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Comment by armchairhacker | Hacker News Reader

Can someone explain why Flipper is making these decisions, or what advantages Flipper One has vs a Flipper Zero, RPI, and Linux machine?

The (EDIT2: maybe not) AI writing doesn’t help.

EDIT: looking more, it seems like the goal is to be a fun project like Playdate, except a Linux multi-tool instead of game console. Which is actually great, a step towards healing today’s corporatized tech culture. It’s unfortunate that the website non-explains this with AI and marketing speak.

EDIT2: I wrote too soon, AI is making me too cynical. My only remaining critique is that they explain the motive instead of just stating features and repeating “we’re doing something exciting and important [for reasons not really explained]”

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> what advantages Flipper One has vs a Flipper Zero

They work at different layers, the Zero is physical, the One is network. There is almost no overlap between the two, so one doesn't have an advantage over the other.

> RPI

It has a battery, with attention given to power management, and is a complete unit, not just a board.

> Linux machine

You mean like a laptop? You can probably do all this on a Linux laptop PC, but the Flipper One is a smaller, more specialized device, with a firmware as open as the manufacturers will let them.

> My only remaining critique is that they explain the motive instead of just stating features

Go to this page for this: https://docs.flipper.net/one/general/features

Can't answer for the One, as I don't think even they themselves know what it'll end up being when done, but for the Zero, the biggest benefit have been the whole "one device = one large community = lots of firmware = lots of software" thing which gets a lot of benefits from one cohesive community around one device, I'm guessing the One would also get similar benefits with this.

As a current Zero user, I'd definitively get a One once available, just the addition of the PTT-button feels worth it to me, but almost all the other changes are good (IMO) as well, don't really see any drawbacks from the design they're aiming for now, besides the modularity will make things slightly more complicated, but also comes with a ton of obvious benefits.

Can you elaborate on how you use the zero? I got all excited, bought one, and it’s in a drawer. I’m way deep into coding, CNC machining, making of all sorts… but I just never incorporated it.

What am I missing? What do you use yours for?

Mine is mostly just lying around but sometimes I find some use for it. This winter I bought some remote controlled electricity sockets that at first didn't seem to work so then I got the Flipper and started recording radio to figure out what was happening. Turns out the remote was some cheap hardware that at first broadcast promiscously and to the sockets entirely unintelligibly but with time and trying it stabilised.

If I didn't have the Flipper or some other SDR device I'd probably have assumed it was bad and left it at the recycling station. If I'd lose the original remote I can use the recordings on the Flipper to either control the sockets or create a new remote.

I've also looked into how the key fob to my car works and investigated tens of RFID and NFC cards, some of which I could probably have talked to with my phone but I like the format of the Flipper and it has very few distractions except Snake.

When traveling I sometimes bring it up just to check out what radio stuff I can find and think about what devices might be sending.

> Can you elaborate on how you use the zero?

Mostly around debugging and troubleshooting networking (WiFi+Zigbee network) at home, which the Zero is nice for this as it's easy to bring with me to any area in the house/yard and test stuff wherever. I used to use a laptop+radio for this, but I no longer have any laptops and the Zero does the trick nicely enough.

I also tend (try) to duplicate any keyfobs/cards I come across too, as backups, which helped me just the other day as we've lost the card we got for the municipal trash, so now I'm using the Zero to unlock them as we still haven't recovered that card.

Some months ago I used it for moving a bunch of AC+IR remotes to be connected to my Home Assistant installation by first reverse-engineering the IR protocol then building my own hardware for it with a little IR transmitter, now I can remotely control the old AC unit regardless of where I am in the house. I'm pretty sure it's a fairly standard protocol I didn't need to reverse-engineer myself, probably well documented on the internet already, but way more fun to do so yourself.

I'm in a similar boat. I'm not passionate enough about technology with the Flipper Zero. Don't get me wrong, really cool device but I've pretty much just used it as a toy to play snake on and a universal remote. If it just had a 3.5mm jack, I would use it as an MP3 player as well.

> The AI writing doesn’t help.

Why do you say there is AI writing?

Anything that anyone ever writes from now on has people coming out of the woodwork to accuse it of being AI-written. I too bemoan what the written word is coming to, but I am also so over the Slop Police, and wish they would just keep the conclusions of their sleuthing to themselves from now on.

I appreciate that some sites state explicitly whether AI was used in content creation. I wish it were the social norm.

I think this is the optimal outcome of the “Slop Police.” Normalization of these acknowledgements. Transparency is good, like a journalist declaring whether they have vested interests.

I usually give the benefit of the doubt, and regret accusing this article. It's the articles and comments that are obviously AI and score 100% on Pangram that I still feel should be called out, because the writing is hard to understand and the underlying message rarely makes good insight or discussion.

The writing style.

> So today we're going public not with a big shiny announcement, but to tell the whole story straight. Honestly? We're genuinely terrified, and we need your help.

> Flipper Zero and Flipper One operate at different protocol layers [below a graphic with features like "Power Bank". Do they know what a "protocol layer" is or do I not?]

> Flipper One isn't an upgrade to Flipper Zero — it's a completely different project with its own goals.

And lots of em-dashes.

But looking closer, I actually suspect it’s not AI, the author just integrated LLM-isms into their style.

So the em-dashes is the new AI taletell? I mean, I have noticed them, but never thought it was such a characteristic.

New telltale? I mean this in the most polite way but have you been living under a rock? Its been a clear sign people have been more than noticing since at least 4o back in mid 2024.

Indeed. Looking back at the previous blog posts by this author from 2020 shows the same isms. Maybe AI trained on these posts instead of the other way around.

> But looking closer, I actually suspect it’s not AI, the author just integrated LLM-isms into their style.

I think his native/first language is Russian -- em dashes are widely used (e.g. most definitions start with it, look at any Wikipedia article), quite a lot of people learn how to type proper em dashes and do so even in casual chats (a bit of self-proclaimed elitist sign).

edit: actually switching languages on Wikipedia and it almost seems like some USSR influence -- Ukrainian, Belarusian, Georgian, Azerbaijani, Kazakh, Uzbek and Tajik language pages start with em dash. Turkmen, Kyrgyz and Lithuanian uses eN dash. Armenian, Estonian and Latvian don't start with dash.

For non-ex-USSR countries/titular languages I found only Polish to start with eN dash.

Yeah, you've acknowledged it in your edits, but just for others: the author commented above that he did not use AI, only translation tools.

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