Hacker News

points by Brendinooo 3 days ago | 0 comments

Pretty weird to see "Hacker News" coming out of the gate strongly against what appears to be a fun, cheap, extensible little hardware accessory. This is hardly the first accessory keypad to ever be made, and it's neat to see the AI use case driving people to mess around and try some ideas in this space.

(I'll add too - I am seeing a bunch of these come across my feeds now. Fun to see different options, people tinkering with hardware ideas!)

[–] jrowen 3 days ago

To me - and I would guess this is why others don't like it - this is the distillation of AI slop.

People get the value of AI all wrong. It's not supposed to be a one-and-done button. This mentality is why people think AI will make us dumber.

AI is best as a tool to probe the extents of your own understanding of a problem and identify gaps and vagaries. You should interact with it with a full keyboard mentality like you would a fellow human. In this way you will actually learn many things from it that strengthen your own understanding.

And yeah, on top of that, it will "do all the work" super fast. It's the ultimate pair programmer.

[–] Brendinooo 3 days ago

I dunno. I'm hardly some "run 20 agents overnight" kind of guy and I'm not an ASI guy, but this sentiment sort of reads like a monk who makes a living copying manuscripts, dictating how the new printing press technology should be used.

We are about three or four years in to a technology that has the potential to be world altering! This is absolutely the time to experiment with form factors and techniques, and challenge our own assumptions of what it is we actually do.

And even if you reject all of that, a utility like this one isn't even incompatible with your vision! Couldn't you program a key to say "explain this concept in clearer terms"? However you work with the tool, this gives you ways to use it better. That...seems really nice!

[–] jrowen 3 days ago

That's fascinating to me. I'm hitting usage limits on Claude Max and I think we've basically reached the singularity. I was moved to write an essay about it.

I'm fully there with ya but I don't understand how a device with such limited expressive power is bringing anything to the table. If you're just using voice, just use voice? Sure, in some sense, it's always cool to try ideas. But IMO anything new would try to improve on subtlety and richness of communication.

[–] Brendinooo 3 days ago

>but I don't understand how a device with such limited expressive power is bringing anything to the table

Well, to be fair, it is $35 hardware. Perhaps my defense of the idea in general led to some hyperbole about the specific thing.

[–] skeledrew 3 days ago

Why would you want a full keyboard when speech is good enough for most of the heavy lifting?

[–] jrowen 2 days ago

If you're going with speech, what does this do that you can't do with speech alone?

The value of keys is writing, supporting a composition and editing workflow.

[–] skeledrew 2 days ago

Speech can do it all but eventually fatigue sets in if you do try to do it all with speech. Like RSI from too much typing but much faster. Best to use speech for the occasional long prose and steering, and something else for the yes/no/accept/decline options so the throat gets reasonable breaks.

[–] blensor 3 days ago

cheap?

[–] Brendinooo 3 days ago

For niche/hobby-tier hardware? Yeah, I'd say so

[–] MisterPea 3 days ago

very much on brand for HN lol. probably not useful to see, but enjoy seeing fun products out there

[–] minatoaqua1 3 days ago

sayodevice cheaper if you want a hall effect keypad lol

[–] varispeed 3 days ago

Maybe something with quantum, like you don't know what agent asks until you look.