Reddit refuge, escentric engineer and serial hobbyist.
Wild to see this posted. I worked for the guy that invented this at Sylvania, I have a bunch of photos of the early prototypes. They never figured out how to commercialize it and in the process of trying to manufacturer it in China the manufacturer stole the IP and started making them under their own brand and stole the market. They were called Icetron lamps. I worked in their R&D facilities and domestic manufacturing sites in the early 2000s.
This comment hits hard. There are a lot of ignorant people in my life that spout idiotic stuff and I brush it off, I disengage. I could take the time to listen, converse and correct but I don’t. I disengage, I brush it off as just “Oh boy, there goes crazy Joe rambling again! But generally he’s a good guy so I’ll tolerate it”. I need to start taking the time to push back and correct people I care about so they understand people are judging them when stupid things are said. Thank you!
I work for an un-named company that makes stuff that has google assistant on them. Initially we put hardware mutes and piped the microphones to physical hardware that monitored for wake up words locally and would then start piping the microphone data to the mother ship once it was heard. Google told us to stop that, only way to certify the product as compatible with Google Assistant was to pipe the raw microphone data to the mother ship 24/7. That was 5 years ago and I removed all devices from my house.