The actual prose is ham fisted, but the structural bits - “why it matters” headings and bulleted content are traditional clickbait. Compare to “the results may surprise you” and similar stock phrases that we roll our eyes at. This stuff has always hooked people so it’s unsurprising that RLHF got its way.
If you want examples look at popular DIY magazines from a decade ago, they’re full of this sort of material where every article subheading has a catchy sentence.
I’ve found Codex’s overage to be much better value than Claude’s. A monthly $10 budget is plenty for my backup Codex usage, but on Claude Code that would be gone in a couple of days.
A lot of human PCB errors could be caught by analyzing the netlist against requirements and knowledge of the datasheet. Schematic and board formats are usually plaintext, so you can generate those directly even. Or kicad + python?
That’s probably enough for an LLM to check if you’ve mis-wired something, missed a part or chose the wrong resistor to set a regulator voltage. Plus good old DRC/ERC. If you pass all of those, there’s a good chance things will work unless your placement is really bad, but you could manually lay out and autoroute a lot of simple boards. Not to belittle the parent but a 4 layer board is actually simpler in some ways because you have a power plane which is one less net to worry about.
For analog work you can even run a SPICE simulation.
Going to need more than that. Why? Do you want to work in biostats or biotech, or do you enjoy it enough that the money and time commitment is worth it purely out of interest? What skills are you missing that you think a masters would give you? Online, in person, where?
Right, but that also means sourcing a grouphead, a suitable boiler and all the other bits. Plus worrying about thermal cutout, running the boiler dry, OPVs, all sorts of safety things. Having someone else handle that is nice. Those projects also exist, but the point is you can buy a platform that has all of that in a nice chassis and only need to replace the control system by mitm-ing the wiring.
It looks like a cool project for sure https://www.diypresso.com and actually reasonably priced for what you get and what a similar spec system would cost off the shelf.
The biggest benefit for me has been getting side projects done. Little bugs or todos that would take more time than I have to spare, but don’t detract from the project.
I’ve had Claude do stuff like interrogate IoT devices, look into proprietary file formats and even assisted debugging electronics from a text description and datasheets. It has stupidly broad knowledge as long as you watch out for things like getting part numbers/boards correct. Have you ever tried to ask for help on an electronics forum full of miserable greybeards? $20/mo for getting ballpark answers immediately is excellent value.
Do assess if you want the learning experience or not, and whether you care if the problem is solved for you.
For writing I get the appeal to bloggers, but I can’t stand reading anything that has the hallmarks of generative AI.
Gagguino is a great example of this approach, licensing scandal aside†. Espresso machines are expensive and not because the software is particularly clever. They are electrically simple, but mechanically there's a lot of pressurized plumbing that you really don't want to DIY.
The kit is a control board for the pump and boiler, and some add-on sensors for temperature and pressure. The "high end" features that it enables are almost entirely software driven, the main one being temperature control via PID. I've seen even simpler mods for other machines that bypass the "brew" button so you can do things like connect a bluetooth scale to enable brew-by-weight on a machine that doesn't support it, or add a shot timer.
The commercial version of this would be the Decent, but it costs 3x as much. I would love something like this for my robot vacuums. Valetudo is minimally invasive, but there's no reason you couldn't control the vacuum + wheels, but navigation is hard and those sensors are much more complex (can you even access the camera and undistort the image?)
If you imagine a square robot traversing a wall and approaching a 90 degree inside corner, it can’t make the turn and would also be unable to make a perpendicular move to get more space.
That said Eufy, Makita and others make square-ish robots.
We do this with movie night now. It can be 15 bucks to rent an HD movie - not even a new release! Frequently it’s cheaper to buy a copy and give it to a thrift store afterwards.
I’m considering trying one of the mail order rental companies again.
The issue I have is the documentation and “status” is slop. Looking at the repo, how much of it is even real?
There’s supposed to be a build-along on YouTube but nothing there yet. The BoM is a bunch of aliexpress modules which is ok, but what about the chassis? Is that image generated?
The RFC calls to generate accurate models for the components, but the render looks like a full assembly?
Try to avoid milling unless you absolutely need it. Better to go 2D with some tolerance and print small adapters, or use standard T-slot hardware, to connect it. It's often educational to browser McMaster just to get a feel for what standard parts even exist.
For a bracket I would look at a laser or waterjet service. Sendcutsend is one of the more well known web shops and the pricing is OK for the convenience. Also look out for local places that are linked to education. Some libraries even have laser cutters. One shop near us will do simple jobs for machine time + material cost, like you give them a DXF and they'll cut acrylic for a good price. Other option for metalwork is to join a makerspace. The dues are often very reasonable vs trying to get a lathe into your house.
It's not obvious from the marketing if this is applicable to non-biosciences. If it is, they couldn't come up with a single example from another domain like astrophysics?
Same advice as ever? We call it context engineering now, but prompt engineering still matters a lot. Most of the failures I run into are unspecified assumptions made by the model that derails the conversation, but usually updating the first prompt fixes it. Opus in my experience is a bit better about checking assumptions, while Sonnet will plow on ahead. An example is mentioning a file that doesn't exist: Sonnet will go ahead and try to grep your entire hard drive for it. Opus will say it's not local and request the path.
I trust neither for general knowledge and I still find Opus giving me answers that are completely BS. But the token spend for Q&A is nothing compared to coding, so I always use Opus + a lot of thinking. For coding, I find Opus to be better value/token but I haven't done any sort of rigorous test.
Intel was supposed to build a fab in Magdeburg, which would have been great, but apparently the reason it was canned (2025) was they couldn't secure enough customers.
Well “humane” and fair aren’t necessarily the same, and some people hate loops.
I like programming problems, spending a day at Google was fun, they put me up in a fancy hotel, and the interviewers were nice. Like it was clear a lot of time and money had gone into the process (6-8 hours of dev time is not cheap), not a zoom and ghost like most companies.
I’ve always found King Arthur to be reliable? Their recipes are good and include metric, you can get the flour anywhere and they’re very proactive with support if you have questions about tweaking. Also good books.
Good bread exists, it’s just not cheap like it is in Europe.
If you truly believe you’re “scaling” you do it the Google way and have a strict loop with a good rubric for the interview so applicants are comparable. The whole point of that system is thousands of people and hundreds of interviewers, and a very standard process. I’ve always found it pretty fair even with some randomness in scoring.
You shouldn’t be giving take homes unless they’re either short, or the applicant passed a screen and you’re investing time. Otherwise how are you “scaling” the review? Claude? Hidden test suite (not bad)? Some sort of leaderboard (bad, rewards people with time), something else?
And link rot. A lot of sites from back when are straight up gone, sadly. Maybe you get lucky on archive.org. Or in your pan case, affiliate farming where the bias or technical expertise is suspect.
(Aside, for a lot of cooking I’ve gone back to dead trees and I realized one day I have so many cookbooks, why am I looking at some lifestyle recipe blogger?)
Or the information actually goes out of date and best practices change. There’s been like 25 years of standard revisions since I first learned C++.
Florida is a declaration of experience for minors and nothing(?) for adults except a (computer) knowledge exam. If you turn 18, you can go and sit the knowledge exam and do a lap round the DMV.
For kids, it's 50 hours of road experience, and 10 at night, but a parent can sign that off. Maryland looks the same? You've got to do a knowledge test to get a learner's permit, 6 hours behind the wheel + 30 class, and then you get a provisional which can be upgraded to full. NY is also a 50/15 hour parent declaration and maybe(?) a supervised course for a few hours.
The standard of driving in most places I've lived in the US is very low for a developed country. People blow through pedestrian crossings, get-there-itis, crawling through stops, don't use their turn signals, make illegal U-Turns, ignore overtaking conventions. Compare to most countries in Europe where a driving test is a rigorous 45 minutes and you can fail for all sorts of minor stuff. I live in a place with decent pedestrian infrastructure fortunately. I'm more worried about being involved in a random fatal crash when I'm driving than on foot.
Making right-on-red illegal wouldn't be bad either. The number of times I've almost been run over when a car is stopped in the middle/straight lane and blocks line of sight to a right-turning car that doesn't look.
DUIs are at least treated seriously. It's one of the few offenses that will get a visa instantly revoked. Same in Canada I think.
If you want examples look at popular DIY magazines from a decade ago, they’re full of this sort of material where every article subheading has a catchy sentence.