rolfus

The technology is amazing, for sure. But the success of the current CI tech is also a testament to how fantastically adaptable the human brain is.

A normal cochlea has 15-20.000 tonotopically mapped hair cells that turn mechanical movement into electric signals which the brain then turn into meaningful sound. The fact that the brain can also make sense of the electrical signals coming out of just twelve to sixteen little electrical contacts placed along a silicon noodle that gets shoved into the cochlea, and turn this crude signal into into speech and music, is nothing short of mind blowing!

Not quite; they estimate that the battery will hold at least 24 hours of charge after 15 years. Charging it back up takes one hour, and in the context of cochlear implants these are very good numbers. I think most people would be okay with a (let's say) 20-year reimplant cadence given the benefits of this technology - but this obviously depends on which country you happen to live in. I'm lucky enough to live in a place where cochlear implants (and the surgery) is free to whoever needs it.

This is fun!

From age 5 - 10 I remember almost exclusively producing rich imagery of people getting mauled by various defensive mechanisms. I searched for the keywords 'spikes', 'pitfalls', 'traps' and 'impaled' and nothing came up, so obviously none of my art has been submitted to this repository...

(I turned out OK by the way)

This is very useful information and comes at a perfect time! I use Openrouter for my newly released running tracker (I use it for live coaching and post-run debriefs). I've benchmarked a bunch of models over time to evaluate their aptitude for this specific task, and have noticed that sometimes a model can underperform for seemingly no reason. I'll be sure to include model providers in my benchmarking suite going forward!

Thank you - ordered!

I've been fascinated by Cephalopods since reading (the excellent) book "Other Minds" by Peter Godfrey-Smith. They are probably the closest we'll get to an alien intelligence. Their nervous systems evolved along a completely different evolutionary path from us vertebrates. It pains me that they are so short lived, though. I wonder what potential could be unlocked by their intelligence if they lived for 40 years or longer.

This is only tangentially directed at your reply, but this is the kind of statement that I'll sometimes hear other parents say, and it makes me think that they've completely forgotten what childhood was actually like. Like, the idea that normal, fun activities and sports are bad because they bear some abstract resemblance to adult violence feels very contrived and misses what childhood play is about.

Me and my partner did this as well, only using a HTC Vive. We modeled our bathroom in two different versions and could toggle between the two while "standing inside" the bathroom. The VR simulation was the deciding factor between the two layouts, as one just "felt" better in person.

Thanks for linking that comment! I wasn't familiar with the term, but it perfectly describes the pattern that manifests in every single HN thread about certain topics. The Grok announcement thread that is on the main page today is another perfect example.

We had much of the same skepticism and anti-EV propaganda here in Norway a decade ago, when EV's started becoming popular. The usual claims was that the batteries would have to be replaced every five years, the cars would stop working in the winters, the batteries are fire hazards, the power grid won't support everyone buying EV's, etc.. All of which turned out to not be true.

Today the market share for EV's is 98% and they account for the majority of the total number of cars on the road! The people who bough 1st. generation EV's as a number two car a decade ago chose EV's as their main car before long. My own vehicles are 7 and 12 years old and holding up well, despite the 12 year old having inferior battery chemistry compared to modern cars.

Change isn't always easy or smooth, but this one is inevitable.

The sun is greeting you! I drew these freehand, kind of quickly. And while I personally like the style and think it's a good fit for us, I did intend to make several sets of weather icons. At the very least I need to make the sun symbols adapt to the seasons - we don't really have a full sun during the darkest months of the year where I live.