Just think of the possibilities—previously Muse invited someone to the user's house from Facebook Marketplace, but sadly the user wasn't home, and so got angry. But if you connect Muse to your Internet of Things—why, Muse could just unlock the door for your guest! You don't even need to be aware that they're coming. Surprise guests!
I know ESP32 is popular, but I wished WCH's CH58x got more attention. (Or WCH's chips in general. e.g. their CH32V006 seems really neat for its price).
> Gadgets you build with the Muse Gadget SDK need a token. Add it to your SDK configuration so your gadgets can pair with the Muse app.
> Each token can be used by a limited number of devices.
> The Muse Gadget SDK is intended for personal tinkering and is not a supported product or developer platform. The SDK can change, break, or stop functioning without warning.
The larping as a grassroots/open source product is really off-putting. The only reason anyone would use this is that its "free" and comes with preloaded prompts for non-technical people.
LARPing would imply pretending to do something, but not actually doing it. Here they appear to be actually doing it (open source product). Is there something Im missing?
You only addressed half of it. I'm with you that the code is open source, but it's an open source client for Meta's proprietary service. The one original piece of hardware on this "Open source hardware for your Muse" page, the Home Link, only works with an active subscription. And the "grassroots" part is clearly larpy: a "by hackers, for hackers" voice in a Meta incubator repo.
https://muse.ai/deviceterms
"If your Muse subscription terminates or expires, your Muse Device will cease to function as described in these Device Terms and the device documentation. The device's capabilities will be unavailable until an active subscription is restored."
The general theme of meta's approach across the board here is interesting - basically, they are trying to win in part by taking risks others aren't willing to. I can imagine they saw that all the success is coming so far when a someone is willing to cross a boundary that wasn't previously thought acceptable - from releasing ChatGPT in the first place, to things like OpenClaw.
So now they are actively distributing SDKs and to let people "hack" custom hardware integrations to their already risky AI agents unleashed on the general public. Giving agents abilty to control things in the physical world - what could possibly go wrong?
But here we are: so far the story is pretty much 100% "fortune favors the bold", and Meta is leaning into it.
Meta has never created anything successful since getting lucky with Facebook. Instagram and WhatsApp were acquisitions. Facebook Phone, the Libra shitcoin, and Metaverse VR were all flops. Jury's still out on the much-maligned "pervert glasses", but maybe those will sell.
Now they're trying a new thing. I don't know if it's so much "being bold" as flailing around for some new thing. They really desperately want to own a "platform" like Microsoft, Apple, or Google.
I don't totally disagree but I think you understate the level of competence needed to integrate and make successful the acquisitions. And they navigated the valley of death from desktop to mobile. And Threads is an interesting example everyone ignores that is 100% in-house and has actually established a strong user base. At very least, Meta has avoided the fate of so many others that came before - Yahoo, MySpace, etc and in part that is because Zuck made big bets at the right time that many people thought were insane (buying WhatsApp, Instagram etc).
> I don't totally disagree but I think you understate the level of competence needed to integrate and make successful the acquisitions.
Those take a huge level of competence and skill; I don't think the argument is "Meta can't do anything", but I also don't think it addresses "Meta can't invent anything new".
The glasses are great! Considering they have a light that shows when you're recording and it is NOT easy to disable, I definitely don't think they are 'pervert' glasses or spy glasses.
There are certain recordings where glasses make the perfect form factor.
It is weird, a year and a half ago I wrote a blog post (https://meanderingthoughts.hashnode.dev/lets-do-some-actual-...) basically describing a lot of what Muse does, except all hosted locally. I included a section about using hardware around the house to enhance AI agents.
When the initial Muse launch happened, my first reaction was "wow this sounds familiar."
Now the HW side of things is announced.
To be fair, this is all obvious stuff that should be done. The key is who can pull it off. It has been pointed out many types that technically Muse is nothing new, some combination of Gemini products can already do it. The counterpoint being that packaging and branding make a product.
I am kind of sad that desktop computer use ended up being the way to go instead of hooking into mobile phones. Mobile phones allow for a lot more potential integrations with day to day life, plenty of services now days are (sadly) only available through a mobile app.
> But here we are: so far the story is pretty much 100% "fortune favors the bold", and Meta is leaning into it.
Been thinking about this lately when I saw some mathematicians talking about more AI regulation after the millennial prize thing.
Move fast break things, fortune favors the bold, breaking rules doesn't matter if you win, etc silicon valley ideologies to me seem to be domination ideologies. Uber may toy with playing nice with taxi law until it's too annoying, then they shift to getting as many people as possible to have their commute, convenience, or livelihood to depend on it, then they can turn around to regulators with their finger on their chin and say "oopsies, I guess everyone needs us now, better consider that in your regulatory efforts!"
It's the brunch equivalent of changing the restaurant the night before to one you prefer by DMing everyone in the group chat with "we decided to change to antipodean because dave had a breakup with one of the waiters at french twist," and then when everyone arrives and Dave says "I've never dated a waiter in my life," you say "well we're all already here so..."
Anyway, it seems pointless to try to regulate this culture out of these kinds of companies or really this entire scene. Any law is now just an obstacle, and besides, various government actors seem to be angling for industry retirement positions, so passing useful regulation seems basically impossible.
Imo two can play at this game. When law fails to serve the interests of the people or is even weaponized by the interests of Capital against us, what's the point of it? I'm interested in things like LLM distillation and open weight models that take the winds of profit out of the sails of these "disruptors" to make their activities have no payoff. Wonder what other things we can do that would make someone ask "why would I send all my data to Facebook when I could instead just..." Pirating, free culture, leaks, hell outright theft, if we're going to disrupt things, why not DISRUPT things?
Even ignoring all the privacy issues Meta has (and they are many, and we shouldn't), Zuck is happy to do a rug-pull on his users whenever he feels like it.
"Facebook's main purpose isn't really to connect with friends any more."
If he wakes up tomorrow and decides everything should be different, and that ruins your plans, well tough beans for you. I wouldn't touch this with a ten-foot pole.
I'll go against the grain and say that I like this, I genuinely don't think this is anything but some internal team being excited about their product and giving you some firmware to connect stuff to their agents. Meta the trillion dollar company will not move at all from this.
why build here? why should we grow our gardens in this factory farm?
if this muse gadget seems so cool, why not make your own?
don’t outsource your curiosity to people like this, they do not care about you, your family, or your livelihood. they want to control you; this is their toy that they made for you to become fascinated by
First, the muse gadget is just an API and SDK. It’s a fun toy for silly projects.
The software world is spoiled in that making something new is just text in a file, we’ve proliferated open source freeware, and with AI we can readily clone entire products in a weekend.
Sometimes though, people like to use commercial products for various reasons (reliability, cost, network effect, etc). If you like to tinker, this seems like a neat way for some without yak shaving an AI assistant along the way. We don’t need to reinvent every wheel for everything.
I personally think “embodied” assistants are a really fun idea, and this is just an API and SDK to build on and it’s super accessible to basically everyone in the world. If you were inclined to use Muse already, why not tinker with this. I’m sure the hardware would be easy enough to point to an API running on your own server later if you wanted.
Meta should have called it Abuse Gadgets instead of Muse Gadgets.
After all, React is a Graphical Abuser Interface Toolkit, so it would be on brand.
The firmware is Apache 2.0, so yes, you can point it at your own server. But read the token terms before you plant anything: "not a supported product and not a developer platform... may change, stop working, or be withdrawn at any time, with or without notice," and you "may not enable functionality that Meta has disabled." Max 50 devices, none sold or advertised.
That's not a platform, it's a petting zoo with a revocable leash. You're not a hacker, you're a sharecropper. Meta's word for it is "gadgets." The honest word is "tenants."
If you'd finished reading the whole sentence you'd see it went on to say "...so it can reach compatible devices you already own, or anything you build with a local HTTP API."
It's not about using cloud AI. It's using wifi to enable the local AI to do more stuff.
And when my smart TV asked to be connected to the internet it too told me all the fun things I'd get out of it. Of course it didn't tell you about all the spying
Indeed and Ai keychain voice assistants can double as a home Ai smart speaker and also conversing with it via earbuds when out and about.
I was a bit shocked last week to see Zuckerberg announce the Muse Charm keychain as that's what I suggested and blogged about in August (submitted my blog post here then).
These are readily available. I visited a place once where they had one of these in every cubicle, and it was synced with whatever your current status on Lync (nowadays called MS Teams) was.
I'm just saying you could probably find one of those devices. It sounded great in theory, but actually doing it, well, it's just plain awkward to come to someone's cubicle and there's a yellow light. It's not red, but it's not green. What do you do next?
For extra fun times, the owner of the company tended to just ignore everyone else's red and yellow lights, and he kept working in an office with a door that he closed.
I really like this too, as a principle, but I know Meta enough to know that this is just PR to get more traction, and everything will be closed up instantly the moment they're satisfied with the market share Muse has, whatever it is. I don't even bother to see what they've released, these days.
The world is changing. Meta entered the enterprise market for the first time ever, and now this. I'd guess they're feeling pretty open minded about throwing any products out there and seeing what sticks.
I literally ordered an ESP32-C5 board yesterday to build a home network proxy for cloud agents (not limited to Muse). I guess this is confirmation I'm on the right track.
It's a matter of time until Alexa, Google Home, and Siri leverage their device ecosystems to pull users into their Muse/Instinct alternative (whatever we end up calling this market).
This looks like a really smart way for Meta to bootstrap a hardware ecosystem around Muse.
106 comments
[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 40.9 ms ] thread> Gadgets you build with the Muse Gadget SDK need a token. Add it to your SDK configuration so your gadgets can pair with the Muse app.
> Each token can be used by a limited number of devices.
> The Muse Gadget SDK is intended for personal tinkering and is not a supported product or developer platform. The SDK can change, break, or stop functioning without warning.
Doesn't really feel like it's my own.
No thanks.
https://gadgets.muse.ai/home-link "Muse Home Link itself only runs official firmware and can’t be reflashed"
So now they are actively distributing SDKs and to let people "hack" custom hardware integrations to their already risky AI agents unleashed on the general public. Giving agents abilty to control things in the physical world - what could possibly go wrong?
But here we are: so far the story is pretty much 100% "fortune favors the bold", and Meta is leaning into it.
Now they're trying a new thing. I don't know if it's so much "being bold" as flailing around for some new thing. They really desperately want to own a "platform" like Microsoft, Apple, or Google.
Those take a huge level of competence and skill; I don't think the argument is "Meta can't do anything", but I also don't think it addresses "Meta can't invent anything new".
There are certain recordings where glasses make the perfect form factor.
When the initial Muse launch happened, my first reaction was "wow this sounds familiar."
Now the HW side of things is announced.
To be fair, this is all obvious stuff that should be done. The key is who can pull it off. It has been pointed out many types that technically Muse is nothing new, some combination of Gemini products can already do it. The counterpoint being that packaging and branding make a product.
I am kind of sad that desktop computer use ended up being the way to go instead of hooking into mobile phones. Mobile phones allow for a lot more potential integrations with day to day life, plenty of services now days are (sadly) only available through a mobile app.
Modularity, connection, and true ownership.
I was shocked to see Zuckerberg announce the Muse Charm keychain last week.
Im betting a Coincedence.
Been thinking about this lately when I saw some mathematicians talking about more AI regulation after the millennial prize thing.
Move fast break things, fortune favors the bold, breaking rules doesn't matter if you win, etc silicon valley ideologies to me seem to be domination ideologies. Uber may toy with playing nice with taxi law until it's too annoying, then they shift to getting as many people as possible to have their commute, convenience, or livelihood to depend on it, then they can turn around to regulators with their finger on their chin and say "oopsies, I guess everyone needs us now, better consider that in your regulatory efforts!"
It's the brunch equivalent of changing the restaurant the night before to one you prefer by DMing everyone in the group chat with "we decided to change to antipodean because dave had a breakup with one of the waiters at french twist," and then when everyone arrives and Dave says "I've never dated a waiter in my life," you say "well we're all already here so..."
Anyway, it seems pointless to try to regulate this culture out of these kinds of companies or really this entire scene. Any law is now just an obstacle, and besides, various government actors seem to be angling for industry retirement positions, so passing useful regulation seems basically impossible.
Imo two can play at this game. When law fails to serve the interests of the people or is even weaponized by the interests of Capital against us, what's the point of it? I'm interested in things like LLM distillation and open weight models that take the winds of profit out of the sails of these "disruptors" to make their activities have no payoff. Wonder what other things we can do that would make someone ask "why would I send all my data to Facebook when I could instead just..." Pirating, free culture, leaks, hell outright theft, if we're going to disrupt things, why not DISRUPT things?
"Facebook's main purpose isn't really to connect with friends any more."
If he wakes up tomorrow and decides everything should be different, and that ruins your plans, well tough beans for you. I wouldn't touch this with a ten-foot pole.
why build here? why should we grow our gardens in this factory farm?
if this muse gadget seems so cool, why not make your own?
don’t outsource your curiosity to people like this, they do not care about you, your family, or your livelihood. they want to control you; this is their toy that they made for you to become fascinated by
The software world is spoiled in that making something new is just text in a file, we’ve proliferated open source freeware, and with AI we can readily clone entire products in a weekend.
Sometimes though, people like to use commercial products for various reasons (reliability, cost, network effect, etc). If you like to tinker, this seems like a neat way for some without yak shaving an AI assistant along the way. We don’t need to reinvent every wheel for everything.
I personally think “embodied” assistants are a really fun idea, and this is just an API and SDK to build on and it’s super accessible to basically everyone in the world. If you were inclined to use Muse already, why not tinker with this. I’m sure the hardware would be easy enough to point to an API running on your own server later if you wanted.
After all, React is a Graphical Abuser Interface Toolkit, so it would be on brand.
The firmware is Apache 2.0, so yes, you can point it at your own server. But read the token terms before you plant anything: "not a supported product and not a developer platform... may change, stop working, or be withdrawn at any time, with or without notice," and you "may not enable functionality that Meta has disabled." Max 50 devices, none sold or advertised.
That's not a platform, it's a petting zoo with a revocable leash. You're not a hacker, you're a sharecropper. Meta's word for it is "gadgets." The honest word is "tenants."
https://gadgets.muse.ai/sdk-terms
This seems unnecessarily primitive and hyperbolic. In what way is React like that, anyway?
I lost interest there. I'm only interested in off-line AI.
It's not about using cloud AI. It's using wifi to enable the local AI to do more stuff.
I could add that layer myself. When they provide the WiFi layer… yeah, I'm disinclined to trust them on that.
I was a bit shocked last week to see Zuckerberg announce the Muse Charm keychain as that's what I suggested and blogged about in August (submitted my blog post here then).
https://ryanspahn.substack.com/p/openais-rumored-speaker-bel...
Red meaning "I'm working on something important. Disturb only if emergency" Green being, "I'm scattershot, come hang"
This is the perfect platform for stuff like this.
Note that most of the staff absolutely hated it.
to be clear, I suggested this for me to help me.
For extra fun times, the owner of the company tended to just ignore everyone else's red and yellow lights, and he kept working in an office with a door that he closed.
What's perfect about this platform for it?
This looks like a really smart way for Meta to bootstrap a hardware ecosystem around Muse.