I'll go against the grain and say that I like this, I genuinely don't think this is anything but some internal team being excited about their product and giving you some firmware to connect stuff to their agents. Meta the trillion dollar company will not move at all from this.
why build here? why should we grow our gardens in this factory farm?
if this muse gadget seems so cool, why not make your own?
don’t outsource your curiosity to people like this, they do not care about you, your family, or your livelihood. they want to control you; this is their toy that they made for you to become fascinated by
First, the muse gadget is just an API and SDK. It’s a fun toy for silly projects.
The software world is spoiled in that making something new is just text in a file, we’ve proliferated open source freeware, and with AI we can readily clone entire products in a weekend.
Sometimes though, people like to use commercial products for various reasons (reliability, cost, network effect, etc). If you like to tinker, this seems like a neat way for some without yak shaving an AI assistant along the way. We don’t need to reinvent every wheel for everything.
I personally think “embodied” assistants are a really fun idea, and this is just an API and SDK to build on and it’s super accessible to basically everyone in the world. If you were inclined to use Muse already, why not tinker with this. I’m sure the hardware would be easy enough to point to an API running on your own server later if you wanted.
Meta should have called it Abuse Gadgets instead of Muse Gadgets.
After all, React is a Graphical Abuser Interface Toolkit, so it would be on brand. React is the Virtual DOM, and you're the Actual SUB.
The firmware is Apache 2.0, so yes, you can point it at your own server. But read the token terms before you plant anything: "not a supported product and not a developer platform... may change, stop working, or be withdrawn at any time, with or without notice," and you "may not enable functionality that Meta has disabled." Max 50 devices, none sold or advertised.
That's not a platform, it's a petting zoo with a revocable leash. You're not a hacker, you're a sharecropper. Meta's word for it is "gadgets." The honest word is "tenants."
If you'd finished reading the whole sentence you'd see it went on to say "...so it can reach compatible devices you already own, or anything you build with a local HTTP API."
It's not about using cloud AI. It's using wifi to enable the local AI to do more stuff.
And when my smart TV asked to be connected to the internet it too told me all the fun things I'd get out of it. Of course it didn't tell you about all the spying
Indeed and Ai keychain voice assistants can double as a home Ai smart speaker and also conversing with it via earbuds when out and about.
I was a bit shocked last week to see Zuckerberg announce the Muse Charm keychain as that's what I suggested and blogged about in August -- portable Ai speakers are best suited on keychains.
I really like this too, as a principle, but I know Meta enough to know that this is just PR to get more traction, and everything will be closed up instantly the moment they're satisfied with the market share Muse has, whatever it is. I don't even bother to see what they've released, these days.
The world is changing. Meta entered the enterprise market for the first time ever, and now this. I'd guess they're feeling pretty open minded about throwing any products out there and seeing what sticks.
These are readily available. I visited a place once where they had one of these in every cubicle, and it was synced with whatever your current status on Lync (nowadays called MS Teams) was.
I'm just saying you could probably find one of those devices. It sounded great in theory, but actually doing it, well, it's just plain awkward to come to someone's cubicle and there's a yellow light. It's not red, but it's not green. What do you do next?
For extra fun times, the owner of the company tended to just ignore everyone else's red and yellow lights, and he kept working in an office with a door that he closed.
The general theme of meta's approach across the board here is interesting - basically, they are trying to win in part by taking risks others aren't willing to. I can imagine they saw that all the success is coming so far when a someone is willing to cross a boundary that wasn't previously thought acceptable - from releasing ChatGPT in the first place, to things like OpenClaw.
So now they are actively distributing SDKs and to let people "hack" custom hardware integrations to their already risky AI agents unleashed on the general public. Giving agents abilty to control things in the physical world - what could possibly go wrong?
But here we are: so far the story is pretty much 100% "fortune favors the bold", and Meta is leaning into it.
It is weird, a year and a half ago I wrote a blog post (https://meanderingthoughts.hashnode.dev/lets-do-some-actual-...) basically describing a lot of what Muse does, except all hosted locally. I included a section about using hardware around the house to enhance AI agents.
When the initial Muse launch happened, my first reaction was "wow this sounds familiar."
Now the HW side of things is announced.
To be fair, this is all obvious stuff that should be done. The key is who can pull it off. It has been pointed out many types that technically Muse is nothing new, some combination of Gemini products can already do it. The counterpoint being that packaging and branding make a product.
I am kind of sad that desktop computer use ended up being the way to go instead of hooking into mobile phones. Mobile phones allow for a lot more potential integrations with day to day life, plenty of services now days are (sadly) only available through a mobile app.
Meta has never created anything successful since getting lucky with Facebook. Instagram and WhatsApp were acquisitions. Facebook Phone, the Libra shitcoin, and Metaverse VR were all flops. Jury's still out on the much-maligned "pervert glasses", but maybe those will sell.
Now they're trying a new thing. I don't know if it's so much "being bold" as flailing around for some new thing. They really desperately want to own a "platform" like Microsoft, Apple, or Google.
The glasses are great! Considering they have a light that shows when you're recording and it is NOT easy to disable, I definitely don't think they are 'pervert' glasses or spy glasses.
There are certain recordings where glasses make the perfect form factor.
I don't totally disagree but I think you understate the level of competence needed to integrate and make successful the acquisitions. And they navigated the valley of death from desktop to mobile. And Threads is an interesting example everyone ignores that is 100% in-house and has actually established a strong user base. At very least, Meta has avoided the fate of so many others that came before - Yahoo, MySpace, etc and in part that is because Zuck made big bets at the right time that many people thought were insane (buying WhatsApp, Instagram etc).
> I don't totally disagree but I think you understate the level of competence needed to integrate and make successful the acquisitions.
Those take a huge level of competence and skill; I don't think the argument is "Meta can't do anything", but I also don't think it addresses "Meta can't invent anything new".
> But here we are: so far the story is pretty much 100% "fortune favors the bold", and Meta is leaning into it.
Been thinking about this lately when I saw some mathematicians talking about more AI regulation after the millennial prize thing.
Move fast break things, fortune favors the bold, breaking rules doesn't matter if you win, etc silicon valley ideologies to me seem to be domination ideologies. Uber may toy with playing nice with taxi law until it's too annoying, then they shift to getting as many people as possible to have their commute, convenience, or livelihood to depend on it, then they can turn around to regulators with their finger on their chin and say "oopsies, I guess everyone needs us now, better consider that in your regulatory efforts!"
It's the brunch equivalent of changing the restaurant the night before to one you prefer by DMing everyone in the group chat with "we decided to change to antipodean because dave had a breakup with one of the waiters at french twist," and then when everyone arrives and Dave says "I've never dated a waiter in my life," you say "well we're all already here so..."
Anyway, it seems pointless to try to regulate this culture out of these kinds of companies or really this entire scene. Any law is now just an obstacle, and besides, various government actors seem to be angling for industry retirement positions, so passing useful regulation seems basically impossible.
Imo two can play at this game. When law fails to serve the interests of the people or is even weaponized by the interests of Capital against us, what's the point of it? I'm interested in things like LLM distillation and open weight models that take the winds of profit out of the sails of these "disruptors" to make their activities have no payoff. Wonder what other things we can do that would make someone ask "why would I send all my data to Facebook when I could instead just..." Pirating, free culture, leaks, hell outright theft, if we're going to disrupt things, why not DISRUPT things?
> He wants to own the future for the sake of money, not because he wants to improve lives or entertain folks.
Don't hate the player, hate the game. These CEOs are being propped up by the administrations that lead the countries that allow their ventures to flourish. Most recent example on the 29th of Sept [0]
you cant seriously believe that any other big player in LLMs is actually better, right? how many companies has open AI and anthropic hacked, that we at least know of? you think they are any more or less trustworthy than zuck? Not to mention that the competition for OpenAI and anthropic are all controlled by the CCP, which doesnt sound any better.
obviously zuck has his problems, and people are free to make their own choices. but at least let's acknowledge that if you use any LLM at this time, your grounds for objecting to Muse are anything but logical.
Yeah that is what bothers me. I can't get Muse in Australia anyway (could probably VPN I guess) but would be keen when someone else more reliable/trustworthy.
I can see the VR stuff, but why this? It seems like anyone bold enough to hack on local hardware would have no trouble working outside Muse as an ecosystem.
I'm generally skeptical and critical of most things that Meta is doing ("fool me once...") and I definitely won't trust them enough to use their agents and give them any more data than I already do, but this is a super cute and fun idea!
I love microcontrollers and DIY IoT as a hobby, a huge fan of ESP32s (so affordable and perfectly packaged in ready-to-use boards), and I can see how such easy, vibe-coded projects can inspire more people and show them how easy it is to get started with them today.
(I remember my first experiments with microcontrollers and DSPs at college in 00s - the nightmare of even just flashing those devices, not to mention the almost-prohibitive cost to get them and the sometimes required JTAG programmers I faced in Poland... My BSc thesis project was reduced in scope a few times because my professor couldn't get some purchases and shipments approved on time)
A toy with not much value? Sure. But who cares, it's fun and inspiring! They even recommend vibe-building so that the user doesn't need to download or configure SDKs. Awesome stuff for complete beginners to this area.
Over a decade ago, I could see Google releasing such a whimsy, hackersy fun toy project. Sadly, not anymore... (Saying this as a former Google employee in 2017-2022, witnessing in person the sad, gradual change from hacker culture to corporate culture)
“ Connect Muse to your home Wi-Fi so it can reach compatible devices you already own, or anything you build with a local HTTP API. Community-built skills can let Muse turn on a light, control your TV, send a document to a printer, and more, depending on your setup.” What a great way to give Meta your lan information, wifi password, and free research for future product development ideas for mass market products.
> Gadgets you build with the Muse Gadget SDK need a token. Add it to your SDK configuration so your gadgets can pair with the Muse app.
> Each token can be used by a limited number of devices.
> The Muse Gadget SDK is intended for personal tinkering and is not a supported product or developer platform. The SDK can change, break, or stop functioning without warning.
Clearly you just made the completely unique mistake of not understanding it’s more like the “ownership” of digital movies, games and music where there is clearly no ownership. That is completely obvious to anyone who would see the word “own”…at least according to most companies court filings.
Literally yesterday I ordered an ESP32-C5 board to build a home network proxy for cloud agents (including but not limited to Muse), and today they announce this. I guess this is confirmation I'm on the right track.
I like the idea of having a simple display telling me what to remember every morning. Having kids in kindergarten and school comes with daily planning, like remember a bycykel, drop them off at a different because it is tour day, etc. All that information comes as emails once or twice a week.
Basically I want to feed that information into an agent that can make a summary every day and put it on a display. I find it hard to figure out what model to use since it will get a lot of knowlige about my kids and that is a little unsettling.
Maybe I'm farther out of the average than I think, but for me, planning and reminders are one of the few things I want 100% conscious control over at all times. Reminders are for me to make sure I don't forget the important stuff, so hooking in any kind of probabilistic system there would feel antithetical.
What an interesting timeline, I bought an Seeed reTerminal E1001 just few weeks ago and loaded it with ESP Home for my daily morning brief, and here Meta is advertising support for this niche hacker product.
Interestingly, although this is about hardware, it contains the protocol for communicating with Muse, so I packaged them into a separate TypeScript SDK, https://github.com/wong2/muse-client
The simplest use case: you can chat with Muse in your favorite IM.
Just think of the possibilities—previously Muse invited someone to the user's house from Facebook Marketplace, but sadly the user wasn't home, and so got angry. But if you connect Muse to your Internet of Things—why, Muse could just unlock the door for your guest! You don't even need to be aware that they're coming. Surprise guests!
Oh, thank God it was such a specific and unique human error. There's no way almost everybody using AI via Meta products aren't just clicking "always approve" on their app lol
This took no time to flash onto a Stick S3 using codex to pull everything. The interface is interesting. I can't get it to respond to a voice message though.
It's a matter of time until Alexa, Google Home, and Siri leverage their device ecosystems to pull users into their Muse/Instinct alternative (whatever we end up calling this market).
This looks like a really smart way for Meta to bootstrap a hardware ecosystem around Muse.
I said it before, and I'll say it again. The winners of the AI race are going to be the ones who control the products to deliver the AI features to the end users. The obvious ones are Google with its myriad of consumer tech, then we have Apple, Meta, Microsoft, etc. That's why OpenAI, Anthropic are desperate to build the applications themselves than being just an API provider. Meta is better off focusing on such initiatives than trying to complete with the labs on the model strength. They seem to have realised that finally, so that's refreshing. Whether the solutions they bring are useful or not is a different question, but this is definitely how you reach the end users, not with the strongest models.
I know ESP32 is popular, but I wished WCH's CH58x got more attention. (Or WCH's chips in general. e.g. their CH32V006 seems really neat for its price).
The larping as a grassroots/open source product is really off-putting. The only reason anyone would use this is that its "free" and comes with preloaded prompts for non-technical people.
LARPing would imply pretending to do something, but not actually doing it. Here they appear to be actually doing it (open source product). Is there something Im missing?
You only addressed half of it. I'm with you that the code is open source, but it's an open source client for Meta's proprietary service. The one original piece of hardware on this "Open source hardware for your Muse" page, the Home Link, only works with an active subscription. And the "grassroots" part is clearly larpy: a "by hackers, for hackers" voice in a Meta incubator repo.
https://muse.ai/deviceterms
"If your Muse subscription terminates or expires, your Muse Device will cease to function as described in these Device Terms and the device documentation. The device's capabilities will be unavailable until an active subscription is restored."
I'll go against the grain and say that I like this, I genuinely don't think this is anything but some internal team being excited about their product and giving you some firmware to connect stuff to their agents. Meta the trillion dollar company will not move at all from this.
This looks exiting for tinkerers. This feels like the early days of voice assistants again except it’s more AI driven this time.
yes, but:
why build here? why should we grow our gardens in this factory farm?
if this muse gadget seems so cool, why not make your own?
don’t outsource your curiosity to people like this, they do not care about you, your family, or your livelihood. they want to control you; this is their toy that they made for you to become fascinated by
First, the muse gadget is just an API and SDK. It’s a fun toy for silly projects.
The software world is spoiled in that making something new is just text in a file, we’ve proliferated open source freeware, and with AI we can readily clone entire products in a weekend.
Sometimes though, people like to use commercial products for various reasons (reliability, cost, network effect, etc). If you like to tinker, this seems like a neat way for some without yak shaving an AI assistant along the way. We don’t need to reinvent every wheel for everything.
I personally think “embodied” assistants are a really fun idea, and this is just an API and SDK to build on and it’s super accessible to basically everyone in the world. If you were inclined to use Muse already, why not tinker with this. I’m sure the hardware would be easy enough to point to an API running on your own server later if you wanted.
Meta should have called it Abuse Gadgets instead of Muse Gadgets.
After all, React is a Graphical Abuser Interface Toolkit, so it would be on brand. React is the Virtual DOM, and you're the Actual SUB.
The firmware is Apache 2.0, so yes, you can point it at your own server. But read the token terms before you plant anything: "not a supported product and not a developer platform... may change, stop working, or be withdrawn at any time, with or without notice," and you "may not enable functionality that Meta has disabled." Max 50 devices, none sold or advertised.
That's not a platform, it's a petting zoo with a revocable leash. You're not a hacker, you're a sharecropper. Meta's word for it is "gadgets." The honest word is "tenants."
https://gadgets.muse.ai/sdk-terms
> After all, React is a Graphical Abuser Interface Toolkit
This seems unnecessarily primitive and hyperbolic. In what way is React like that, anyway?
I think this is better suited for the vast majority of people would never begin to garden than for farmers.
"Connect Muse to your home Wi-Fi…"
I lost interest there. I'm only interested in off-line AI.
If you'd finished reading the whole sentence you'd see it went on to say "...so it can reach compatible devices you already own, or anything you build with a local HTTP API."
It's not about using cloud AI. It's using wifi to enable the local AI to do more stuff.
"…or anything you build with a local HTTP API."
I could add that layer myself. When they provide the WiFi layer… yeah, I'm disinclined to trust them on that.
And when my smart TV asked to be connected to the internet it too told me all the fun things I'd get out of it. Of course it didn't tell you about all the spying
Well like that’s your opinion. You aren’t forced to use the platform just vibe. Code it instead
Indeed and Ai keychain voice assistants can double as a home Ai smart speaker and also conversing with it via earbuds when out and about.
I was a bit shocked last week to see Zuckerberg announce the Muse Charm keychain as that's what I suggested and blogged about in August -- portable Ai speakers are best suited on keychains.
https://ryanspahn.substack.com/p/openais-rumored-speaker-bel...
I really like this too, as a principle, but I know Meta enough to know that this is just PR to get more traction, and everything will be closed up instantly the moment they're satisfied with the market share Muse has, whatever it is. I don't even bother to see what they've released, these days.
The world is changing. Meta entered the enterprise market for the first time ever, and now this. I'd guess they're feeling pretty open minded about throwing any products out there and seeing what sticks.
I want a red light/green light for my Office Desk.
Red meaning "I'm working on something important. Disturb only if emergency"
Green being, "I'm scattershot, come hang"
This is the perfect platform for stuff like this.
If you mean a physical light, you can buy light switches and coloured bulbs from a hardware store.
there's also a dude on amazon who sells lightbulbs with unlocked bootloaders, if you dont want to have 2 lightbulbs.
> This is the perfect platform for stuff like this.
What's perfect about this platform for it?
These are readily available. I visited a place once where they had one of these in every cubicle, and it was synced with whatever your current status on Lync (nowadays called MS Teams) was.
Note that most of the staff absolutely hated it.
turns out consent, agency and autonomy are important!
to be clear, I suggested this for me to help me.
I'm just saying you could probably find one of those devices. It sounded great in theory, but actually doing it, well, it's just plain awkward to come to someone's cubicle and there's a yellow light. It's not red, but it's not green. What do you do next?
For extra fun times, the owner of the company tended to just ignore everyone else's red and yellow lights, and he kept working in an office with a door that he closed.
This is being driven by Nat Friedman, one of the cofounders of Gnome. So it’s got some level of open source cred.
It won't move because anyone with a brain won't use this, but I was also surprised at how many people put Bezos-listening devices in their own home.
Hey now, setting a timer or playing a podcast without unlocking your phone is important!
Fair take, but I'm not seeing anything that makes me buy that rosy theory over Meta just doing PR to get adoption in the dev community.
Yes I am keen to have some kind of desktop robot I can talk to, as long as I can use ElevenLabs and ChatGPT
typical... will use the will power of open source tinkerers and enthusiasts to build goodwill and then enshittify. this is meta.
The general theme of meta's approach across the board here is interesting - basically, they are trying to win in part by taking risks others aren't willing to. I can imagine they saw that all the success is coming so far when a someone is willing to cross a boundary that wasn't previously thought acceptable - from releasing ChatGPT in the first place, to things like OpenClaw.
So now they are actively distributing SDKs and to let people "hack" custom hardware integrations to their already risky AI agents unleashed on the general public. Giving agents abilty to control things in the physical world - what could possibly go wrong?
But here we are: so far the story is pretty much 100% "fortune favors the bold", and Meta is leaning into it.
It is weird, a year and a half ago I wrote a blog post (https://meanderingthoughts.hashnode.dev/lets-do-some-actual-...) basically describing a lot of what Muse does, except all hosted locally. I included a section about using hardware around the house to enhance AI agents.
When the initial Muse launch happened, my first reaction was "wow this sounds familiar."
Now the HW side of things is announced.
To be fair, this is all obvious stuff that should be done. The key is who can pull it off. It has been pointed out many types that technically Muse is nothing new, some combination of Gemini products can already do it. The counterpoint being that packaging and branding make a product.
I am kind of sad that desktop computer use ended up being the way to go instead of hooking into mobile phones. Mobile phones allow for a lot more potential integrations with day to day life, plenty of services now days are (sadly) only available through a mobile app.
I think if someone can bring the Jonathan Computer and a mobile device that connects with that ecosystem, will be going towards a future we all want.
Modularity, connection, and true ownership.
Meta has never created anything successful since getting lucky with Facebook. Instagram and WhatsApp were acquisitions. Facebook Phone, the Libra shitcoin, and Metaverse VR were all flops. Jury's still out on the much-maligned "pervert glasses", but maybe those will sell.
Now they're trying a new thing. I don't know if it's so much "being bold" as flailing around for some new thing. They really desperately want to own a "platform" like Microsoft, Apple, or Google.
The glasses are great! Considering they have a light that shows when you're recording and it is NOT easy to disable, I definitely don't think they are 'pervert' glasses or spy glasses.
There are certain recordings where glasses make the perfect form factor.
I don't totally disagree but I think you understate the level of competence needed to integrate and make successful the acquisitions. And they navigated the valley of death from desktop to mobile. And Threads is an interesting example everyone ignores that is 100% in-house and has actually established a strong user base. At very least, Meta has avoided the fate of so many others that came before - Yahoo, MySpace, etc and in part that is because Zuck made big bets at the right time that many people thought were insane (buying WhatsApp, Instagram etc).
> I don't totally disagree but I think you understate the level of competence needed to integrate and make successful the acquisitions.
Those take a huge level of competence and skill; I don't think the argument is "Meta can't do anything", but I also don't think it addresses "Meta can't invent anything new".
Threads is shit.
In Brazil we say “shoothing all way around”
> But here we are: so far the story is pretty much 100% "fortune favors the bold", and Meta is leaning into it.
Been thinking about this lately when I saw some mathematicians talking about more AI regulation after the millennial prize thing.
Move fast break things, fortune favors the bold, breaking rules doesn't matter if you win, etc silicon valley ideologies to me seem to be domination ideologies. Uber may toy with playing nice with taxi law until it's too annoying, then they shift to getting as many people as possible to have their commute, convenience, or livelihood to depend on it, then they can turn around to regulators with their finger on their chin and say "oopsies, I guess everyone needs us now, better consider that in your regulatory efforts!"
It's the brunch equivalent of changing the restaurant the night before to one you prefer by DMing everyone in the group chat with "we decided to change to antipodean because dave had a breakup with one of the waiters at french twist," and then when everyone arrives and Dave says "I've never dated a waiter in my life," you say "well we're all already here so..."
Anyway, it seems pointless to try to regulate this culture out of these kinds of companies or really this entire scene. Any law is now just an obstacle, and besides, various government actors seem to be angling for industry retirement positions, so passing useful regulation seems basically impossible.
Imo two can play at this game. When law fails to serve the interests of the people or is even weaponized by the interests of Capital against us, what's the point of it? I'm interested in things like LLM distillation and open weight models that take the winds of profit out of the sails of these "disruptors" to make their activities have no payoff. Wonder what other things we can do that would make someone ask "why would I send all my data to Facebook when I could instead just..." Pirating, free culture, leaks, hell outright theft, if we're going to disrupt things, why not DISRUPT things?
This and the Meta VR stuff - I would be all over it if it weren't Meta. It's objectively cool tech.
But you're handcuffed.
I second this. Zuck gives me the ick, like that corpo villain in Ready Player One.
He wants to own the future for the sake of money, not because he wants to improve lives or entertain folks.
> He wants to own the future for the sake of money, not because he wants to improve lives or entertain folks.
Don't hate the player, hate the game. These CEOs are being propped up by the administrations that lead the countries that allow their ventures to flourish. Most recent example on the 29th of Sept [0]
0 https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSfrT0s...
"The future is for everyone" was an interesting slogan (I think it was superintelligence but I could be wrong) because of stuff like this https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/facebook-misleading-indians-i...
you cant seriously believe that any other big player in LLMs is actually better, right? how many companies has open AI and anthropic hacked, that we at least know of? you think they are any more or less trustworthy than zuck? Not to mention that the competition for OpenAI and anthropic are all controlled by the CCP, which doesnt sound any better.
obviously zuck has his problems, and people are free to make their own choices. but at least let's acknowledge that if you use any LLM at this time, your grounds for objecting to Muse are anything but logical.
Yeah that is what bothers me. I can't get Muse in Australia anyway (could probably VPN I guess) but would be keen when someone else more reliable/trustworthy.
I can see the VR stuff, but why this? It seems like anyone bold enough to hack on local hardware would have no trouble working outside Muse as an ecosystem.
I'm generally skeptical and critical of most things that Meta is doing ("fool me once...") and I definitely won't trust them enough to use their agents and give them any more data than I already do, but this is a super cute and fun idea!
I love microcontrollers and DIY IoT as a hobby, a huge fan of ESP32s (so affordable and perfectly packaged in ready-to-use boards), and I can see how such easy, vibe-coded projects can inspire more people and show them how easy it is to get started with them today. (I remember my first experiments with microcontrollers and DSPs at college in 00s - the nightmare of even just flashing those devices, not to mention the almost-prohibitive cost to get them and the sometimes required JTAG programmers I faced in Poland... My BSc thesis project was reduced in scope a few times because my professor couldn't get some purchases and shipments approved on time)
A toy with not much value? Sure. But who cares, it's fun and inspiring! They even recommend vibe-building so that the user doesn't need to download or configure SDKs. Awesome stuff for complete beginners to this area.
Over a decade ago, I could see Google releasing such a whimsy, hackersy fun toy project. Sadly, not anymore... (Saying this as a former Google employee in 2017-2022, witnessing in person the sad, gradual change from hacker culture to corporate culture)
“ Connect Muse to your home Wi-Fi so it can reach compatible devices you already own, or anything you build with a local HTTP API. Community-built skills can let Muse turn on a light, control your TV, send a document to a printer, and more, depending on your setup.” What a great way to give Meta your lan information, wifi password, and free research for future product development ideas for mass market products.
This needs more upvotes.
A Meta ecosystem is definitely not coming to my household.
agreed. I only have Facebook and that is out of necessity. I never post on it.
It says make it your own. Then
> Gadgets you build with the Muse Gadget SDK need a token. Add it to your SDK configuration so your gadgets can pair with the Muse app.
> Each token can be used by a limited number of devices.
> The Muse Gadget SDK is intended for personal tinkering and is not a supported product or developer platform. The SDK can change, break, or stop functioning without warning.
Doesn't really feel like it's my own.
That has been the nature of every Facebook API ever released
Needing a token to call someone's API seems reasonable to me.
Clearly you just made the completely unique mistake of not understanding it’s more like the “ownership” of digital movies, games and music where there is clearly no ownership. That is completely obvious to anyone who would see the word “own”…at least according to most companies court filings.
(I joke, but not really…)
our digital landlords, we are but serfs
Please do not waste hardware (nowadays valuable) on Meta's privacy-leaking garbage.
Literally yesterday I ordered an ESP32-C5 board to build a home network proxy for cloud agents (including but not limited to Muse), and today they announce this. I guess this is confirmation I'm on the right track.
This being Facebook is hard to trust with everything even considering they already have a lot of info on you
I like the idea of having a simple display telling me what to remember every morning. Having kids in kindergarten and school comes with daily planning, like remember a bycykel, drop them off at a different because it is tour day, etc. All that information comes as emails once or twice a week. Basically I want to feed that information into an agent that can make a summary every day and put it on a display. I find it hard to figure out what model to use since it will get a lot of knowlige about my kids and that is a little unsettling.
Aren't you worried about missing stuff?
Maybe I'm farther out of the average than I think, but for me, planning and reminders are one of the few things I want 100% conscious control over at all times. Reminders are for me to make sure I don't forget the important stuff, so hooking in any kind of probabilistic system there would feel antithetical.
I applaud the direction (and like muse spark 1.3), but I'm still not hooking meta into my life.
That Muse firestick clone they've got at bottom is interesting though...wonder if it'll be jailbreakable
What an interesting timeline, I bought an Seeed reTerminal E1001 just few weeks ago and loaded it with ESP Home for my daily morning brief, and here Meta is advertising support for this niche hacker product.
Interestingly, although this is about hardware, it contains the protocol for communicating with Muse, so I packaged them into a separate TypeScript SDK, https://github.com/wong2/muse-client
The simplest use case: you can chat with Muse in your favorite IM.
No way in hell will I give Meta access to my IoT network.
Neat idea, but I don't know how it would work to let non-deterministically led software/hardware hang out on private home networks.
Just think of the possibilities—previously Muse invited someone to the user's house from Facebook Marketplace, but sadly the user wasn't home, and so got angry. But if you connect Muse to your Internet of Things—why, Muse could just unlock the door for your guest! You don't even need to be aware that they're coming. Surprise guests!
It was discovered that the person hit "always approve" when their muse asked them if it could give out their address.
Oh, thank God it was such a specific and unique human error. There's no way almost everybody using AI via Meta products aren't just clicking "always approve" on their app lol
Ah, yes, that’s a perfectly reasonable thing for Meta to request.
this guy reads every single eula an cookie popup
This took no time to flash onto a Stick S3 using codex to pull everything. The interface is interesting. I can't get it to respond to a voice message though.
Here are some fun things I've worked on for the S3: https://rillsound.com
Voice issue was recently fixed! Now you can send voice in, get text out, and use your own TTS API if needed.
It's a matter of time until Alexa, Google Home, and Siri leverage their device ecosystems to pull users into their Muse/Instinct alternative (whatever we end up calling this market).
This looks like a really smart way for Meta to bootstrap a hardware ecosystem around Muse.
100% vibe coded page
The name of the game with AI is capturing context. With each product announcement ask “What proprietary data access will they get with this.”
I said it before, and I'll say it again. The winners of the AI race are going to be the ones who control the products to deliver the AI features to the end users. The obvious ones are Google with its myriad of consumer tech, then we have Apple, Meta, Microsoft, etc. That's why OpenAI, Anthropic are desperate to build the applications themselves than being just an API provider. Meta is better off focusing on such initiatives than trying to complete with the labs on the model strength. They seem to have realised that finally, so that's refreshing. Whether the solutions they bring are useful or not is a different question, but this is definitely how you reach the end users, not with the strongest models.
The model producers are like the camera producers.
It turns out the high value wasn’t in the camera - it was in distributing and consuming photos/videos with an advertising based revenue model. lol
This nuance is what many here struggle to understand. Building these products isn’t easy either - openAI already has an ever expanding graveyard.
I am gonna be so pissed if ESP32 prices spike
And a lot of us would feel the same way, so to prevent this, we start buying a bit more, prices raise a bit, so a bit more people get scared and...
ESP32 survived even the 2020 chip shortage unscathed. I struggle to imagine this making a dent.
I know ESP32 is popular, but I wished WCH's CH58x got more attention. (Or WCH's chips in general. e.g. their CH32V006 seems really neat for its price).
Will not limited to ESP32.
i made a similar device as this Muse stick idea but using TrustedRouter for the ai instead of something loooking at your prompts
fanless, quiet, no dust
wonder if i should do a kickstarter for it
the Quill Feather: https://quill.lorehex.co/
My hope is that, like Jev, we're going to see Open alternatives to Muse using this framework within days
Thats very @dps
I don't get it
Hahaha
Why would I ever want Facebook to have access to anything I own, think, or post if I could avoid it?
An AI from Meta on my house… FEAR!!!
Zuck realized the metaverse wouldn’t work, so now he’s creating the Musiverse.
I honestly don’t think I would have any gadget from meta even if they payed me.
As for AI, I would only use it for work and as a substitute for google search and don’t want it to do anything else in my personal life
So many possibilities, especially connecting to the real agent :D
These possibilities all exist outside of anything from Meta, too, though.
Muse(um) of gadgets. Anachronistic on arrival.
yeah right like I'm gonna willingly let meta on my wifi beyond my laptop & phone lol
ill wait for the inevitable "foss community open source alternative" version
We actually already have this: the combination of Home Assistant, ESPHome, and HA-MCP/CLI.
Commodify the complement?
Was this the AI that gives strangers your home address or am I confusing it for something else?
Yep, it is
typical... will use the will power of open source tinkerers and enthusiasts to build goodwill and then enshittify. this is meta.
I wish Anthropic would robustify their bluetooth implementation (Developer > Hardware Buddy...)
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The larping as a grassroots/open source product is really off-putting. The only reason anyone would use this is that its "free" and comes with preloaded prompts for non-technical people.
No thanks.
LARPing would imply pretending to do something, but not actually doing it. Here they appear to be actually doing it (open source product). Is there something Im missing?
You only addressed half of it. I'm with you that the code is open source, but it's an open source client for Meta's proprietary service. The one original piece of hardware on this "Open source hardware for your Muse" page, the Home Link, only works with an active subscription. And the "grassroots" part is clearly larpy: a "by hackers, for hackers" voice in a Meta incubator repo.
It does not say you have to keep an active subscription for continued operation. The page only says:
https://muse.ai/deviceterms "If your Muse subscription terminates or expires, your Muse Device will cease to function as described in these Device Terms and the device documentation. The device's capabilities will be unavailable until an active subscription is restored."
https://gadgets.muse.ai/home-link "Muse Home Link itself only runs official firmware and can’t be reflashed"
Clause 6 esp 6c makes this completely unfree and probably worse in the regard than an HP inkjet.
A surplus of outrage and a willingness to share your unfiltered reactions to things, I guess.
celebrities and billionaires always catch more heat, can we not call out their bs?
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Your response is unrelated to the content of this thread (the open sourcing of hardware/software)
sorry, cannot see past the terrible person
there are so many other awesome open hardware/software we could share and talk about, from other HNers, some in /new right now
...instead of this
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