alexalex's comments

*PEX (not PVC which is used on waste lines)

Thank you, Beagle!

And a big thank you to TI, for this project. I hope that if TI views their involvement in BeagleX as successful, they can extend what went right with this project into other product lines (open design files, reasonable pricing, accessible documentation, accessible IDEs/compilers, transparency with design decisions, and a true sense of community). My company has begun transitioning to Nordic for RF and it feels like dealing with a startup (Nordic) vs. an incumbent (TI).

The ability to run android on BBB is a wonderful advantage of the BBB vs RasPi. The Beaglebone was my introduction to exploring embedded android and it was perfect for it. The community is smaller than the RasPi but it is very strong. I hope there are more tools supporting the BBB as a point of entry into android.

If true and successful, this would be huge for Detroit.

I once looked into the suitability of Detroit for a start-up. It seemed that professional services were generally not as interested in working with young companies as in the bay area. The availability of deferred legal, accounting, or other services was non-existent. Being in the bay area, my company has benefited greatly from having deferred legal work. I also worried about finding good advisers.

With Techstars there, it would definitely solve these problems for their awardees.

While there aren't a wealth of affluent, urban customers in the city, there would be great opportunities for consumer or educational startups that address problems for the base of the pyramid. Whole Foods opened a store in Detroit, and talked more about it in their last quarterly conference call than any other topic. Ostensibly, figuring out how to be successful in markets like Detroit is a huge opportunity for growth for them. Finally, the city of Detroit has neighborhoods that are young and affluent. Inventory is very limited, and rents in the highest profile areas are as high as most big cities -- think Lake Merritt in Oakland.

I really hope TechStars is successful there. Detroit is a place dear in my heart and not as scary as many think. I lived in SF's SOMA 10-ish years ago, and can say that I had way crazier stories and more dangerous moments than my mom, who has been working in Detroit Public Schools since her retirement.

I* believe that implicit in the curriculum of a doctoral program is the education on how to take on any question or problem and contribute to it. I'm not a computer scientist but do a lot programming and work with many people with a CS education. Many have an incredible ability to architect a solution to a problem by breaking it down into straightforward operations. A PhD is like that, but for questions and bigger problems. If you want to build something that other people haven't built before, or answer a question that nobody else has answered before, a PhD will give you great confidence and experience in doing that. It is incredibly enabling and will change how you approach problems for the rest of your life.

However, you also learn why nobody has done it before: because those things take a lot of time. And in a PhD program time is not a limited resource, money is. You will be doing stuff that is a waste of time by any objective measure. You have to be very mindful of the time cost of tasks, work, and your choices, because nobody else is. If you're not careful, a very meaningful period of time will have gone by without a lot to show for.

My advice for people who ask me about getting a PhD is that it is risky entering a PhD program without certainty in what you want to do. You can go to college and figure out what to do. But in a doctoral program, you are too likely to get lost in the system, have a bad experience, waste too much time, and accrue too much opportunity cost. You will regret it if that happens.

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*PhD in a Physics/Engineering program and research work in neuroscience and medicine. My one reccurring nightmare in life is waking up certain that I'm missing a credit, signature, or form and I'm still in graduate school.

Often the IPUs will provide an interface to setup a PRU systeml... but, "so easily"?

While the functionality will appear on the spec sheet, it can be difficult to program. If you're using GCC, you'll want permission from your husband/wife/roommates before you start, because you're going to be occupied and accruing some significant brain damage. (I'm a hobbyist, not a professional.)

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