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tellarinon Show HN: Benchmarking Tangible Interface Understanding in Long-Horizon Tasks

Some collaborators and I recently released a first version of a benchmark we think highlights a critical gap in recent AI models in understanding causality in the real-world, beyond a physics focus.

Everyday environments are rich in tangible control interfaces (TCIs), like, light switches, appliance panels, and embedded GUIs, that are designed for humans and demand commonsense and physics reasoning, but also causal prediction and outcome verification in time and space (e.g., delayed heating, remote lights).

Paper: SWITCH: Benchmarking Modeling and Handling of Tangible Interfaces in Long-horizon Embodied Scenarios

Data and leaderboard in HuggingFace.

Feedback, suggestions, and collaborators are very welcome!

tellarinon Yann LeCun raises $1B to build AI that understands the physical world

Selfless plug here... Some collaborators and I just released a first version of a benchmark we think highlights a critical gap in recent models in understanding causality in the real-world, beyond a physics focus.

SWITCH: Benchmarking Modeling and Handling of Tangible Interfaces in Long-horizon Embodied Scenarios (https://huggingface.co/papers/2511.17649)

Feedback, suggestions, and collaborators are very welcome!

tellarinon CompSci was a golden ticket to a lucrative career. Now graduates can't get a job

I'm hiring and can't find enough good CS candidates. Not in the UK though.

tellarinon Ask HN: What was the most humble living situation you had in your early days?

For a while I shared an old apartment with 3 others. Old building, 10th floor, cloth-wrapped wiring (no modern plastic/rubber/etc.), windows that didn't close, a condemned fenced-off balcony, and occasional rat visitors that could reach the 10th floor.

tellarinon How Quake.exe got its TCP/IP stack

Dupe. Recent thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45962654

tellarinon Former US Vice-President Dick Cheney dies aged 84

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45809932

tellarinon Dick Cheney, Powerful Vice President and Washington Insider, Dies at 84

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45809932

tellarinon The Internet runs on free and open source software and so does the DNS

Just maybe not enough.

tellarinon Why Bell Labs Worked

Google has DeepMind, Microsoft has Microsoft Research, Meta has FAIR.

It’s not trivial to foster such environments, but they do still exist in different forms.

tellarinon Ask HN: What are you working on? (April 2025)

My team and I are working on embodied AI. More specifically, focusing on humanoid legged robots for long horizon tasks combining navigation and manipulation/interaction.

We've recently put a paper out in arXiv (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2503.12533) and the project page is: https://beingbeyond.github.io/being-0/

BAAI is also hiring! No fully remote positions though. :-/

tellarinon The Wright brothers invented the airplane, right? Not if you're in Brazil

Not to mention that clarifying this can lead to increased motivation to learn and discover stuff, as kids won’t think that if they are not geniuses they shouldn’t even try to create something new.

tellarinon iOS 19 and iOS 20 Must Include a Long List of Major Changes, EU Says

Well, there was a Canadian competitor company, and then a Canadian CEO...

tellarinon iOS 19 and iOS 20 Must Include a Long List of Major Changes, EU Says

The funny thing is that all FAANGs have big European subsidiaries, and specially so for their research labs.

Also, they always buy any promising new European company (and many times even keep their original offices open in Europe).

If things in Europe are so bad, I wonder why?

tellarinon Ask HN: What are you working on (March 2025)?

I’m working on embodied AI. More specifically, focusing on humanoid legged robots for long horizon tasks combining navigation and manipulation/interaction.

We just actually put a paper out in arXiv: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2503.12533 And the project page is: https://beingbeyond.github.io/being-0/

BAAI is also hiring! No fully remote positions though. :-/

tellarinon Gemini Robotics

I’m actually working on a demo like this. Kinda. ;-)

Hope to share the details here soon.

tellarinon The US stops sharing air quality data from embassies worldwide

They already do, in a sense. The scale used here is different from the internationally used and the categories imply lesser health effects.

tellarinon The US stops sharing air quality data from embassies worldwide

That really made China move. Both in blocking some social media and taking more action to improve air quality.

tellarinon Texas measles outbreak rises to 146 cases spanning more than 9 counties

Vitamin A neither prevents nor cures measles.

tellarinon Are Runny Egg Yolks Safe to Eat?

Yes^. Otherwise most of Europe and Japan would be dead by now.

^At least to some degree.

tellarinon Why Are Americans So Rich?

Economic powerhouses? Sure. But forces for good? I don't think necessarily so.

Regarding the wealth thing, I'd really like to see some analysis that quantifies the risks of not having guaranteed health insurance. It is basically a gamble in the US. And even when tech companies pay for your insurance, it doesn't cover everything and can disappear at any moment if you are fired.

I'd also like to see some analysis of the impact of all the European companies that US companies acquire and integrated when they show promise. Not to mention that all the big tech companies have big offices with thousands of employees in Europe too. How much is this a wealth transfer either way?

tellarinon [dead]

Wow! I knew there were some issues between him and regulatory agencies, but many more than I thought: FAA, DOJ, FCC, FTC, Interior, EEOC, NLRB, EPA, etc.

tellarinon Show HN: Sourcetable – AI Spreadsheet and Data Platform

When I was in there in Microsoft Research, our team was working on related efforts. But, yes, while pieces have shipped into products, MS never released a complete solution at the time.

Some links that might be of interest:

- Table semantics: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/table-inter...

- Entity semantics (video): https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21AMIdbT4yVFaw2Kk&cid=A6...

- Natural Language in Spreadsheets: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/gridbook/

tellarinon The Architecture of Open Source Applications

v2 is 2012 and I think some of the other books linked are more recent.

tellarinon Fake retro video game ring worth €50M smashed in Italy

Way to exaggerate the amount by claiming full game price for all games in a bunch of random ROMs preloaded in each console. There were only 12k seized consoles...

tellarinon Ask HN: What have you built with LLMs?

We've built Cradle, a framework that leverages such models to perform complex computer tasks via the same general interface humans use: screen as input and keyboard & mouse operations as output.

It works both on regular software and in complex games like RDR2. And it doesn't cheat by using any game-/software-specific API, nor accessibility calls, nor DOM trees. :)

https://baai-agents.github.io/Cradle/

And we're still evolving it.

tellarinon A Woman Who Showed President Biden ChatGPT–and Helped Set the Course for AI

"The Woman"

tellarinon Google Announces Stealing Part of a Production Language Model

Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39675735

tellarinon Boeing's woes continue as 50 injured on Australia-New Zealand flight

The airline itself said it was due to technical issues, right after the plane landed.

tellarinon Aya: An open LLM by 3k independent researchers across the globe

If you're willing, please share more details by email (in my profile). This can be very useful data to improve things.

Thanks for trying it out!