Enabling more people to solve more problems is a great benefit to everyone, even people who don't like AI. I'm using AI to solve problems for me, and I hope more people continue this trend.
This is exactly the type of niche service that modern technology enables. Without that tech (3D printing, the internet, AI) things like this are simply more likely to just not exist because it would be impossible to make the economics work.
AI didn't really help in making this at all just the article talking about it months later. They already did a write up on their own about a year back without clauding it up.
I wish AI solved the problem of writing like shit. It REALLY bothers me how bad AI writing is and I'm not at all negative about the technology itself. I love AI, I just don't like the side effect of all this garbage content being regurgitated on the internet right now.
Pun notwithstanding, what a fun itch to scratch! A clever single-user solution becomes it's own industry. I'd love to repeat this sort of growth myself, and find such clever solutions to real world problems.
It’s pretty easy to figure out what DLE was about from the context clues in the article. Knowing that it means discoid lupus erythematosus and the detailed definition wouldn’t have added much imo. In fact I didn’t even care to look it up until I read your comment.
if you're referring to DLE, from the second paragraph:
> When she was diagnosed with DLE, discoid lupus erythematosus, an autoimmune condition where the immune system attacks the skin on the nose and sunlight makes it worse
edit: ah, just saw a comment from the author indicating they added that post-hoc
That would have to be a lot more custom fitted to the dog. It's not the best but the neck attachment is a lot easier. Also it seems to work just fine from the large amount of users it's gotten too, I bet the distance doesn't actually change that much.
Microplastics shouldn’t make the list of things to worry about here.
For one, we don’t really know how/why microplastics are bad, or how bad. If they have significant bad effects, the mechanism is slow and subtle, so unlikely to affect dogs (who, very sadly, just don’t live that long).
Second, the incremental increase in microplastics from this device would be very tiny compared to typical exposure estimates.
When you balance the very small risk against a tangible benefit, they answer is clear.
I wouldn't worry about that, but about bacteria colonies inside the print. Sure dogs already eat random (and literal) shit, but if it's placed on an already inflammation prone nose, maybe it should be a some special material. Bacteria don't grow on metals, maybe it can be some silver ion filament or maybe at least solid resin
Dogs likely don't live long enough for microplastics to be a big problem. We haven't seen an increase in cancers in dogs in recent years like we have with people.
They're main exposure to microplastics would be from toys, water, dishes, and low-quality food, anyway. This nose guard would be a small drop in the bucket.
The idea is good and cute (the AI writing is a slog to read though). But I wince a bit at seeing a pit with something looking like a mouth guard at a glance, as if they're not scary enough already.
I've heard of 3D prints being not-food-safe for a host of reasons, but lead is a new one. How does lead get into the filament? Care to share an article?
Mostly from some nozzles with leaded brass components, but lead is probably very small component and I'm not sure is the main reason why something printed isn't food safe. Mostly I think it's not food safe because it's not really a traceable chain, has very high surface areas, lots of bacterial pockets, generally hard to determine if it's food safe or not.
But wrt to lead, it would mostly be in brass components
Out of the random materials like ground seashells or exotic metals like tungsten I don't think anyone has ever made a lead-fill composite filament. And that is what I call a missed opportunity
DLE, I had never heard of it. Something like lupus and it needs protection from the sun. One smart guy to come up with a simple solution.. Very good use of 3D printer.
What's the big risk though? Plastic has pretty low conductivity so the surface in the sun might get a little warm but the whole thing will take a long time to heat up. Same thing keeps it from being very dangerous to touch, plastic transmits the heat it has to your hand more slowly too. Plus most dog noses are already black so you're not even really changing the absorption of the area much. If the nose can carry away the heat of the sun directly hitting the nose skin it can do the same for it creeping through the plastic nose guard too.
Author here. Thanks everyone for being mean, I mean that in the best way :)
Fair points. I’m a designer, not a writer, so I used an LLM to help write it. The story and the dogs are real. After reading the comments I removed the parts that felt off and defined DLE (discoid lupus erythematosus, an autoimmune skin condition made worse by sun).
My dog Billie has it, and that’s what started all this. I made the cover for her, shared it free, and it grew from there.
I don't think you need to make it DLE exclusive. My dog gets fungal infections on his nose and this would probably help. Although TBH I haven't gone looking for solutions.
It's specifically against the guidelines to post LLM-generated comments here [1]. LLM-generated articles on 3rd-party sites, we're more lenient about because we can't always expect people to follow our guidelines on their own site, and sometimes the substance wins out even if an LLM is used to "polish" the writing. But you can see what happens when an article is posted that has obvious LLM-smell; the discussion ends up being much more about that than the article's content.
> I’m a designer, not a writer
Most people are not "writers" but anyone can write their own story in their own words, and it's always much more charming than the output of a text-generation tool, especially when the topic is something you did for your pet :)
FWIW I read the whole article now, so can’t compare to before, but I never thought it was written using AI. Congrats on the product it’s really wonderful what you achieved.
I would be concerned about the lead in 3D prints. Even if you take proper precautions (which is very difficult because it's the material in the extruder and filament) they are not food safe and easily grow bacteria.
Thanks - and congratulations.
One question. What is this UV-sensitive filament, and does it really change color in both directions as quickly as the video shows?
This dude invented not one but multiple dog health care products ... with no animal product design background whatsoever! Then (with no business background) he started an entire company helping hundreds of dogs all over the world.
Maybe instead of expecting everyone to be good at everything, we cut this guy a little slack and let him use AI to help write?
Clearly, some readers did, given all of the similar posts on the HN thread.
It's also worth noting that the article has been edited in the last hour. Some section headers read a lot more clearly and naturally now (which is awesome!).
But, did AI actually _help_ in this specific phrase? I think it's OK to point out the quirks (and even drawbacks) of AI, even if we generally support the underlying motions of the person using it.
My assumption is that every LLM-written article would just not have been written otherwise. That is a net good. It's also true that it's grating to read LLM-written prose.
Am I utterly mistaken or was LLM-written prose more tolerable when it was GPT-4o and Opus 3.x writing it?
The AI didnt help him write. The AI wrote very annoying prose. Seemingly everyone was completely capable of writing long winded comments, rants, and rambles before AI. They can do it after too just fine.
Unnecessary comment. It is really heartwarming to see an individual do something in his spare time that helps 100s of being that can't speak for themselves.
I wish we could put the paw-litics aside and not be so snoot-y about the AI writing and focus on the awesomeness of this idea. Honestly wouldn’t be surprised to see it in re-tail. You’re barking up the right tree and I wish you success and a lot of kibble money.
If nobody complains, nothing changes. At the very least Claude's output should have been edited and improved, but it reads like it was mostly copy-paste.
I dislike one-shot LLM prose as much as the next person, but there's no chance this use case ever goes away. Writing is difficult and takes a long time. Using an LLM to write for you gets your message across with the least effort. It's here to stay. Our only hope is that the models simply start writing better.
It gets a lot less difficult when you don't outsource it to a chat bot at every opportunity. Communication matters. If you do it badly because you let a bot that can't write do it all for you people should complain. The fact that lots of people will do it doesn't mean that readers should lower their standards.
I'm never going to complain about people using AI to write their private documents, but if someone publishes something, explicitly for others to read, and what they published is annoying to read and that wasn't the goal of the "writer" they should probably know about it. Even if they never check the comments, those of us who were made to read that slop can commiserate with each other.
Sure, it's here to stay. But the least effort solution is often not the best one. I would also argue it gets the point across with the least effort on the writer's part, but the most on the reader's. LLM prose is not easy to read and often not interesting because we're all used to slop. And I like a little human touch. I don't know if LLMs will ever be able to replace the individual human style differences.
The critics never point this out though. They typically just find the first AI smell then proudly announce to everyone that they didn’t finish the article. It’s the new HN meta for securing upvotes with low effort.
I do generally agree though that the author should edit or rewrite completely the AI output since he clearly put a lot of effort into the thing he made itself.
It's hard to imagine people taking the time to give a bunch of detailed helpful notes and criticism about what the AI did poorly to a person who didn't even bother to do much more than copy/paste the shitty AI output in the first place.
We're not professional editors, and this isn't a forum for aspiring writers looking to improve, we're just insulted that someone published thousands of words they didn't put any effort into while expecting others to slog through their slop.
> The critics never point this out though. They typically just find the first AI smell then proudly announce to everyone that they didn’t finish the article.
I mean, I'm the "critic" that started this thread and my comment doesn't say that, so what exactly is your problem? If it were poor writing for any other reason would you have the same kneejerk defensive reaction that you have about poor AI writing?
What’s my problem? Your low effort Redditor tier updoot seeking behavior.
What do I think you should do? Just ignore it and let people who are interested in what the guy made have a discussion. If you are so keen to discuss AI use in blog posts, make a separate post about it and have an on-topic discussion rather than starting a circle jerk in every other post.
Personally, comments like this are against the guidelines. Please either downvote and move on, or comment about the parts that are interesting and substantive.
> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
> Find something interesting to respond to instead.
> Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.
It's not a shallow dismissal. Writing quality is core to the value of an article.
It's likely that but for LLMs, the article would not have been written. I'm glad it was written. It's also true that it's unpleasant to read LLM-written prose for those of us who have to read it all day for work.
Do you think your comment is a good critical comment that "teaches us something"? If not, it qualifies as a shallow dismissal according to these guidelines, even if it's not a shallow dismissal according some other definition or criteria.
I don't think it's shallow because writing quality isn't important, I think it's a shallow dismissal of the writing quality because it doesn't discuss anything interesting or substantive about the writing quality.
Also, what about the other guidelines? Comments should meet all of the guidelines, not just some of them. (I do get that some of these are borderline.)
I find it so much more annoying when it's on something that should be genuinely interesting - I just can't read this even though I do actually want to.
This is a net gain all around.
Until it does, it falls on the human publishing that slop to polish it up.
> When she was diagnosed with DLE, discoid lupus erythematosus, an autoimmune condition where the immune system attacks the skin on the nose and sunlight makes it worse
edit: ah, just saw a comment from the author indicating they added that post-hoc
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ASCII-Table-wide.svg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canine_discoid_lupus_erythemat...
Better to have some part hook at the back of the head or any bony protrusions on the sides or back of the head, perhaps in the vicinity of the ears.
For one, we don’t really know how/why microplastics are bad, or how bad. If they have significant bad effects, the mechanism is slow and subtle, so unlikely to affect dogs (who, very sadly, just don’t live that long).
Second, the incremental increase in microplastics from this device would be very tiny compared to typical exposure estimates.
When you balance the very small risk against a tangible benefit, they answer is clear.
They're main exposure to microplastics would be from toys, water, dishes, and low-quality food, anyway. This nose guard would be a small drop in the bucket.
Why are you concerned about the food safety of this though?
But wrt to lead, it would mostly be in brass components
The CDC has some good info on 3D printers, but they don't mention food safety: https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/publications/numbered/2024-103.htm...
Here is an article on the food side of things: https://spoolhound.com/food-safety-guide
A chunk of plastic can easily get painfully hot to a sensitive piece of skin, like a dog nose.
Like, why ?
If you click the image it goes away.
Fair points. I’m a designer, not a writer, so I used an LLM to help write it. The story and the dogs are real. After reading the comments I removed the parts that felt off and defined DLE (discoid lupus erythematosus, an autoimmune skin condition made worse by sun).
My dog Billie has it, and that’s what started all this. I made the cover for her, shared it free, and it grew from there.
> I’m a designer, not a writer
Most people are not "writers" but anyone can write their own story in their own words, and it's always much more charming than the output of a text-generation tool, especially when the topic is something you did for your pet :)
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#genai
I like the project but using Claude sure didn't improve this article.
Maybe instead of expecting everyone to be good at everything, we cut this guy a little slack and let him use AI to help write?
It's also worth noting that the article has been edited in the last hour. Some section headers read a lot more clearly and naturally now (which is awesome!).
Like if we have a problem with this being vibe coded, we’ve got a problem guys
But, did AI actually _help_ in this specific phrase? I think it's OK to point out the quirks (and even drawbacks) of AI, even if we generally support the underlying motions of the person using it.
Am I utterly mistaken or was LLM-written prose more tolerable when it was GPT-4o and Opus 3.x writing it?
But that doesn't change that slop sucks to read.
It's mainstreamed. Spare the rest of us.
It gets a lot less difficult when you don't outsource it to a chat bot at every opportunity. Communication matters. If you do it badly because you let a bot that can't write do it all for you people should complain. The fact that lots of people will do it doesn't mean that readers should lower their standards.
I'm never going to complain about people using AI to write their private documents, but if someone publishes something, explicitly for others to read, and what they published is annoying to read and that wasn't the goal of the "writer" they should probably know about it. Even if they never check the comments, those of us who were made to read that slop can commiserate with each other.
I do generally agree though that the author should edit or rewrite completely the AI output since he clearly put a lot of effort into the thing he made itself.
We're not professional editors, and this isn't a forum for aspiring writers looking to improve, we're just insulted that someone published thousands of words they didn't put any effort into while expecting others to slog through their slop.
I mean, I'm the "critic" that started this thread and my comment doesn't say that, so what exactly is your problem? If it were poor writing for any other reason would you have the same kneejerk defensive reaction that you have about poor AI writing?
What do I think you should do? Just ignore it and let people who are interested in what the guy made have a discussion. If you are so keen to discuss AI use in blog posts, make a separate post about it and have an on-topic discussion rather than starting a circle jerk in every other post.
> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
> Find something interesting to respond to instead.
> Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.
> Omit internet tropes.
It's likely that but for LLMs, the article would not have been written. I'm glad it was written. It's also true that it's unpleasant to read LLM-written prose for those of us who have to read it all day for work.
I don't think it's shallow because writing quality isn't important, I think it's a shallow dismissal of the writing quality because it doesn't discuss anything interesting or substantive about the writing quality.
Also, what about the other guidelines? Comments should meet all of the guidelines, not just some of them. (I do get that some of these are borderline.)