Yes this makes CCC look bad. You can tell they were not serious because they used OpenPNP. From the video - "most importantly, it is open, hackable, and extensible." not mentioned: able to assemble electronics!
Hi, talk speaker here, we are hoping to assemble our first products this year.
OpenPnP is currently more than able to assemble electronics, Opulo and LumenPnP are used by many profitable companies (many I know first hand).
Our opinion (shared in the talk) is that there is a little bit of work to bring it from "able to assemble electronics" to "entreprise-ready" in the sense of adding features like access rights (operators and admins shoudl have different rights) and integration to Inventree, our inventory and parts management software.
Investing in even new production devices is a dead end, and our vision is that owning 100% of the software is owning 100% of the capability. China essentially developed their solutions themselves, and I believe that is the reason why they are so advanced.
Entire business needs are locked behind aging software, licensing hell, an junk fees, both in europe and the US.
Given the context (CCC) I would find it far less interesting if they did NOT use OpenPNP. It is also, coincidentally, able to assemble PCBs, even if it's perhaps not the best software out there.
Given it's CCC, a hobbyist hacker con, OpenPNP and especially those three things you mentioned seem perfect, I'm not sure why you'd think it makes the con look bad. I've heard this talk mentioned repeatedly as one of the coolest ones there, and I certainly enjoyed it myself.
It's not an industry seminar on how to start a board house, it's two guys explaining how they automated the basics of production on a low budget and with space constraints, etc.
Ironic isn't it, since Thorlabs brought down the cost of optical tooling and made components more accessible - they are the Amazon of optics and remain a cost leader.
Yeah, I don't mean to beat up on Thor Labs. As they point out, they don't even make any extra profit on those kits beyond the components themselves. And then there are the free snacks. :-P
If you are putting together some more advanced educational or experimental apparatus, they are pretty much a no-brainer supplier, as you say. But their level of quality, support, and system integration just isn't necessary for something like this.
I was a free user ~20 years ago and still use them today! It's exactly what I need out of email, with everything included in the one price tier. I tried ProtonMail and some others like iCloud but found no equivalent.
I work with camera sensors and I think this is a good way to train some of the new guys, with some added segments about the sensor itself and readout. It starts with raw data, something any engineer can understand, and the connection to the familiar output makes for good training.
> I recognize this is a hard concept to understand for folks on this site, but the average joe signing up for a VPN doesn't even remotely understand what they are doing and why.
So what? This article isn’t for them and this isn’t a major news site for the general public, it’s a site for people who want or need to know how things work.
These experiments afaik don't require particle accelerators and are a different field of science, one of the largest of these detectors is the LIGO observatory overseen by Caltech
I know. That is why I think the money that would be spent on a new particle accelerator should be spent on new more sensitive gravitational wave detectors.
As someone who works with THz I can assure you that nobody has thought of environmental factors as these technologies are far from being implemented in any consumer or industrial device - as stated in the article, this is fundamental science. If you go to the THz conference or PW all you will get is academic papers. The applications are certainly very interesting given the nearly unlimited bandwidth available in the THz regime and the fact that it's unlicensed, but we are far away from any kind of real implementation despite decades of articles like these.
Actual applications at the moment are mostly imaging, the 'nudie scanners' at airports and THz imaging at various frequencies is in use for food inspection as it can easily show blemishes/defects in produce that would otherwise be invisible. I read a paper once on detecting counterfeit money. Analysis of airborne contaminants / weather prediction are other possible applications. For telecom it has been considered (at very early stages) for 6G due to the huge bandwidth available. Really there are a lot of 'possible' applications but implementing them has proven difficult either because it requires advancements in materials or other risky aspects or because it's beaten by existing technologies at the moment.
Can I speak with you? I’m managing a startup that is working on a manufacturing process that might let us make THz sensors. I’m hoping to get to know the product space better. My email is in my profile.
Ooooh yeah! They’d have to work right at the antenna, but maybe some kind of metamaterial process could make more efficient solar panels that way? Hard
To imaging that they would be cheap
Though.
> ChatGPT Atlas, the browser with ChatGPT built it.
I know HN's rules disallow nitpicking, but I find this kind of error, right at the top of a product launch of a gigantic software automation company, a delicious slice of irony.
No idea. Despite no confirmations yet on whether space debris was involved, it felt relevant to share because of the overlapping nature and time frames.
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