I don't even think they're driving hype, they just have a problem common in the hardware world, they are far too optimistic in their shipping timeline.
Versus a company like Bambu who seems to ramp up production now, in advance of selling the product.
There's a lot of code I never wanted to be an expert on. I might care about an algorithm. I might care about the UX. There are other things I might let an AI tackle because I don't care about them.
That is a problem though with AI currently. E.g. I've found a severe issue with Claude Code and prose writing when trying to make an explainer site. Instead of "plain" english it likes to use "flowery" phrases and "punchy" statements. This forces the user to spend extra time thinking about it.
And code comments are terrible. It can use 3 paragraphs to describe something when only one sentence is enough. Then further agents (or humans) have to waste their context window to figure out what the "riddle-ly" worded sentences mean.
But the things you care the most about, the AI doesn't unless you tell it to care. And even then, you have to be very careful because it acts more like a contractor with the potential to stop in the middle of a project (lack of tokens) and leave it in a very bad state until it's complete.
Or worse, it forgets what you want and does it's own thing for a while until you remind it.
Your statement about complexity is true with most SaaS offerings. They need to be everything to everybody so they can target as large a market as possible.
But as a user if you can identify the exact requirements you need your software to do, then it's very possible to vibe code a solution to do exactly what you're looking for. And your own offering doesn't need to be as complex, and can be tightly coupled to the other infrastructure you have.
It is cool to do. But there are professional uses for it, particularly like finding interference or noise. You can ask things like: "How crowded is my 2.4 GHz spectrum?"
The RTL SDR is the gateway drug into SDR's. The bandwidth is limited, so don't expect to be capturing HDTV Streams. But it's certainly possible to listen to AM/FM, Ham Bands, VHF/UHF signals, etc.
If you don't want to buy an RTL-SDR, you can search KiwiSDR which is a streaming SDR for frequencies under 30MHz. You can also connect to KiwiSDR's worldwide.
Then if you get the itch, you can go get your a HackRF, a ham license, or whatever else scratches it.
It's also removed the difficulty of configuring a mikrotik router as well. Mikrotik has a cloud router instance which is much easier to deal with I think than linux. Mostly because there's a UI interface for Mikrotik that makes it a little easier to inspect what's going on.
One of my pet projects I need to get back to is an SDN to make configuration for mikrotik routers easier (particularly with VLAN's, wireguard or VPNS, or routing configuration between ports).
Winbox is nice in a sense because it tells you the true configuration. But what I really want is something that can start with a network diagram (e.g.) and then get the current state of the router, and then validate that against the network config.
My favorite example of the heroic engineers are "helicopter" engineers who fly in, "solve" the problem at the expense of something else being made much worse. Usually getting the accolades of upper management.
Then the heroic engineers get promoted and then learn that they can use their weight to shove others around. Meanwhile the ICs that had to do fire drills to make crap happen don't typically get anything out of it, other than watching some manager that shoved them around get promoted.
This reminds me of the experience VRML wanted to be 3 decades ago. The only difference is that links went to other worlds living on another server. But that seems trivial to implement with this.
There's some work going on at the Metaverse Standards Forum to progress these ideas with Web of Worlds (https://webofworlds.github.io/). It's scope is a lot broader than VRML, it covers assets, identity, avatars, payments, etc.
I know a guy in LA who basically spent every waking minute of his life past year or two building a spec for this. Announced soon apparently. I’ve spent hours reading some of it.
I’d bet a lot of money that the NTSB will determine that the pilots’ failure to maintain clearance from terrain during a visual approach will be the primary cause with contributing factors of dark, moonless night and GPS jamming.
That one’s going to be on the flight crew, not the GPS jamming test.
I'm not going to argue that as it's always easy to blame dead people, but there's two different types of jamming.
One is to actually jam the signal IOW preventing reception. The other is to overpower the satellites' signals and replace them with your own. That defeats the doppler calculations of GPS needed for triangulation, and instead the receiver believes it's where the jammer wants it to be.
If the latter includes altitude information, then it's a huge problem.
If you overpower a signal, is there a difference? I'm not saying you're right or wrong here. I'm just saying there's a long history of coverups in the government and military.
If you can say, "oh we were only jamming" when in fact you were spoofing, well that's certainly a super easy excuse to hide behind.
In either case, asking for and being cleared for a visual approach (as the crew did and was) puts the onus on them to maintain continuous visual contact with the airport and to maintain their own terrain and obstacle clearance, which it’s safe to say they didn’t do.
>If you overpower a signal, is there a difference?
Yes, obviously. Losing signal on your GPS unit, and having your GPS unit tell you that you are in a different position than you actually are, are two very different things.
Also, since other aircraft reported GPS issues, that is evidence that would speak to jamming or spoofing. All three other aircraft reported a loss of GPS, not inaccurate GPS. Coverups are real, government conspiracies are real. But the completely evidenceless “I’m just saying…” or “isn’t it weird…” or “I’m just asking questions” is tiresome.
I would have expected around 10k.
Edit: Professional python programmer.
reply