Everything Is BOM: Bill of Materials Encyclopedia

(bomwiki.com)

36 points | by sebg 2 hours ago

5 comments

  • nativeit 8 minutes ago
    Well that soured quickly. A wiki is only as good as the human experts who volunteer to contribute towards it. I’m not sure there are any in this one?
  • bobjordan 36 minutes ago
    This is cool! Shameless plug, I started bomquote.com 15+ years ago with the thesis "everything is a BOM". We provide design firms & hardware teams design-to-MFG services including line item quotes for their entire BOM. Hard to believe I haven't come across this site by now.
  • Crowberry 1 hour ago
    Really cool! I wonder what their data source is
    • alufers 50 minutes ago
      The few pages I've looked at seem to be mostly (if not completely) AI hallucinated, with semi relevant photos from WikiMedia linked. Despite the name there is no way to edit the articles or even log in.

      Also the "BOMs" are provided for such generic objects as "Excavator", which makes no sense. Different excavators will be made of different parts. If you want to get the general idea you can ask an LLM yourself instead of going to that website.

    • tantalor 1 hour ago
      It's a wiki
      • kbaker 1 hour ago
        Seems like a LOT of AI generation.

        I wonder where this wiki format would be useful vs asking an AI directly.

      • epgui 1 hour ago
        Presumably they should have said “sources” but that’s not a helpful answer
  • zetalyrae 50 minutes ago
    Seems kinda silly to name such a huge project after a meme that will be stale in a few years, but then, this was likely all generated by AI, so it doesn't matter.

    EDIT: Expanding on this a bit, because I want this comment to be more productive and less old-man-yells-at-cloud.

    When I saw the link I got curious. It reminds me of the old skdb[0] project and of Open Source Ecology[1]. The idea is cool: a DAG of civilization from David Gingery[2] basic tools to jet planes and turbofans and rocket engines! Imagine that!

    If it was real, it would be world-changing. The creator would be a personal hero of mine. But it's not real. It's a vague suggestion of the real thing.

    Who is the creator? No-one knows. These vibeslop websites never have an About page, or contact info. No-one is putting their reputation on the line, regarding the quality or accuracy of the content.

    [0]: https://diyhpl.us/skdb/

    [1]: https://www.opensourceecology.org/

    [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_J._Gingery

    • pimlottc 0 minutes ago
      What meme?
    • embedding-shape 27 minutes ago
      > never have an About page, or contact info. No-one is putting their reputation on the line, regarding the quality or accuracy of the content.

      It's a useful litmus test current to quickly evaluate new websites/services/projects, if there is no names/profiles attached to it that you can find some history about, it's well likely to be hastily put together with not much concern for quality. People who care about quality usually end up proud of the thing they make public.

      • zetalyrae 16 minutes ago
        Tangentially, this is why (despite being an extremist for privacy) I've somewhat soured on Internet anonymity. Very few people are using their anon status to further discourse, i.e. like Publius. Mostly it's just people who want to sever the reputational thread between their output and their person.

        I think it's fine to be pseudonymous, like Gwern, because while your government identity is protected, the pseudonym is a persistent store of reputation across time.

  • contingencies 54 minutes ago
    Missing entry for 'asml machine' :)

    Actually a lot of this is garbage AI hallucinated info, eg. https://bomwiki.com/item/drone-docking-station/ authoritatively combines USB devices with fanciful drone installations.

    • embedding-shape 24 minutes ago
      Similarly page for "Drum machine" says that "Sidechain compression" is a "Sequencing modes" on the drum machine, and is used (on the drum machine according to the text) to sidechain compress a bass line in a DAW, but the relationship would be the other way, not to mention it's not a "sequencing mode" at all.

      Seems bit rushed in the parts I already know, so guessing that applies to all of it. The idea is quite neat though, maybe makes more sense as a humanly edited and curated wiki instead of "automatic publish of 10K articles no one reviewed".