Milton Friedman was once visiting China when he was shocked to see that, instead of modern tractors, thousands of workers were toiling away building a canal with shovels. He asked his host, a government bureaucrat, why more machines weren’t being used. The bureaucrat replied, “You don’t understand. This is a jobs program.” To which Milton responded, “Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal. If it’s jobs you want, you should give these workers spoons, not shovels!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOcz-H5u3Rk

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48300140

Points: 4

# Comments: 1

I talk more about the gran future here

https://www.hackyexperiments.com/blog/machines-of-loving-emb...

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48269457

Points: 43

# Comments: 60

Wrote about this and the impact of to jobs here: https://x.com/deepwhitman/status/2058324179506831372

I gave Claude a full end-to-end task of creating a graphic novel. I've been thinking about this idea of leveraging GPT-Image-2 for creating a comic book for a while, but didn't have the time to do it, so I said screw it, let's see if the models can figure it out.

I gave it full autonomy in choosing the story, artwork, and creating the end product. Here is a summary of the steps in its instructions:

1. Research the last 30 years of graphic novels 2. Come up with a story + art style that would resonate based on what worked in the past 3. Write the script 4. Break it up into image prompts for each page 5. Call a Codex subagent to generate the images using GPT-Image-2 (I could have swapped this for an API call, but I got a sub and didn't want to pay any more money than I'm already forking over)

Claude got to work... and a few hours later I got a 25-page PDF of the graphic novel.

I can easily extend this to more customized and longer storylines with specific artwork and maybe even swap out with Codex next time.

I was curious why it picked this particular theme (the setting is in Karachi) and protagonist, and Claude replied (accurately) that because I have a Pakistani name.

I used HyperFrames to create a quick video with some music.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48137187

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

This week they released talkie: a 13B model trained only on text written before 1931. No internet. No World War II. No transistor. The point isn't novelty, it's that a model frozen in 1930 is a clean lab for asking what AI actually generalizes vs. just memorizes. Can it independently invent a Turing machine? Predict the transistor? Learn to code purely from in-context examples?

Reading the thread I had a fun idea I couldn't shake.

What if you took the premise, experts from the past reacting to the future, and turned it into a podcast?

So I did. Meet The Coming Age, hosted by four characters frozen in 1930:

- Edmund Crale, the newspaperman

- Henry Aldrige Thorne, the historian

- Dr. Walter Brennan, the economist

- Theodore Marsden, the engineer

Episode 1 covers the networked age, from PCs and email through smartphones and social platforms.

Build: hosting talkie myself was a slog and I had problems using platforms, so I used Codex to orchestrate the back-and-forth with the model hosted on the chat webui and stitch the output into a clean script, then handed it off to Jellypod for voice synthesis and production.

Let me know if you have any ideas on where to take this show!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47944991

Points: 5

# Comments: 1

How about yes.

I found myself converging to this workflow for more complicated features. I would give the same prompt to Codex and Claude and ask each to create a PRD file for the feature.

The independence mattered, because the moment one model sees the other's plan, the answer collapses toward whoever spoke first.

Once I had the PRDs, I would manually ask both Codex and Claude to critique the other plan, and revise theirs based on the findings of the other. Eventually I would converge to a final PRD where both models had reached agreement.

This final PRD was meaningfully better than what either model produced alone.

Doing this manually was annoying, so I packaged it.

Presenting The Order of the Agents.

The Order of the Agents convenes a sworn fellowship of AI agents (Codex, Claude, and other CLIs you trust) around a single question. Each agent takes a position, challenges the others, and revises in turn, until the Order issues a final decree. Every oath, critique, and revision is recorded as Markdown, so the reasoning behind the decision is auditable, shareable, and yours to keep.

You can even do a grill-me style intake first to finesse the requirement before the Order convenes. That mode was inspired by Matt Pocock's grill-me skill.

You can install it locally with npm:

npm install agent-order

Requires codex and claude CLIs (or other agent CLIs you trust) already installed and logged in. Use it like this:

npx agent-order@latest "Research and draft a PRD for adding SSO to our app"

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47904220

Points: 5

# Comments: 0

The basic flow is: place SVG characters on a scene, write dialogue, pick voices, and render to MP4. It handles word timestamps, mouth cues, and lip-sync automatically.

This started as me playing around with Jellypod's Speech SDK and HeyGen's HyperFrames. I wanted a small tool that could go from script to video without a big animation pipeline and next thing I knew I was trying to create my own South Park style show and here we are. :D

A few details:

- desktop app built with Electron

- supports multiple TTS providers through Jellypod's Speech SDK

- renders via HyperFrames

- lets you upload or generate characters and backdrop scenes

- includes default characters/scenes so you can try it quickly

- open source

It runs from source today. AI features use bring-your-own API keys, but the app itself is fully inspectable and local-first in the sense that there’s no hosted backend or telemetry.

Here are some fun examples of the the types of videos you can create:

https://x.com/deepwhitman/status/2046425875789631701

https://x.com/deepwhitman/status/2047040471579697512

And the repo:

https://github.com/Jellypod-Inc/cartoon-studio

Happy to answer questions and appreciate any feedback!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47871828

Points: 15

# Comments: 5