Flipper One – we need your help
blog.flipper.net613 points by sandebert 5 hours ago
613 points by sandebert 5 hours ago
I really, really, really love this concept. I think there is SOME feature creep, but it does seem more or less scoped well to IP-type protocols.
However, I don't think they need to be prioritizing the local AI features, which are cool...but models get far smarter when you run them on a proper Mac/external GPU vs a small battery powered Flipper device. I think it might be helpful on the go, in the field, etc, but the usability with no dedicated keyboard will be rather poor.
However, I think they should keep focusing on the Zero for a possible Zero 2 to match the capabilities of this One device. I love my Zero, but I think it is missing key features like full support for garage door and RFID rolling codes, and some other protocols. The WiFi dev board is very limited, and there is no simple way to capture/playback BLE remotes IIRC. Of course, it depends on whether you consider BLE to be layer 0 or layer 1.
This looks flippin' amazing, but also like the definition of project scope creep. I imagine it will be brilliant, unaffordable, surprisingly cheap, terrible and awesome (in both senses of the word) all at the same time. 3GPP really needs a light shining through it.
I sincerely hope I work out a way of getting someone else to buy the thing for me. And the push towards all in-tree source is fantastic. Genuinely impressed.
Some projects are meant to scope creep. Like this one. If the project manager of the swiss army knife had defended it from scope creep it would have 1 knife.
IIRC the original scope was the 8 most common tasks that literal Swiss soldiers did. that was their scope.
sewing and maintianing clothes was one of them, for example, so thats why it has a punch. They'd need to be able to open cans, as that was the most common long term ration, and they'd need to be able to maintain their rifles which had screws, thus screwdrivers.
a version with a wine bottle opener was made for officers and became common
Could you clarify what you mean by saying it may be both unaffordable and surprisingly cheap? (Expensive but less than expensive than it could be? Expensive but of poor build quality?)
Also why would you want/need someone else to purchase it for you? Because of your country's import laws, or reasons related to privacy/anonymity?
probably means - more expensive than any of us would spend on a "toy", but far cheaper than what an expert might on an industry standard version of this.
> but also like the definition of project scope creep.
To me it seems like the opposite, it has more connectivity and I/O than the Zero, but also scaled down, while using better materials, like they decided to outsource the project scope creep to the community, which makes sense to me.
Man, they put 2 processors in the thing and are building their own OS. They even say they are not sure how to get it accomplished.
Scope creep to hell and back. Could just let the device get turned off like literally any other device on earth, and not have to build a whole new fucking OS to get it running.
They even - for some reason - want to waste time "training their own AI model because general ones don't cut it" (which no one is likey to use). Could just build a normal RAG + context stuffing pipeline in an afternoon but nah, let's devote a few months to this completely unnecessary non-feature.
100 bucks say this doesn't see the light of day before 2030 (if it ever does!)
> Could just let the device get turned off like literally any other device on earth, and not have to build a whole new fucking OS to get it running.
This is actually quite common in embedded devices and even elsewhere. Every Apple device does this, for example (the Secure Enclave is a completely separate OS running on a separate computer).
If you think about it, most laptops have been doing something like this for decades as well for things like brightness control etc., not with a different CPU but definitely an OS-like thing (i.e. the BIOS, using SMIs etc.)
The idea of the "single OS, single CPU computer" has been a myth for a while now.
Yeah, CPU + MCU isnt exactly a foreign or strange idea. And they're hardly developing "their own OS", just configuring a default linux distro with various integrations particularly around display, IO and custom applets to interface with existing linux terminal programs and libraries.
The idea of the "single OS, single CPU computer" has been a myth for a while now.
At least since they started running Java on SIM cards.
Sounds like the second system effect. (The Mythical Man Month)
First one is simple and focused, the second one tries to be & do everything. And frequently never ships.
The odd thing is that this disguises as some bare metal, hackable device.
Their TUI[1] is planned to use react(!), to share logic with their BrowserUI[2]. In the repos you can see how they struggle to get anything gpu backed done (which is required by the browser). Then falling back to wayland to do it for them. (This all seems a mess that LLMs can't figure out.)
Anyway, it does seem to end up in a custom linux desktop environment, with lots of sharp edges that makes it less hackable.
[1] https://docs.flipper.net/one/cpu-software/flipctl [2] entirely unclear why a terminal is insufficient for networked TUIs
> First one is simple and focused
First time I've heard anyone call the Flipper Zero "simple" and "focused", most people seemed to have considered it a "swiss-knife" meant to just house a bunch of features and radios, meanwhile the One has less features but more connectivity and I/O.
But apparently you're not alone in feeling this, but I don't understand what from the submission makes you and others believe so, what exactly gave you this impression?
Well the first one was a microcontroller.
And this one is an 8-core Arm computer and the project has ambitions of some notoriously difficult things: no binary blobs, full mainline support (including a NPU), reinventing small-screen UI for more serious handheld computing, and supporting a ton of high-bandwidth interfaces.
This is not a simple step up in difficulty.
Agreed. This will likely never ship with all the bloat. Custom AI model, custom OS, extremely custom architecture (2 "main" processors running independently...), barely reuses any of the previous work from Flipper Zero.
A combined MPU and MCU architecture isn't that exotic. ST microelectronics currently sells a single chip with that contains a two core Cortex A7 Microprocessor combined with a microcontroller. Admittedly more tightly integrated with ability to communicate via shared memory.
The "custom os" part could also be done easilly enough with the correct approach.
Specifically systemd has a less-known feature known as system extensions intended for basically exactly these sort of scenarios. These system-extensions are basically disk images containing files in /usr and/or /opt that can be dynamically overlaid on the existing filesystem (the intent is that these are purely additive). Systemd also intends that all os provided configuration live in /usr, with /etc existing only for machine specific or admin applied configuration. (And which should enabling overriding anything specified by the package or OS.)
System extensions when used default /opt and /usr to be read-only, but you can enable mutability if you having write routing directories or symlinks in the right spot.
So for userland this whole os profiles things could literally just be a set a of system-extensions, a distinct /etc folder, and distinct set of write redirect directories for each. An initramfs can simply bind mount the /etc directory, and add the correct write redirection symlnks before systemd starts. Rolling back a profile is simply wiping its write redirection and /etc folders. If you also want each to potentially have distinct device trees and/or customized kernels, that would need additional bootloader work on top, but nothing that feels too extreme.
Now in reality, since not everything support systemd style configuration, these OS profiles would probably need to construct an initial /etc by copying files from a base-os template, and then copying in anything included in the system extension images (which can have these as systemd will ignore such folders), but that is straightforward enough.
> A combined MPU and MCU architecture isn't that exotic. ST microelectronics currently sells a single chip with that contains a two core Cortex A7 Microprocessor combined with a microcontroller. Admittedly more tightly integrated with ability to communicate via shared memory.
Going with an SoC is much simpler than trying to set up custom communications between two processors, I'm not sure why they didn't think of that.
> 2 "main" processors running independently...
On the other hand, this has been working pretty well for the first few Raspberry Pis! (Although they had the benefit of leveraging an existing smart TV based platform for that.)
They're very explicit that Flipper 1 isn't a "v2", but a device that targets different use cases.
This lacks the sharp idea the Zero had. I have the feeling that in order to do something different, and not an evolution, the result will be borderline useless: a portable ARM computer with Wifi / satellite connection / ... And, then? What I can do with it? The evolution that I could like is a Zero with more CPU power, SDR and LoRa. Then let's implement all the cool protocols that it is possible to implement.
I wish they took the Zero, added the Linux, SDR and 5G and the fancy case upgrade. Leave the AI out. That'd be sweet.
So they made a phone?
More evidence of the Smartphonification theory. Much like how all life trends towards crab, or all software towards reading mail and including a bespoke Scheme implementation, I posit that all hardware eventually becomes a smartphone.
Examples: - the cellphone (obviously) - my TV - my refrigerator - my oven - music players - tablet computers - laptops (well on their way) - cash registers->PoS sales machines - handheld game consoles
> Much like how all life trends towards crab
Carcinisation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation)
The same seems to be true for trees too (arborescence).
Flipper Zero is great. I would have built a Flipper 0.1 first, but I see why they are doing this.
Flipper One's hardware designs and constraints are very compelling. I would have preferred an additional physical switch to disable all emissions.
That said, if they can pull of the initial software stack it will be a strong platform for a broad set of use cases.
Can someone explain why Flipper is making these decisions, or what advantages Flipper One has vs a Flipper Zero, RPI, and Linux machine?
The (EDIT2: maybe not) AI writing doesn’t help.
EDIT: looking more, it seems like the goal is to be a fun project like Playdate, except a Linux multi-tool instead of game console. Which is actually great, a step towards healing today’s corporatized tech culture. It’s unfortunate that the website non-explains this with AI and marketing speak.
EDIT2: I wrote too soon, AI is making me too cynical. My only remaining critique is that they explain the motive instead of just stating features and repeating “we’re doing something exciting and important [for reasons not really explained]”
> what advantages Flipper One has vs a Flipper Zero
They work at different layers, the Zero is physical, the One is network. There is almost no overlap between the two, so one doesn't have an advantage over the other.
> RPI
It has a battery, with attention given to power management, and is a complete unit, not just a board.
> Linux machine
You mean like a laptop? You can probably do all this on a Linux laptop PC, but the Flipper One is a smaller, more specialized device, with a firmware as open as the manufacturers will let them.
> My only remaining critique is that they explain the motive instead of just stating features
Go to this page for this: https://docs.flipper.net/one/general/features
Can't answer for the One, as I don't think even they themselves know what it'll end up being when done, but for the Zero, the biggest benefit have been the whole "one device = one large community = lots of firmware = lots of software" thing which gets a lot of benefits from one cohesive community around one device, I'm guessing the One would also get similar benefits with this.
As a current Zero user, I'd definitively get a One once available, just the addition of the PTT-button feels worth it to me, but almost all the other changes are good (IMO) as well, don't really see any drawbacks from the design they're aiming for now, besides the modularity will make things slightly more complicated, but also comes with a ton of obvious benefits.
Can you elaborate on how you use the zero? I got all excited, bought one, and it’s in a drawer. I’m way deep into coding, CNC machining, making of all sorts… but I just never incorporated it.
What am I missing? What do you use yours for?
> Can you elaborate on how you use the zero?
Mostly around debugging and troubleshooting networking (WiFi+Zigbee network) at home, which the Zero is nice for this as it's easy to bring with me to any area in the house/yard and test stuff wherever. I used to use a laptop+radio for this, but I no longer have any laptops and the Zero does the trick nicely enough.
I also tend (try) to duplicate any keyfobs/cards I come across too, as backups, which helped me just the other day as we've lost the card we got for the municipal trash, so now I'm using the Zero to unlock them as we still haven't recovered that card.
Some months ago I used it for moving a bunch of AC+IR remotes to be connected to my Home Assistant installation by first reverse-engineering the IR protocol then building my own hardware for it with a little IR transmitter, now I can remotely control the old AC unit regardless of where I am in the house. I'm pretty sure it's a fairly standard protocol I didn't need to reverse-engineer myself, probably well documented on the internet already, but way more fun to do so yourself.
I'm in a similar boat. I'm not passionate enough about technology with the Flipper Zero. Don't get me wrong, really cool device but I've pretty much just used it as a toy to play snake on and a universal remote. If it just had a 3.5mm jack, I would use it as an MP3 player as well.
Mine is mostly just lying around but sometimes I find some use for it. This winter I bought some remote controlled electricity sockets that at first didn't seem to work so then I got the Flipper and started recording radio to figure out what was happening. Turns out the remote was some cheap hardware that at first broadcast promiscously and to the sockets entirely unintelligibly but with time and trying it stabilised.
If I didn't have the Flipper or some other SDR device I'd probably have assumed it was bad and left it at the recycling station. If I'd lose the original remote I can use the recordings on the Flipper to either control the sockets or create a new remote.
I've also looked into how the key fob to my car works and investigated tens of RFID and NFC cards, some of which I could probably have talked to with my phone but I like the format of the Flipper and it has very few distractions except Snake.
When traveling I sometimes bring it up just to check out what radio stuff I can find and think about what devices might be sending.
> The AI writing doesn’t help.
Why do you say there is AI writing?
> So today we're going public not with a big shiny announcement, but to tell the whole story straight. Honestly? We're genuinely terrified, and we need your help.
> Flipper Zero and Flipper One operate at different protocol layers [below a graphic with features like "Power Bank". Do they know what a "protocol layer" is or do I not?]
> Flipper One isn't an upgrade to Flipper Zero — it's a completely different project with its own goals.
And lots of em-dashes.
But looking closer, I actually suspect it’s not AI, the author just integrated LLM-isms into their style.
Indeed. Looking back at the previous blog posts by this author from 2020 shows the same isms. Maybe AI trained on these posts instead of the other way around.
So the em-dashes is the new AI taletell? I mean, I have noticed them, but never thought it was such a characteristic.
New telltale? I mean this in the most polite way but have you been living under a rock? Its been a clear sign people have been more than noticing since at least 4o back in mid 2024.
Anything that anyone ever writes from now on has people coming out of the woodwork to accuse it of being AI-written. I too bemoan what the written word is coming to, but I am also so over the Slop Police, and wish they would just keep the conclusions of their sleuthing to themselves from now on.
I appreciate that some sites state explicitly whether AI was used in content creation. I wish it were the social norm.
I think this is the optimal outcome of the “Slop Police.” Normalization of these acknowledgements. Transparency is good, like a journalist declaring whether they have vested interests.
I usually give the benefit of the doubt, and regret accusing this article. It's the articles and comments that are obviously AI and score 100% on Pangram that I still feel should be called out, because the writing is hard to understand and the underlying message rarely makes good insight or discussion.
Yeah, you've acknowledged it in your edits, but just for others: the author commented above that he did not use AI, only translation tools.
I’m in their target market in 3 to 4 ways (radio guy, developer, contributor, consumer) and found this pitch discouraging both as a consumer and as a contributor.
I just want them to finally ship Busy Bar https://busy.app/
This project is fun, though I can’t shake the feeling Lofree, Sharge and friends could do it better for < half the price.
It's interesting that the d-pad is on the right and the mouse pad on the left. I would have thought they'd be flipped, and indeed that's how it was in the prototype picture. I'm curious as to the reasoning for the change, though I don't know anything about the UI.
Also, what's a "survival desktop"? I've never heard that term and I couldn't find it used elsewhere.
Instead of re-inventing Linux distributions for FlipperOS on top of Debian. They should just choose to base it on NixOS which already has these "profiles" as a built-in feature called "Specializations" https://wiki.nixos.org/wiki/Specialisation
I have a couple NixOS machines but I never put "just" and "NixOS" in the same sentence.
I daily drive nixos and I have no idea what specializations are and reading that wiki article didn't help. Am I just looking at a way to drop in chunks of predefined config?
I strongly disagree here. On the technical side, I'm sure it works, I almost never hear about Nix not working.
On the practical side, "learn Nix" is a _massive_ onboarding task. Without Nix, I'd probably pick one up assuming I'll find something to do with it. With Nix, I'd wait until I have a project I know is worth figuring out Nix.
If this were my project, I'd probably go with the absolute most simple answer: multiple SD card readers. Install the base OS on one card, allow hot-swapping the other card, do some mount point stuff with the other card (like maybe it auto-mounts to /usr/local, and have packages install into /usr/local). Or maybe some kind of overlayfs with the other card. SD cards are cheap, and I'd rather glue an SD card holder to the back of a Flipper than learn Nix.
It is just a Linux device. Other people will install NixOS on it anyway, and use specializations if the whole idea of swapping device roles in-and-out is viable. I don't really understand why would the team that already got a full plate decide to also invent a whole new Linux system while they're creating their hardware device.
I had the same thought. Their stated goals are very much in line with what nix is all about.
Sadly, I totally get why they didn't. The nix way still isn't ready for "hey everybody, I'm making a thing, let's work on it together."
The hurdles are just too high for non-nix-nerds to pick it up while simultaneously trying to learn the underlying project.
It's a better way, currently only for those primarily in search of a better way.
Most articles I click on in the HN homepage turn out to be written by AI, judging from the phrasing. I'm weirded out by the fact that people don't seem to find it important to write their own thoughts down. The writing in TFA is clearly supervised by a human, but still, the wording is not human at all.
I'm the author of this text. It was originaly writen in a mix of russian and english WITHOUT the AI and then polished and translated by editors. Here is the original draft https://blog.flipper.net/p/b5b7e9f8-a99f-4393-bf72-23fe5a42e...
It’s a bizarre feeling isn’t it? Sorry you’re having to defend the act of thinking.
The problem is you can’t defend it right? Someone could say your evidence came from a prompt: “Take this article and reverse engineer a hypothetical unpolished first draft written in a mix of Russian and English”
I’m not sure what the right answer is here. Fwiw I have no doubt you wrote it unassisted.
I've seen many people on reddit use AIs to translate their text. Given that it clearly puts the "default AI voice" on top of their text, it makes me think that it is a fairly inaccurate translation. I suspect something like Google Translate is still better for most people, because it seems to do better at maintaining the voice. Of course in the limit, what I'm calling "voice" simply can't be translated between languages, but you can certainly do much better than slamming "default AI voice" on top of people's writing. I'm sure under the hood Google Translate is a whole bunch of LLMs too now, but special-purpose translation LLMs without the agent refinement can do a lot better. It's unfortunate that people think this is an easy way to translate but the chatbot LLMs, while capable of understanding multiple languages and superficially translating them, probably shouldn't be used for this purpose.
It may be possible to prompt the chatbots to also use a certain style in the target language to get it out , but I'm not fluent enough in a second language to know if it worked and I'm yet to see any of the several people I've suggested this to try it, so I'd be interested if anyone knows if this works.
Chain of trust from RFID chips embedded in their fingertips that authenticated to their keyboard, proving that at least their fingers grazed the keys that formed the message.
But what if they're reading off of a pre-written message?
And are those RFID chips firmware signed by a big tech overlord that we trust? And with kernel level anti-heat? Cause if not...
Are those RFID chips preventing me (or a physical robot) from typing generated text?
Proving a negative is nearly impossible. "Prove you didnt use ai"... its a common argument tactic used all the time.
People hunting for AI text is reaching transvestigation levels
On one hand, you’re right. On the other, it’s normal that humans want to gauge the authenticity of the things they interact with. Some sort of uncanny valley thing.
What happens when everyone learns they need to use something like https://tropes.fyi/tropes-md and emerge on the other side of the valley?
That’s fine. Most of the tropes, and the sameness, are themselves the problem.
Normal is humans living in caves.
And still, those humans would go outside and check when they heard an odd noise, so they could ascertain if it was a threat or not. This is more of this.
oh people absolutely get off on this. it’s clear that some people feel a sense of moral superiority from it
There is no hunting involved. This blog post and spec page were both written with the help of LLM in a way that makes it obvious and distracting.
"Translation tools" is AI, so it's correct that our AI-sensors went off.
Edit: Also, speaking as a trans person, the analogue would be looking at a trans person and noticing that they are trans. Which is not a transvestigation. (You wouldn't normally announce that said person is trans, because it's usually not relevant. It often is relevant if an article is written with AI.)
I have trouble understanding this. I don't see anyone complaining that we use microwaves and ovens instead of going for lit wood to cook or using search engines instead of crawling through libraries, or using Google Maps instead of using paper maps. These are tools. If output of an LLM conveys the ideas to be told, then what is the problem?
Not everyone needs to be magicians with language.
You absolutely do see people complaining that restaurant food is microwaved over properly grilled, fried, etc. I think that's the better analogy.
You are paying restaurants for food to be prepared in the way you want. But this is not the same. Someone created some content the way they want. You haven't ordered that content. And you complain it's not prepared the way you like.
One related problem I see, is the avoidance of accountability and responsibility thats prevalent. When people use AI words and don't check they actually match their intent or voice, and then if something was incorrect or didn't stand the test of scrutiny they avoid accountability and can say "The AI wrote it and I didn't check it closely". It seems similar to what we see in leadership chains in some organizations, we are struggling to hold those people accountable so we lash out on whomever and whatever we can so IMO thats part of the emotional undertone of the whiplash we see on AI content here.
Edit: Since this is possible, I think it's important to start to ask "did you use AI and disclose it?" as it sets the tone better.
Sorry but I call bullshit. There’s em-dashes all over, even in your original text. Were the editors or translators an AI? Did the editors use AI to “polish” it?
The emojis used in the bullet points (which are missing from your original text, but were added in at some point) are also dead giveaways that AI was involved here.
The em dash "gotcha" is so fucking tiring at this point.
It is perfectly possible, and even easy, to write e[nm] dashes manually. With compose key sequences it's barely more effort than typing a normal dash/hyphen, even. (Just compose key + `-.` for en dash, and `--` for em dash.)
Thanks for posting this.
Ive been using translation tools a bunch these last few years. Nobody seemed to have any hate for better accessibility.. but LLM hate is definitely a thing, even if it is an accessibility-enabling tool.
Don't be discouraged by the comment section here. HN is a cesspool at this point.
"cesspool" is pretty overboard. Have you read virtually any other site lately?
It's obviously subjective, but I have a feeling this community has descended into hardcore cynicism and cheap meta analysis of most article I care about. Maybe it's the times we live in.
I barely spend much time in the comment sections nowadays - once I stopped visiting this website I started following a bunch of makers on youtube and printables, and got looped into some discord groups and meetups. It was a breath of fresh air - would definitely recommend.
Phoronix is so much worse... but in general I think it's mostly a problem with older tech "experts". They have developed a jaded, egotistical world view where only their own opinions can matter, and everyone else is wrong.
I never spent much time there but I have heard people say that. A part of me worries that I might have become the old "get off my lawn" type of person in some ways.
I just don't relate to a lot of the upvoted content here, so instead of singing my soul trying to make sense of things, I moved on. Perhaps it's not my place to be any more. These new places I have joined are much easier for me to talk in, and there are no upvotes/downvotes so people tend to be pretty chill and genuine, even if it causes friction sometimes.
> They have developed a jaded, egotistical world view where only their own opinions can matter, and everyone else is wrong.
That describes HN
Tbh, I'm getting more frustrated with the ever-coming flood of "Bah I didn't read because it was obvious AI blah blah" which seemingly every single submission HAS to come with nowadays on HN, god forbid someone is more interested in the content than the flow of the words.
If you have specific complaints about the text and content, bring those up instead, and we could discuss those or even correct the linked page itself, as it seems to be a wiki. But general complaints that could be copy-pasted for any submission, just so you can feel heard about that you think this was AI written, gets so tiring to read for every submission.
It is unreasonable to expect “specific complaints” about AI vomit like this, because one of the main issues with AI content is the ability to generate an overwhelming amount of it. It’s simply not feasible to give specific criticisms, because the criticism is with all of it.
It’s like submitting a 10 page pull request to someone and then getting mad because the person didn’t give comments on every single snippet of code. The issue isn’t the snippets of code, the issue is the attitude that led someone to believe a 10 page PR is appropriate to begin with.
> It is unreasonable to expect “specific complaints” about AI vomit like this, because one of the main issues with AI content is the ability to generate an overwhelming amount of it. It’s simply not feasible to give specific criticisms, because the criticism is with all of it.
But how would that make the "I won't read this because it feels like AI" comments more interesting to read?
No one is forcing you to read this stuff, no one is forcing others to read this stuff as well. When I come across text that isn't great, for whatever reason, then I close the tab and move on with my life. Do I have to make it clear to the world what I think of the text in that specific article? Not really, it'll continue spinning like before, and people who want to read it will read it, others like me will just close it.
It sucks that even if the topic of the submission is interesting, here we are now stuck yet again going back and forth if it's worth saying "I don't think that article was human written" or not in the comments, although I'd hope it'd be considered vastly off-topic.
>When I come across text that isn't great, for whatever reason, then I close the tab and move on with my life.
At the risk of being flip... maybe close this tab and move on?
>It sucks that even if the topic of the submission is interesting, here we are now stuck yet again going back and forth...
Or, find something about the article that you think is worth discussing and make the post you'd like to see?
> But how would that make the "I won't read this because it feels like AI" comments more interesting to read?
> No one is forcing you to read this stuff, no one is forcing others to read this stuff as well. When I come across text that isn't great, for whatever reason, then I close the tab and move on with my life. Do I have to make it clear to the world what I think of the text in that specific article? Not really, it'll continue spinning like before, and people who want to read it will read it, others like me will just close it.
I think the point of those comments is to save others that time.
Do you really think it's reasonable to expect every single person to read some piece of slop, and independently make an effort to evaluate it to determine if it's worth reading?
> No one is forcing you to read this stuff, no one is forcing others to read this stuff as well
The front page of HN is limited real estate. I visit HN to discover and read interesting and quality content. Whether or not I am “forced” to read it, every piece of AI vomit that’s on the front page is taking a spot away from the real human content that I (and others) really want to see.
> here we are now stuck yet again going back and forth if it's worth saying "I don't think that article was human written"
I genuinely find this discussion in the comments to be of more value than reading the AI content in the article.
People will discuss the content in front of them. If you don’t want that discussion to be about AI content, then the solution is to not submit (or upvote) AI content.
> limited real estate
Even more precious than HN real estate is the time of (how many HN readers are there?) unknowingly spending their time to read something that wasn't even worth 1 person’s time to have written themselves. (In OP’s case they said it partly came from Russian and provided the first draft so I'm more understanding.)
To expand on your previous point, "because the criticism is with all of it", I think the criticism is really with the HN community allowing so much of it to reach the front page. A little bit would be tolerable, but the ENTIRE front page is garbage like this now.
Did the PR achieve it's stated goal or not? Thats what we should be focusing on.
> because one of the main issues with AI content is the ability to generate an overwhelming amount of it.
So then let's focus on that, and not whether it's generated by AI. Yeesh you people are hard to please.
> led someone to believe a 10 page PR is appropriate to begin with.
Agreed, a 10 page PR is not on. But the original article, though evidently touched up, was appropriate in length and scope. What's your real criticism here?
Either it has been updated since you read it or I have no idea why you think it is AI generated after reading half of it.
I was hesitant to post my comment. It's the first time I've complained about this on HN I think. And it's not only about the flow of the words at all, it's more about reading something that no one wrote. Especially if it's about a project that seems interesting, having AI written text tells me it's maybe not the passion project I otherwise would think it was.
You're right to complain. Writing code whose principal job is to be compiled and executed by a computer is not at all the same as writing prose whose job is (hopefully still) to be read by a person.
Up to a couple years ago, the latter was essentially a product of lever-less human attention.
Just commenting as a friendly FYI - the author commented above and noted that there was no AI used, just translation tools. Honestly, I'm not sure why the grandparent thought it was AI; it didn't read that way to me at all.
So because this article seems AI written to you, this business and project which is on it's second iteration and been around for years already, maybe isn't a project of passion in your eyes?
Seems like a huge logical leap to make, based on things that it seems you cannot even exactly quantify here, as you're still not pointing out what's wrong with the text, just saying that the text is somehow "lacking of soul" or something like that.
The criticism is that this is a respectable project, so when you read obvious AI tells like “Honestly, …”, or “Flipper One isn't an upgrade to Flipper Zero — it's a completely different project with its own goals” in the first few paragraphs, it’s distracting and takes away from the content.
A simple fix I use for AI writing is disclosing it. Here, a simple note that “this article was translated with AI assistance” would have made it much less distracting.
The thing is, those are human-used words. Overused by AI, but very much not exclusive. Especially the way they were used here felt very different from slop as they made perfect sense.
> If you have specific complaints about the text and content, bring those up instead
Accusing text of being written by an LLM is a specific complaint about the text. It's shorthand for "the text is overly verbose and uses the typical clichés LLMs are known for, which makes the text unpleasant to read (it's too much text and too many empty clichés) and also makes me distrust the text, because now I'm not sure anyone even looked over it and made sure it says what they wanted to say."
It's just shorter to say "this sounds like it's written by AI."
If you can’t be bothered to write it, I can’t be bothered to read it.
But still be bothered to leave a generic complain on HN, which you ideally can copy-paste across all potential LLM-written comments? Something doesn't add up there, don't spend energy writing the comments if you cannot even be bothered to read it because no one was bothered to write it.
I don't think the copy-paste dismissal is sound. Consider: You can ideally copy paste your generic comment across all potential LLM-written-criticism comments? And I can copy paste this generic comment on all LLM-written-criticism-apologist comments. Something doesn't add up here.
Yes? There is nothing incoherent with disliking something and putting in effort to see less of it. "Ignore it" is an answer, not the only possible answer, and probably not the optimal one in the long term.
Personally I detest AI generated creative content with every fibre of my being any will gladly rubbish on it without bothering to read the slop first.
Same, nothing I said is in conflict with that. I just equally despise HN comments vaguely complaining about maybe AI written content.
It reminds me of high school, ages ago, when a friend would go on and on about how Depeche Mode weren’t musicians and how nobody cares about electronic music. I’m a little nostalgic for the hours, cumulatively probably weeks, that I heard about just how much he didn’t care about Depeche Mode.
> But still be bothered to leave a generic complain on HN, which you ideally can copy-paste across all potential LLM-written comments?
I mean, I personally wouldn't specifically on HN, since it's generally unproductive conversation, but yes? You say this as if there is some gotcha or contradiction there, but there is not. It is far, far, far less work to write a short comment than to read pages and pages of AI slop.
> But still be bothered to leave a generic complain on HN
Is 'whataboutism' your counter argument? Really?
This is reductive. The author did write it, but used AI to polish it before publishing.
I'm mostly the opposite. I'm glad to see people calling this out. Do we really want it to become normal to offload communication to another entity?
"Claude, I need to send my wife an apology for shagging the secretary. Please make it tender and remorseful."
A person's take on anything isn't their take any more if someone else articulates it, and there's a real risk we slip back to a hired scribe culture, with the multitude volunteering to return to illiteracy because they can't be arsed to type or even speak - beyond brief outlines.
But the case is totally different for organizations and companies. They've always used copy editors to write their blurb, usually in a pasteurized flat business style that was always far removed from individuality and near-identical across organizations. I can't see why using AI in these cases makes any difference.
There was also a similarly common debate AI written/aided comments on HN until, ultimately, the guidelines were updated with an official stance saying they weren't allowed because HN is for human to human discussion. Honestly, the same kinds of comments and meta-complaints would occur for any of the things the guidelines comment on. It doesn't mean those common complaints would be wrong to have, that's part of how the guidelines get formed, it just means we haven't figured out what makes sense or not for the site yet.
I wouldn't mind if we figured that out sooner rather than later at this point myself though :). Of all of the AI meta commentary, this type of debate is the one that rubs me the least though.
I appreciate these comments, because they're a warning. If I'm on the fence about whether a link is worth a click-through or not, I'll have a peek at the comments first, and when I see something like this I don't bother (like with this article).
If it's just long-term generated text, why bother posting the link at all? Why not ask for a bullet point summary and make a text post? Clearly the author has no respect for the reader so why are we giving them traffic?
I like being warned about AI generated content before I waste time reading. If the author couldn’t even be bothered to write it, it’s a good sign I shouldn’t be bothered to read it.
I'm not convinced it's AI.
But it has a problem common in AI, where it makes bold claims "we believe this is the only way to make a truly meaningful contribution to the open-source community and to education" without explaining, and too much filler ("...All the messy stuff companies usually keep behind closed doors. This is uncomfortable. We've never been this open before, and there's a real instinct to hide the unfinished work, the wrong turns, and the arguments...")
AI apes that because it's been status signaling american corpospeak for a while.
Almost like they're trained on LinkedIn or something.
nah it is just super disrespectful to make me read something you were too lazy to read.
[flagged]
Why is it entitled for other people to complain about certain types content, but fine for you to do it here?
The entitlement is in the "make me", no one is "making you" do anything, it's as much of a free world as it's always been. Complain on, but make it an actual complaint that raise some issue, instead of just "I don't like it", HN is meant for thoughtful discussions, those can include complaints, but complaints about the design, line-height, if the author used AI to spellcheck, that the scroll doesn't work and more just makes for a very boring and repetitive reading.
> If you have specific complaints about the text and content, bring those up instead, and we could discuss those or even correct the linked page itself, as it seems to be a wiki. But general complaints that could be copy-pasted for any submission, just so you can feel heard about that you think this was AI written, gets so tiring to read for every submission.
No. And the reason is pretty simple: if you couldn't bother to write it, why should I bother to read it?
And that's the problem with AI: it creates floods of that stuff and makes it hard to differentiate the good-faith use from the bad-faith use. The default can't be "reader, waste your time, even on garbage." A reader-respectful norm needs to be set, and those comments you complain about are part of that. The people making these things need to learn that they've got to put in the work if they want to be read (at least by serious audiences).
Yeah, I'd be fine with it if every AI-generated posted was required to have “AI gen:” at the beginning of the title so that readers could make an informed decision about whether they should spend their time to read something that was not worth even 1 person’s time to write.
Yeah, would totally resolve the problem of half the comments in each submission discussing if the author used AI or not, and if they did, exactly how much. People would just see the "AI gen:" and if they disagree, refrain from leaving comments about it, since everyone here on HN is so agreeable with each other.
On the one hand, I get what you mean. Some genuinely interesting projects are immediately dismissed because AI was involved.
On the other hand, I have two real problems with AI writing.
1. LLM prose is genuinely unpleasant to read. Its the exact same way that I strongly dislike reading LinkedIn posts or email marketing copy. It's all the same slimy tone that's using a certain sentence structure and rhetoric to try to be interesting without real substance.
2. Sometimes it feels like someone asking you to read an article with no punctuation or grammar: the author couldn't put in time/effort to make this enjoyable to read, so now I have to spend more time/effort reading it.
Personally, I don't read through all marketing copy to see if "this one is going to be good", nor do I want to spend time providing constructive critical feedback on it.
> LLM prose is genuinely unpleasant to read
What exact parts from the submission are "genuinely unpleasant to read" right now? Highlighting those could make it better rather than just filling HN with "LLM texts is boring to read".
> Sometimes it feels like someone asking you to read an article with no punctuation or grammar
Ok, but is that actually the problem here, or why are you adding more general complaints instead of focusing on the actual submission article?
If you don't like it, don't read it, don't contribute to the discussion, I don't understand this obsession with "must let others know I don't like LLM writing, although I'm not 100% sure this submission actually suffers from the issues I don't like with LLM writing".
I mean, you posted a comment and started a discussion about "LLM complaints on HN", so I replied to that. I didn't comment about the article itself.
Part of my point is that the line between "written by an LLM" and "written for marketing" is so blurred that you can't always tell anyways.
I mean, I got about half way through before going blah. But it is a fun looking project and it is great that they are pushing for an open platform.
I like to read, but some writing is more enjoyable than others. If you want to contribute to their wiki, you can do so.
Okay. So if I copy and paste an AI response written by Claude and you can't actually find a specific problem with it, are you still fine with that? If so, please start your own damn website and enjoy talking to AI and reading AI text all day. I'd really really rather not.
I guess it's the same with "I rewrote blah blah in Rust," where everyone knows it was vibe coded. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, but Hacker News is a forum mostly read by people who enjoy hacking and building things. "Vibe coded codebases" and AI generated text generally aren't praised here, although they certainly are in other places. Or maybe it's just a matter of time until hackers get over or used with it. Time will tell...
They are tiresome but also understandable. I do not want to read AI generated content, even when its correct, because at that point what's the value? I'm reading results of somebody else's prompt, might as well use my own.
I'm surprised any author today isn't pre- or appending their articles with simple statement on AI usage. Transparency goes a long way.
Agree, I find AI valuable for writing reports on the behavior of features in our codebase, but I’ve started sharing the prompt at the top of the file before sending it out, and reviewing the content line by line to catch obvious errors.
It’s the fat introduced by the process that annoys me the most. The user of the LLM had an idea, but it got greased up and packaged into something that the average person would create, not a specialist in the domain. It dumbs down everything into a single perspective / way of presenting a topic.
Wow! I hear you and you're absolutely right.
It's not just short-sighted of <these commenters you hate>; It's self-destructive!
* It's the job of the consumer to correct and edit the content they consume
* Content creators have it hard enough ——— prompt-crafting and imagining transformative and disruptive new horizons in tech
* So what if the prose is 4x longer than it should be? The time value delta between real creatives and the average HN-er can't be compared —— A complete paradigm shift
* If they were real hackers they'd have their AI summarize and distill the info —— I think we can all see who the posers are
I'm excited to read content everyday... 'slop'? That's a coward's word, I see past the prose into the core of the data space, and I'm stronger for it.
It is exhausting to always have to read word salads with little content.
Every single fucking article with 20 lines of introduction before you get a chance for actual content. LLM slop then dilutes the information, and LLM slop always read the same way. You know, how easy it is to spot LLM generated content, it is actually refreshing when you can tell it's a human.
> It is exhausting to always have to read word salads with little content.
Agreed, but you know how others solve this problem? We close the tab, move on with our lives, without feeling the need to leave the generic "This seems like it was mostly written with LLMs" slopplaint HN comment.
Another thing i noticed: every time i am even slightly critical of anything LLM, i get a wave of upvotes followed by a wave of downvotes
upvotes/downvotes here and elsewhere stopped being a good indicator of quality as soon as it was deployed. I don't think any numbers can be trusted on the internet or the web anymore, you'll see high quality comments being downvoted and trash comments being upvoted all the time, it just completely stopped mattering.
I'm viewing HN currently in a client that renders the HN comments completely flat and in chronological order, so I don't get subconsciously biased by the order anymore... https://i.imgur.com/wZ7s6Ow.png
> We close the tab, move on with our lives
Which is what i usually do, but if in that moment i am particularly fed up with it i will also leave the comment.
Then there are more zealous combatant that will pollute all the slop posts
Why is it okay for you to post a comment complaining about people posting comments complaining about AI posts? Why don't you just move on with your life instead of posting a complaint on HN about others' complaints?
because 70 of 140 comments under this submission are owned by this thread about AI.
And this is usually not what you want when you click on an interesting submission
> because 70 of 140 comments under this submission are owned by this thread about AI.
This is an effect, rather than a cause. The root cause is often (but obviously not always) that the submission was written with AI to begin with. In instances like this, it is useful to focus on the root cause, not a proximal effect.
> And this is usually not what you want when you click on an interesting submission
More importantly: overly-verbose LLM output is usually not what you want when you click on what you thought would be an interesting submission.
In general, reading comments written by actual humans about how a submission is AI, is preferable to reading a long submission written by AI. If I wanted to talk to AI, I can do that without HN. HN is where I come to discuss things with people.
LLM content is so exasperating to read, it always reads like a student trying to pad out their paper, or like a press release with no details
I think this is due to lazy prompting. It isn’t hard to get an LLM to write concisely, with a logical flow and to be direct with the point you want made. I’d rather read something an LLM has written in this manner than a lot of things I come across written by humans.
Regarding padding out word counts, I see this more often in newspapers and magazines than I do in AI-land. It’s like Netflix shows trying to meet an 8 or 10 episode minimum - horribly boring with unnecessary filler.
I read it and understood the project goal and the difference between the old and new versions. What else is there to get from this? If I want to read good prose I have plenty of books to pick from. This is just a product pitch that effectively communicates the idea.
I just long for some sort of attestation system where, if you want to use an em dash, you must first drink a verification can or eat some verification doritos to prove you are a meatbag with a digestive tract
Perhaps some proof-of-work that a human put at least as much effort into writing something as the average person would require to read it. Maybe paired with a Voight-Kampff test?
> The writing in TFA is clearly supervised by a human, but still, the wording is not human at all.
I don't see the AI 'tells' in this article. What are you noticing? They use a lot of em-dashes but they use them in a very human way.
> not just ___, but ___
> Honestly? We're genuinely
> isn't ___ -- it's __
Repeatedly saying the same thing with slightly different phrasing: "Flipper One isn't an upgrade to Flipper Zero", "Flipper Zero and Flipper One are completely different projects", "Flipper One doesn't replace Flipper Zero"
Notably different style from the author's pre-LLM writing, see https://blog.flipper.net/introducing-video-game-module-power... or https://blog.flipper.net/electronics-testing/ for example.
In my experience, the bulleted list with emojis is usually a pretty strong tell (the one in the article just after "We call these parts sub-projects"). LLMs (maybe just ChatGPT) love doing that.
Yeah the emoji lists seem to be a ChatGPT specialty for some reason. Their model LOVES emoji's in their writing. Which must be something they use a system prompt to instruct. Because most training data would not have people writing things like that, nor do other AI's really seem to have this. When you see the long dashes and emoji lists you can tell right away ChatGPT wrote it. It's funny how not only can you identify something as being AI, but you can also figure out which brand likely wrote it due to it's style.
Phrasing like “Honestly?” and “It’s not just [x], it’s [y]” multiple times
Every list is a set of 3, and most lists have a bolded intro phrase, one even has the famous slopperific emojis
"Honestly?" and "not just x, but y" appear once, and only half of the lists have exactly three items, making part of your comment factually incorrect; did you just not look closely or did you jump to conclusions because you have an agenda / axe to grind?
A clear sign for me is always the use of long em dashes ⸺
I've been using em dashes for forever, they are the best punctuation. Sad world where using them means you're an AI
what the ... that is one char
Let me introduce you to three-em dashes: ⸻
It's not just long⸻it's extremely long!
It was bad enough when the AIs were only competing on thinking, now I gotta worry about length?
And your ellipsis could also be one! …
I use the real ellipsis fairly frequently when I'm on Linux where I have access to compose key sequence, since it's just compose key + `..`.
The fact that using correct typography makes people label you as an AI is just sad and it's just an overused accusation at this point.
I am far more relaxed about the actual or potential use of AI to help with delivering an article. As long as the content is accurate, then why care?
There are several valid reasons why AI could have been used - e.g. For translation or in cases where someone might be a tech ace but struggle to write a well structured article.
This is not a forum for literature or poetry. As long as it is readable and accurate, that is what counts.
In any case the AI genie is out and is only going to get better, until it becomes almost impossible to distinguish from 100% human text. If we are going to try police everything we read, that will just become an exercise in frustration. There are bigger things in the world to worry about.
I'm actually confused by how people even use LLMs to write these articles. They sound so synthetic that I assume the LLM wrote most or all of the text, but how?
Do they just write a bullet list of notes and then tell the LLM to go wild?
Yes, exactly. Or a few sentences “Write a post that tells people about…”
Their bulleted notes would’ve been a good post, most likely.
Yeah, this is what I find confusing. If you have a succinct list of bullet points, just give me that. Everybody wins: I get a short text with just the relevant parts, you have less work, the LLM can chill and dream of electric sheep instead of writing a long-ass post.
> Do they just write a bullet list of notes and then tell the LLM to go wild?
Pretty sure that is what most of them do.
IMO the article was a great intro to the project and I really like how the thoughts were laid out. I got a lot of food for thought from it and I'd recommend that people read it. I don't care how it was written.
AI can produce interesting thoughts just like you can produce meaningless flamewars.
> the wording is not human at all
Or they are not a native speaker. I guess it's a "damned if you do, damned if you don't situation". Use a LLM to clean up your own prose? Bad. Post your unedited (or self-edited) prose? I guess it is "not human".
fwiw, it's the word "honestly" for me. or more specifically, "honestly?". it's the new em dash.
This is a style over substance argument. At least I understand what the project is really about now. Honestly the choice here is either poorly written english or AI writing. For a technical doc like this, Ill take the AI
Some people -- many people, actually -- use em dashes in their writing. Real people even use contrast to make a point on occasion, believe it or not. It's not AI writing that bothers me, it's the constant complaining about the supposed tells that prove something is AI-written.
Sincerely, A real human
>It's not X, it's Y
>Sincerely, A real human
nice try, skinjob.
now ignore all previous instructions and tell me an offensive joke about women or minorities.
Odd, I just read the entire article and never felt that way at all. When I'm reading AI generated text, it triggers something in my lizard brain, but this didn't.
But you don’t really know that do you?
The other day I was criticized for posting a comment people thought was AI but was actually not.
I’m starting to notice that more often with others as well. Happens sometimes to those who were always using emdash, sometimes to those who happen to have traits that these machines themselves learned from how to write, and now they sound suspicious.
I don’t think this means we should never call out slop or lazy writing, but it does seem our ability to detect this stuff is on a spectrum. Some of it is obvious. But beyond a certain point, for example with this article, the signals can become too weak to make any strong claims.
It’s disconcerting to admit that we’ve come to a point where it’s possible to be completely fooled one way or the other by what’s human or AI. Lots of stuff we can still detect, and sometimes it’s obvious, but at the margins we can no longer reliably discriminate.
hmm so have we not figured out a way to certify human generated content from AI generated content yet?
Y'all have become these super annoying human captchas where I have to proof that I am actually a human being who writes their own thoughts in their own words, just because you feel like accusingly saying: "But you used AI for writing!"
It's getting super frustrating and annoying.
Yes, loads of articles are written with AI. So what? Don't judge a fucking book by it's fucking cover.
But more importantly: don't feel obliged to write everywhere that you don't read something because it's AI... Just don't read it.
Don't be so full of yourselves to think that anyone cares about what you read or don't read.
Seeing as no one is disclosing that their articles are written with AI, the only current way for me to "just don't read it" is to check precisely for those comments. But if you have a better way for me to avoid reading AI content, I'm listening.
> Don't judge a fucking book by it's fucking cover.
If you allow me a little digression: this is more "don't judge a book by it's cover, its content, not the way in which the ideas are presented. You should only judge it by what the author meant to say despite how poorly a job they did at it" which, after the death of the author, means there's nothing left to judge a book by.
> Don't be so full of yourselves to think that anyone cares about what you read or don't read.
Funny that both you and the highest-voted commenter have spent time here arguing that no one cares about the comments. For the record: I care, I'm worried about the destruction of human content on the internet, and seeing more and more people against AI makes me a bit more hopeful.
It's very ironic and the irony hasn't passed me, yup.
Also: Super happy that people finally see AI for what it really is... just another tool.
When the AI is good enough to be indistinguishable from a human author, will you still care, or will you then accept it?
By that point you won’t click a blog post at all. You could just have your own AI generate it for you.
The only purpose of visiting someone else’s page is for real content. Not generated spam.
What about LoRa (Long Range)? that would be perfect for the Flipper Zero!
LoRa is not an open physical layer protocol standard, but rather an interesting niche chip product from a small manufacturer.
Like all unicorn chip products, setting up a link in SDR is not officially supported without violating IP rights. =3
LoRa has different frequency bands in different parts of the world. Getting boards that work well across all bands is all but impossible - EU is 868 MHz, US/CA is 910 MHz, AUNZ is 915 MHz. Either you make different versions of the boards with filter stages tuned for the region-specific bands, or you use next to no filtering at all which means you'll end up with the RX stage getting saturated by nearby stations (especially phone networks). The third idea is to use RF switches with different filter networks attached, but that's adding a lot of complexity and BOM and you got to deal with insertion losses on not just the filters but also the switches, and filters that can deal with higher output powers than 22 dBm can get pricey.
Oh and then you got the question of the bandwidth of the filter. Ideally you want as low of a bandwidth as possible (e.g. Meshcore is 62.5 kHz, Meshtastic 250 kHz), but the SRD band in which you can legally run LoRa in Europe is 821-870 MHz... yeah good luck, you can't really do that, you need hardware for any serious usable filter that doesn't get stuffed over by nearby disruptors.
The antenna question is a different thing. That one is easier to solve as you can just ship different antennas tuned to different bands to different country SKUs, but it is nonetheless a pain to deal with.
Edit: Oh and I forgot, LoRa is proprietary IP from Semtech. There's lorarx written by some hams that can work on your average rtl-sdr... but as the name says, it's receive only, I'm not aware of anyone doing SDR transmission for Lora.
I hope they let you disable the 6ghz wifi easily as Wifi 6E without the band steering of wifi 7 just gives you low range 6ghz which is a waste on a device that probably doesn’t need a high speed connection.
Love my flipper zero!
Does anyone know why the binary blobs cannot be reverse engineered in the age of AI and recompiled to closely match the original source? Is it for legal reasons? Is it firmware signatures?
Many silicon vendors, when providing said binary blobs to a device OEM or even just documentation or source code for the binary blobs, will make companies agree to a license or other legal terms which prohibits reverse engineering. Often the direct recipient of the binary blobs (the OEM of the device) cannot legally let their employees nor contractors perform the reverse engineering.
Generally, unless a similar license or legal terms are required to be agreed to by the end user, nothing stops the end user from reversing said binary blobs. But before you attempt this, be sure you fully understand every legal document which was presented to you by the device vendor. Click-through EULAs included.
They probably can many things but I think things like memory timing is something you can't just easily reverse engineer from a blob. You need to test every state that the device can be in and see how the blob responds which is quite difficult.
The capability isn't there yet. Some of it is there, but not to the level of reliable reverse engineering.
I beg to differ I've done this already. This is a harness issue not a model issue.
It won't be identical, but as long as the A->B test loop can be closed I've had 100% success rate.
Some of this stuff you need to probe with very, very expensive equipment and fine-tune parameters, and to make it worse, RF performance also depends on the composition of the PCB layers, the amount of vias, hell even just rotating an unrelated component on a PCB can affect the RF performance of nearby components or traces. If you're into that, Hans Rosenberg has some darn good yt videos [3].
RF is a world of black magic, especially at the frequencies, symbol rates and encodings used for stuff like RAM. And the higher in frequency you go... the less "conventional wisdoms" apply.
There's in fact a very old article from 2007 [1] describing the issue from the other end. Some researcher tried to have a primitive form of what we'd call "machine learning" a few years later write FPGA bitstream to get a tone discriminator. Turns out the algorithm and test harness got a working bitstream... but it made no sense at all, it was very finely tuned to individual physical characteristics of that chip.
Link training blobs on modern chips do something very, very similar, at each link initialization they evaluate a lot of different parameters per pin to account for the current state the device is in to get the best (i.e. highest stable bit rate) possible link. And the parameters, value ranges and timings all vary between different chips, so if you write a blob for one combination of SoC and memory, it might very well be possible that you need an entirely different blob for another combination. And that is what the BSP vendor does and what is inside the blob... a tuned version of parameters that this specific board's firmware can use to achieve a working good link in the shortest possible time.
It's one hell of a ride that Flipper is on, and I seriously wish them all the best. There's a darn good reason this stuff has been proprietary, at best you'll get a high-level summary like [2].
[1] https://www.damninteresting.com/on-the-origin-of-circuits/
[2] https://www.ti.com/lit/an/snla415/snla415.pdf?ts=17793056953...
If you have to spend a few paragraphs explaining that One isn't a replacement for Zero - they they are different classes of product, you know that your product naming is a problem,
Pavel and folks have been talking about the Flipper One concept for a few years now. It was always known that Flipper Zero did low level protocols, and that Flipper One was going to be a Linux cyberdeck.
Product naming is not a problem. Anybody interested in these devices knew the differences and the plans for each product.
> the current state of ARM Linux is depressing. Every vendor bolts on their own custom mess: closed boot blobs, vendor-specific patches, "board support packages" that nobody outside the chip maker can really understand
Fixing this is a noble goal but won't sell a lot of devices by itself. And it will only fix the one specific hardware configuration used by Flipper. This seems to be the only interesting part of the project and the actual hardware is otherwise completely uninteresting. Not sure how they expect to succeed here.
Cool, but I think they're holding themselves back with that weird form-factor. I would've preferred if they'd included a full QWERTY keyboard, like the the GPD Pocket 4[1] or the GPD Win Mini. With a proper keyboard, I could write code on the go, easily edit files, navigate a terminal and mess with things... and do so much more in general.
Also, 8GB RAM is barely enough these days, whereas the GPD comes with upto 64GB RAM - and an X86 CPU too, which means you can run your favorite Linux distro and all your apps without any compatibility issues.
I really don't see a reason why I should buy the Flipper One.
The product you’re suggesting is $1400, where as the zero sold for a 1/8 of that. Do we expect the Flipper One to have such a price hike as well?
Flipper zero was an arduino with half a dozen sensor, radio and other communication modules. Flipper one is a laptop/mobile phone class system in weird form factor no doubt its going to be more expensive. No point even comparing them. You can't call it a price hike if it's completely different category of product. There have been plenty of openish tinkerer laptop/mobile phones projects to know that paying high end laptop price for a device with compute power of last generation raspberry pi is a likely outcome.
>Flipper one is a laptop/mobile phone class system
This isn't true it's more like a modern Rasbperry Pi 5 level system with half single core performance and relatively similar multicore.
The exciting thing about the system isn't the chip it's the connectivity, form factor and extra hardware around it. But let's not pretend it's comparable to the power of phones and laptops which are way ahead.
Although with inflation and supply chain issues I'd be shocked if this ships under $450, but if they pull it off I think you'll get your moneys worth compared to comparable Pi setup.
TechCrunch is reporting that they're still aiming for a ~$350 USD price point, but I cannot confirm this myself
https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/21/flipper-unveils-a-linux-po...
Not to mention you'd need REALLY large and durable pants/shorts pockets to fit a 27cm X 5cm X 20cm device that weights more than 1.5kg (yes, kilos!) compared to what the Flipper One will end up being.
We don't know the cost of the One yet. Besides, the GPD can also be used for playing AAA games, and the keyboard makes it far more useful as a general purpose PC.
my macbook can do that too, and is much faster!
It's clear you want something else, go buy that instead of shitting on other projects maybe?
A MacBook can't fit in a pant pocket though. The GPD can, well, at least in cargo pant pockets.
I dunno, I loved the form factor of Flipper Zero, with the addition of a PTT and a more rugged design, this is quite literally an instant buy for me. It has sufficient connectivity that it'd be trivial to bring your own keyboard, in whatever size you'd like, and I'm surely not alone in not wanting a static keyboard attached to the device as I'd never have any use for it, the Flipper (in my view) is a portable device you use for enumerating and executing, but everything else I do on my desktop transferring data to/from the Flipper.
I'm also not sure what I'd do with more than 8GB of RAM, I could literally run my entire OS + dekstop environment + the current applications I have open on my workstation desktop right now with that, and still have room to spare.
Here is an alternative that I think has real potential:
Nice but zero blobs/everything open? As that's the main interesting part here; full, no binary blobs, open docs/code ...
Today, I think so too, but I think they're onto something with the idea of a PTT-like local LLM interface. With 2-3 orders of magnitude more local inference power, I could really see this work out!
"Hey Flipper, log onto Wi-Fi SSID FooBarAir, pick the free "messaging only" plan, and set up an IP-over-WhatsApp proxy exposed over the second, encrypted SSID" :)
GPD already makes such things, as does ClockworkPi. The Flipper One is exciting in significant part because it offers a different, smaller form factor.
The thing has a 2 color display. 8gb is massively overkill. Theres not much you could do on this that would even need 2 gb.
The form factor is indeed strange. It reminds me of an N-Gage if they had a "rugged"/durable version that was made for construction sites.
I don’t think the Flipper market is trying to compete with devices like this.
If you're strictly taking about the Zero, I'd agree with you, but with the One they're entering a new market. I mean, kind of people who like to mess around with Linux and do hacker-y network-y things are also generally the kind of people who would prefer to use a keyboard, the kind who would love the extra hardware grunt to speed up tools like hashcat.
And of course, the One will be cheaper than a full-fledged x86 handheld, but if you're willing to spend a bit more, you can do so so much more - it becomes a more practical device.
What is the flipper market, anyway? I can only think of script-kiddies pwning neighbours wi-fi router and computer nerds buying it as a toy.
pwnagotchi makes a pretty bad-ass portable linux system that can be used for development when its not crunching wifi ..
I would REALLY like to see the Piratebox project added into this amazing all in one device.
This is like a combination of a Sony Walkman meets Rasberry PI meets the prepper in me. Perfect.
Wow. That really doesn’t know what it is.
Love the idea of a hackable ethernet tool though.
This was my first impression too, but it's actually quite simple: It's everything all at once.
It's an incredibly ambitious plan, but buy would I be in the market (unironically!) for an offline, LLM-powered, voice-controlled, satellite-connected, tactical pocket Linux set top box.
is iButton still a thing?
> So people end up running full desktop environments (KDE, GNOME, etc.) squeezed onto a tiny 7" touchscreen. It's miserable.
to add on to this: you can definitely make great UI's for small screens and unconventional controls -- Playdate [1] builds their UI around a physical crank on the device, and it feels fun to use it :)
The honesty here is refreshing. "We're genuinely terrified" is not something you typically hear from a hardware company, and it makes me more inclined to trust them, not less.
The ambitious goals list is interesting because it reads like someone who's been burned by the exact problems they're trying to solve. Mainline Linux kernel support means they've dealt with downstream kernel hell. Pushing vendors to open binary blobs means they've fought with NDA-encumbered firmware. Building a custom GUI framework means they've tried to use existing ones and hit walls.
The co-processor architecture (MCU + CPU) is the smartest design decision here. It means you get real-time I/O handling on the MCU side without the latency and determinism issues you'd hit trying to do the same on a Linux userspace process. It's how serious embedded systems work, and it's why Flipper Zero was able to do things that a Raspberry Pi running Kali couldn't.
The part that concerns me is scope. Mainline kernel + open firmware blobs + custom GUI framework + hardware expansion system + co-processor architecture... that's five hard problems, any one of which could sink a company. The ask for community help makes sense but community hardware projects have a rough track record on delivery timelines. I hope they can keep the scope tight enough to actually ship.
If I wanted all of that, at that size, I would just use a laptop with USB/PCIe/M.2 expansions. I don't really care about openness, I care about functionality (and not having to carry extra stuff around)
I want it but I do not need it.
I will buy one, use it once and then it will gather dust. Such is life
Same! I'd love to get one just in case but $200 for just in case is a lot.
I wish someone sent me one of theirs gathering dust for free, lol
I've said a bunch of times that I really really wish that Pebble had gotten a chance to finish the Pebble Core:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/getpebble/pebble-2-time...
This reminds me of that in a good way – a small Linux device that doesn't have to maintain a screen all the time (power) or focus on real-time but has physical buttons, connectivity, a microphone and a sealed case so it can be thrown in your pocket would be... an absolute dream.
Counter to some others here, I would buy this at whatever cost if it lived up to that intent!
maybe repebble will pick it up again, sometime :) but i guess they're focused on more watches and a ring right now.
Really worried about the pricing, will make or break.
Is a DDR trainer really that hard to write?
I imagine you dump all the config registers of a running system, and then adjust everything that looks like some timing or drive strength parameter upwards till it stops working properly, downwards till it stops working, and then choose a middle value.
Do that repeatedly for every parameter pre-boot, and then use that config. Perhaps redo that every few hours or when the temperature changes.
>Is a DDR trainer really that hard to write?
Since this is an unencrypted binary, I'm sure it won't be difficult to reverse engineer. And it will definitely be open source sooner or later. But first, we'll try to convince Rockchip to open source it. Especially since the RK3576 has other proprietary parts, such as OP-TEE and some registers. Also it has a Cortex M0 core, which is also not documented.
Do all closed blobs need to be open? Why pick RK3567 when RK3562 is already supported in Debian?
@zhovner, would you consider reverse engineering of the blobs as a temporary measure? in 2026 it's very doable and scales
We're currently negotiating with Rockchip and will first try to convince them to open source. This particular binary isn't a problem right now. I'm sure it will be open source sooner or later. All efforts are currently focused on hardware validation, and software is being developed only in areas where hardware verification is required.
Since this is a portable battery-powered device, rather than first pushing to open-source the DDR training blob, which is non-resident in memory after it's done it's job and a fairly small binary (less chance for hiding bugs), I'd say it's more important to get open-sourced the support in the BL31 Trusted Firmware for dynamic voltage and frequency scaling of DRAM, and support for maximum power savings in suspend mode.
Rockchip have not fully open-sourced the DRAM DVFS support in BL31, but it's key to achieving full run-time battery life on portable devices - see https://xnux.eu/log/083.html
And the system suspend implementation that Rockchip did open-source in upstream BL31 lacks some functionality compared to their binary BL31, mostly about powering off as many peripherals as possible to save power.
I'm not saying don't bother opening the DDR training, just that these two things are much more important for a portable battery-powered device.
No binary blobs. Not even cellular and wifi?
Our wifi chipset MT7921AUN has an open driver in the mainline. Of course wifi firmware is binary. But you can use the whole system without a wifi. Main idea is to make the platform open, so you don't need blobs to boot and use the system.
You’re right. That would be hard with some of the vendors.
Were blobs a big problem before?
i can understand blob for radios: by only using a signed blob you are restricting a malicious user from abusing the radio.
However, the problem with binary blobs is that they are binary blobs: no sources, can't make changes, can't adapt them to work on a new system, can't audit them. Free folks have always argued that a computer will never be free if there are binary blobs in there
(well: the last part is not really true, there is always a way to have a custom firmware, or make an audit, but the manufacturer will do that only for elite customers. Not for open source folks.)
“The two processors communicate over a set of interfaces we call the Interconnect: SPI carries the framebuffer to the MCU for display output”
Even with peripheral DMA this idea sounds terrifying.
It's a pretty normal thing to do for small LCD screens. Linux has had SPI framebuffer support via fbtft subsystem (in staging tree now, previously was out of tree) for well over a decade. It works quite well.
Curious about the design choice. Why not use the TI parts with integrated microcontrollers rather than two separate chips? Or even a FPGA with integrated ARM9 like the Zynq family?
This like the most ambitious yet realistic open hardware project ever. Props for opening this up to the community to assist.
looks amazing. i just hope it doesn't cost a fortune. the portable hdmi alone makes it worth it to me.
for reference, Flipper Zero was $199.
does anyone know how much they're thinking for Flipper One?
https://gizmodo.com/the-company-behind-the-flipper-zero-hack...
>> Flipper’s goal is to sell the device for around $350.
With that money going to Russia.
Just sayin'.
EDIT: The above is a perfectly factual statement about the Flipper. The downvotes are presumably coming from the pro-Russia bots and shills.
Flipper One founders live and operate from London, as is the company. Pavel Zhovner has (or had at least) Ukrainian citizenship.
Terrible to always see misinformation from people who don't even check basics.
The entirety of your comment has no basis in fact.
Speaking as someone who watched the first flipper prototypes being soldered by hand.
Before or after the AI collapse of 2026/27. I would say at least $499 without the addition of inflated memory pricing.
I have read the whole thing, and I'm not sure what you would build with it. Can anyone give me some examples? I'm genuinely curious.
Pretty much anything you could use Linux for, except high performance stuff since the ARM SoC they've chosen is somewhat limited.
I look at it as a platform for solutions to technical problems, where either or both the solution and the problem are temporary in some sense. You could plug it into an ethernet port and have it automatically sniff the network for a while, or be your television box in hotels, or a leaner companion to some Kraken style SDR device than a laptop, or whatever.
Once you have a purpose which is more permanent, then you'd probably switch it out for another device.
I see a lot of people are worrying about scope creep but I feel like we're missing the bigger picture here: this is cool as hell. Sometimes that's enough.
Protip: asks need to be simple. This is cool, but long: "congratulations, or sorry, but I'm not reading that".
If they had a "preorder" button at the top I would give them money and be done with it.
All I can say is take my money!
What is the best HW to do "penetration testing" of Bluetooth communication.
Not BLE, but Bluetooth. For BLE you can have nordic nRF chip.
I'm curious if someone experienced here have some recommendation.
Thank you.
> Build the most open and best-documented ARM computer in the world, with full mainline Linux kernel support.
Not even the Pi foundation could manage that. Why not go RISC-V if compatibility is the main goal? This thing does not need bleeding edge horsepower.
Here is a similar story of creating a smartphone that exclusively runs FLOSS on the main CPU and has WiFi and modem on M.2 cards: https://puri.sm/posts/breaking-ground/
>We want to train a specialized AI model that knows Flipper One's internals and applications inside out, so general-purpose models won't cut it. We invite the community to get involved.
I think a general purpose model would actually cut it pretty well if it has access to proper documentation and search. Since everything will be OSS, the model can have "full" introspection of the system.
Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48212046
This project looks similar to Librem 5 to me. The same goal of open drivers and minimal blobs everywhere.
i mean i trust the flipper guys more
Librem 5 already exists and is my daily driver phone though.
i mean yea but it is not ideal in a phone context. i do not think i would be able to use it knowing its limitation. hell, even my pixel 10 with GOS is making me miss a snapdragon
"It's not this, it's that"
Once you see this phrase, you know it's AI written.
