Instead of staring down at their phones in social situations people can pretend to pay attention wile looking at a screen. Can't wait for zombie stairs.
The Age of Personalized Hardware Is Coming
81–90 of 90 posts
Re: The Age of Personalized Hardware Is Coming
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd include the geeks in that. I've been programming computers and tinkering with all sorts of hardware for more than 30 years. I first used FreeBSD in.....2001? and Linux not long after that. I've programmed OS code, I've grudgingly written VHDL, I've assembled a sound card for the Apple II I still have running - all this to say that I believe I'm in your tiny few. And I'm so tired. Tired of having to debug all the…
> I run Windows because I'm sick of debugging device driver issues. Lost me there. The rest is reasonable but other OSes (MacOS, Linux) also rarely have driver issues. Its not like Windows never needs fixing (these days more than Linux). These days you can buy computers with Linux pre-installed and compatible hardware. My biggest problem with technology is with very stock stuff. Mobile apps that everyone pushes you t…
I'm tired of having this debate over and over. I still use Linux devices regularly at work and have a T420S and various RPi-like devices that run it, so it's not like I'm going off memories of 2010. I owned a Framework Laptop (designed to run Linux) and got rid of it in no small part because the battery life was so much worse on Linux than it was in Windows. I've worked at Google who (circa 2019) had an incredible team of IT specialists and specifically selected hardware and still struggled to get Bluetooth on Linux to work reliably for everyone.
I don't want to have to carefully pick hardware for compatibility. I want first class support for pen and touch. I value thin, light, and long battery over the ability to run a custom bootloader.
Here's a thread where I ranted with specific examples 3 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47463982
Re: The Age of Personalized Hardware Is Coming
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's mildly surprising to me, given what I've seen when I ask current models to make an SVG of something. Would I be on the right track if I guessed there's a DSL for designing PCBs that would help enforce functional correctness?
A lot of human PCB errors could be caught by analyzing the netlist against requirements and knowledge of the datasheet. Schematic and board formats are usually plaintext, so you can generate those directly even. Or kicad + python? That’s probably enough for an LLM to check if you’ve mis-wired something, missed a part or chose the wrong resistor to set a regulator voltage. Plus good old DRC/ERC. If you pass all of tho…
You got it. It was kicad and python, with the builtin DRC/ERC. It had to iterate quite a lot to get it to pass, but once it did the board was solid, if not elegant. I almost feel like kicad was the real hero.
A human would have done a better job, and maybe used half the PCB... but it got it done and at the end of the day the board is 100% functional, and 100% machine designed.
Re: The Age of Personalized Hardware Is Coming
#84AI + hardware has really helped my wife and I get more sleep. I had an esp32-box-3 lying around from a lapsed "voice agent" project from a year or two ago. Had a baby. Baby moved to another room, sleep trained. Baby either: 1. wakes up a few times a night, babbles for a bit, goes back to sleep OR 2. baby wakes up and fusses for N (=10) minutes, at which point parents need to go in and settle (that's the sleep trainin…
Baby monitors fundamentally need to be safe and allow parents peace of mind. Knowing they can constantly hear the baby and communicate verbally to soothe, as if you were in the room with them, allows this. It already means you only have to respond and/or get up to tend if they are still unsettled after a period of time. Monitors also have volume control so you can stay alert without being constantly disturbed. The tr…
Thank you for engaging with this thoughtfully. You've highlighted the HUGE difference between "bespoke just for me/us" and "product that works for everyone". I've been struggling with this myself, since its value to my family is such that I immediately think "how can I share/sell this to everyone?"
In my case, I have a separate heartbeat check process (running on another machine) which ensures that the monitor is correctly working (no silent fails). I also wired up a SECOND esp32-box-3 as a receiver, and it will complain loudly if the transmitter one isn't sending (much like most normal baby monitors do). The monitor (web ui) has an option of directly listening to the raw non-gated audio, which I use every now and then to confirm what's going on. I also record the streams sometimes for algorithmic improvement.
My aim is not to replace human connection with machines, it's to allow the parents a bit more sanity so as to be better carers for our children. So far we've gained in sleep, piece of mind, and reduced stress. The last one is important - listening to your baby yell for 10 minutes, even if you know they're just annoyed because they don't want to sleep, can be really draining (especially for mom). The notifications allow us to keep tabs on things without the direct audio line to the limbic system.
Re: The Age of Personalized Hardware Is Coming
#85The author is missing the _hardest_ part of small hardware: power management. The reason why AR glasses are not a thing yes is because there isn't a big enough battery to allow them to function for more than a few minutes. Glasses form factor have space for about .9watt hours now, and ~2 in 4 years time (assuming current trends) Assuming a 14 hour day, that means that your have 140mwhr to spend every hour. A not very…
I don't know, it's getting better every day. The other day, I took apart an old handheld vacuum cleaner to scavenge the internals. All there was inside was a small but powerful motor, and a couple of 18650 batteries with a charge controller and a switch. Two small batteries, running a relatively powerful vacuum, which could do spot cleans of the whole house (corners and crevices and such) without needing a recharge.
Two 18650s hold about 22Wh of energy, more than two iPhones, and 20x more than what the parent comment is talking about.
Re: The Age of Personalized Hardware Is Coming
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I run Windows because I'm sick of debugging device driver issues. Lost me there. The rest is reasonable but other OSes (MacOS, Linux) also rarely have driver issues. Its not like Windows never needs fixing (these days more than Linux). These days you can buy computers with Linux pre-installed and compatible hardware. My biggest problem with technology is with very stock stuff. Mobile apps that everyone pushes you t…
I'm tired of having this debate over and over. I still use Linux devices regularly at work and have a T420S and various RPi-like devices that run it, so it's not like I'm going off memories of 2010. I owned a Framework Laptop (designed to run Linux) and got rid of it in no small part because the battery life was so much worse on Linux than it was in Windows. I've worked at Google who (circa 2019) had an incredible te…
I am tired of arguing about this as I do not not have these problems and have not in many years over multiple machines.
Looking at your specific examples they are not a like for like comparison. Two are Ubuntu on Raspberry Pi issues (so on a device designed for experimentation, and not even running the usual distro). One is a bug in the GUI for True NAS. One is unhappiness with the default installed command line packages for Debian on WSL.
When I used Windows I had just as many irritants. It was very noticeable when I was using Linux at home and Windows at work (and is one reason I switched to Linux). it is definitely not true that Windows always works flawlessly for everyone in all circumstances. If you count every irritation you find with every Linux distro on a wide range of hardware it will add up to more than Windows on typical hardware. Have your tried Windows on your Pi? Have you replaced your TrueNas server with a Windows equivalent?
Re: The Age of Personalized Hardware Is Coming
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's special about it, other than more constraints, more things to take into account, and having to simulate/test more - so the need for some specialized SW? They are different constraints than the ones in SW development, but is there some fundamental difference that prevents replacing the human in the loop with AI in the loop?
Experienced humans can do basic high speed layout without expensive simulation using rules of thumb that worked for them in the past. It’ll be overconstrained and overbuilt, but it will work. I’m curious if AI’s know enough to do some useful high frequency / data rate layouts without paying for $50,000+ simulation tools.
You can certainly make it produce a lot of design rules of thumb. You can make it do the research for each of those based on the literature. And you can then make the machine sort out the rules of thumb by effect and quantify them meaningfully.
Then you can make it process existing good designs and make it propose a general design/routing methodology (and it's own scripts/tools for calculating/optimizing the "thumb" rules that would be used throughout) for initial placement/routing of key components based on all the collected data.
Then you may have enough context and tools to have it make use of them during design.
Re: The Age of Personalized Hardware Is Coming
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Experienced humans can do basic high speed layout without expensive simulation using rules of thumb that worked for them in the past. It’ll be overconstrained and overbuilt, but it will work. I’m curious if AI’s know enough to do some useful high frequency / data rate layouts without paying for $50,000+ simulation tools.
You can certainly make it produce a lot of design rules of thumb. You can make it do the research for each of those based on the literature. And you can then make the machine sort out the rules of thumb by effect and quantify them meaningfully. Then you can make it process existing good designs and make it propose a general design/routing methodology (and it's own scripts/tools for calculating/optimizing the "thumb"…
Right. Okay - so you have no idea if it does or not. Thank you.
Re: The Age of Personalized Hardware Is Coming
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can certainly make it produce a lot of design rules of thumb. You can make it do the research for each of those based on the literature. And you can then make the machine sort out the rules of thumb by effect and quantify them meaningfully. Then you can make it process existing good designs and make it propose a general design/routing methodology (and it's own scripts/tools for calculating/optimizing the "thumb"…
Right. Okay - so you have no idea if it does or not. Thank you.
I actually tried a few of the steps, but whatever.
Re: The Age of Personalized Hardware Is Coming
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
The idea of "pythonizing" resource-constrained environments like embedded seems feasible to me, and even a good idea if executed well (e.g., numpy, torch, jax, etc.), but it does have me cackling imagining the first encounters of modern web devs with performance/power economy constraints
adds animation Battery life decreases by 25% Adds telemetry to see why battery life is suffering Battery lasts 10 minutes and the device gets hot to touch. Thats going to be a brutal intro into embedded hardware
brutal for them, hilarious for me