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To the future occupants of my office at the MIT Media Lab

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Re: To the future occupants of my office at the MIT Media Lab

#71

Post by rsynnott »

anonymfus wrote: post #25
axaxs wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some reason this reminds me. My old house, built in the 40s, had a mysterious small hatch in the closet floor across from the bathroom. One day I opened it and it was just a cutout of the floor, directly over the washing machine in the basement below. I'm not sure if that's lazy or genius, but it doesn't get much easier than that I guess.

In typical Russian apartment washing machine is installed in bathroom.

I think this is common in Europe, too. Except in the UK and Ireland, where electrical regulations don’t allow it, banishing the washing machine to the kitchen.

Re: To the future occupants of my office at the MIT Media Lab

#72

Post by analog31 »

lmilcin wrote: post #48
Animats wrote: post #7

It's very MIT. It's also an illustration of what went wrong with the "internet of things" concept. Sensors are easy today. Actuators are hard. Most "IoT" things can't do much. Try to buy a home power window. They exist. They're an exotic luxury home item. Even controllable home HVAC dampers are rare. It makes good sense to have a system where windows, fans, dampers, heaters, and compressors are all coordinated to max…

The trouble seems that there aren't many people that get software AND electronics AND mechanics AND on top of that marketing, right. It is rare enough to find people with good electronics and software skills.

A big problem is that anybody from those fields who can program well enough to do it exclusively for a living, eventually does so. This could be due to higher pay, and more mobility within the job market.

There's also a perception that software is more valuable than hardware, which can affect the workplace culture in a negative way.

Re: To the future occupants of my office at the MIT Media Lab

#74

Post by reaperducer »

mymacbook wrote: post #50
Animats wrote: post #7

It's very MIT. It's also an illustration of what went wrong with the "internet of things" concept. Sensors are easy today. Actuators are hard. Most "IoT" things can't do much. Try to buy a home power window. They exist. They're an exotic luxury home item. Even controllable home HVAC dampers are rare. It makes good sense to have a system where windows, fans, dampers, heaters, and compressors are all coordinated to max…

I’m guessing NeXT is supposed to be Nest (given IoT and HVAC).

Changing "Nest" to "NeXT" — That guy's phone must have the world's most awesome autocorrect learning database.

I can't even get my phone to stop correcting "duck."

Re: To the future occupants of my office at the MIT Media Lab

#75

Post by spanhandler »

jefftk wrote: post #59
spanhandler wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our built-in-the-late-90s house has one of those in the hall closet upstairs. No door on it, just a hole. There’s some flashing and a “chute” that’s just a piece of sheet metal angled at 45 degrees to keep stuff from free-falling the whole way down, so it doesn’t look unfinished, but it’s basically just a hole. Really it’s just a laundry chute. If the laundry room is directly under you, why make it fancier than that?

You'd want a door of some sort to keep things (cats, children) from falling down it, no?

It's like an 8-inch-square hole. Big enough for a shirt or pants or a towel to slide down, maybe with a nudge from a foot. By the time a kid can open the closet door to get to the hole, they'd have a hard time fitting through it. Any cat that falls through a hole in the floor has only itself to blame, and can likely manage the problem just fine.

We have kids and a cat and none have had trouble with it. It's not half as dangerous as and has a lower attractive-nuisance factor than any set of stairs.

Re: To the future occupants of my office at the MIT Media Lab

#76

Post by reaperducer »

squarefoot wrote: post #12
Animats wrote: post #7

It's very MIT. It's also an illustration of what went wrong with the "internet of things" concept. Sensors are easy today. Actuators are hard. Most "IoT" things can't do much. Try to buy a home power window. They exist. They're an exotic luxury home item. Even controllable home HVAC dampers are rare. It makes good sense to have a system where windows, fans, dampers, heaters, and compressors are all coordinated to max…

Yup. True home automation is something that changes your life, not gadgets for rich people. I will call true home automation for example when I can throw the trash into a hatch at my same floor in a bag with RFID tag so that it will send it down and sort out it for recycle. I recall when I was less than 10 (mid '70s) my grandparents having those hatches (minus electronics of course) in their building. They would leav…

I used to work in a place that put me in contact with a lot of architects who worked on skyscrapers. I asked one why new apartment buildings don't have trash chutes as often as they used to.

He said a lot of developers don't want the expense that goes into building them. And a lot of owners don't want the maintenance expense. They get clogged up more often than most people realize.

That said, when I lived in Seattle last decade, my building was new and had a trash chute. It got clogged about once a month. You'd see the maintenance guys with big long poles trying to shove the stuff through.

Re: To the future occupants of my office at the MIT Media Lab

#77

Post by reaperducer »

axaxs wrote: post #17
squarefoot wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. True home automation is something that changes your life, not gadgets for rich people. I will call true home automation for example when I can throw the trash into a hatch at my same floor in a bag with RFID tag so that it will send it down and sort out it for recycle. I recall when I was less than 10 (mid '70s) my grandparents having those hatches (minus electronics of course) in their building. They would leav…

For some reason this reminds me. My old house, built in the 40s, had a mysterious small hatch in the closet floor across from the bathroom. One day I opened it and it was just a cutout of the floor, directly over the washing machine in the basement below. I'm not sure if that's lazy or genius, but it doesn't get much easier than that I guess.

it was just a cutout of the floor, directly over the washing machine in the basement below.

See also: the film Home Alone.

Re: To the future occupants of my office at the MIT Media Lab

#78

Post by jefftk »

spanhandler wrote: post #75
jefftk wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd want a door of some sort to keep things (cats, children) from falling down it, no?

It's like an 8-inch-square hole. Big enough for a shirt or pants or a towel to slide down, maybe with a nudge from a foot. By the time a kid can open the closet door to get to the hole, they'd have a hard time fitting through it. Any cat that falls through a hole in the floor has only itself to blame, and can likely manage the problem just fine. We have kids and a cat and none have had trouble with it. It's not half…

8" square is pretty big: 11" on the diagonal. I think my 6yo would fit through that fine, though she has the sense not to.

Re: To the future occupants of my office at the MIT Media Lab

#79

Post by dbcurtis »

lmilcin wrote: post #48
Animats wrote: post #7

It's very MIT. It's also an illustration of what went wrong with the "internet of things" concept. Sensors are easy today. Actuators are hard. Most "IoT" things can't do much. Try to buy a home power window. They exist. They're an exotic luxury home item. Even controllable home HVAC dampers are rare. It makes good sense to have a system where windows, fans, dampers, heaters, and compressors are all coordinated to max…

The trouble seems that there aren't many people that get software AND electronics AND mechanics AND on top of that marketing, right. It is rare enough to find people with good electronics and software skills.

After working in robotics for a few years, I came to the realization that people (applies especially to managers) don't recognize when they are bringing the wrong instincts to a problem. If you come up through software, you develop one set of instincts, EE another, and ME yet another set of instincts. When making a decision, step one must be identifying the appropriate set of instincts to bring to the problem.

Once upon a time I worked for a manager who could only bring software instincts to any problem. He was dismissive, even, of ME problems. But not every problem can be solved in two-week sprints and pushed over LTE to the fleet. (Actually, if you want a good start-up idea, find a way to push a field update to a 5 kilo aluminum casting over LTE -- I'd invest in that.)

But here is the thing -- unless you can synchronize the release of software + electronics + mechanics, you don't have a robot. That means design, validation, component tracking, field updates, maintenance. You always need to take a step back and ask yourself what instincts to bring to a problem, and if you are weak in one/some of those areas, learn who's instincts you can trust and bring them in.

I am presumptuous enough to believe this applies to IOT mechatronics as well as robots. (Actually robots need more than SW+EE+ME, but this rant is already long enough.)

Re: To the future occupants of my office at the MIT Media Lab

#80

Post by GeorgeTirebiter »

gowld wrote: post #62
hardwaregeek wrote: post #15

Whenever I read stuff about this I get a sense of immense jealousy. MIT certainly has its issues but man, I'd love to be at a place where people exhibit so much joy and interest in creation. I've met my share of cool people but it truly does feel like MIT has this unique environment of technical skill and creativity.

That the old MIT. For the past 15 years MIT leadership has been dedicated to destroying the creative hacker spirit.

Evidence?
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