Rabbit R1 as an Android App | Hacker News Reader

Rabbit R1 as an Android App

theverge.com

31 pointsbrothrock20 comments

In a few years we will look back at this period in AI with niche hardware startups and companies pouring millions into chatbot UIs and think how early it all was.

The future lives in a thick fog and someone has to venture through. Bless the first to try and find it, but they’re all missing

Maybe, maybe not. How do we fix the core issue of it making shit up all the time?

Looks like handwaving it as the fog of the future will do for now.. I don't see any progress made in this area. It seems like most of the investment is going to the interesting "look what the AI can do" stuff instead of correctness. I'm assuming the interesting stuff is easier to market.

It’s incredible to me that people think they can replace phones.

It’s more likely that phones will evolve into whatever takes off next.

Wait, if this is AOSP powered, don’t they have to publish the kernel sources under GPL?

Lots of things are just Android devices. This allows their manufacturers to easily hire people who is comfortable developing on a known platform, and also repurpose very cheap obsolete hardware that couldn't run a modern phone but would still be usable for a stripped down OS that runs only one app. And of course by being hard+soft solutions they can charge a lot more compared to a simple "normal" app. All good from a business POV, but most of those devices are tight closed with locked bootloaders and other protections against repurposing, which turns them into e-waste once their services are terminated. Pollution issues aside, an old board that runs only Android 4.x is pretty much unusable for everything interesting, while being able to unlock the same board and install Armbian, DietPI or similar OS, turns it into a completely different device.

HN discussion [0] (70 points, 5 hours ago, 44 comments)

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40217453

[dupe]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40217453

Rabbit R1: Barely Reviewable [video]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40206063

I Witnessed the Future of AI, and It's a Broken Toy

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40205666

people have been hard on rabbit r1, but ultimately it is a step toward future I feel. And they bury further down in the article that it requires permissions that the android won't grant.

What future though? And it’s easily replaced by a hardware button on a phone. I expect Google and Apple will release theirs this year.

I got a Bixby button on my Samsung. Am I living in the future? /s

It's fine to take baby steps, but you can't sell a proof of concept as a real product. People will hate you, and it'll taint their perception of similar products going forward.

So why don't they sell a phone with customized Android that does what they want, like every single Android brand other than Pixel?

The Rabbit R1 is doomed to be obsolete as soon as Google and Apple add similar functionality to their OS.

Probably because a competitive phone is a much bigger effort than a special purpose device

It’s way more fun to set a huge pile of VC money on fire.

Because its Teenage Engineering and hardware designwankery, not product design, is what they do.

Need a BT speaker? That'll be $550 thank you, btw the speaker cones are completely exposed because it looks cool.

> it requires permissions that the android won't grant

No, it really doesn't.

That’s just because it needs installed as a system app (read: shipped with the ROM) to access system level permissions. Android will grant them, since it grants them on the Rabbit’s ROM like android would to any system app.

It’s still just an android app.

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