My system has a list mechanism as well. You can create a shopping list and add to it. Either scan barcode or AI Vision. You can add notes too, such as found at Target for $16.99 and Walmart for $19.99. If the items you add exist in the inventory, it will have the breadcrumb to the items and the quantity. If not, they're added as external.
You can also create a camping list, and add the things you need. When you pack and check things off, they are checked out from the system. When you're done, uncheck will check them back into the system.
Another use for list is for projects. You can have a list for your workshops and keep track what is being used and what need to be replenished.
One more feature I have that could be useful for your workshop is related items. For example, when you look up soldering iron, you'll also see related items such as solder, wick, flux. That way you don't forget.
This is a preview to show HN?
I made an app that help me keep track of my home inventory. I try to keep it as simple as possible so I can stick to the process. The app keeps track of containers and items. Just like a file system, containers are folders and items are files. Of course you can have containers within a container. For example, my house has a garage. In it I have a rack of 5 rows by 7 columns of 27 gallon bins (https://www.tameru.app/tote-rack-planner). One bin has my power tools such as drills, router, bits, etc.
To inventory a bin, I either scan the barcode of the item if it has one. Ninety nine percent of the time the result will fill in the title, description, and picture. If there's no barcode, then taking a picture and AI will give a pretty good title and description. There are other attributes you can have, but just a title and description from the scan is all that is needed.
Once the items are in the system, I can search with keywords based on the title, description, notes, etc. If the same items are spread across multiple locations, they will show up in the result. Selecting one will show me the breadcrumb to the location: Garage->Tote Rack->Row4Col2->Corded Drill.
I can select certain containers or items to share with different groups. My siblings can see my mitre saw, my friends can see my camping laterns. The app has a check out/check in mechanism. It keeps a historical track of who checked out, when, how many, and when they intend to return the items. Similarly, when checking in items, who, when, quantity, and condition returned.
The history report is similar to the dot system in the article. I can get a list of what I haven't used more than, say two years, and consider selling or donating. The side effect is now I know what I have so I'm less likely to buy duplicates.
There are many other features, but I'll have to wait for a show HN when my app is approved in the stores. I just want to share how I organize and declutter. Hopefully it resonates with others, like this dot system.
I think the author assumed things will be spread fairly across the board. I don't think wealth gain will be evenly distributed.
The other issue I have with the article is that the author assumed unlimited resource to build the robots. Resources will be limited.
Building those robots won't be a nice green field either. I think there will be a lot of dirty waste by products that will be a major health concern for the human.
This was how I started with my son, who was also 10.
Have him learned Scratch from MIT, learn how logic is constructed in a program
Then I got him a couple of Snap Circuit kit. I know you said no kit, but this is just to learn basic circuit and electricity flow.
Then we used a Raspberry Pi to learn Python.
Once he's comfortable with Python a bit, I set up an environment to program micro controller, specifically the ESP32. I flash Micro Python on there and we started to program some LED string lights. Then control motors with H-Bridges.
After that, it's onto robotics and anything we can get our hands on. I repurpose a baseball pitching machine to launch pickleball, with bluetooth connectivity to boot! All with an ESP 32, I can control the speed and rotation of the ball, which the original machine only had one speed and no rotation.
It took my son about 2 years to get from zero to building robots.
Good luck!
I'm in the same boat, except I recruited two people who are simi-techinical enough to at least know what are servers and services. I trust them with my computer and pw manager credentials. If anything happens to me, they will at least be able to provide credentials to any services, network, or devices I touched in the last 15 years.
I hope that will be enough, or at least ease the burden.
As the saying goes, the best time to start is 10 years ago. The second best time is? Now.
For me, starting a business is not a specific point in time. I constantly trying out different thing, asking for feedbacks. When I find a solution that solves the pain points for a lot of people, that's when it's time to start a business.
I try to repair as much as I can because I don't want stuff end up in the trash. If the parts are expensive, we need a way to source the parts from the non-fully functional units out there. From my experience, most people find the repair a daunting task and won't even think about it.
I think LangChain serves its purpose when you are new to AI and LLM and have to experiment a lot. That was my case. The landscape is changing so fast it is hard to keep up. With LangChain I was able to try different LLM and their features with minimal efforts. Granted, I haven't taken anything to production yet. But using LangChain to narrow down to the LLM you like, then you can use the LLM directly without going through LangChain.
Please don't get me wrong. You guys are doing great work. And I did notice the hard work you put into runes to make things better.
My point is that, it feels like I'm just trading one complexity for another. Like most people, I am constantly searching for ways to do my job better.
I've been trying Svelte for the last couple of months. At first the claim was that it's not complicated like React because there's a lot less concepts to learn. And it's just using basic Javascript and CSS so those skill sets are transferable to any other job. As I use it more and more, there's more and more special way of doing things I have to learn: store, reactive variable, $, $$, etc. I didn't mind, sure I'm in Svelte's world. But the number of libraries is limited and it really slowed me down tremendously. Now with runes, it's just more "magic" to learn. I think that's the last straw for me. I'm done with Svelte experiment. Back to React land.
Yes, I understand the content of the database is supposed to be on disk. But for the database to function and do its thing, it needs space in RAM. Like page swap and cache.
I wish the RAM could be a bit more, at least 1G or 2G, so I can have a database on there without having to ship my data to the cloud. Then the system can really run isolated as much as possible, for security and privacy.
It looks promising, but I think it's a one sided solution. I would like to see something like Malloy crossed with CubeJS. We need a consistent and flexible language like Malloy and the interface that CubeJS provides: REST, SQL, GraphQL.
The way I see it is business defines the processes. Those processes store and manipulate data in a storage. Business processes could change quickly so we need a way to quickly model and adapt to match. The analyst needs a way to slide and dice the data to optimize the business. The end user can get limited access to the data via an NLP interface, such as chatbot. Also, applications and RPA need to interface with the data as well.
To make semantic layers work, I think we need to think holistically, not just making it easy for a group of users. It has to be for analysts, developers, and applications/APIs.