Hacker News

Article URL: https://phys.org/news/2024-12-donut-effect-persists-major-cities.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42307530

Points: 1

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I want to build a private AI setup for my company. Im thinking of hosting our model locally instead of in the cloud, using a server at the office that my team can access. Has anyone else done this and had success with it?

This setup will be used internally for uncensored chat, coding, image gen and analysis.

We're thinking of using a combo of hardware:

- RTX 4090 GPU (heard it's a beast)

- Threadripper Pro 5955WX (anyone used this one before?)

- SSD NVMe 1TB

What are your picks for a local AI setup? And what’s the minimum budget to achieve it?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42307524

Points: 1

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Article URL: https://thoughtcurrents.substack.com/p/coomer-capitalism

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42307492

Points: 1

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Article URL: https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/international-operation-takes-down-another-encrypted-messaging-service-used-criminals

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42307491

Points: 1

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Article URL: https://weltge.ist/history/pauperism-what-it-is-and-how-it-transformed-europe

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42307476

Points: 1

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When OpenAI released Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision in 2021, it sparked a multimodal semantic search revolution. While the concept wasn’t new, the paper catalyzed a shift in the industry, inspiring a wave of semantic search tools. These advances delivered a leap forward in search quality compared to traditional lexical search, with adopters reporting significant improvements in conversion rates and revenue.

But semantic search alone isn’t the endgame. Productionizing search remains a challenge, and hybrid search—combining keyword precision with semantic depth—is still found in the state-of-the-art for relevancy. The next frontier lies in sophisticated reranking techniques, particularly learning-to-rank (LTR) models. By leveraging behavioral signals and user preferences, these approaches optimize search outcomes far beyond just query relevance, enabling personalized and adaptive experiences. Such models dynamically tailor search results based on historical interactions, user context, and business objectives, balancing relevance, diversity, and fairness. The result? Smarter, more impactful search that drives better user experiences and business outcomes.

We built Shaped on the belief that LTR is the future of content & product discovery, and that includes LTR for search. Taking the benefits of personalization as an example – why should every user get the same results when their needs and behaviors differ?

Shaped is a platform designed to bring AI-native search to the 99%. With an emphasis on easy integration, rapid experimentation, and flexible configurability, developers can deploy advanced search and recommendation systems in less than a sprint.

Here's how it works:

Connect your datastack, including multi-modal item catalog and optional real-time event streams. Choose your objective (e.g., clicks, new-user activation) using a flexible value-model interface. By default, Shaped selects the optimal search architecture, including search type and reranking models, however, you can configure all of this manually. Shaped deploys and orchestrates the infrastructure, models and pipelines needed for a scalable, AI-native search engine with continuous indexing and learning-to-rank model training. Access a UI for performance monitoring and result exploration.

Check out our demo sandbox at (play.shaped.ai) and try the text query input. We’d love your feedback and thoughts on how to push AI powered search further!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42307471

Points: 6

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Article URL: https://www.securityweek.com/hackers-stole-1-49-billion-in-cryptocurrency-to-date-in-2024/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42307463

Points: 1

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Article URL: https://www.theregister.com/2024/12/03/ncsc_annual_review/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42307458

Points: 1

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Article URL: https://www.decodable.co/blog/failover-replication-slots-with-postgres-17

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42307456

Points: 1

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Article URL: https://gizmodo.com/apple-illegally-surveilled-and-censored-workers-employee-lawsuit-says-2000533053

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42307451

Points: 2

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Article URL: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2024-12-02/the-casual-moviegoer-is-a-thing-of-the-past-thats-a-big-problem-for-hollywood

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42307446

Points: 3

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Article URL: https://www.theregister.com/2024/12/03/russia_hydra_sentencing/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42307442

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

I'm releasing an early version of a minimal WebRTC SFU video relay server, with the major differentiators being it can easily run on OpenWrt and it has the ability to trunk all tracks to the cloud, and vice versa:

Code: https://github.com/atomirex/umbrella

Demo: https://x.com/atomirex/status/1863956802984984728

* Golang with Pion. Runs on lots of things (including OpenWrt APs, Macs, Linux containers)

* Typescript/React client, with protobuf based signalling, works with Chrome, Firefox and Safari

* "Backhaul" means SFUs can act as clients to other SFUs, and then forward everything they receive

* Reasonably stable, including as you start/stop/start/stop backhauls and participants come and go repeatedly

This is very early days, but you can have four 720P participants on a D-Link AX3200 access point, and it will only use about 25% of the CPU. I should test with more!

If you try it let me know how it goes.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42307440

Points: 1

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Article URL: https://www.indiatoday.in/trending-news/story/tiny-robot-kidnaps-12-larger-bots-chinese-showroom-shanghai-viral-video-2636943-2024-11-21

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42307433

Points: 2

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Article URL: https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/china-bans-exports-gallium-germanium-antimony-us-2024-12-03/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42307426

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

Article URL: https://onepercentrule.substack.com/p/hugo-steinhauss-legacy-in-the-age

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42307422

Points: 2

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Article URL: https://github.com/remichu-ai/gallama

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42307419

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

In an era where technology often overshadows creativity, the Mind Art app stands out as a groundbreaking innovation. Launched on November 26, 2024, this revolutionary application combines the timeless beauty of art with cutting-edge artificial intelligence. Behind this remarkable project is Elena Stepkina—an artist, art therapist, and visionary entrepreneur who has redefined the boundaries of creativity—along with a team of top developers who brought this idea to life.

Where Art Meets Technology

Elena Stepkina’s career has always been a vivid testament to her belief in the transformative power of art. From exhibitions at the Tretyakov Gallery to Manhattan, she has gained global recognition for her talent and vision. But her ambitions extend far beyond traditional art spaces.

Mind Art, her latest creation, is more than just an app—it’s a gateway to creativity for millions. Designed to make art accessible to everyone, Mind Art allows users to create stunning digital paintings by blending their emotions, memories, and ideas with AI-powered tools.

“The goal of Mind Art is simple yet profound: to empower people to express themselves through art and preserve the best moments of their lives,” explains Stepkina.

How Mind Art Works

The app’s design is as intuitive as it is powerful. Users begin by selecting whether they want to create a memory or a goal in the form of a painting. After answering a series of simple questions, the magic happens! The app’s AI generates unique visual interpretations, transforming abstract emotions into vibrant digital masterpieces. Currently, the app is available in two languages.

Art for Everyone

Mind Art is more than just a creative tool—it’s a force democratizing the world of art. In a society where access to traditional art education and resources is often limited, Mind Art breaks down these barriers.

“You don’t need expensive materials or years of training to create something beautiful,” says Elena. “All you need is the desire to create.”

The app also serves as a therapeutic tool, reflecting Elena’s expertise in art therapy. By engaging in the creative process, users reduce stress, improve focus, and find inspiration.

A Visionary’s Journey

Stepkina’s journey to creating Mind Art is as inspiring as the app itself. A successful artist and author of three books published in 49 countries, she is also a member of prestigious organizations such as the Eurasian Art Union, the International Union of Teachers-Artists, and the All-Russian Art Therapy Association.

Publications about Elena have been featured in more than 80 countries worldwide, and the combined reach of online galleries showcasing her artwork exceeds 157 million people monthly.

Her experience in both artistic and technological fields provided the perfect foundation for developing Mind Art. Combining artistic expertise with a deep understanding of human emotions and advanced technology, she created a tool that resonates with audiences worldwide.

Looking Ahead

The launch of Mind Art is just the beginning. Elena envisions a future where creativity and technology continue to intersect in meaningful ways.

“Creativity is the essence of what makes us human,” says Elena. “With Mind Art, we’re not just creating digital paintings—we’re building bridges between technology and the human soul.”

Why Mind Art Matters

Mind Art is not just an app—it’s a movement. In a world that often prioritizes productivity over creativity, it reminds us of the joy and importance of self-expression. By making art accessible to everyone, the app inspires users to explore new dimensions of their imagination.

Today, we celebrate not only the launch of Mind Art but also the visionary who brought it to life. Elena Stepkina has proven that art and technology are not opposites but tools that, together, can unlock human potential.

The future of creativity has arrived, and its name is Mind Art.

By Jean Hale December 2, 2024

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42307394

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

Hey HN, we’re Shashij, Sidhant, and Tarush, founders of Vocera AI (https://www.vocera.ai) – a platform that automates the testing and monitoring of AI voice agents. We’re building the product we wish we had when we were developing voice agents. Here’s a demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRtAb_E60jY. You can engage in a roleplay as well which we made just for fun: https://www.vocera.ai/talk.

We were working on voice agents in healthcare, and kept running into the same problem: manually testing was incredibly time-consuming and error-prone. Testing voice AI in a comprehensive way was far more difficult than we had anticipated – not just the setup, but the ongoing monitoring of production calls. Despite our best efforts, some calls still failed once we went live.

The main challenges we faced were: (1) Demonstrating reliability to customers for production was really tough; (2) Manual testing was incomplete and didn't cover edge cases; (3) We couldn’t easily simulate all possible conversations, especially with diverse customer personas; (4) Monitoring every production call manually was a huge time sink.

We built Vocera to solve these problems. Vocera automatically simulates real personas, generates a wide range of testing scenarios from your prompts/call scripts and monitors all production calls. The result? You can be sure your voice agents are reliable, and you get real-time insights into how they’re performing.

Our platform tests how your AI responds to diverse personas, evaluates the conversation against different metrics and gives you directed feedback on the issues.

What’s different about us is that we don’t just automate the evaluation. We generate scenarios and metrics automatically, so developers do not have to spend time defining their scenarios or eval metrics. This saves them a ton of time. Obviously, we give them the option to define these manually as well. Also, we provide detailed analytics on the agent's performance across simulations so developers do not need to listen to all call recordings manually.

If you’re building voice agents and want to ensure they’re reliable and production-ready, or if you’re just interested in the challenges of Voice AI, we’d love to chat.

We’d love to get your feedback, thoughts, or experiences related to testing voice agents!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42307393

Points: 2

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Article URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42307352

Points: 2

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