frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

Open in hackernews

Understanding Moravec's Paradox

https://hexhowells.com/posts/moravecs-paradox.html
18•hexhowells•3d ago

Comments

cwmoore•6h ago
Put all the bad robots in jail, for UBI.

EDIT: someone has to order the license plates

joe_the_user•3h ago
Any attention on Moravec's paradox is good imo because it is important.

That said, the article starts with several problems.

1) Claims that it isn't a paradox, which is just silly. A paradox is a counter-intuitive result. The result is generally counter-intuitive whatever explanation you give. Zeno's paradox remains a paradox despite calculus essentially explaining it, etc.

2) Calls the article "Understanding Moravec's Paradox" when it should be called "My Explanation of Moravec's Paradox".

3) The author's final explanation seems kind of simplistic; "Human activities just have a large search space". IDK. Human activity sometimes does still in things that aren't walking also. I mean, "not enough data" is an explanation why neural networks can't do a bunch of things. But not all programs are neural networks. One of the things humans are really good at is learning things from a few examples. A serious explanation of Moravec's Paradox would have to explain this as well imo.

cwmoore•2h ago
Indeed, also ideally, the 2 second rule.
neerajsi•45m ago
> mean, "not enough data" is an explanation why neural networks can't do a bunch of things... One of the things humans are really good at is learning things from a few examples

I dispute the search space problem for something like folding clothes. Like a lot of human actions in space, folding clothes and other motor tasks are hierarchical sequences of smaller tasks that are strung together, similar to a sentence or paragraph of text.

We can probably learn things from each other from few examples because we are leaning on a large library of subtasks that all have learned or which are innate, and the actual novel learning of sequencing and ordering is relatively small to get to the new reward.

I expect soon we'll get AIs that have part of their training be unsupervised rl in a physics simulation, if it's not being done already.

qrios•2h ago
Why the name „Moravec“ is two times correct in this article, but it is misspelled if it is a link text.

Code review can be better

https://tigerbeetle.com/blog/2025-08-04-code-review-can-be-better/
184•sealeck•6h ago•76 comments

I've never had a real adversary

https://inoticeiamconfused.substack.com/p/ive-never-had-a-real-adversary
42•walterbell•3h ago•2 comments

Show HN: I was curious about spherical helix, ended up making this visualization

https://visualrambling.space/moving-objects-in-3d/
695•damarberlari•15h ago•122 comments

Contrasting Data and Objects (2018)

https://www.tedinski.com/2018/01/23/data-objects-and-being-railroaded-into-misdesign.html
7•dvrp•40m ago•0 comments

SK hynix dethrones Samsung as world’s top DRAM maker

https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2025-08-15/business/tech/Thanks-Nvidia-SK-hynix-dethrones-Samsung-as-worlds-top-DRAM-maker-for-first-time-in-over-30-years/2376834
99•ksec•3d ago•31 comments

Epson MX-80 Fonts

https://mw.rat.bz/MX-80/
41•m_walden•3d ago•9 comments

A statistical analysis of Rotten Tomatoes

https://www.statsignificant.com/p/is-rotten-tomatoes-still-reliable
79•m463•5h ago•32 comments

'Reading crisis' prompts Denmark to end 25% tax on books

https://www.rte.ie/news/world/2025/0820/1529397-denmark-book-tax/
15•austinallegro•27m ago•2 comments

Why are anime catgirls blocking my access to the Linux kernel?

https://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/anubis.html
388•taviso•14h ago•411 comments

Gemma 3 270M re-implemented in pure PyTorch for local tinkering

https://github.com/rasbt/LLMs-from-scratch/tree/main/ch05/12_gemma3
339•ModelForge•15h ago•50 comments

The Pleasure of Patterns in Art

https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/why-repetition-in-art-pleases-the-brain/
10•prismatic•1h ago•1 comments

Mirror Ball Emoji Proposal (2018) [pdf]

https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2019/19310-mirror-ball-emoji.pdf
8•michalc•3d ago•0 comments

SimpleIDE

https://github.com/jamesplotts/simpleide
51•impendingchange•6h ago•24 comments

Launch HN: Channel3 (YC S25) – A database of every product on the internet

103•glawrence13•14h ago•61 comments

Show HN: PlutoPrint – Generate PDFs and PNGs from HTML with Python

https://github.com/plutoprint/plutoprint
107•sammycage•9h ago•21 comments

Home Depot sued for 'secretly' using facial recognition at self-checkouts

https://petapixel.com/2025/08/20/home-depot-sued-for-secretly-using-facial-recognition-technology-on-self-checkout-cameras/
66•mikece•14h ago•60 comments

Sequoia backs Zed

https://zed.dev/blog/sequoia-backs-zed
344•vquemener•17h ago•216 comments

An Update on Pytype

https://github.com/google/pytype
162•mxmlnkn•12h ago•53 comments

Zedless: Zed fork focused on privacy and being local-first

https://github.com/zedless-editor/zed
443•homebrewer•10h ago•254 comments

Advice for Tech Non-Profits

https://mitchellh.com/writing/advice-for-tech-nonprofits
31•ksec•5h ago•8 comments

Project to formalise a proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem in the Lean theorem prover

https://imperialcollegelondon.github.io/FLT/
93•ljlolel•11h ago•66 comments

Coris (YC S22) Is Hiring

https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/coris/jobs/rqO40yy-ai-engineer
1•smaddali•8h ago

French firm Gouach is pitching an Infinite Battery with replaceable cells

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/05/gouach-wants-you-to-insert-and-pluck-the-cells-from-its-infinite-e-bike-battery/
70•pabs3•3d ago•55 comments

Introduction to AT Protocol

https://mackuba.eu/2025/08/20/introduction-to-atproto/
149•psionides•10h ago•75 comments

Creating 3D Worlds with HTML and CSS (2013)

https://keithclark.co.uk/articles/creating-3d-worlds-with-html-and-css/
18•razodactyl•4h ago•4 comments

Show HN: Luminal – Open-source, search-based GPU compiler

https://github.com/luminal-ai/luminal
101•jafioti•13h ago•48 comments

OPA maintainers and Styra employees hired by Apple

https://blog.openpolicyagent.org/note-from-teemu-tim-and-torin-to-the-open-policy-agent-community-2dbbfe494371
122•crcsmnky•14h ago•42 comments

How to stop feeling lost in tech: the wafflehouse method

https://www.yacinemahdid.com/p/how-to-stop-feeling-lost-in-tech
92•research_pie•4h ago•51 comments

Pixel 10 Phones

https://blog.google/products/pixel/google-pixel-10-pro-xl/
381•gotmedium•12h ago•735 comments

Tidewave Web: in-browser coding agent for Rails and Phoenix

https://tidewave.ai/blog/tidewave-web-phoenix-rails
275•kieloo•20h ago•50 comments