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ehead

177 karma · joined August 18, 2017

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ehead··on Silent speech with ultrasound
These guys are on a roll!
ehead··on Core Devices keeps stealing our work
It sounds like theres room for a deal here; multiple app stores are very trendy right now :)

My preorder is definitely on the line if this doesn't get fixed.

ehead··on Reid Hoffman's $30M bet: Send partners, not cash, to startups
This is an interesting concept. Another thing that would be interesting is if recruiting firms started operating like this...
ehead··on Smartphones and Dematerialization
Perhaps the author was quoting a statistic that includes electricity requirements of the datacenters and infrastructure to power the phone. Perhaps not, but that would be an interesting statistic.
ehead··on Productivity Is About Attention Management
This is my solution, but it feels like there should be a better way.

I have replaced 'staring into space thinking' with taking a walk outside my office.

ehead··on How does the Hololens 2 matter?
You should check out Virtual Desktop with the Oculus Go. It’s astonishing.

The Go’s screen is appreciably better than the Rift’s, and the network streaming utility that brings your Windows computer’s screen into the Go is excellent.

One thing that was interesting was the zen of using it instead of a monitor - it’s just you and your screen. Nothing else in visible space. With a pair of noise cancelling headphones, I’m convinced that this is the first glimmer of productivity in the commercial space for VR that has wide appeal.

I tried it for a fair amount of time and I’m convinced that when the Oculus Quest comes out, I’ll use that instead of a monitor for some of my work.

ehead··on Ask HN: Leaving a Job at Big Tech Giants for Startup
I’m finding this out the hard way. I recently shut down a startup that became very distant from my interests, and now I’m having trouble finding jobs in my actual interest area, hardware engineering. I’m no longer a ‘recent grad’ so my college internships don’t have much weight. I wish I had taken advantage of the amazing opportunities afforded by being a fresh grad instead of starting my own thing, and I wish I had had the foresight to not do a startup that would distract me from my career path.
ehead··on Tell HN: Alexa mute button is not hardwired
Wow, I didn’t realize that the validity of this statement is not widely confirmed.

I’ll post back here if I find any info to confirm or deny this.

ehead··on Ray Kurzweil 2019 Predictions
Agree - this article is pretty underwhelming. Rodney Brooks seems like the only person who knows how to write an article like this that delivers.
ehead··on Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations?
I also do this. Two handy upshots are: - At the end of the week, I have a list of most of the things I’ve accomplished - Tomorrow morning, I can hit the ground running because I can remember where I left off
ehead··on SpaceX just got FCC approval to launch 7,518 satellites
I believe companies like Boeing or Space Systems Lorale do that kind of work in their satellite design groups. Same with Orbital ATK.
ehead··on Ask HN: Anyone else find the new Gmail interface sluggish?
Yes - I've since switched to the Apple email client.
ehead··on Rethink Robotics shuts down
What companies will scoop up all the talent that was there? Can anyone speculate about what Rodney Brooks will do next?
ehead··on Lessons From a Failed Startup — From and For First Time Founders
I agree with the idea that startups should generate clear hypothesis and do well-documented experiments.

VCs should be more vigorous about grilling founders on their hypotheses, imo. The experiment logs also make for content-marketing and investor documentation.

ehead··on E Ink Waveforms are a closely guarded secret
If you’ve ever seen an OG Pebble, you’ve seen that display. It looks like a better resolution gameboy display. Very little space between pixels.

Some models are different, though, and basically turn into a mirror when their pixels are turned on, rather than become matte black.

Adafruit sells a dev board for 25 bucks. Perfect for low power wearables, much better than E Ink.

ehead··on E Ink Waveforms are a closely guarded secret
In my experience, memory LCD has been a better technology to work with: https://www.sharpsma.com/sharp-memory-lcd-technology

No crazy +/- 40V lines, no external driver circuitry, and extremely low power. Not as low power as E Ink, but since you don’t need to drive wacky voltages, your power budget math will come out the same or better.

ehead··on The new MacBook Pros with T2 chips do indeed kernel panic randomly
Ubuntu runs great on my 2013 15" Macbook Pro. It does mess with the boot manager, and can become unstable if you install it simultaneously with boot camp.

The only issue is that the trackpad drivers aren't so good. Stick to OS X if you're a trackpad gesture power user.

ehead··on High-power thermoelectric generator utilises thermal difference of only 5°C
I didn't see in the article a T_low or T_high where this device was operational. Normally TEGs work well with high temperature differences (attached to the side of a hot wire pipe with a heat sink on the opposite side), and they work poorly at lower temps (room temp). Anyone know what temperature range this device is made for?
ehead··on Meet the Numtots: the millennials who find fixing public transit sexy
Sometimes I wonder if all of these leftist meme groups popping up (or leftist memes in other groups) are propaganda put on by bad actors. If so, it seems to be working...
ehead··on Facebook lifts cryptocurrency ban amid rumours of Coinbase takeover
Man, this would be wild. What products would come out of this acquisition?

Maybe they'd fully support crypto as a method of payment transfer to replace their Messenger Payments product. It's not clear if crypto would make their payments platform so much better that they'd get strong penetration, but in countries with underdeveloped payments platforms, I can imagine they'd get some good growth. It'd be very much in line with their vision of connecting everyone - enable payments between anyone in the world.

ehead··on Earliest images of the moon were better than people realised
I used to work at Ames in a facility a stone's throw from McMoon's (not singularity University hah).

Heard that the guys who worked on this stuff in there were super crochety. I went over there once to check out some old aerospace equipment they had hanging out in the back (I think it was some decrepit rocket engine), and they gave me a classic 'you kids get off my lawn speech' - until they found out that the friend I went with had a PhD in aeronotical engineering. They lightened up after that and we had a great conversation after that. What a wacky group.

ehead··on Charging electric scooters is a cut-throat business
Man, the gig economy is getting pretty surreal.

Wait until the food delivery guys get on electric longboards. YT from Snow Crash might be a relatable character for my kids...

ehead··on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk Has Reinvented Research
It's an interesting question, whether or not the data is representative (or what demographic is the data representative of).

Are there any studies done of the demographic distribution of Turkers?

ehead··on Lessons from Optics, the Other Deep Learning
Seconded. This book should be given to all EE undergraduates, it’s a shame how few people know about it.
ehead··on Amazon, Berkshire, JPMorgan to Create Healthcare Company
Do you think that we'll be able to escape making this tradeoff in the future? I don't think it's unreasonable to think that sanitation and healthcare technology will advance to the point that they can be implemented in smaller communities at similar levels of quality that could be seen in big cities.
ehead··on Robot Operating System 2.0: Ardent Apalone Release
Has anyone played with the RTOS implementation? I used ROS a ton for my thesis but was always left longing for true real time actions. I'd love to hear the story of someone who has tried to do a real project with it.
ehead··on The beginning of the end for copper wire
Maintenance fees are likely to be high, especially considering that the companies are required to keep their copper lines maintained until no customers want copper service anymore. In rural areas, this could mean keeping miles and miles of line maintained for a single customer.

Selling the copper from the wires also could be quite lucrative.