell the party when they've come up with a potentially deadly idea no matter how much of a killjoy that may be.

[the-chitmonger]

Case in point - my friends wanted to imbibe a certain white powder with alcohol and I had to let them know that it is magnitudes more toxic to take them together. Did they have a less fun time? Probably. But I won't have their premature deaths on my conscience.

[jjulius]

So, now we're comparing a hat dropping one or two stories to overdosing on a combination of drugs and alcohol?

It'd be nice if we could all just chill the hell out and let someone's fun, stupid, kinda pointless project just be someone's fun, stupid, kinda pointless project.

Edit: I don't mind the downvotes, but do feel free to tell me if I'm off base for thinking comparing this project to overdosing is a hell of a stretch.

[the-chitmonger]

I was responding with an anecdote to the comment that sometimes it's important to communicate concerns, even if it means being a killjoy. Didn't mean for it to sound like I was trying to equate the AI hat-dropper to potentially overdosing, just a recent occurrence that I was reminded of when I saw the parent comment.

[rob74]

Imagine walking (or in this case, standing around) on a sidewalk just going about your business. Then, imagine something drops on your head, literally out of the blue. In a city littered with scaffolding designed to prevent pedestrians being injured by stuff dropping from buildings. Further, imagine you are easily scared and/or have a weak heart. So, I think it's not a huge stretch to say that, with enough unlucky coincidences, this also might kill someone.

[cutemonster]

I think it'd almost certainly eventually kill someone with a pacemaker and a weak heart.

(Or maybe cause someone to take a sudden step away from the sidewalk)

(I wonder if the title is a bit clickbait and the hat dropper in fact tries out this new tech only on friends who are prepared already, not random strangers?)

[armada651]

I don't think he was making that comparison. I think this he was more referring to the mentality of "you must be fun at parties" whenever someone speaks up with some concerns about an idea.

[the-chitmonger]

Thanks for getting where I was coming from, haha.

[maxlin]

Most parties serve alcoholic drinks. Alcohol is a common reason for sudden and early deaths. Do you go around saying that in every party you attend?

[CleanRoomClub]

I think it’s more akin to telling someone at the party that it’d be stupid to chug that whole bottle of liquor on a dare.

[addicted]

Drinking alcohol is almost certainly more dangerous than dropping hats.

This is not even close.

Heck, pick any one negative impact of drinking alcohol at parties (impaired driving, or long term health effects, or impaired judgment, etc) and that individual impact would probably be orders of magnitude worse than the total negative impact of dropping hats.

[abirch]

If someone spikes the punch with alcohol that's bad. If everyone is consenting: drop away. If they don't consent please leave them alone.

[badRNG]

Is dropping a hat really comparable to chugging a whole bottle of liquor?

[solsane]

It is a hat. Chugging a bottle of liquor has way more harm potential.

[Retric]

Only if you’re focused on the individual instead of risk to unrelated 3rd parties.

[jncfhnb]

Do you go around qualifying every point with a hyperbolic example to show that it doesn’t generalize at every party that you attend?

[HPMOR]

Yes, you don’t?

[mhb]

Deadly? More like the music's too loud.

[dleslie]

I'm thinking it's assault.

Imagine being on the sidewalk and someone just hucks a hat at your head, how would that feel? More than a little alarming for many, I should think.

How is it not clear that it's inappropriate to be violating others' personal space without their consent and without warning, to force clothing upon them no less?

[s3p]

If a hat falls on me when I'm outside I promise you my first thought will not be about how the wind assaulted me without consent...

[julesallen]

If you actually read the article all will be much clearer.

[borski]

Read the article. It is opt-in.

[ertgbnm]

Eh, it's cute and I seriously doubt he is using this when not at home since it is a single use device.

But also I am shocked that there is a New Yorker that would pick up a hat from the street and put it on their head. My first thought would be, "how much lice is in this thing?"

[sandworm101]

As opposed to the hat in the store that has been tried on by a dozen tourists?

[aiauthoritydev]

Exactly my thoughts. I dont want anything being dropped on me when I am riding my bike or walking with an infant in a stroller. But I am hoping the guy did this just to solve problems and not actually dropping hats on others.

[julesallen]

"Here a busy New Yorker *can book a 5 minute time slot*, pay for a hat, stand in a spot under my window for 3 seconds, have a hat put on their head, and get on with their extremely important, extemely busy day all within a single New York minute."

[karolist]

This perspective is being on the right side in the bell curve meme graph. Also why did they copy Noogler hat design?

[fcarraldo]

Google didn't invent the propeller hat.

[rvnx]

They just popularized it for humiliating new employees.

[karolist]

Strange perspective, it's not like they make employees wear them around the office, it's more so a message that you're new and it's ok, relax and take your time to onboard ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[askl]

[flagged]

[rrgok]

He should've have said "Blazingly fast AI hat dropper, in Rust"

[Narishma]

"running on a M4 macbook and controlled by a raspberry pi"

[simianparrot]

And yet again it’s an existing technology (image recognition) with a lick of AI paint

[codingdave]

Image 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]

No 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.

[stronglikedan]

Babies with hats?! Won't somebody think of the children!

[iamleppert]

Also no permitting, especially in NYC! Eeek!