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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

#131

Post by OJFord »

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.

> It is rare enough to find people with good electronics and software skills.

That should be my niche (if it's small enough to be called one), but I've worked firmly in software since graduating a few years ago, and I'm increasingly worried that I'm unhirable for anything else, even if I brushed up with some hobby electronics at home, despite it being electronics that got me into CS.

Is there any truth to that? Would I have to start over in a grad role for anyone to hire me for hardware? (I'm not actually looking, I just don't like the thought that the road's closed, my next job has to be software.)

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

#132

Post by johnwalkr »

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…

Growing up, my house had a laundry chute. In retrospect, it was probably installed by my dad. It was in the en-suite bathroom of the master bedroom, and had a door in the cabinet of the bathroom that folded down like a dishwasher door. It opened up directly on top of the washing machine in the basement.

I remember crawling up and down it all the time as a kid while playing hide and seek or whatever. In fact it had a flaw of a weak latch. Sometimes when you closed the bathroom door, The laundry chute door would fall open, blocking the bathroom door from opening. When this happened the only way to resolve it is to send a small child up through the laundry chute to close its door.

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

#133

Post by dredmorbius »

axaxs wrote: post #33
squarefoot wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems a nice way to send a basket with dirty clothes down without having to bag them or bring them through common areas. Was the basement in common with other people or it was all yours? Nice idea though, although hard to survive in modern times where the mere thought that a child could open it and fall down the basement onto the washing machine would deem it instantly.

This was a single family home, 3 bed 1 bath. Incidentally, the basement was smaller than the house itself, which I guess why the hatch wasn't in the bathroom itself(which was over empty crawlspace). I'd never considered the child aspect, but that may explain why it had a lock on it(the turn up, push/pull, turn down kind, like on public restroom doors, unsure what they're called). Also, why it was so heavy. I wish I'd…

Fire and safety codes may mandate much of this.

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

#134

Post by OJFord »

eitland wrote: post #117
rsynnott wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> where electrical regulations don’t allow it, banishing the washing machine to the kitchen. That explains! I've wondered why people in movies/series would keep washing machines in the kitchen. Around here in medium size houses like mine the washing machine is typically placed in the same room as one of the toilets and the room is referred to as the washing room (vaskerom).

That would actually be allowed AFAIK - it's the bath/shower that makes it a bathroom (both in British English usage and electrical regs!) and banishes the white goods. But WCs tend to be v. small (as if given a little extra space architects say What shall we do, Fred, cupboard or loo?) so can't house them either.

Usually (flats/small houses aside) they'll be in the scullery (adjoining the kitchen) though, not actually in the 'cooking area'.

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

#135

Post by 082349872349872 »

m0zg wrote: post #84
vikramkr wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's art

Then why bother with Peltier?

Why bother making costumes for Neptune Day?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLymNoVvC0k

(Но впрочем песня не о нем, а о любви.)

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

#136

Post by thesauri »

Mizza wrote: post #94

I've been thinking about some of these guys a lot lately. When are we going to collectively unpack the fact the Media Lab/Berkman Center project has been a complete failure? I worked at these places and mingled on the outskirts, and for a long time really believed all the bullshit they were spouting at the time - that the internet was a positive force, if we just connected enough people, surely their "stories" and "e…

Solving a problem with technology does solve the initial problem, but at the same time it introduces new ones.

There has been a naïve belief that the Internet would be an all-positive force, which it is not. For instance, we used to have a constant lack of information, now there is information overflow. Content consumption used to be synchronous (people watched the same broadcasts, live), now content consumption is asynchronous.

The problem is that our old tools and concepts to navigate the world around us don't work in this new era anymore, not that the development in itself is inherently bad. Real problems have been solved.

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

#138

Post by ponker »

culturestate wrote: post #87
reaperducer wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Interesting; garbage chutes are required for any building over 4 storeys around here (Singapore). Some older places have individual chute openings in each flat, but most newer ones use centralized pneumatic systems, e.g. https://www.hdb.gov.sg/cs/infoweb/about-us/our-role/smart-an...

Singapore and Japan are two countries where I've seen things work that don't work anywhere else because the citizenry treats the commons so well (whether out of pure civic pride or fear of some consequences I don't have any idea).

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

#139

Post by ponker »

wombatpm wrote: post #92
mrgordon wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize the author of the linked article resigned over Epstein and frequently fought to improve things? Why try to link him to some trash that he vehemently opposed? And Swartz’s death was caused by JSTOR not the Media Lab FYI

And MIT threw Adam to the wolves.

Who's Adam?

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

#140

Post by ponker »

ethanwillis wrote: post #53
sbierwagen wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's a flamewar topic. There's a new controversy coming out of MIT media lab every week and we need to question whether whatever "culture" they're putting out is actually worth emulating. And don't forget MIT pushed out Richard Stallman in regards to Epstein debate while ignoring people who knowingly took childfucking money.

I think "cancel culture" has gone too far in all respects but that Stallman email was beyond the pale and he deserved to get kicked out of MIT for writing that on an MIT mailing list.
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