strawberry isn't a trick question. llms jus don't sea letters like that. I just asked chatgpt how many Rs are in "Air Fryer" and it said two, one in air and one in fryer.
I do think it can be useful though that these errors still exist. They can break the spell for some who believe models are conscious or actually possess human intelligence.
Of course there will always be people who become defensive on behalf of the models as if they are intelligent but on the spectrum and that we are just asking the wrong questions.
Hey Rob. I'm not on the tech team here at Gradium (I do GTM) but still curious where you found the glitch? Were you entering words into the STT in the bottom of the front page? Can you share an example so I can replicate? Many thanks!
I believe Happy has been abandoned. I am a Happy user and I got my wife to also use it. She had a bunch of complaints. She was basically begging me to just start making those changes into Happy source code directly (I even pay money to support Happy), but I believe it's gone. Omnara has a better business model.
It would be good if it used interval names rather than relying on absolute notes. Eg minor third, fifth etc. Also notes played together and more and more complex chords as level gets higher. keyboard shortcuts would be great too. And a fully hands-free mode with voice input for practise while doing other things.
If you need a variety of trainers, I recommend the Tenuto app.
I train with it most mornings, but am currently only using 2 of the 24 - interval and fretboard note identification.
about power usage: sure there exists a light bulb such that this draws less power, but the vast majority of light bulbs are far less than 15W. Also the mac mini sips power when idle at only 2-4W. This isn't a criticism of the product, only the marketing material.
The other thing is that moltbot/openclaw or what ever it's name is today is massively hyped AI slop that will be replaced by the next over hyped AI thing in a matter of weeks.
I had a look and it does look like a great deal for the price. It would probably be good for running home assistant. If you marketed a version with HA preloaded you could beat the Nexus1 AI base station [0] to market.
The thing Home Assistant needs, or any AI assistant like Openclaw, is an affordable smart speaker with a good microphone array and open firmware. I think there would be a good market for that combination, even with people who would be put off by the security and privacy concerns of Openclaw.
Also a lot of what you learn is how to work around limitations of today's models and agent frameworks. That will all change, and I imagine things like skills and subagents will just be an internal detail that you don't need to know about.
My feeling is that focusing on the display hardware is the way to go. I have seen so many great Braille devices let down by poor, slow, out-of-date software, especially since they started using Android. The computing device part will always age worse than the display. It is just sad to see a $5800 Android tablet stuck on Android 8.1 and having worse speech responsiveness than devices from the 80s, and that is not an exaggeration.
We all have a supercomputer in our pockets that can quickly connect to a Braille display via Bluetooth.
Minimal software for note taking etc is great though, but a bloated OS like Android or Windows just gets in the way and is quickly outdated.
I'm curious why you think voice input is an important feature. Does that come from the needs of blind people you have spoken to? It seems like another thing to distract from producing an affordable Braille device.
I'm really not trying to be unduly critical, but this sentence stands out as utterly baffling: "Real-time voice-to-braille pipeline converts any digital text instantly."
The main focus of Tactis is to provide affordable hardware that can bring features like on-the-go learning and navigation assistance to visually impaired people worldwide.
I agree with your statement where you critique the choice of words on voice-to-braille conversion. The intended use of it is to help users learn Braille.
With only 8-10% of people with partial to full visual impairment knowing braille, Tactis aims to educate the rest by giving them the feature to feel and understand how braille is represented as they speak. With this being one of the features, and understanding that the user should not need to maintain any external piece of smart hardware while using Tactis, we have built it in a way that the device does not rely on any type of Android software infrastructure; it is based on a custom-built Debian-based operating system that lets bring the best performance out of the minimal hardware we can ship to keep the price point low.
The whole mission is to bring the cost down, so the mechanism used to raise the dots is also not what the most expensive braille displays have. Although it is not new, we are using an electromagnetism-based mechanism + latching to overcome the production cost pain point.
All of this just to acknowledge that there aren't many people in the world that needs braille to understand the world better, but just don't have access to learn it. So we had to build stuff into Tactis that not only focuses on the Navigation and content consumption aspect of the device, but also the braille learning point of it.
Yes, that makes perfect sense. Apologies for the overly negative tone of my comment.
Do you have a description of the device with specs, or is it in earlier development than that?
Are you using the technology from DotPad, or do you have your own?
Does it have a Braille keyboard for input? I would consider that essential for education.
I fully agree that education is the most important thing. Without it Braille will die. In the UK blind schools are dying out, replaced by specialist teachers who visit mainstream schools. It's just not the same and children don't have much incentive to learn Braille.
There are some, in particular the orbit reader[0] is much cheaper than a piezoelectric display. The trade off is that is is relatively slow to refresh and quite noisy.
There is also the dot pad[1] which is much more like a screen with a rectangle of cells that can show Braille and graphics! It is a different technology using electromagnetic actuators with latching. It can only refresh when not being touched. It's also out of the price range of most consumers, but apparently the technology scales very well so they expect the price to fall. It is also modular so users can easily replace broken cells.
The Monarch[2] is based on Dot Pad technology and also runs Android and Humanware's Keysoft software like the BrailleNotes.
I do think it can be useful though that these errors still exist. They can break the spell for some who believe models are conscious or actually possess human intelligence.
Of course there will always be people who become defensive on behalf of the models as if they are intelligent but on the spectrum and that we are just asking the wrong questions.
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