omenti

apple announces its first serious augmented reality product

A few days ago Apple announced the AirPods Pro.  It is largely being described as an AirPod with a noise cancelling feature and a higher price.  It turns out to be much more than that and a couple of features give a few hints: transparency mode and how it does noise cancellation.  I haven't played with them yet. My fun money budget is at zero dollars for the rest of the year.¹  In the meantime there are trustworthy reviews from Om Malik and John Gruber. 

 

Transparency mode is what it sounds like - ambient sounds around you are mixed in with those meant to go to the earbuds.  You get a bad version with poorly sealed headphones/earbuds.  Doing it propertly is tricky and  initial reports indicate Apple has pulled it off.  While most people will use the feature to be aware of their surroundings, it can easily become an augmented reality - specifically an acoustic augmented reality.

 

A variety of visual augmented reality devices and apps have appeared in the past decade.  All have issued and none have cracked the mass market.  iPhones and iPads happy to be visual AR ready.  They mix a live image from the front pointing camera with a computed overlay. The result can be cute and even useful, but mostly it's cumbersome and something you try approximately once.  Google, of course, has had a couple incarnations of their glasses.  There are a number of issues and they appear to have found a few niches in business.  At this point they're not exactly consumer clueful devices.

 

Augmented audio is less intrusive and a natural domain.  Your AirPods Pro could be sending you turn by turn directions as you walk or bike through a city.  Hey Siri is their ready to go interface.  It would be a natural for reading recipes or a thousand other things.  Anything where you want contextual information that is an augmentation of the acoustic soundscape around you.  Then you don't have to switch modes completely and take out a device and/or give up the acoustic soundscape.  It would be dandy for seniors -  hey Siri, where did I leave my glasses?²

 

Speaking of senior citizens AirPod Pros have almost all the features needed to make a very high quality hearing aid.  There is a test that uses feedback to find the best fitting silicone earpiece adapter. It woudn't be a big deal to do it over a range of frequencies for each ear and compute the corrections to sound in transparency mode. It would become an active computational hearing aid.   They could probably even correct for tympanic movement (suggestion by Bryan William Jones).  At the very least these could be the equivalent of non-prescription reading glasses and that could be free assuming you own these.  Apple could work on what it would take to do proper testing and get them certified.  

 

AirPods Pro augmented hearing could mean serious trouble for the conventional hearing aid industry. If you've ever had to deal with hearing aids - your own or for someone you help take care of - you find they cost two to five thousand dollars and they don't work very well. These hold the promise of being able to tune to new acoustic spaces in real time.. something regular hearing aids never have pulled off.  

 

Everyone has been expecting Apple's AR glasses.  They may well be coming, but in the meantime acoustic augmented reality can happen now and Apple could easily extend it into owning a new health market while they're doing it.  There are some other computational tricks to enhance sound for folks with normal hearing, but for now I think these are the two big areas.

 

And finally - to answer some emails from frustrated hearing aid users - they did not announce a hearing aid.  It's just the pieces are there for them.  It wouldn't be much of a stretch and there is frustration over price and quality among hearing aid users. 

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¹ When we got married we decided to pool our income except for individual fun money accounts. They aren't big, but the agreement is the other spouse can't complain about what they're used for. One of the best things we've ever done.  Most of my funds support time tithing activities.

² Apple has the tech that allows good location (like 10 cm)  using ultawide band beacons that could be very inexpensive and taped onto a pair of glasses for example.  If you've ever had to help a friend or relative with dementia, this is a killer app.

 

imperfect storms

It's sad and frightening watching the fires in California. With the likelihood that some fires were triggered by power lines in high winds there are massive precautionary power blackouts. The result is an enormous amount of blame aimed at the already troubled power utility. That's only part of the problem.

 

Globally fire seasons have grown in length along with fire size and frequency. Australia, Siberia, Alaska, and the Western US and Canada have been hard hit in recent years. Much of this is from changing climate patterns driven by global warming, but some is the result of mismanagement and a failure to adapt.. Summaries found in the scientific literature are very clear: we need to recognize fire is natural - forests and grasslands need to burn periodically. We have to adapt to fire rather than completely subdue it. We need to reduce fuel near our infrastructure and homes in the wildlife-urban boundary regions. Easy to state, but very political and difficult in practice.

 

Better practices will probably emerge for property owners and hopefully new construction won't take place in the wildlife-urban boundary regions. Getting political acceptance for prescribed burns and letting nature shift the types of forest to what would naturally occur is going to be difficult. One worries the focus will be on bandages like shifting management and ownership of electric utilities, building microgrids, undergrounding transmission lines, and so on. Some of these might have merit on their own, but they divert attention and resources from real solutions. In the meantime blackouts are about the only short term lever to pull.

 

I suspect this is a good example of the need for a regional adaptation to deal with global warming fueled climate change. Most parts of the world have some local dangers that bring death and damage to some and inconvenience to many more. This will be a growing trend, but mitigation and adaptation can make a difference. Dealing with fire has known solutions. Too bad they’re not socially popular.

 

And a final comment.. why has this become bad so suddenly.  It seems likely there's no single case, but some of the inputs have a good deal of natural variability and perhaps we're seeing just that - a resonance.  That would suggest the likelihood of near term repeats is probably low.  On the other hand maybe this is one of those sudden accelerations similar to what is occurring in the Arctic.  Either way the long term prognosis is not great so it makes sense to become more clever and take clueful action.

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I first sent this as an email and received a few angry replies.  Mostly along lines like: this isn't global warming, or it's an evil power company that needs to be taken over, or why do Easterners complain about little snowstorms when we have this...  In fact local climates are changing and that we have to adapt.  It will be messy, expensive and in some cases lives will be lost and there will be issues we haven't thought through. Mitigation efforts can reduce these adaptation expenses and are generally seen as cost effective although they're a bet on the future many aren't willing to take. Adaptation will be expensive, but if we're smart we can find clueful paths.  We need to be planning and building now.

 

playing with popcorn

A minipost

 

Chatting with Sarah the topic of snack foods somehow came up.  She mentioned problems getting all of the popcorn kernels to pop and sometimes there was burning. We wandered to something else, but afterwards it struck me that proper popcorn popping was something I know how to do.  In fact a few scientific papers have been written and it's a good area for home experimentation. But first the recipe:

 

Our next door neighbor when I was in high school, had it down.

° 1/3 cup of fresh popcorn .. he'd keep it in a sealed glass jar.  

°  3 tablespoons of vegetable oil in a 3 quart heavy bottomed sauce pan over medium high head. Add 3 or 4 kernels of popcorn and wait.

° When they pop add the rest of the popcorn and lift the pot away from the heat for about 30 seconds.  Put on the cover and return to heat.   If you can it's a good idea to leave the lid slightly ajar to release some of the steam (his lid had a vent)  When the popping slows to once every second or two, dump the popped corn into a bowl and add salt and melted butter to taste.

I use an inexpensive light olive oil (not a rich or expensive one) and add a bit of salt when the popcorn goes into the oil.  I prefer white popcorn, but your taste may vary. Jolly Time comes in thick plastic bags that are fairly air-tight.  Upscale popcorns come in glass jars, but I'm cheap.  

 

Popcorn is a special variety of corn.  The kernel has a hard thin hull on the outside. Inside is the seed along with enough water and a starchy food to get it sprouting.   The trick is to get the water inside to boil.  The hull is strong enough that it takes quite a bit of pressure to get it to burst. As the starch heats it gelatinizes.  The hull bursts at a weak spot and the gelatinous starch cools and solidifies as it expands outwards. The expansion is asymmetrical starting at the weak spot where the hull burst giving the mass a kick. The sound comes from the expanding gas resonating against the expanding kernel and not the breaking hull. No one figured the sound part out until a couple of years ago.

 

If you have kids or some curiosity on your own you can figure out a few things:

 

Find an oven-safe bowl with a lid and heat your oven to about 190°C (375°F).  Add a small number of kernels - say 20.  You may have to shake the bowl around a bit as it heats.  After the popping stops count successful pops.  Now try it at about 170° C (about 340°F).. your count should be different.  If you like you can find the threshold.  You might need to calibrate your oven.  I use an infrared thermometer.   (180°C seems to be the threshold for fresh Jiffy Pop white).

 

If you have a good scale weigh 20 or 30 kernels and calculate the average weight of a kernel.  Put them in the hotter oven and pop as many as you can.  Weigh the popped kernels and calculate the moisture percentage.  I get close to the 14% moisture content good popcorn is supposed to have.

 

You can try different types and freshnesses of popcorn and find popping yields (percent popped). You can also measure the average size.  Try it at a different altitude if you can or enlist a friend.  Try slicing the kernels and see what that does to the size.  How different are the fancy varieties?  And of course you can try toppings other than butter.

 

While on the subject of snack food. Sarah told me about maple cotton candy.  It isn't easy to find in the US, but I finally did.  Expensive, but very good and addictive.  Be warned.

 

 

 

woodie

an Omenti mini-post

I was shocked and saddened to learn of Woodie Flowers' passing.

 

There's an interesting question you can ask about a school.  Who is the most important person?  Of course it depends on your point of view and what you think a school should be doing.  It might be an administer who has managed to turn the place around,  a remarkable alumni member who does the same, a Nobel Laurette perhaps? and for some it might be a coach who somehow energizes the place.  Is there someone who makes the place special?  Universities mean a lot of things to different people.  Ask me about MIT and I'll suggest Woodie Flowers.  He managed to light *that* spark and inspire more young engineers than you can imagine.  In light of the current ethical problems ripping apart a school on campus, he was a beacon of ethics for decades.  

 

I was lucky enough to have spent time with him on a few occasions.  He was even more optimistic and even evangelistic than what comes over in this video:

 

 

Woodie was like this in many areas.  He was responsible for developing and promoting the concept of gracious professionalism..  from an email a few years ago:

 

The election has been painful. It reminds me that we have a responsibility to help students become thoughtful citizens. Rational thought blended with empathy seems too rare everywhere.

Personal experience leads me to believe our students would be receptive to hearing us address their obligations to society. Dean Kamen founded FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) in 1989. A couple of years later, Dean and I co-founded the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) patterned after the creative design exercises I had been running for many years in the Mechanical Engineering design courses. The “2.70 Contest” was anchored by “gracious professionalism,” a term I coined to celebrate the wonderful behavior prevalent among students in that course. They competed like crazy, but treated one another with respect and took pride in helping and teaching one another.

At the first FRC Kickoff, I used one slide with the term “Gracious Professionalism.” Encouraged by Dean, at the second FRC Kickoff, I used six slides featuring the phrase. Since then, Gracious Professionalism™ has become a powerful part of the ethos of the whole FIRST community. FIRST competitions have grown and have millions of alumni. Scattered over 80 countries, young people have embraced the notion that competition and kindness are compatible. At MIT, 10% of our freshman classes are FIRST alumni.

As we make the transition to digitally-enhanced learning and machine-assisted professions, I believe “uniquely-human” will be a powerful differentiator. Professionals who understand the laws of the universe and also have an emphatic response to others will be the leaders. Those who think science is a la carte will have aspirations that Mother Nature will not tolerate.

MIT students will have an obvious advantage because of their understanding of what is possible. We need to make sure they are also well equipped to manifest creativity, leadership, good judgment, and ethical behavior.

I offer Gracious Professionalism as a convenient label. It blends rigorous adherence to the laws of the universe with the human qualities we hope to see as those laws are applied by our alumni. Giving back with conscience. Blending hard knowledge with soft feelings. Facts, feeling, and fairness. The FIRST community, which includes all ages, have embraced “GP” and actually compete to “out GP” one another.

How might Gracious Professionals have voted?

Woodie Flowers

 

I'm not an engineer, but am amazed what the good ones do.  This is a big loss for MIT, engineering and the world

 

happy bob from finland

Several years ago I met Jutta Haaramo though a bit of serendipity.  We share some interests and it's been great fun talking with her over the years.  A bit over a year ago I learned about her efforts to make a dent in the Universe and do something about juvenile diabetes management.  It's a tough problem that consumes an enormous amount of time and worry on the part of the children and their parents.  It also happens to be an area where technology can be used to help out.  

Jutta is amazing - she put together a team and an iPhone app that uses a bit of machine learning and gamification was born.  This is really great stuff and is just emerging into something that can be used.   So if you have diabetes or know someone who does - or if you're interested in serious medical aids that can run on iPhones and Apple Watches read on as Jutta continues with a guest post.

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My son was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes five years ago when he was just six years old.  In type 1 diabetes (T1D) your pancreas stops producing insulin, so you need to dose it manually to keep blood sugar at a normal level. Keeping blood glucose stable is hard, as everything affects it: insulin, carbohydrate consumption, exercise, stress, other hormones etc.

We started to use continuous glucose monitor (CGM) to follow his sugar level every five minutes. For insulin delivery we use an insulin pump that delivers insulin in small doses throughout the day. Before every meal we calculate the carbs as the insulin is dosed according the amount of carbs eaten

 

 

Diabetes management is really complex. There is a risk of short term complications (severe hypoglycemia i.e. too low blood glucose and hyperglycemia, too high blood glucose), which can both be fatal. But the long term complications, which are caused by elevated blood glucose over time, are as scary. Heart disease, nerve damage, kidney failure, blindness, premature death can all be caused by diabetes. Diabetes also takes a huge amount of time: counting every carbohydrate you eat, calculating insulin doses, changing infusion sites and sensors just needs to be done, no matter how tired or overwhelmed you might feel.

No wonder there are many who know the mental burden of diabetes far too well. But being stressed about your condition does not help you to take any better care of yourself.  Rather, we noticed that humour and positivity did help. Noticing the small wins (“oh, your blood glucose was really good at school today - well done!”) made a big difference.  So we wanted to turn that approach into a new way of diabetes management. One that gives insights to future glucose levels and rewards you when you're succeeding in managing on your own.

 

This idea turned into Happy Bob, an app that uses gamification and machine learning to turn health data into rewarding and engaging experiences.
Users can follow their own blood glucose data and there are stars which can be collected when blood sugar is kept within target levels. The star counts are displayed and a user can achieve daily star targets and share scores with others. The app also uses personal blood glucose history data with machine learning to predict the user’s blood glucose up to two hours ahead. The prediction helps to foresee high and low blood sugar before they happen.

The interface is simple and playful.  Happy Bob is also available in the Snarky Bob mode for those with a more sarcastic sense of humour.

 

The app is currently available on iPhone and is used by both children and adults. Users tell us Happy Bob makes diabetes management more fun and helps them to be more aware of own data. Everyone enjoys collecting stars and getting positive feedback. It’s still early but the app retention is really good.

Next we plan to add more health data in the experience, to provide a more holistic health management experience and more ways to be rewarded. Our goal is to help users foresee periods when they should pay extra attention to their blood sugar and health to prevent the risk of complications.  We also want to add ways to use the stars earned, as that’s something many users have been asking for. We believe that by creating a daily, fun habit of good glucose management with Happy Bob, many people with diabetes can have a better life and health.

 

Happy Bob user feedback

 

First check out this video from Happy Bob user T1Swimmer .. she's great!  It should come up for those of you who aren't FB users 

https://www.facebook.com/T1Swimmer/videos/441338936474643/

 

If you are interested in testing out the Happy Bob App, have an iPhone and wear a CGM (continuous glucose monitor), you can download the app in the App Store https://apps.apple.com/app/happy-bob/id1444877516

For any information, please get in touch with me at [email protected]. You can follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/happybob_app/ or read more at our website https://happybob.app/

 

My three boys. Finland has the world’s highest incidence of type 1 diabetes. Diabetes is on the rise across the globe. With good glucose control most of the complications can be prevented.