6 ms·

Strata – An app that talks me out of dying outdoors

9 points by cloocher 2mo ago

planewave 2mo ago
Is it just me, or does it seem extremely dangerous to market: “Strata doesn't just show the data. It makes the call.” The page states it’s powered by Claude with nothing I could see that relates to its performance, metrics, processes, testing, etc. for something expected to be used in a safety application.
- jere 2mo ago
  It's perfectly safe, I assure you.
- cyphar 2mo ago
  "You're right to push back on that. Let me take a step back and reconsider the requirements for an application that people might entrust with their lives."
- trillic 2mo ago
  Should I climb this mountain? Analyze the data. Make no mistakes.
- cloocher 2mo ago
  Fair point, and you caught a real contradiction. "It makes the call" was wrong — it also contradicted our own safety page. We've changed it: Strata surfaces the risks and links the source forecasts, you make the call. It's a briefing, not a verdict. Appreciate the push.
ungreased0675 2mo ago
Absolutely the wrong application for an LLM. How do we know it’s providing correct data?
- add-sub-mul-div 2mo ago
  Worrying about "correctness" is such pre-LLM thinking. What's important now is generating content that doesn't require effort or labor cost.
daft_pink 2mo ago
Make sure you have a very good LLC that can’t be pierced.
rafram 2mo ago
Well, for the creators’ sakes, I hope the ToS that Claude wrote [1] holds up in court! [1]: https://strata.highloop.co/terms https://strata.highloop.co/terms
foxfired 2mo ago
Note that there is Strata (strata.com), the 3d software company, which I immediately thought it was about. It was the first 3d software I used some 30 years ago.
jcoder 2mo ago
“Strata doesn’t just show the data. It makes the call.” Scroll scroll scroll… “Strata informs your decisions — it doesn't make them for you.” I hope you don’t kill someone.
carabiner 2mo ago
Read the headline - sounds like a therapy / anti-suicide advocacy app? Clicked the link - ok looks like it's for ski touring, because it mentions avalanche stuff? Checked the route catalog - wait, there's barely any ski tours here and it's a bunch of random hikes from around the country. Why is avalanche risk highlighted when 99% of hikers are probably gonna stay home if there's a big snowstorm? Is this by chance your personal hiking history? Why these hikes in particular? Are avalanches the only way someone can die outdoors? What about snake bites, heat exhaustion, drowning etc.? I am not sure what the app actually does vs gaia, alltrails, nwac app. The site only has one screenshot. What does this app add?
- lukeasch21 2mo ago
  Unfortunately I think you've given far more thought into the concept than OP has
  - metacritic12 2mo ago
    Possibly because OP might have one-shot vibe-coded this app with a single sentence as an LLM wrapper.
buildsjets 2mo ago
Incoming trademark infringement lawsuit from Strava in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
weakfish 2mo ago
This is gonna kill someone.
alfalfasprout 2mo ago
This is going to kill someone... you can't just make these calls for people. And it's DEFINITELY not a replacement for snowpack tests, etc. at the location you're going to visit.
jobs_throwaway 2mo ago
Classic HN responses ITT. Very Reddit-like in its absolute knee-knocking fear at any kind of liability/rule-breaking
- devmor 2mo ago
  Yeah, let’s not let a little thing like safety get in the way of disrupting the “staying alive” paradigm.
- Barbing 2mo ago
  Yeah, the app "tells you...whether today is a go", which is completely responsible and I'm not sure how HN could be able to miss it! Jokes aside, couple changes come to mind: - pitch more carefully as "may indicate when danger may be elevated" - in app, on calm days insist "while prelim scan found nothing anomalous, click these links to find the original forecasts" As of today, with this tech for this use case, the warnings should be the lede. Otherwise you're even more likely to have a "'Full' Self Driving" situation where we're lured into a false sense of safety.
- planewave 2mo ago
  I’m not so sure mocking is really that on point, a tool used to understand avalanche safety should be safe. The product copy highlights safety and the value of providing a recommendation instead of having to collate and synthesize different data yourself. Avalanche risk and its management are unknown to me, but not to ski patrols, experienced backcountry trekkers, scientists, and national weather services of many countries, etc. I saw no evidence of trials to test to see how the technology performs against real conditions. If you can’t trust this product’s recommendations within some margin of safety then it’s value proposition disappears. Why not market it instead as an experiment and seek some way of collecting data to improve the process or develop a model fine tuned to the inputs?
  - cloocher 2mo ago
    [flagged]
snypher 2mo ago
Any real avalanche threat analysis is done boots on ground, this app isn't adding any additional information.
- rtkwe 2mo ago
  I think this is taking the data those guys gather, some other data, and distilling it to a threat rating? That's at least what I get from the big above the fold blurb.
  - ungreased0675 2mo ago
    But there is no underlying algorithm crunching the data. It’s Claude simulating the output of such an algorithm.
    - rtkwe 2mo ago
      Chinese room problem and all that, if Claude can perform the mimicry of synthesis sufficiently and reliably how much does it matter that it isn't "really" doing the work. I'm dubious of it's ability to do that mimicry reliably that but the prompt is taking in/including the information from all those sources to nominally distill them for the user.
jstrong 2mo ago
hoping this is a joke
metacritic12 2mo ago
Flagging for clickbait title. It's deliberately obfuscating to intrigue users into clicking. A better plain title would be Strata: An LLM App that Tells You If Your Hiking Route Today is Likely Safe.
buildsjets 2mo ago
To be perfected, this app needs a feature that uses AI to identify the difference between edible and poisonous plants and fungi.
defrost 2mo ago
Wouldn't touch it with a forty foot pole. I've literally "risked my life outdoors" for more than six decades in most climates at many altitudes and depths and this isn't something I'd pack.
uargos 2mo ago
Risk assessment is entirely part of mountaineering, and other risk-encompassing outdoor activities. Decision boundary to go or not go is never a sharp line, and it's always relative to your capacities, your knowledge, and ability to continually assess the risks while practicing. It is simple to craft the story around an accident in retrospect, but on the field the story is never that simple. If you read accidents reports (like AAC), you will probably never see accidents coming straight from one bad decision, at the beginning of the day, on one particular aspect. It is usual though to see failure about acknowledging changing conditions, multi-factor risks, or even failure to acknowledge high risk/low difficulty transitions by experienced people. It's also why it is called engagement. Some people are willing to put their life on the line to achieve a moonshot project. But they usually know the risk they are taking. Llms never took a difficult on field decision, never had to turn gut feeling into calls. If you were experienced enough in both machine learning and mountaineering, you would know a lot of this decision taking is pre-verbal, and is probably very lightly represented in training sets, if at all.
- cloocher 2mo ago
  [flagged]
Auzy 2mo ago
More AI hiking crap that will probably kill someone So tired of this crap flooding the hiking community. Hiking communities are being bombarded by crap apps at the moment (particularly trip planning apps) Do not trust this data.

9 points by cloocher 2mo ago

Is it just me, or does it seem extremely dangerous to market: “Strata doesn't just show the data. It makes the call.” The page states it’s powered by Claude with nothing I could see that relates to its performance, metrics, processes, testing, etc. for something expected to be used in a safety application.

jere 2mo ago
It's perfectly safe, I assure you.
cyphar 2mo ago
"You're right to push back on that. Let me take a step back and reconsider the requirements for an application that people might entrust with their lives."
trillic 2mo ago
Should I climb this mountain? Analyze the data. Make no mistakes.
cloocher 2mo ago
Fair point, and you caught a real contradiction. "It makes the call" was wrong — it also contradicted our own safety page. We've changed it: Strata surfaces the risks and links the source forecasts, you make the call. It's a briefing, not a verdict. Appreciate the push.

ungreased0675 2mo ago

Absolutely the wrong application for an LLM. How do we know it’s providing correct data?

add-sub-mul-div 2mo ago
Worrying about "correctness" is such pre-LLM thinking. What's important now is generating content that doesn't require effort or labor cost.

daft_pink 2mo ago

Make sure you have a very good LLC that can’t be pierced.

rafram 2mo ago

Well, for the creators’ sakes, I hope the ToS that Claude wrote [1] holds up in court! [1]: https://strata.highloop.co/terms https://strata.highloop.co/terms

foxfired 2mo ago

Note that there is Strata (strata.com), the 3d software company, which I immediately thought it was about. It was the first 3d software I used some 30 years ago.

jcoder 2mo ago

“Strata doesn’t just show the data. It makes the call.” Scroll scroll scroll… “Strata informs your decisions — it doesn't make them for you.” I hope you don’t kill someone.

carabiner 2mo ago

Read the headline - sounds like a therapy / anti-suicide advocacy app? Clicked the link - ok looks like it's for ski touring, because it mentions avalanche stuff? Checked the route catalog - wait, there's barely any ski tours here and it's a bunch of random hikes from around the country. Why is avalanche risk highlighted when 99% of hikers are probably gonna stay home if there's a big snowstorm? Is this by chance your personal hiking history? Why these hikes in particular? Are avalanches the only way someone can die outdoors? What about snake bites, heat exhaustion, drowning etc.? I am not sure what the app actually does vs gaia, alltrails, nwac app. The site only has one screenshot. What does this app add?

lukeasch21 2mo ago
Unfortunately I think you've given far more thought into the concept than OP has
- metacritic12 2mo ago
  Possibly because OP might have one-shot vibe-coded this app with a single sentence as an LLM wrapper.

buildsjets 2mo ago

Incoming trademark infringement lawsuit from Strava in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

weakfish 2mo ago

This is gonna kill someone.

alfalfasprout 2mo ago

This is going to kill someone... you can't just make these calls for people. And it's DEFINITELY not a replacement for snowpack tests, etc. at the location you're going to visit.

jobs_throwaway 2mo ago

Classic HN responses ITT. Very Reddit-like in its absolute knee-knocking fear at any kind of liability/rule-breaking

devmor 2mo ago
Yeah, let’s not let a little thing like safety get in the way of disrupting the “staying alive” paradigm.
Barbing 2mo ago
Yeah, the app "tells you...whether today is a go", which is completely responsible and I'm not sure how HN could be able to miss it! Jokes aside, couple changes come to mind: - pitch more carefully as "may indicate when danger may be elevated" - in app, on calm days insist "while prelim scan found nothing anomalous, click these links to find the original forecasts" As of today, with this tech for this use case, the warnings should be the lede. Otherwise you're even more likely to have a "'Full' Self Driving" situation where we're lured into a false sense of safety.
planewave 2mo ago
I’m not so sure mocking is really that on point, a tool used to understand avalanche safety should be safe. The product copy highlights safety and the value of providing a recommendation instead of having to collate and synthesize different data yourself. Avalanche risk and its management are unknown to me, but not to ski patrols, experienced backcountry trekkers, scientists, and national weather services of many countries, etc. I saw no evidence of trials to test to see how the technology performs against real conditions. If you can’t trust this product’s recommendations within some margin of safety then it’s value proposition disappears. Why not market it instead as an experiment and seek some way of collecting data to improve the process or develop a model fine tuned to the inputs?
- cloocher 2mo ago
  [flagged]

snypher 2mo ago

Any real avalanche threat analysis is done boots on ground, this app isn't adding any additional information.

rtkwe 2mo ago
I think this is taking the data those guys gather, some other data, and distilling it to a threat rating? That's at least what I get from the big above the fold blurb.
- ungreased0675 2mo ago
  But there is no underlying algorithm crunching the data. It’s Claude simulating the output of such an algorithm.
  - rtkwe 2mo ago
    Chinese room problem and all that, if Claude can perform the mimicry of synthesis sufficiently and reliably how much does it matter that it isn't "really" doing the work. I'm dubious of it's ability to do that mimicry reliably that but the prompt is taking in/including the information from all those sources to nominally distill them for the user.

jstrong 2mo ago

hoping this is a joke

metacritic12 2mo ago

Flagging for clickbait title. It's deliberately obfuscating to intrigue users into clicking. A better plain title would be Strata: An LLM App that Tells You If Your Hiking Route Today is Likely Safe.

buildsjets 2mo ago

To be perfected, this app needs a feature that uses AI to identify the difference between edible and poisonous plants and fungi.

defrost 2mo ago

Wouldn't touch it with a forty foot pole. I've literally "risked my life outdoors" for more than six decades in most climates at many altitudes and depths and this isn't something I'd pack.

uargos 2mo ago

Risk assessment is entirely part of mountaineering, and other risk-encompassing outdoor activities. Decision boundary to go or not go is never a sharp line, and it's always relative to your capacities, your knowledge, and ability to continually assess the risks while practicing. It is simple to craft the story around an accident in retrospect, but on the field the story is never that simple. If you read accidents reports (like AAC), you will probably never see accidents coming straight from one bad decision, at the beginning of the day, on one particular aspect. It is usual though to see failure about acknowledging changing conditions, multi-factor risks, or even failure to acknowledge high risk/low difficulty transitions by experienced people. It's also why it is called engagement. Some people are willing to put their life on the line to achieve a moonshot project. But they usually know the risk they are taking. Llms never took a difficult on field decision, never had to turn gut feeling into calls. If you were experienced enough in both machine learning and mountaineering, you would know a lot of this decision taking is pre-verbal, and is probably very lightly represented in training sets, if at all.

cloocher 2mo ago
[flagged]

Auzy 2mo ago

More AI hiking crap that will probably kill someone So tired of this crap flooding the hiking community. Hiking communities are being bombarded by crap apps at the moment (particularly trip planning apps) Do not trust this data.