Menu
Author 92 Posts
Manish Vij

Manish Vij

manish vij

Humane AI Pin

Humane = Trek communicator with body cam, laser projector, simple gesture recognition, ChatGPT voice interface. Resembles iPhone 6 with its chrome sides.

The side view explains their logo 🌙, and is coincidentally resembles Imran Chaudhri’s presumed birth religion :)

Voice is low bandwidth for computing tasks, but a usability win for non-techies. Low-res projection feels like a gimmick.

Palms are terrible projection screens, rough and uneven. Ironically the brown skin of Chaudhri’s palms, and mine, shows higher contrast. Finally we win one :)

Tilting your palm to select a different control seems tricky, like one of those games where you’re rolling a ball in a maze. AR interfaces where you point are more precise.

A camera with no preview screen makes a pic hard to frame, so you’d use this for raw moment-in-time snaps.

Good use case: holding up food and getting a macronutrient breakdown. But LLMs are fairly dumb autocomplete, so the answer given (15g protein in a handful of almonds) makes no sense.

The eclipse part of the demo is also false:

the “best places to see it are
 Australia and East Timor”
 not right
 will almost exclusively be visible across North America [512 Pixels]

Translation in your own voice is magical, and less awkward with a lapel communicator than a phone, but largely the magic of LLMs not hardware.

Better use case, not shown: what am I looking at? Use the cam, classifier + LLM and tell me if the mushroom is edible and in which recipes. Have a way to double-check.

Same with summarizing your texts, and composing them with different inflections: that’s all LLM, the chest placement makes it more convenient.

Chest pin has a lot of overlap with AR use cases, but AR would be much higher visual bandwidth.

I cheer anyone trying to do something different and better, and dedicated hardware for LLM UI is promising.

Might find its killer app like ïŁż Watch eventually did. Could change as LLMs get more powerful. I might have a completely different reaction atter playing with it.

These use cases are like ïŁż Watch 1.0, not fully dialed in. On first glimpse it feels like a concept which could’ve stayed a sheaf of patents.

‘The Marvels’

The Marvels uses the Peter Parker template for Kamala Khan. The Punjabi-coded family is the relatable audience bridge, Kamala’s the wide-eyed teen supe.

Funny action scene where Ma, Pa and brother Khan fight off aliens with a wet mop, under a rap track with a bhangra sample.

Kamala crosses her forearms Wonder Woman-style and mutters “Bismillah” before loosing an energy blast.

The movie has some Hindi jokes without subtitles, nothing spicy.

Dad says, “Yah Allah.” Shahada (?) wall art in the living room, later in close-up surrounded by alien cat eggs. Khan kids played by Muslim actors, parents by a Parsi and a Hindu.

Opening scene still has Maria Qamar’s pop art on Kamala’s wall.

Samuel L. Jackson using an alien housecat as a ranged weapon never gets old.

Female leads and writers, funny double-dutch jump rope in a space station.

“The Marvels” uses the same unwilling-teleportation mechanic as “Loki” and Kowalski in “Fantastic Beasts,” and it’s funny every time, like a snarling kitten born over and over in a new world.

The unwilling teleportation / time travel / body swap mechanic is funny in “Quantum Leap” and “Big” too. Each leap is a fish-out-of-water comedy in miniature, on fast-forward. “Mork and Mindy” if comic, “Moscow on the Hudson” if tragic, every few minutes.

Brie Larson has a musical scene, just like her Bollywood-style turn with Utkarsh Ambudkar in “Basmati Blues.”
Charming Iman Vellani isn’t the first time Larson’s been overshadowed by a desi actor in her own movie :)

Screenwriters love energy battles, they’re completely synthetic like greenscreen. Energy beams can vary from powerful to weak based on plot needs. You don’t have to deal with weapon range, balance, reload or gun nerds.

‘Ghee Happy’ Web series

Sanjay Patel (Pixar, “Sanjay’s Super Team,” “Divine Loophole”) makes a twee Diwali music vid for kids:

It’s part of his new “Ghee Happy” YouTube series, which basically an animated “Little Book of Hindi Deities”:

A rather cuter interpretation of Durga vs. demon Mahishasura:

Twee Kali, Ganesha, Krishna, Saraswati:

Me, all festival season:

Flow debate

Re: Gerry Lopez getting into flow state on big waves, I used to enter it in high school debate’s 1AR, the first affirmative rebuttal.

You’re at a 3:1 time disadvantage, 4 minutes to cover 12 by your opponent. In prep time you need to zoom out, think coolly and surgically. When speaking, you need absolute word economy.

A good 1AR sounds slow but covers the entire active argument ground. Someone bad at it speaks frantically, spins out and runs out of time, instant loss. Separates the adults from the kids. I loved it.

It’s the intense focus that comes when you’ve procrastinated something unpleasant but high stakes. You surprise yourself.

Debate 1AR has a time disadvantage so the affirmative side gets to both open and close the debate.

It’s aff / neg / neg / aff (simplified).

This levels the field because the negative side / status quo gets presumption. This debate rule reflects our loss aversion in reality.

Team debate felt more like football or “Missile Command” than basketball. More territory capture and defense, not dropping any arg undefended, than creative, improvisational Curry.

Defense is easier than offense, in nerd football and war.

Scott Pilgrimage

“Thirsty Suitors” on Steam: Sri Lankan-Am skater girl returns to US hometown, fights off aunties, suitors and feelings of inadequacy. Desi “Scott Pilgrim” :) [wired.com]

Cooking combat with mom

Disappointing her dad

Ma’s sandal fends off mulleted ex Sergio

Gameplay: