hershel

I wonder, if the goal was to build a hacker friendly PCB tool: written in python[1], easy to develop for(via extensions), open etc.

What would be the amount of work needed to get to a basic version ? could that be supported by a kickstarter ?

If it could, maybe the rest of the way to altium can be built incrementally ?

[1]there's boldport(https://bitbucket.org/boldport/pcbmode) a python pcb tool , might be a good start

The part rank is a very good idea. Is there a place we see part rank before starting a design ?

The main problem with crowdfunding is prevention of scams. The SEC which is responsible for implementing this bill,have an expensive list of demands(papers, lawyers) for companies wanting to go that route, making the whole process not worthy for companies.

Until a solution for this problem will be found, it's hard to see crowd-funding becoming an option.

The question is: do you need to be someone with the size/capabilities of Google to compete in this market, or there are many companies that can make that "commodity" ?

Because if the answer is the first one, this looks like a good place to be in.

3d printed women's shoes are here today:

http://www.dezeen.com/2013/08/02/cubify-launches-free-to-dow...

The printer costs around $3K.

a bitcoin miner isn't a isn't a general processing unit.It does something specific that's very very easy to optimize and implement, and you don't use latest manufacturing process but tools like easic , hence the small investment.

It's not cheap. If you want to compete wit cpu/fpga/gpu ,you'll need to use the latest manufacturing processes and do complex designs,and now we're talking about more than 100 million USD investment.

Yes moore's law is in deep troubles, but there are few paths for innovation in that area: bus speeds, imprecise but faster and lower power computation(which works for some things), much more efficient ways to build on chip memory(which takes 50% of chip area), 3d manufacturing techniques to decrease cost, ,affordable ways to make customizable microprocessors and moving from silicon to other materials to achieve much lower power consumption.

So on average we might be able to see 50x improvement in the next 30 years (according to a darpa manager).

In general GPU's are same or better in floating points per given area of silicon. on top of that , FPGA's add other expenses due to lower market size.

Maybe FPGA's are competitive in integer math, but that's a pretty small niche ,not big enough for a coprocessor.

The interesting thing to do is to look at the progression. Project spark is a huge improvement over little big planet 1 both in graphics and game variety , and maybe programming model/power. Why won't this kind of improvement continue , or maybe there will be some collaborative model between spark and some framework ?

It's not out of line of their current rate. In 2013 they had 56 new deals and 81 total investments[1]. Over a few years that could cover 1.5B.

[1]http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2014/02/04/500-startups-...

There's rumors microsoft is working on VR. They also have an amazing 3d game creation platform for beginners called "project spark", very good at building developer communities a and would be happy to sell more PC's. Assuming they can create decent VR glasses, they seems to have the winning combination of hardware + content.

Even better - project spark content would be free, which is a powerful tool to achieve mass appeal.

Sony has one major disadvantage: they are tied up to the ps4 while PC's which are more powerful/upgradable are a better fit for VR.

There's rumors microsoft is working on VR. They also have an amazing 3d game creation platform for beginners called "project spark", very good at building developer communities a and would be happy to sell more PC's. Assuming they can create decent VR glasses, they seems to have the winning combination of hardware + content.

Even better - project spark content would be free, which is a powerful tool to achieve mass appeal.

Microsoft's project spark looks like that kind platform.

This looks pretty similar to the parallela, with better price, nicer software support and better manufacturing horizon.

Oh well, that was somewhat predictable: parallela competed with nvidia in something that nvidia cared about and could execute.

You can use hola against cencorship.From reading a bit around the web, it seems that most of the time it does work in china, the country with the most advanced censorship tech.

I think hola.org would be a good recommendation - it's a free p2p proxy service. I used it to watch hulu and it worked quite well with a simple UI.

a. There's this work is robotics[1]: You specify at a very high level the required robot behavior.The system analyzes it and if it find contradictions or things that are not fully specified it points you to them. After solving the issues it verifies the program behaves according to your spec.

b. see "Making programming more conversational " [2]

c. see "Integrating Programming by Example and Natural Language Programming" [3]

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_uVE86dJYI

[2http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~ralex/papers/PDF/Conversational-...

[3]http://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/AAAI/AAAI13/paper/view/647...

Is it common for chinese citizens to do this , or is it only done by some tech guys ?

Have a look at circuits.io. It's a platform for collaboration and sharing of complete design: schematics + pcb's a modules, with plenty of shared modules.

Archos is working on a $50 smartwatch it will release in the summer. Unless you're interested in premium products in general ,it might make sense to wait.

The also talk about asymetric keys in [1]. And moxie from text secure is highly regarded in crypto circles.

Healthcare costs grow faster than inflation, which is unsustainable.

In general, thinking about amazing embedded projects of reasonable scope is quite hard.It's like inventing a new product. You can see phenomena this also is final year undergraduate projects in electronic engineering - very few are "amazing".

But still, some nice ones:

http://www.instructables.com/id/20-Unbelievable-Arduino-Proj...

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/05/11-ard...

And they're not the only one deploying lockers. The integer.pl group is starting to invest hundred of millions of dollars to installing 10k+ lockers worldwide.

This is will be integrated with amazon's warehouse robots.

Pcwalton, do you guys at mozilla think servo could be foolproof against sandbox escapes, or that this is a bit unrealistic ?

Is the preservation of rare music is based on what users choose to keep, or is there algorithm keeping stuff in the background ?

I skimmed the pdf , and didn't see variance.

Another interesting thing to do is having a high quality medical expert system(Watson), running outside the u.s.(say africa[1]) with people who we're taught how to use it(even doctors), with access to video communication with the patient, with access to his test results - administer advice to him.

Assuming good , mostly automated process and a good expert system - this could be a way to offer highly accurate second opinion.

And it would be a perfectly legal service from the provider side.

[1]This could be used locally in the country, which is a nice way to augment/start a country medical system

That's great to hear. Best of luck.