Hacker News: tianqi

New comment by tianqi in "The emergence of print-on-demand Amazon paperback books"

tianqi — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 10:00:27 +0000

I don't have any reason to believe this is not a scam. If Amazon had any good intention in doing this, why didn’t they simply note on the webpage that this book is printed on demand? Those introduction on pages look exactly the same as those for the original edition. It’s only once you’ve received the book that you realise Amazon has printed it themselves. I don’t like this game, and now I never buy books from Amazon unless I absolutely have to.

New comment by tianqi in "I built a demo of what AI chat will look like when it's “free” and ad-supported"

tianqi — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 08:47:48 +0000

I'm shocked.

1. This chatbot is incredibly fast. It's the fastest chatbot I've ever seen. Before this, I was used to waiting several or tens of seconds after speaking before the response appeared word by word. But this one immediately displayed a complete answer, which was a completely new experience for me. Is it because of using local model?

2. I'm almost never influenced by any ads, but the ads it recommended really appealed to me. I even hoped they were real. I asked how to buy them and Googled similar products. This shocked me and led to a long self-reflection.

3. Another thing that shocked me is that someone can now create such a beautifully executed, product-level, non-profit thing, simply to showcase an ironic concept. (Even the experience is somehow better real products, see 1). This spectacular unrestrained use of productivity is epic. And this is precisely what AI brings. A double irony.

New comment by tianqi in "Martial arts robots at 2026 Spring Festival Gala [video]"

tianqi — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 10:12:10 +0000

I'm afraid you might not understand what you're talking about. Animation is a geometry problem, while robotics is a dynamics problem. The latter is subject to constraints many times greater than the former. There is no such "easy" model as you imagined that can transform the former into the latter.

New comment by tianqi in "Skip the Tips: A game to select "No Tip" but dark patterns try to stop you"

tianqi — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 12:10:39 +0000

Currency conversion is not only incredibly fraught with traps, but believe me, even for very intelligent and research-savvy individuals, if you're not a professional in this area, you'll struggle to see all the pitfalls and still fall for them. I don't consider myself stupid, but I spent several days seriously researching it, and ultimately, after being exploited by several new tricks, I gave up. I consider those losses as a part of travel expenses and avoid letting it amplify my losses, that ruining my travel. PayPal is even more blatant fraud. You never know how much money is left after a transfer or withdrawal until you're surprised, and then they'll say they mentioned it in some tens of thousands of words of agreement that they would deduct this amount.

New comment by tianqi in "Qwen-Image-2.0: Professional infographics, exquisite photorealism"

tianqi — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 14:56:40 +0000

Since China has a population of 1.4 billion people with vastly differing levels of cognition, I find it difficult to claim I can summarize "modern Chinese culture". But within my range of observation, no. Chinese not only have no hostility toward AI but actively pursues and reveres it with fervor. They widely perceive AI as an advanced force, a new opportunity for everyone, a new avenue for making money, and a new chance to surpass others. At most, some of the consumers might associate businesses using AI generated content with a budget-conscious brand image, but not hostile.

New comment by tianqi in "Qwen-Image-2.0: Professional infographics, exquisite photorealism"

tianqi — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 11:22:48 +0000

I've seen many comments describing the "horse riding man" example as extremely bizarre (which it actually is), so I'd like to provide some background context here. The "horse riding man" is a Chinese internet meme originating from an entertainment awards ceremony, when the renowned host Tsai Kang-yong wore an elaborate outfit featuring a horse riding on his back[1]. At the time, he was embroiled in a rumor about his unpublicized homosexual partner, whose name sounded "Ma Qi Ren" which coincidentally translates to "horse riding man" in Mandarin. This incident spread widely across Chinese internet and turned into a meme. So they used "horse riding man" as an example isn't entirely nonsensical, though the image per se is undeniably bizarre and carries an unsettling vibe.

[1] The photo of the outfit: https://share.google/mHJbchlsTNJ771yBa

New comment by tianqi in "Minichord: A pocket-sized musical instrument"

tianqi — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 13:20:29 +0000

Very interesting! It seems to be a great way to combine chords with scales within chords, something no traditional instrument can do. I see the key positions on the left is similar to a computer keyboard, perhaps it could be directly mapped onto a keyboard? That way it could be played even when without that hardware.

New comment by tianqi in "Silver plunges 30% in worst day since 1980, gold tumbles"

tianqi — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 10:50:32 +0000

It is definitely not legal tender. As a Chinese, I've only ever seen such things in tourist souvenir shops for foreigners. If your argument is that a €4000 souvenir is questionable, please allow me to remind you that a €4000 currency coin makes no more sense. If your source is this webpage: https://www.kjc-gold-silver-bullion.com.au/PD/30-g-2023-chin..., I can be almost certain it's a scam because its description is ridiculous.

New comment by tianqi in "Silver plunges 30% in worst day since 1980, gold tumbles"

tianqi — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 06:48:44 +0000

Thank you. None of these are circulated coin currency. They are all tourist gifts or souvenirs. This is why they command a "much higher premium".

New comment by tianqi in "Silver plunges 30% in worst day since 1980, gold tumbles"

tianqi — Sun, 01 Feb 2026 17:28:16 +0000

Could you talk more about the "recent Chinese coins"? China hasn't had any fiat money containing gold or silver for at least 100 years. So I'm curious what exactly these Chinese coins are.

New comment by tianqi in "Drawings of the elements of CMS detector, in the style of Leonardo da Vinci"

tianqi — Sun, 01 Feb 2026 08:04:30 +0000

This is amazingly beautiful. If it were drawn as isometric projection instead of perspective projection, it would be more in the style of Leonardo da Vinci.

New comment by tianqi in "Ask HN: Do you still use physical calculators?"

tianqi — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 10:33:56 +0000

I use a Casio. Not just calculator, but for any tool, I try to avoid using my phone. A phone is a rabbit hole. Once you pick it up, you never know what notification will interrupt your flow. Besides, for these utility apps are difficult to monetize, it's hard to find one that isn't bombarded with ads. Even if luckily you find a perfect one, the creator might lose interest and stop maintaining it next year, forcing you to change your usage habits.

New comment by tianqi in "Show HN: I trained a 9M speech model to fix my Mandarin tones"

tianqi — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 09:33:54 +0000

Please allow me to share some of my views. I'm a native Mandarin speaker.

> I can guarantee that tones are not particularly useful and that you can communicate with native speakers with all the tones messed up, and that's perfectly fine.

Not at all. Tones are extremely important. If you have all the tones messed up, you can hardly communicate in Mandarin. It's true, as you said, that different regions of China have different dialects, and you'll find that people can communicate normally because: 1) The tonal differences in nearby regions are not too significant, and people can still try to understand based on context. And 2) In many cases, people switch to regular Mandarin when their dialects cannot communicate with each other. This is why Mandarin exists. It is an officially regulated dialect that all Chinese people learn, to solve the dialect problem among different regions. Chinese people may speak their own dialects at hometown, but when two Chinese people meet and find that their dialects cannot communicate, they immediately switch to Mandarin. Therefore, the tones in Mandarin are very important. To a considerable extent, Mandarin exists because of tones. You cannot communicate in it with messed up tones.

New comment by tianqi in "I found the perfect yearly calendar (for me)"

tianqi — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 04:13:13 +0000

Our local MP (I'm in Sydney) distributed a piece of magnetic calendars to every household, which can be attached to the refrigerator. All the public holidays are already marked, and I mark my own special ones with a highlighter. It's really useful, as long as you don't mind seeing the MP's photo every day.

New comment by tianqi in "New York Times games are hard: A computational perspective"

tianqi — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 06:01:29 +0000

They are difficult. As I'm not a native English speaker, I didn't know many of the obscure words or usages, so I actually played these games from a purely computational perspective. I discovered early on that there were a lot of at least NPC problems in them. As my English improved (partially thanks to these games), intuitions began to help me take shortcuts, as if I had become a nondeterministic Turing machine.

New comment by tianqi in "Bye Bye Gmail"

tianqi — Sat, 24 Jan 2026 22:02:22 +0000

I've been using it for years and have no complaints. But some people say Zoho can even read your emails by human, I'm not sure if that's true.

New comment by tianqi in "Ask HN: Gmail spam filtering suddenly marking everything as spam?"

tianqi — Sat, 24 Jan 2026 21:46:11 +0000

Which service provider would you recommend?

New comment by tianqi in "Map To Poster – Create Art of your favourite city"

tianqi — Sat, 17 Jan 2026 11:13:10 +0000

That's splendid. I've long wanted to make a jigsaw puzzle out of Sydney's road map, so I can familiarise myself with the layout of roads while having fun. That way I can reduce my reliance on nav app and become one of those old-school drivers.

New comment by tianqi in "North Korea's AI Development Plan for 2026 and the North Korean ChatGPT"

tianqi — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 17:45:57 +0000

Translated into English using Google Translate: https://www-nkeconomy-com.translate.goog/news/articleView.ht...

North Korea's AI Development Plan for 2026 and the North Korean ChatGPT

tianqi — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 17:41:36 +0000

Article URL: http://www.nkeconomy.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=15746

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46591707

Points: 1

# Comments: 1