> why does it matter how it works?

So we don't get another Theranos grift if this eventually raises money from private investors?

Big difference since this product appears to demonstrate that it does work.

Well, because we're curious and this is a place where curious critical technology enthusiasts gravitate. If it doesn't do anything novel _at_all_ or if there's no story to elaborate on, go to Reddit.

Plus, many are probably tired of seeing the same thing being made repeatedly that just proxys requests to chatgpt and makes them look pretty.

I'm curious: don't you think the aggregate interest of the HN crowd is adequately measured via the voting mechanism? You seem not to find BlenderGPT as presented in its current form uninteresting, but if you accept that (voting up)=interest, many other people did. Why dismiss("go to Reddit" comment) someone else's work, that, evidently, many other HNers find interesting?

I didn't dismiss anyone's work, and I do find the upvote system to, at least in some cases, adequately represent the level interest on hn.

The question was: > why does it matter how it works?

and that's all my comment was intended to answer. Many people here are interested both in the idea of doing something enough to upvote AND are curious how something works. We're not necessarily just consoomers, we're often interested in details, but if I was buying something and wanted to know why I should, the maker should probably be able to answer why their thing is special; in this case, I'm just saying that people on HN are generally interested in how things work.

Sure, HNers are interested in explanations of how things work (I am too!).

But you specifically said that without such an explanation, products should "go to Reddit" (which presumably means, they don't belong on HN). I'll leave whether that's a "dismissal of someone's work" or not up to you, but all I'm saying is: it's evident via voting that many HNers find BlenderGPT, a tech product, interesting, even with the lack of that explanation. And so BlenderGPT does not need to "go to Reddit".

> But you specifically said that without such an explanation, products should "go to Reddit" (which presumably means, they don't belong on HN)

I didn't imply anything about BlenderGPT at all, I just responded to a comment. Reddit is both an advertising platform for products of all kinds, and a conversation platform for broader categories of audiences, whereas SHOW HN is like a "here's my project/product, I hope you find it interesting, and here's a chance to ask me about it". If someone posts a Show HN, it's fair assume that if people find it interesting, they'll ask how it works, because we're going to be curious, and if a person is hypothetically not prepared for that, Show HN might not be the best place to post it. I didn't say any of that was true or false regarding BlenderGPT, it was just a general remark.

Gotcha. It sounds like you and I agree that tech products whose underlying workings might not be elaborated are still ok to be on Show HN!

Do you believe this was the nature of the thread? Seems appropriate to say you agree with me that Show HN is ideal for those who'd like to engage in some curious discussion about whatever it is they're posting, but without regard to whether or not that's a requirement.

The reason I engaged in the thread is I didn't want OP to feel like their posting/their work was unappreciated. Putting myself in their shoes, I especially guessed that the "go to Reddit" comment would have felt dismissive.

I do agree that I (and most HNers) find explanations of inner workings interesting in Show HN (or anything on HN).

I also don't feel like people should be treated dismissively, but I think the GP in this subthread did qualify their initial impression enough, since OP did respond to them. It seemed to me like the person I responded to, a few replies deep, felt as though it was somehow overstepping to ask how something worked, and it was that take I was responding to, nothing backhanded toward OP, especially because they already established themselves to be as forthcoming as one might expect.

> why does it matter how it works? Either it works and people pay for it or it doesn't.

It's hackernews, not aliexpress

I think that's a fair point that not every company owes the end user a recipe for how to reproduce their product.

However, it's also a fair question on Hacker News. Again, fair if they chose not to answer it.. but many people here are programmers.

Since they explained that they used an open source model and system https://github.com/Microsoft/TRELLIS, it will be possible for other developers who want to start similar businesses to launch basic competitors within a week or so, if they are ambitious about it.

I spent about 10 minutes with my agent running Claude 3.5 Sonnet New and generated most of the core code already: https://github.com/runvnc/img2blender

Although I haven't tested that and don't actually know if it will work.