9 ms·

Founders Resign at Mycroft.ai

111 points by rexreed 4y ago

totetsu 4y ago
What's HNsers expo yet experience using Mycroft? I tried to play with it on a rpi a few years ago. Got stuck blue being able to use a Bluetooth mic. I found the CMU Sphinx voice was good to just use on it's own.
- traverseda 4y ago
  It's... Fine. Very dependent on Google voice api's, no android client, and the programming API is not great. I'm not sure what niche I could use it for. As it is it's not quite a replacement for Google assistant. For custom stuff rhasspy does a better job... Give me the ability to store a bit of data accessable to app my nodes and an Android client and it becomes a lot more reasonable.
lovingCranberry 4y ago
"We're seeing higher than usual traffic, please try again shortly." Sigh, this seems to be a simple blog post. What are people doing to not even be able to deliver such a trivial thing?
- dodyg 4y ago
  The blog post is stored in a blockchain and has to go through 6 layers of micro-services.
  - blantonl 4y ago
    On mongodb! :/
    - aaaaaaaaaaab 4y ago
      Not sure which one is worse.
      - bee_rider 4y ago
        mongo db is webscale...
    - andreareina 4y ago
      To be fair, latency and throughput are not among its issues.
    - neuronic 4y ago
      As if MongoDB really was the issue here...
  - louissan 4y ago
- nicoburns 4y ago
  Usually running Wordpress
  - donohoe 4y ago
    A bit irrelevant, no. You can botch caching on any CMS these days :)
  - splatzone 4y ago
    I've served millions of visitors using WordPress without any issues - as long as you set up caching properly
    - baisq 4y ago
      The fact that you have to set up caching by hand, when the wordpress team knows how slow wordpress is, says a lot about them.
      - wzy 4y ago
        ...because getting caching right on a dynamic database-driven content management system is so easy.
      - tedivm 4y ago
        You're acting like setting it up by hand means you're diving into the code and doing it yourself. In truth it means just picking the caching extension that matches your needs the most, and if you don't know what that means picking the most popular one will be just fine. Personally I like this. It means that I was able to pick a caching engine that integrates directly into nginx, so that when I write a new post or edit an existing one the extension invalidates it directly in nginx. This means for the vast majority of my site the content is being served directly from nginx's memory cache. My performance is awesome. If they didn't go with an extension approach that would not have been nearly as easy to accomplish.
    - capableweb 4y ago
      That caching is needed just means WordPress itself can't handle it. With caching you could serve a blog for millions of hits per day from a potato.
- lelandfe 4y ago
  It's WordPress too, so typically a deeply misconfigured cache... WordPress can be fairly durable if set up correctly.
- hericium 4y ago
  > What are people doing to not even be able to deliver such a trivial thing? It's usually what they're not doing: caching.
  - noufalibrahim 4y ago
    Obligatory XKCD. https://xkcd.com/908/ https://xkcd.com/908/
_han 4y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20220523113959/https://mycroft.ai/blog/founders-resignation/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220523113959/https://mycroft.a...
- bee_rider 4y ago
  Ah, thanks, the site has been... hackernews'd? Also, because the site is overloaded, the non-archive link opened up with the browser tab title "We've had some trouble," which puts a different spin on the whole thing.
  - Jaruzel 4y ago
    > Ah, thanks, the site has been... hackernews'd? It's called the HN 'Hug of Death' :)
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - javajosh 4y ago
      >It's called the HN 'Hug of Death' AKA just "hugged".
- ignoramous 4y ago
  https://archive.is/Mi1nz https://archive.is/Mi1nz
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
streetcat1 4y ago
If I recall, the company was attacked by patent trolls, and tried to fight them. Not sure if this is related.
- __d 4y ago
  Mycroft recently claimed to have won that case, with the USPTO invalidating all claims that had been asserted against them.
  - sonicggg 4y ago
    That does not matter though. As long as US avoids to adopt the English rule for attorney's fees, everyone will lose to patent trolls.
Dave3of5 4y ago
Total out of the loop on this one...
- synesthesiam 4y ago
  Joshua Montgomery founded Mycroft AI, but Michael Lewis has been running the company for 2 years as CEO. Joshua recently "resigned", though his day to day involvement has been minimal.
blitzar 4y ago
An accomplished serial entrepreneur What do these things even mean anymore?
- saimiam 4y ago
  “Serial entrepreneurship” was accomplished. It’s like an achievement level in gaming. Happens when one launches more than one venture one after another. Longevity of venture is not typically a concern to unlock this moniker.
  - jjoonathan 4y ago
    Risks include getting mauled by a bear market.
  - hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
    Well, I read "accomplished" here in a different way: he didn't just create a few startups, but they were successful.
    - saimiam 4y ago
      My comment was tongue in cheek. Your interpretation is likely the intended one.
- IceWreck 4y ago
  > What do these things even mean anymore? Dude makes a startup, gets some VC money, gets paid and leaves in a couple of years when their contract is up. Repeat.
  - blitzar 4y ago
    You son of a b, I'm in.
    - bartchamdo 4y ago
synesthesiam 4y ago
The "new" CEO (Michael Lewis) has been there for a few years now, so this doesn't really affect Mycroft going forward. Source: I work for Mycroft AI.
- Jensson 4y ago
  > so this doesn't really affect Mycroft going forward People tend to say this when the founders leave but things almost always changes anyway.
  - synesthesiam 4y ago
    I'd normally agree, but Joshua (the founder) has been minimally involved for years outside of the patent lawsuits. With that mostly resolved (in Mycroft's favor), he's moving on to the next thing.
  - mrits 4y ago
    If you want to replace a founder sometimes we just push them aside to make the focus on a new qualified CEO to take the company to the next level. After awhile people get used to the founders not being highly involved and their departure becomes less of a shock.
- grammers 4y ago
  Could you share details as to the why?
  - synesthesiam 4y ago
    Sure. I joined the company last year, and Joshua has mainly been busy appearing in court to fight the patent troll. With that fight effectively over, Joshua and Kris are focusing on something new (not sure what specifically). Michael Lewis has been running the company for two years, so this resignation is more symbolic than anything.
tediousdemise 4y ago
Mycroft? Sounds like they were trying to make their company name sound/look extremely close to Microsoft...
- louissan 4y ago
  or Sherlock's brother?
- DFHippie 4y ago
  I think it's an allusion to Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock Holmes's smarter brother.
- synesthesiam 4y ago
  It's a reference to the sentient computer from: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Is_a_Harsh_Mistress https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Is_a_Harsh_Mistress
  - dsr_ 4y ago
    which is itself a reference to Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock's brother.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
mario_kart_snes 4y ago
What does this company do?
- traverseda 4y ago
  Open source voice assistant, not unlike google home or amazon alexa. The voice assistant itself works pretty alright but currently relies on google's speech-to-text to get good results. The technical infrastructure is a bit baroque and it's missing things you'd probably consider to be pretty essential, like an android app. Their goal is to become the platform for embedding voice assistants in things like cars.
  - Semaphor 4y ago
    They recently hired the RhassPy (self hosted OSS voice assistant) dev who started working on satellites and fully local as feature
encryptluks2 4y ago
Did they pull an Elon?
llamataboot 4y ago
I've been a supporter of mycroft since the early days, even did some early work on integrations, but like most hardware kickstarters they ran into /a lot/ of delays (I think it was 2 years post projected date that I actually got my dev kit - but they did come through) and since then progress has been s l o w and it seems they've lost some of the value of an excited community. I'd still love for an open source voice assistant to exist - especially since Sonos bought Snips a few years ago and doesn't seem to have done much with it, but not as excited about this project I was a few years ago
user3939382 4y ago
Nominally related: shout out to the awesome Mycroft search engine plugin project. I wish it got more attention. I never understood why Mozilla built this half-assed search plugin feature on the addons site instead of integrating with Mycroft when it had already existed for years.
tomatowurst 4y ago
GekkePrutser 4y ago
Does Mycroft still actually do something? So many years later it's still beta quality. And a dependency on Google is a total non-runner for me in terms of privacy. I remember with the Mark II Kickstarter in 2017 they were kind of the Messiah of privacy-conscious voice control. I really wanted to back them but I didn't have the cash at time. Though that turned out to be great luck. Because then they screwed that up and nothing happened for years. Now they continue but the project is more like a smart screen than a smart speaker now. And all this time it's still not possible to run the core locally for true privacy. As it is it's just the same as Google, Amazon and Apple just with better promises on privacy. Maybe I'm overlooking something because they have long fallen off my radar. But I'm still disappointed about the Kickstarter fail. They have a lot of trust to rebuild, at least with me.
- johnebgd 4y ago
  At this point kickstarter campaigns should be considered donations with a low value and low probability of winning lottery ticket included with each donation. The expectation that you get anything in return from backing a kickstarter needs to be reset.
  - teawrecks 4y ago
    It's just Sturgeon's law/the Pareto Principle. There are good crowdfunded products that succeed, don't focus on the 90% that are crap. > The expectation that you get anything in return from backing a kickstarter needs to be reset. This is why Kickstarter repeats time and time again that it's not a marketplace. If you go into it thinking you're buying a product, you're gonna have a bad time. That's not at all what it is.
- infamia 4y ago
  Mycroft's new Mimic 3 TTS engine can run locally on a Raspberry Pi and sounds surprisingly good. https://mycroftai.github.io/mimic3-voices/ https://mycroftai.github.io/mimic3-voices/
malermeister 4y ago
If you want an actually offline, working, Open Source voice assistant, I'd recommend https://rhasspy.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ https://rhasspy.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ I'm using it at home and it's working pretty well, I've written a few python extensions to cover all my use cases. Lmk if you have questions!

111 points by rexreed 4y ago

What's HNsers expo yet experience using Mycroft? I tried to play with it on a rpi a few years ago. Got stuck blue being able to use a Bluetooth mic. I found the CMU Sphinx voice was good to just use on it's own.

traverseda 4y ago
It's... Fine. Very dependent on Google voice api's, no android client, and the programming API is not great. I'm not sure what niche I could use it for. As it is it's not quite a replacement for Google assistant. For custom stuff rhasspy does a better job... Give me the ability to store a bit of data accessable to app my nodes and an Android client and it becomes a lot more reasonable.

lovingCranberry 4y ago

"We're seeing higher than usual traffic, please try again shortly." Sigh, this seems to be a simple blog post. What are people doing to not even be able to deliver such a trivial thing?

dodyg 4y ago
The blog post is stored in a blockchain and has to go through 6 layers of micro-services.
- blantonl 4y ago
  On mongodb! :/
  - aaaaaaaaaaab 4y ago
    Not sure which one is worse.
    - bee_rider 4y ago
      mongo db is webscale...
  - andreareina 4y ago
    To be fair, latency and throughput are not among its issues.
  - neuronic 4y ago
    As if MongoDB really was the issue here...
- louissan 4y ago
nicoburns 4y ago
Usually running Wordpress
- donohoe 4y ago
  A bit irrelevant, no. You can botch caching on any CMS these days :)
- splatzone 4y ago
  I've served millions of visitors using WordPress without any issues - as long as you set up caching properly
  - baisq 4y ago
    The fact that you have to set up caching by hand, when the wordpress team knows how slow wordpress is, says a lot about them.
    - wzy 4y ago
      ...because getting caching right on a dynamic database-driven content management system is so easy.
    - tedivm 4y ago
      You're acting like setting it up by hand means you're diving into the code and doing it yourself. In truth it means just picking the caching extension that matches your needs the most, and if you don't know what that means picking the most popular one will be just fine. Personally I like this. It means that I was able to pick a caching engine that integrates directly into nginx, so that when I write a new post or edit an existing one the extension invalidates it directly in nginx. This means for the vast majority of my site the content is being served directly from nginx's memory cache. My performance is awesome. If they didn't go with an extension approach that would not have been nearly as easy to accomplish.
  - capableweb 4y ago
    That caching is needed just means WordPress itself can't handle it. With caching you could serve a blog for millions of hits per day from a potato.
lelandfe 4y ago
It's WordPress too, so typically a deeply misconfigured cache... WordPress can be fairly durable if set up correctly.
hericium 4y ago
> What are people doing to not even be able to deliver such a trivial thing? It's usually what they're not doing: caching.
- noufalibrahim 4y ago
  Obligatory XKCD. https://xkcd.com/908/ https://xkcd.com/908/

_han 4y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20220523113959/https://mycroft.ai/blog/founders-resignation/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220523113959/https://mycroft.a...

bee_rider 4y ago
Ah, thanks, the site has been... hackernews'd? Also, because the site is overloaded, the non-archive link opened up with the browser tab title "We've had some trouble," which puts a different spin on the whole thing.
- Jaruzel 4y ago
  > Ah, thanks, the site has been... hackernews'd? It's called the HN 'Hug of Death' :)
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - javajosh 4y ago
    >It's called the HN 'Hug of Death' AKA just "hugged".
ignoramous 4y ago
https://archive.is/Mi1nz https://archive.is/Mi1nz

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

streetcat1 4y ago

If I recall, the company was attacked by patent trolls, and tried to fight them. Not sure if this is related.

__d 4y ago
Mycroft recently claimed to have won that case, with the USPTO invalidating all claims that had been asserted against them.
- sonicggg 4y ago
  That does not matter though. As long as US avoids to adopt the English rule for attorney's fees, everyone will lose to patent trolls.

Dave3of5 4y ago

Total out of the loop on this one...

synesthesiam 4y ago
Joshua Montgomery founded Mycroft AI, but Michael Lewis has been running the company for 2 years as CEO. Joshua recently "resigned", though his day to day involvement has been minimal.

blitzar 4y ago

An accomplished serial entrepreneur What do these things even mean anymore?

saimiam 4y ago
“Serial entrepreneurship” was accomplished. It’s like an achievement level in gaming. Happens when one launches more than one venture one after another. Longevity of venture is not typically a concern to unlock this moniker.
- jjoonathan 4y ago
  Risks include getting mauled by a bear market.
- hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
  Well, I read "accomplished" here in a different way: he didn't just create a few startups, but they were successful.
  - saimiam 4y ago
    My comment was tongue in cheek. Your interpretation is likely the intended one.
IceWreck 4y ago
> What do these things even mean anymore? Dude makes a startup, gets some VC money, gets paid and leaves in a couple of years when their contract is up. Repeat.
- blitzar 4y ago
  You son of a b, I'm in.
  - bartchamdo 4y ago

synesthesiam 4y ago

The "new" CEO (Michael Lewis) has been there for a few years now, so this doesn't really affect Mycroft going forward. Source: I work for Mycroft AI.

Jensson 4y ago
> so this doesn't really affect Mycroft going forward People tend to say this when the founders leave but things almost always changes anyway.
- synesthesiam 4y ago
  I'd normally agree, but Joshua (the founder) has been minimally involved for years outside of the patent lawsuits. With that mostly resolved (in Mycroft's favor), he's moving on to the next thing.
- mrits 4y ago
  If you want to replace a founder sometimes we just push them aside to make the focus on a new qualified CEO to take the company to the next level. After awhile people get used to the founders not being highly involved and their departure becomes less of a shock.
grammers 4y ago
Could you share details as to the why?
- synesthesiam 4y ago
  Sure. I joined the company last year, and Joshua has mainly been busy appearing in court to fight the patent troll. With that fight effectively over, Joshua and Kris are focusing on something new (not sure what specifically). Michael Lewis has been running the company for two years, so this resignation is more symbolic than anything.

tediousdemise 4y ago

Mycroft? Sounds like they were trying to make their company name sound/look extremely close to Microsoft...

louissan 4y ago
or Sherlock's brother?
DFHippie 4y ago
I think it's an allusion to Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock Holmes's smarter brother.
synesthesiam 4y ago
It's a reference to the sentient computer from: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Is_a_Harsh_Mistress https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Is_a_Harsh_Mistress
- dsr_ 4y ago
  which is itself a reference to Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock's brother.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

mario_kart_snes 4y ago

What does this company do?

traverseda 4y ago
Open source voice assistant, not unlike google home or amazon alexa. The voice assistant itself works pretty alright but currently relies on google's speech-to-text to get good results. The technical infrastructure is a bit baroque and it's missing things you'd probably consider to be pretty essential, like an android app. Their goal is to become the platform for embedding voice assistants in things like cars.
- Semaphor 4y ago
  They recently hired the RhassPy (self hosted OSS voice assistant) dev who started working on satellites and fully local as feature

encryptluks2 4y ago

Did they pull an Elon?

llamataboot 4y ago

I've been a supporter of mycroft since the early days, even did some early work on integrations, but like most hardware kickstarters they ran into /a lot/ of delays (I think it was 2 years post projected date that I actually got my dev kit - but they did come through) and since then progress has been s l o w and it seems they've lost some of the value of an excited community. I'd still love for an open source voice assistant to exist - especially since Sonos bought Snips a few years ago and doesn't seem to have done much with it, but not as excited about this project I was a few years ago

user3939382 4y ago

Nominally related: shout out to the awesome Mycroft search engine plugin project. I wish it got more attention. I never understood why Mozilla built this half-assed search plugin feature on the addons site instead of integrating with Mycroft when it had already existed for years.

tomatowurst 4y ago

GekkePrutser 4y ago

Does Mycroft still actually do something? So many years later it's still beta quality. And a dependency on Google is a total non-runner for me in terms of privacy. I remember with the Mark II Kickstarter in 2017 they were kind of the Messiah of privacy-conscious voice control. I really wanted to back them but I didn't have the cash at time. Though that turned out to be great luck. Because then they screwed that up and nothing happened for years. Now they continue but the project is more like a smart screen than a smart speaker now. And all this time it's still not possible to run the core locally for true privacy. As it is it's just the same as Google, Amazon and Apple just with better promises on privacy. Maybe I'm overlooking something because they have long fallen off my radar. But I'm still disappointed about the Kickstarter fail. They have a lot of trust to rebuild, at least with me.

johnebgd 4y ago
At this point kickstarter campaigns should be considered donations with a low value and low probability of winning lottery ticket included with each donation. The expectation that you get anything in return from backing a kickstarter needs to be reset.
- teawrecks 4y ago
  It's just Sturgeon's law/the Pareto Principle. There are good crowdfunded products that succeed, don't focus on the 90% that are crap. > The expectation that you get anything in return from backing a kickstarter needs to be reset. This is why Kickstarter repeats time and time again that it's not a marketplace. If you go into it thinking you're buying a product, you're gonna have a bad time. That's not at all what it is.
infamia 4y ago
Mycroft's new Mimic 3 TTS engine can run locally on a Raspberry Pi and sounds surprisingly good. https://mycroftai.github.io/mimic3-voices/ https://mycroftai.github.io/mimic3-voices/

malermeister 4y ago

If you want an actually offline, working, Open Source voice assistant, I'd recommend https://rhasspy.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ https://rhasspy.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ I'm using it at home and it's working pretty well, I've written a few python extensions to cover all my use cases. Lmk if you have questions!