Hippocrates

So is this next on the AI assisted firmware/hardware reverse engineering block? Or has someone already gotten to it?

What a time to be alive.

I worked with and hired tons of H1Bs (and non) over the years and the idea that they earn this visa with exceptional talent is a farce. I work in bog standard web services. We fill seats with H1Bs to write ho-hum crud apps and do UX testing work. Some have been great! Others terrible.

Could be wildly different for someone in a very high-tech org or medical field, but at places I worked it was used as a convenience, but not necessary.

I'm seeing a lot of "offshoring" and go to Canada at the moment in my co.

I like the fact that we're aligning on one connector but it's hard for me to praise USB-C in and of itself. The connector feels flimsy and has some slop/play in a way that lightning did not, and especially on lower-end devices.

The charging standards, voltages, and data rates, are frustrating because they're almost never labeled. This is especially true on low end, cables, and device devices. The worst offenders will only charge with a USB-A to C cable with low voltage, which is not what I hope for when I see a USB-C port on a device.

This seems so obvious. It's like asking your manager for a raise and giving the justification that you want a bigger house.

Always be marketing what you can/will/have done for the company to bring value, not what the company can do for you.

The harness/UI that claude code brought was the thing that stole developer mindshare. Thats when people stopped coding in IDEs. Nothing to do with the underlying model.

The fact that this guy is trying to IPO a crypto company right now is a fantastic reason to present whatever evidence there is that he may be Satoshi.

That doesn't sound right. I have them on my desk. Don't even know where the bra case is. I use and charge them only once in a blue moon, perhaps every 2 months, and the battery does not die. I don't lay them flat or anything either.

> if a large part of our job is purely mechanical, then there is a bigger problem with our engineering processes and AI can't fix that.

It is! And AI is fixing precisely that. What businesses actually care about (well, 99% of them where code is written) is shipping fast and solving the immediate problem, NOT code quality and craft. It goes against what I want to believe as an engineer. Most problems are not new, they are not hard, they are not sensitive. You will need to start with a good understanding of the business need. It's not that the AI can't code to this. I will often stub out an abstraction, explain inputs/outputs in detail, provide sample data etc. That's all. There are frighteningly few showstopper problems with AI coding at this point, and it's moving so quickly.

We're not at the point where non-engineers are capable engineers with AI, but if you are an engineer not using AI extensively, you are being lapped.

It makes me feel very secure in my job that so many engineers ITT are downplaying the ability and productivity of AI coding tools. You can pry cursor out of my cold dead hands. If you aren't seeing a 10x boost, then you must not have tried it lately, or haven't got the experience to prompt well.

What it excels at: - Boilerplate code that's been written 1000x, which can saps your time and enthusiasm for the meaty problems beyond that.

- Complex DSA work. It has been demonstrated millions of times in training material.

- Simple and tedious tasks like making dummy data for tests and struct literals.

- Tightly scoped refactors.

Where does it falter?

- Mapping your product/business to the code or abstractions needed. I think this is where junior devs struggle to leverage it.

- Doing large scale multi-file refactors without proper specifics, guidance, and context. It also can't write a huge project from scratch. Humans are still need to fit the pieces all together or provide guidance. I think this gap closes soon.

Code quality simply isn't a problem IME. If it didn't one-shot your dream abstraction, you probably weren't specific enough in the prompt. Most human-written code is also junk, so pointing out a minor gaffes isn't really a dunk on AI. It's still a massive productivity booster if wielded by even a half-competent engineer.

If you make the user "go to the AI" and activate it somehow, you did it wrong.

A good AI/LLM experience is one which meets you where you are already working. Github Copilot is FAR from the best LLM at coding, but it is amazingly useful the way it integrates with my workflow.

On the other hand, Apple's Image Playground, Genmoji, and writing tools all make you visit the AI feature to use it. Same problem with chatGPT. It's absolutely painful to visit a web UI and copy/paste information in and out of the thing to get anything done.

I actually do get a little value from Apple's notification group summaries. AI/LLMs need to be blended into existing places. Bring the AI to the user, don't make the user go to the AI.

To put it another way. AI is not a feature. It can make a feature better. Somehow everyone wants it to be a standalone feature. It is not.

What’s so good about fresh air? Like I don’t want stinky stuffy air but as someone with central HVAC I had no issues with my indoor air. Are we trying to get outdoor smells? Or is it something else?

> It's amusing to think back to all the buzz around Humane's AI pin

It certainly is. And the Rabbit R1. How in the world did people who supposedly know anything about AI think they could make that work as a standalone device detached from rich context.

Why does SOTA matter here? OpenAI has actually failed already to make something useful and mass-market. After all these years of pushing SOTA, it's still a website with a text box. Siri in its current form is more useful to me than ChatGPT 4. You simply don't need SOTA models for a lot of valuable features; you need context, annotation APIs, and the right platform and integrations to assist users where they already are (on their phones, in cars, in their IDE, etc). MSFT's GitHub copilot is a good example of getting it right.

Apple relegated ChatGPT to a 3rd tier AI capability for "google answers", and "write me a poem" party tricks, and rightfully put it behind a privacy disclaimer. It looks barely better than the various ChatGPT shortcuts so many people have cobbled together. That part of the announcement stuck out like a sore thumb and looked to me like a huge L for OpenAI. The "partnership" was a nothingburger. Like someone at Apple agreed to it early on but then late in the project realized it wasn't needed at all. So much for SOTA.

Thank god. I think 1pw has been mostly good, but it has frustrating quirks... Like requiring me to input the master password on the iOS app/OSX/Browser extension (on the same device) as if each of these apps have no way of communicating.

I constantly have issues with it not engaging on a form where I have to manually switch to 1pw, though it has gotten a bit better over the years.

I hate to see a company/product get sherlocked but I don't feel like password security was something we should need to have a subscription for.

The AI/Cartoony person being sent as a birthday wish was super cringey, like something my boomer father would send me. I'm a fan of genmoji. That looks fun. Less a fan of generated clip art and "images for the sake of having an image here", and way, way less into this "here, I made a cornball image of you from other images of you that I have" feature. It's as lame as Animoji but as creepy as deepfakes.

I was surprised how little they are leaning on OpenAI. Most of the impressive integrations that actually look useful are on-device or in their private cloud. OpenAIs ChatGPT was relegated to a corner of Siri for answering "google queries", if you grant it permission. This seems like an L for OpenAI, not being a bigger part of the architecture (and I'm glad).

The OpenAI/ChatGPT part of this looks pretty useless. Similar to what some shortcuts like “hey data” already do. I was shocked, and relieved that Apple isn't relying on their APIs more. Seems like a big L for OpenAI.

I'm definitely no wood nerd but, yeah, I wouldn't intuit that a softer, new-growth wood would just disintegrate in 100 years time, or much more, for that matter.

As you allude to the material around it, we now have engineered, weather resistant sheathing, house wrap, and vinyl or metal siding, or some such very weather-proof stuff.

Most of the issues I have had with "old growth" wood in my 17th century homes were just due to water penetrating where it should not, rotting that wood, and then causing me a headache trying replace it with a similar material.

Pretty interesting to see the difference in the grain. I do notice the softness of the wall studs when I hang anything in my newer place. Still "they dont build em like they used to" is a bit... wrong. Nimby's or "old heads" as we call em, badmouth new builds for their quality. I've lived in extremely well-built 18th century homes, and now one that is less than a decade old and I greatly, greatly prefer the latter.

Newer features I appreciate are engineered joists (stronger, less creaking floors and noise transmission), doors and double pane windows that seal out air and noise, good insulation, central HVAC, PEX plumbing, neutral wiring, and the fact that if I need to fix or replace anything, it can be easily ordered if not found at a hardware store.

Yeah, maybe some of these materials are not as "sturdy" to the touch and maybe they have a shorter life-span, but I am positive they work better and are cheaper/easier to maintain.

That’s wildly different from my experience. Never lost the pieces or had to “track” them and the charge lasts for longer than I can comfortably listen to something without a short break.

Being tethered to a phone or computer with a wire that pulls, catches, and makes rubbing noise through your ears is truly an awful relic of the past.

If I were an adversary this would certainly pique my interest.

What!!! That stupid feature that gobbles up your phone storage was fudging everyone’s engagement metrics (that they misinterpreted)? That is just bonkers.

Yeah I was just looking into this and apparently you can even patent things that don't work at all, but may be asked for a working model at some point in the future. Thats surprising, because I could easily see the sense in patenting slightly futuristic ideas with a plausible mechanism and then scrambling to create a model if and when it becomes economically enticing.

They rattle off a bunch of other "physiological parameters" like glucose, hemoglobin and "other". I wonder how many of these have been demonstrated via their technology vs. are theoretically possible (patent trolling)? I could be wrong but I thought non-invasive blood glucose has not been cracked yet, yet seems to be covered by the patent.

Also curious as these appear to be dated in 2021 but the Apple Watch 6 with pulse oximeter came out in 2020. Unless there is something different about the "latest" watches.

There are apparently different methods. Apple Watch 3-5 created vo2 max data without a pulse oximeter.

I would have thought school starts before 8:30 because most parents have a workday starting at 9. And, starting earlier may avoid that rush-hour traffic for the busses or parents dropping kids.

I don't believe it is necessary for airplay, but probably is for Chromecast, Sonos, and many devices to establish ad-hoc connectivity for setup and operation.

I take this popup to mean that they want to fingerprint and locate my home network or backdoor it somehow. I ALWAYS deny this access unless the app specifically requires it, and that is rare.

WiFi based geolocationing should be a well known privacy threat by now. The popup should really communicate that better and provide tighter controls.

I think the problem with these two roles is actually the confusion about what each is. Usually the issue is a "product" manager not doing the ideating, not doing research, not enough advocating about what user needs or what the product should be. Instead they do too much "project" management which amounts to gantt charts, check-ins, and nagging about status.

I have seen that in all sizes and maturities of company that people view these roles as interchangeable and they are not.

The problem with most PMs is that they are not doing boots-on-the-ground work. A good PM should be constantly bridging the gap between engineering and the user.

1. Map the product or idea being built to those who will use it. Present it, get users feelings on it, if it is viable and needed. Throughout development, gather continuous feedback by demoing, shadowing, and adapting to new feedback. Plan and execute a launch, watch for snags, provide support and solutions to users.

2. Communicate gathered feedback to engineering, and do so with an understanding of where the project is engineering-wise, where it is going, what needs to change. Give engineering the "why. Convey the priority of everything the project needs vs what it has and what is being worked on.

Repeat this feedback loop.

But most of them seem to think they can operate entirely in document-land and just crank out roadmap docs and keep stakeholder alignment via endless check-ins and nagging. They are doing a "project manager" job instead.