Hacker News: codekansas

The Sand Mandala (2023)

codekansas — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 08:45:24 +0000

Article URL: https://ben.bolte.cc/posts/2023-11-21-the-sand-mandala

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46105014

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Neuron Models

codekansas — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 08:44:22 +0000

Article URL: https://ben.bolte.cc/posts/2025-11-23-neurons

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46105002

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by codekansas in "Launch HN: K-Scale Labs (YC W24) – Open-Source Humanoid Robots"

codekansas — Fri, 04 Jul 2025 06:21:39 +0000

I suspect that these kinds of things will happen with or without my involvement. Assuming that they do, I would rather that a good open source option exists

New comment by codekansas in "Launch HN: K-Scale Labs (YC W24) – Open-Source Humanoid Robots"

codekansas — Fri, 04 Jul 2025 04:41:19 +0000

Oh I see. Yes, we're currently exploring a few different five finger hand options - we will choose whichever option provides the best value. I actually quite like the Inspire hands and we might be able to get a volume discount

New comment by codekansas in "Launch HN: K-Scale Labs (YC W24) – Open-Source Humanoid Robots"

codekansas — Fri, 04 Jul 2025 02:46:37 +0000

Really appreciate it :)

New comment by codekansas in "Launch HN: K-Scale Labs (YC W24) – Open-Source Humanoid Robots"

codekansas — Fri, 04 Jul 2025 02:45:15 +0000

I think we will just focus on making really great, low-cost hardware and a nice SDK, and let other people experiment with different approaches on the intelligence layer.

New comment by codekansas in "Launch HN: K-Scale Labs (YC W24) – Open-Source Humanoid Robots"

codekansas — Fri, 04 Jul 2025 02:44:33 +0000

Well, I believe the competition up until now has mostly been on hardware, but moving forward it will mostly be in software. I don't think we will be outcompeted by Unitree on software. And I hope to capitalize on our engagement with the open source community in a way that Unitree has not.

New comment by codekansas in "Launch HN: K-Scale Labs (YC W24) – Open-Source Humanoid Robots"

codekansas — Fri, 04 Jul 2025 02:43:35 +0000

We try to sell it for a fair price while still making money. Actually I think there will be comparably priced humanoids coming out from other companies soon

New comment by codekansas in "Launch HN: K-Scale Labs (YC W24) – Open-Source Humanoid Robots"

codekansas — Fri, 04 Jul 2025 02:42:51 +0000

I really do think that building through the open source community is the best way to compete with the big players, even without having a lot of capital. Of course, it doesn't mean we can't execute well, but I do think it's a good way to make a lot of progress without spending a lot of money.

New comment by codekansas in "Launch HN: K-Scale Labs (YC W24) – Open-Source Humanoid Robots"

codekansas — Fri, 04 Jul 2025 02:41:28 +0000

I think it's a very hard problem, but I would like to align our company's incentives towards solving it

New comment by codekansas in "Launch HN: K-Scale Labs (YC W24) – Open-Source Humanoid Robots"

codekansas — Thu, 03 Jul 2025 23:21:34 +0000

Yeah, the basic robot is just a robot, albeit with open-source software and hardware

For compute - we're exploring a few boards right now, but the base model will be something from Amlogic and the higher end model will be something from Nvidia

New comment by codekansas in "Launch HN: K-Scale Labs (YC W24) – Open-Source Humanoid Robots"

codekansas — Thu, 03 Jul 2025 23:19:42 +0000

My overall plan is basic joystick control -> VLA with RL -> self-supervised embodied representation -> end-to-end RL -> end-to-end control. I suspect there will be some very good multi modal models coming out in the next few years which we might use as base models, although more likely, we will adapt their techniques to work on data from our own robot.

I agree that the hardware is easier than the software - I am a software guy, personally, but I felt that it was important to do the hardware first so at least we can have a baseline product which we can offer to people. I would personally like to work on this software problem (or rather, build a company to work on this problem), and this seems like the right way to go about funding working on this problem.

New comment by codekansas in "Launch HN: K-Scale Labs (YC W24) – Open-Source Humanoid Robots"

codekansas — Thu, 03 Jul 2025 22:58:29 +0000

This is really interesting to read about. To be honest, I know very little about this space, but it's something a few people have approached me about tackling.

I do think that this is a great application of a general purpose robot. I'm not sure what the technical timeline will be, but it would certainly be cool for my parents to have such a robot when they are elderly.

New comment by codekansas in "Launch HN: K-Scale Labs (YC W24) – Open-Source Humanoid Robots"

codekansas — Thu, 03 Jul 2025 22:16:00 +0000

We're exploring some options - maybe a rental option in the future. Would like to make it accessible to everyone

New comment by codekansas in "Launch HN: K-Scale Labs (YC W24) – Open-Source Humanoid Robots"

codekansas — Thu, 03 Jul 2025 22:15:33 +0000

I have a pretty bad mental model of how most VCs think, but I think good VCs will fund smart people who demonstrate extreme conviction, regardless of how they initially size the market. The opportunity cost for me doing K-Scale is making quite a bit of money at Tesla or Meta, so assuming I am not acting irrationally, either I have extreme conviction or I am a masochist. In my experience, VCs are pretty bad at telling the difference.

New comment by codekansas in "Launch HN: K-Scale Labs (YC W24) – Open-Source Humanoid Robots"

codekansas — Thu, 03 Jul 2025 20:25:03 +0000

Thanks!

We're all pretty cross-stack - there are some hardware people and some software people, but the product is quite integrated. Personally, my time has been mostly focused on the RL stack recently, and after there are more robots in the wild, I suspect my time will transition to working on building this data feedback loop.

I try to answer questions pretty actively on our Discord so happy to chat there about whatever you like

New comment by codekansas in "Launch HN: K-Scale Labs (YC W24) – Open-Source Humanoid Robots"

codekansas — Thu, 03 Jul 2025 20:23:36 +0000

Which link? I can fix

New comment by codekansas in "Launch HN: K-Scale Labs (YC W24) – Open-Source Humanoid Robots"

codekansas — Thu, 03 Jul 2025 20:22:34 +0000

Yes, we are aware of this customer segment. I don't think they have thoroughly considered the implications of what high torque actuators can do to the human body

New comment by codekansas in "Launch HN: K-Scale Labs (YC W24) – Open-Source Humanoid Robots"

codekansas — Thu, 03 Jul 2025 18:35:53 +0000

Yeah I think humanoids are a pretty fraught area. There's definitely been some backlash but overall I have really appreciated the responses we've got from people. Like, I just want people to care about what we're doing - if positive that's great, if negative then we can learn how to do better. As long as people have an opinion one way or the other, I'm happy :)

New comment by codekansas in "Launch HN: K-Scale Labs (YC W24) – Open-Source Humanoid Robots"

codekansas — Thu, 03 Jul 2025 18:34:04 +0000

This is a much better answer than mine