[HN Gopher] The coolest robot I've ever built [video]
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The coolest robot I've ever built [video]
Author : superasn
Score : 343 points
Date : 2023-11-06 14:18 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| superasn wrote:
| The title is verbatim.
|
| I have nothing to do with this channel, but the final product is
| really cool.
| bambax wrote:
| This is a cool project but I strongly disagree with its premise
| that we would need machines with "more personality".
|
| I don't want that.
|
| I want machines that are predictable; not "intelligent" ones that
| may do one thing one time and another thing another time, for no
| discernible reason. I expect machines to be deterministic.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| Why not both? Someone might want to talk to a hologram of their
| celebrity crush in a skimpy outfit that always talks in a
| submissive way and sultry voice, while someone else might want
| a disembodied voice without discernible sex.
| Sander_Marechal wrote:
| I just want Majel Barrett's disembodied voice echoing through
| my room :-)
| dotancohen wrote:
| Bonus points for asking for information in a flat
| unemotional Brent Spiner voice.
| stevekemp wrote:
| If you mention "personality", in the context of robots, the
| first thing that comes to mind is Marvin the paranoid Android,
| from Douglas Adams. He famously built Marvin with 'Genuine
| People Personality', though it seems to do little good for him,
| or those around him for that matter.
| crystaln wrote:
| What if the machine is a comedian?
| no_time wrote:
| There is clearly a demand for personality too.
|
| I was reading some chatGPT programming workflow Twitter thread
| the other day and the guy was unusually polite with the thing.
| Like, does saying "please" or "thank you" actually improve its
| performance or is it just tech roleplay?
| dotancohen wrote:
| Yes, in the early days of ChatGPT I had noticed that polite
| conversation leads to less adversarial responses. In
| retrospect it does seem logical that a language model would
| choose more amenable responses and be more willing to help
| when spoken nicely to. I do not know if that behavior has
| been programmed out of it by now, I simply talk nicely to it
| with please and thank you out of habit at this point.
| tgv wrote:
| > There is clearly a demand for personality too.
|
| Offer people sugar, and they get obese. Demand doesn't
| justify anything.
| krisoft wrote:
| The person who started the thread said "I don't want that."
| Explaining that other people do want that is a perfectly
| valid response. If you would like to further elaborate on
| why you think sugar is the right analogy here that would be
| very welcome too of course.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Saying "please" and "thank you" is hardly dealing with a
| personality. It's civilized behavior 101, and arguably _not_
| doing it is what takes effort.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| what about machines for entertainment?
| alpaca128 wrote:
| I generally agree but part of the purpose of machines like AI
| is unpredictability. For example that AI girlfriend trend
| started exactly because LLMs can now produce more varied output
| than a Skyrim NPC* while making more sense than a random word
| generator.
|
| *Of course not including the new LLM-based Skyrim NPC mods
| flir wrote:
| I bet you lose out in the marketplace. The same selection
| pressure that drives neoteny will drive the evolution of
| hardware-with-a-personality. Compare Bratz dolls with Barbie
| dolls. Or even a 1960s Barbie with a 2020s Barbie, to a degree.
| demondemidi wrote:
| Yes yes, the market rules all and is always correct,
| amiright? Some of us don't want the world ruled by the
| biggest company that won the game of capitalism.
| flir wrote:
| Even if every robot was artisanally hand-made by
| Sandbenders in deepest Oregon, I predict the cute robots
| would still be more popular. It's not capitalism that's
| providing the selection pressure, it's our own evolution.
|
| Given time, we'll find out. Maybe I'm completely wrong.
| bambax wrote:
| You're partly right. The demand for "smart" machines, for
| some reason, indeed seems larger.
|
| But there should be room for both.
| zoeysmithe wrote:
| This is the classic HAL vs the Star Trek "computer" question.
|
| I think initially things like Alexa, Siri and Google Home were
| so much verbose and personality based and now just barely speak
| and don't do any fun personality stuff, outside of kid-centric
| features like "guess the animal game", bedtime stories, etc. I
| think people are just too busy or in a hurry to deal with
| personality from technology. In fact, Cortana has entirely been
| cancelled and replaced with a faceless and nameless Bing
| Enterprise Chat.
|
| Another case is how stoic and boring and lifeless ChatGPT is
| compared to some of these more personality based AIs out there.
| People just want the facts and not to be bothered. They
| actually don't want a virtual friend. Things like MS Bob,
| Cortana, and various avatars and personality-based agents keep
| failing compared to simple and fast interfaces. I think that'll
| probably stick with robotics too. I think the Star Trek
| "computer" will win out every time. People just want to feel
| empowered and have a minimal of their time and effort spent.
| og_kalu wrote:
| Siri, Alexa and Cortana all sucked. They simply weren't smart
| or robust enough for the whole personality thing to work.
| This has clearly changed. LLMs will literally perform better
| with emotionally fused text. https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.11760
|
| Bing may be faceless and nameless but i assure you, it's
| definitely not personality-less.
|
| Character ai is very popular and is based on personality
| infused LLM instances. There is clearly a big market here.
| That Open ai try their best to train the personality out of
| their LLMs by default is not indication there isn't.
|
| https://beta.character.ai/ https://play.google.com/store/apps
| /details?id=ai.character.a...
|
| Then you have Disney working on things like this.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cfIm06tcfA
|
| If you don't think this is potentially a billion dollar
| market then i don't know what to say. It absolutely is.
| btbuildem wrote:
| What about the "marines" robots in Interstellar?
| lucubratory wrote:
| This is a really cool little project!
|
| I think projects like this, as well as Disney's recent incredible
| robots (e.g. https://youtu.be/-cfIm06tcfA?si=D3SKsNekOaDQFeVU)
| mean it's just a matter of time until we have pretty real,
| embodied robots in people's homes. There will probably be some
| viral videos about that, and I imagine some company that can sell
| at an attractive price is going to make a lot of money one day.
| 3abiton wrote:
| There was also the meme robot some years ago that would reply
| by gifs. I have no idea what happened to it.
| blackoil wrote:
| Haven't seen the meme robot, but Flubber movie had a robot
| which used old movie clips to convey emotion.
| amelius wrote:
| Is this safe? How many kV is on the CRT?
| lopis wrote:
| I was thinking the same. CRTs pull a lot of power, and
| everything is just exposed and crammed together. I'm sacred.
| jeffhuys wrote:
| Every human is sacred.
| sgt wrote:
| Every sperm is sacred.
| LeonM wrote:
| > How many kV is on the CRT?
|
| For a monochrome display of that size, probably around 20kV
|
| > Is this safe?
|
| Just don't stick your fingers in there while it's on.
|
| Given that this guy built the entire thing, he clearly has
| enough knowledge on electronics to understand the dangers of
| the flyback transformer.
| amelius wrote:
| I was thinking of children that might like to play with it.
|
| Isn't there a design principle that says that if you make
| something look cute, it should also be safe to touch?
| martin_a wrote:
| > if you make something look cute, it should also be safe
| to touch
|
| I think this does not work. My one cat looks very cute but
| is not really safe to touch.
| master-lincoln wrote:
| So either your cat wasn't designed or it was designed,
| but the principle doesn't hold.
| martin_a wrote:
| Hm! I will talk to her about that. Also, I can touch her
| (most of the time), only other people can't. So she's
| just out of spec "sometimes".
| contingencies wrote:
| Cats and compliance ... like herding cats ...
| dtgriscom wrote:
| No UL or CE marking for Pussy. Use at your own risk.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| These tesla coils are just adorable!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7oD9j814nQ
| danbruc wrote:
| Not sure if this is accurate, but I was once told that the
| voltage itself is not too bad, it hurts but will not kill you
| as the currents are too low. But your reaction to the shock has
| the potential to injure you, cut your hand at sharp edges or
| make you touch something else with dangerous voltages and
| currents.
| Jolter wrote:
| This is true. The CRT itself holds a small charge but at a
| huge voltage. So the current through you would be quite high
| but extremely short, and will not have time to do much
| damage.
|
| Now, if you open up an old TV, what you REALLY need to watch
| out for are the big capacitors in the power supply. Those may
| be only the voltage of your power grid, but hold enough
| charge to power the whole TV for several milliseconds. On a
| 28", that's enough to kill you dead. Luckily the leads on
| those caps are not exposed unless you disassemble the TV
| (removing the PSU PCB).
| amelius wrote:
| > Luckily the leads on those caps are not exposed unless
| you disassemble the TV
|
| The leads might be connected to other parts of a PCB which
| may be exposed.
| dools wrote:
| Sorry for the tangent dang but since this video mentions Alexa I
| gotta say that as an Australian I find the ubuiquity of Amazon in
| the US perplexing.
|
| To me, Amazon is a total mess. The account management is
| terrible. It has all these crazy region restrictions when you try
| to buy books, and I just assume that whenever I buy something
| from the store I'm getting scammed. Everything on Amazon looks
| like a scam.
|
| Then I hear people in the US buy their groceries on Amazon and
| use Alexa. It's crazy, what am I missing? The entire company
| seems like it's strung together with duct tape. I have zero trust
| in Amazon as a brand to do anything right.
| liamwire wrote:
| It's hard to overstate the scale of their offerings and
| ubiquity in consumer mindshare in the states. Comparatively,
| we've had Amazon in Australia for what, seven years at this
| point?
| trabant00 wrote:
| I'm in Europe and I only buy stuff that is sold by or delivered
| by Amazon. Never had a problem with any scam in years and
| hundreds of products. The prices are good. Delivery to pickup
| locations is very convenient. 30 day return policy for any
| reason and it's very easy and free to actually send it back.
|
| I see a lot of hate for Amazon on HN, maybe it depends on the
| location. I never had a problem with them and neither did any
| of my friends.
| mft_ wrote:
| Same here - my experience is that Amazon works very well in
| Europe. We picked up the Amazon habit when we moved house
| during the pandemic, and must have bought hundreds of times
| since.
| RugnirViking wrote:
| for what its worth im also in europe and amazon isnt even in
| my country, if I want it I have to buy from neighboring
| country and it takes many weeks to months to arrive. Seeing
| as the interface and product selection seems tailored to
| getting you to buy the most flimsy knockoff imaginable for
| every product there is no reason to buy from them
| 3D30497420 wrote:
| Second this. I'm putting together a new computer and have
| bought some parts from Amazon and some components from other
| sellers. The Amazon purchases have been easy (not perfect of
| course), while the other purchases have been annoying or
| confusing (cancelled orders, unclear stock availability,
| confusing tracking, etc.).
|
| Amazon is just so much more reliable than other retailers. Is
| it perfect? Of course not, but it is much less of a hassle
| than most others.
| dspillett wrote:
| It is rare, but some fake products due get through even if
| you always get things fulfilled by Amazon. I've never had the
| problem myself in years of buying things including PC parts
| via Amazon, though a friend has. (we are both in the UK)
|
| Due to the way things are co-mingled in the warehouses there
| isn't really much distinction between "sold by Amazon" and
| "fulfilled by Amazon": if something has the same product code
| the system assumes it is the same thing, so the picker is
| sent to the closest one on the assumption that they are the
| same thing. In my friends case this resulted in him getting a
| counterfeit SD card. He noticed oddities on the packaging
| before actually opening it, so we don't know how far it was
| from spec. The return process was smooth and the right
| product was received the next day, but it was a faf he could
| have done without and if he'd not noticed he might have had a
| shock later if the card corrupted itself after writing a
| small amount (many fake storage devices pretend to be far
| larger than they are and stop writing (or worse: data is
| silently corrupted) once you approach their real size).
| Luckily it wasn't needed urgently, so the extra day wasn't a
| massive inconvenience.
| ACow_Adonis wrote:
| Possible tangent enabler, but as an Australian i've felt the
| same + have the same perplexion.
|
| I've bought I think three things from amazon just to try it
| out. My lesson is that the entire site has a toxic interface
| and my credit card got falsely charged sometime afterward,
| which I cannot prove but I'm pretty sure was related to my use
| on their site. It looks like a cheap scam bazaar.
|
| I don't understand its apparent US ubiquity...but then I don't
| understand the desire for something like Alexa either.
| phrotoma wrote:
| Canadian here who lived in the US for a few years. One thing
| I discovered while living stateside is that there are a lot
| of features in the big tech companies services which only
| exist for American users. When I put a US SIM card into my
| google pixel and got a US number, a bunch of stuff I had
| never seen before started appearing. Similarly the number of
| products available to me on Amazon grew by what felt like at
| least an order of magnitude, and I could have nearly all of
| them on my doorstep in days, sometimes on the same day I
| ordered them. And that was in a small city in a flyover
| state.
|
| Agreed, the ubiquity of this stuff is hard to understand from
| the outside but for me it was extremely clear from within.
| dspillett wrote:
| _> I don 't understand the desire for something like Alexa
| either_
|
| What people value them for varies. I had smart bulbs anyway
| (so I can vary between soft low light for watching TV and
| bright white for crafting, etc) and a compatible remotely
| control able heating control, I wanted to be even lazier than
| needing to pick up my phone to change things, and a pair of
| them were dirt cheap in an offer. Setting of timing reminders
| in the kitchen is pretty handy too. I don't use them for much
| else them that though. Occasionally I'll have an audiobook
| play that way via Audible, but the speaker isn't great for
| music.
|
| I looked into open source variants for simple home automation
| like this. I look back every now and then and, while things
| are improving at a pace, it still seems like a chore to setup
| and potentially flaky (not that Amazon devices don't need
| resetting almost monthly because they are a bit flaky too)
| and more expensive in terms of getting good
| microphones/speakers/etc together.
|
| [All the above would apply the same would to Google's
| offering; I went with Echo devices because they were cheap at
| a time that my wallet control was weak, and you can call them
| "computer" rather than "brand-name"]
| jon-wood wrote:
| Amazon has been going downhill for a long time, when I first
| started using them it was quick, it was easy, and I knew what I
| bought was going to arrive within a reasonable time frame. I
| bought Alexa devices, I bought their TV box thing, all was
| good.
|
| Fast forward a decade or so and it's exactly as you say,
| finding anything reputable on their website is an exercise in
| frustration and unpronounceable randomly generated "brands"
| which have paid to be pushed up the search results. Alexa works
| maybe 50% of the time when I try to use it now (mostly I've
| switched to HomePods and Siri), the devices with screens are a
| constant flurry of pointless distractions ("There's nothing on
| your shopping list"... cool, maybe just don't tell me about
| that then). FireTV is a barely functional shit show which often
| takes multiple seconds to validate I've entered the parental
| control PIN correctly, and can take anything up to half a
| minute to fully populate the home screen with adverts.
|
| The thing that really took the biscuit for me was when I
| cancelled my Prime subscription recently. Now whenever I try to
| buy something from Amazon I get interstitials trying to dupe me
| into reupping, often cryptically worded such that it looks like
| I'll be paying PS10 for delivery if I don't. This is probably a
| good thing as it just encourages me to go elsewhere.
| criddell wrote:
| Amazon isn't great, but they are still better than their
| competitors for me. They are fast, have reasonable prices, and
| good customer service. AFAIK, I've never been shipped a
| counterfeit item and they've never given me a hard time when I
| want to return stuff.
|
| The Alexa stuff is a little weirder for me. It's gone in waves
| of being amazing and being terrible. I just noticed that for
| the last six months they've stopped with the "by the way" bs
| after I ask for the time, so that's nice. A month from now they
| might turn the dials and make it annoying again.
|
| Their e-Ink Kindle hardware is very nice and they have more
| ebook titles than anybody, but the DRM is such a downer. I'm
| cheering for the DeDRM people to crack it, but so far KFX seems
| to be holding...
|
| My biggest Amazon complaint is their review system. It's so
| gamed it's almost useless. I pretty much only look at 3 star
| reviews because 1 and 5 are rarely fair or accurate.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I don't know of anyone personally who buys all their groceries
| on Amazon. However, I will buy a few some canned/bottled stuff
| on Amazon if it's hard to find in the stores around me, or if
| it's cheaper (sushi ingredients like nori and rice vinegar). I
| also think I only know about 3 people personally who have
| Alexa.
|
| I think there are fewer region restrictions here, maybe because
| they were a US-first company. Their account management and
| customer service is certainly lacking.
| kube-system wrote:
| It's easy to buy groceries on Amazon if you live somewhere
| that Amazon delivers fresh groceries from a grocery store. I
| did it for a few months. I go online, click a few buttons,
| and a few hours later, someone shows up to my door with bags
| of groceries. It works well, especially if you can't leave
| the house for whatever reason.
| lucubratory wrote:
| Also in Australia, agreed about Amazon being a deeply scammy-
| feeling website. The only reason I'm subscribed is because I
| love Wheel of Time that much and I'll be damned if I'm going to
| wait a minute to watch it when it premieres (very convenient
| time for me in Australia, 10am). Then I figured well, if I've
| got a Prime account, I might as well check and make sure
| something I'm going to buy isn't on Amazon with free shipping
| for a lower price, and it turns out that happens very
| regularly. I see the value now, although it's probably not
| worth what I pay for it as the savings are small. But it's well
| worth it for me because of Amazon Prime Video, particularly
| Wheel of Time.
|
| It's actually funny, ever since Wheel of Time released and we
| got Prime to watch it, it's not just that we started buying
| from Amazon instead of individual stores, but we've actually
| bought a bunch more stuff over the internet than we would have
| before anyway. Stuff like air blowers for cleaning out
| electronics, verifiably safe toys for the cats, spring-loaded
| arms to hold phones up, a Kindle to read ebooks. The Kindle is
| the other thing I'll give credit to Amazon for being just very
| good and very good value like their streaming service, the
| Kindle is a very good device. Annoying DRM on my books, sure,
| but I've got them backed up for when it gets cracked.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| I've used Amazon for ~10 years. It has certainly gotten worse,
| but it isn't bad.
|
| I live in Seattle. A lot of random things I can get shipped the
| next day (sometimes even the same day!) for free (I pay for
| Prime, but there is no additional cost), like if I need a USB
| drive, compost bags, or dish soap.
|
| I'd prefer to buy things from Amazon vs other sites simply
| because I'm used to Amazon. I have an account; they have my
| address and payment information. I just need to click a few
| buttons and have what I need the next day.
|
| If something goes wrong, customer support is still pretty good
| in most cases, although sometimes Amazon has dropped the ball.
| Amazon is great with returns -- most of the time, I don't even
| need to box up and label my return. I just need to show up at
| an Amazon Fresh store or some other dropoff point (there are
| many in Seattle) and hand them my item/scan a QR code, and
| that's it.
|
| People have complained about fake products on Amazon. I've
| bought hundreds of things from Amazon, from CPUs to consumer
| electronics to batteries. I'm sure I received some knockoff at
| some point, but I've never noticed.
|
| I would gladly switch away from Amazon if something better
| popped up, but I don't see how any alternative could be better
| without eventually becoming Amazon again.
| jansan wrote:
| I love how the Roy Batty monologue from the original Blade Runner
| movie ("I have ssen things you people wouldn't even believe...")
| keeps popping up. The robot acutally looks like it was made J. F.
| Sebastian, so making it say the monologue at the end was a very
| nice touch IMO.
| mft_ wrote:
| Side-note: I watch quite a lot of Youtube videos in this space,
| and while I quite liked the presenter and the project, I've
| rarely watched a video with more 'fluff' padding out the content.
| There were multiple sections of music and irrelevant images that
| stretched out to _30-40 second each_ which did nothing but waste
| my time. At least they 're easy to skip.
|
| I get that not everyone wants a dense information-packed how-to
| video - and indeed, a lot of DIY creators (Colin Furze, for
| example) seem to have gradually trended away from this style over
| time. It may therefore be that trying to please the Youtube
| algorithm ('all hail the algorithm') can drive video producers in
| counter-intuitive directions, but I really hope that this is an
| outlier trying to boost their video length, and not the sign of
| yet more things to come.
| KolmogorovComp wrote:
| I also noticed it but it the end didn't mind, as it's clearly
| an entertainment video and not a how-to and the 'fluff' was
| pleasurable.
| iamflimflam1 wrote:
| I was going to suggest that this might have been to get the
| video over the 8 minute limit which triggers mid rolls adverts.
| But the video is almost 20 minutes long..
| Yadayadaaaa wrote:
| He did this for fun and made a video about it. Based on his
| posting history it doesn't seem that he is playing anything
| just wanna make sure that his work gets visibility (thumbnail)
| rmuratov wrote:
| These were panoramas of Tbilisi, Georgia. I didn't expect to
| see them either and thought that the author was somehow
| connected with Georgia.
| SPACE_LAWYER wrote:
| He lives in Tbilisi, he talks about it in other videos
| boredumb wrote:
| I enjoy some of the fluffier tech content because I can usually
| trick my wife into watching them with me.
| puppymaster wrote:
| good god he built this, it's his channel so he can video it
| however he wants. i dont understand the point of this comment.
| why are you questioning the video length and supposedly
| intention behind it? just skip it or don't watch.
| endisneigh wrote:
| People like to complain, lol. It's a travesty the grandparent
| is the top comment. Such entitlement.
|
| The author also has a patreon for any interested
|
| https://www.patreon.com/workshopnation
| thisOtterBeGood wrote:
| So let's complain about people that are complaining, that's
| much better. Surely noone can complain about that.
| nativeit wrote:
| Why do you feel the need to complain about the people
| complaining about the people complaining? Just let them
| complain in peace!
| bilekas wrote:
| I can't speak for OP, but I did comment how it also made my
| feel a bit weird, I get suspicious given the amount of
| shills/plants large companies will create as 'spontaneous'
| social media success people. Its used to create a more
| authentic connection to a person who then shills the brand
| they've been planted by.
|
| Prevalent or not, the ide gives off creepy vibes to me
| personally .
| flkenosad wrote:
| Sounds like you people just lack a solid attention span
| mixed with a little paranoia. There's absolutely nothing
| "creepy" about that video.
| katbyte wrote:
| Yea.. like it's a 20 min video total. it's shorter then a
| average 30min tv show episode without commercials
| mft_ wrote:
| Sure, but it's a 20 minute video, ~40-50% of which is
| arguably unnecessary: it could have been a kick-ass 10
| minute tightly-edited informative video. It's not about a
| short attention span - it's about the value of the time
| spent.
| flkenosad wrote:
| Those tightly compressed videos are not "kick-ass" at
| all. They're high-pitched and annoying.
| katbyte wrote:
| That's your perspective- I hate tictok videos because
| they are just so ungodly short and compressed to the
| point of being in enjoyable - I don't care how much
| information they convey. I enjoy longer form videos that
| indulge, it's a better production and more enjoyable
|
| Like your argument boils down to why watch planet earth
| when you could look at a few photos and read the wiki
|
| It's not just about conveying information here
| bilekas wrote:
| > Sounds like you people just lack a solid attention span
|
| Sorry but that's really not it, I just don't watch a
| video on a topic I'm interested in for 30 seconds of city
| skyline views with some light music..
|
| My attention span has nothing to do with it, my patience
| for wasting my time does however.
|
| Edit : Just to reiterate, I liked the video, cool idea..
| Just the balance seemed off to me. It's not worth an
| argument to be honest. Maybe I shouldn't have said
| anything.
| flkenosad wrote:
| No that's fair. I didn't mean to shit on your opinion. I
| just really enjoyed the slower pace and tbh I'm a little
| frustrated by how quickly internet people talk these
| days.
| mft_ wrote:
| I know, right? God forbid we should share our opinions of
| things posted to an internet forum, on an internet forum.
| Whatever is the world coming to?
|
| To answer your question less sarcastically, I watch quite a
| lot of 'technical' or project Youtube videos - e.g. Stuff
| Made Here, Superfast Matt, Colin Furze, Aging Wheels, Bad
| Obsession Motorsports, Matthias Wendel, Peter Sripol, Tom
| Stanton... and the video style in this case was such an
| outlier (even considering the trend I've seen in recent years
| across multiple channels) that it was mildly noteworthy. I
| can't remember the last time I skipped such large segments of
| a video from any of the producers I listed above (apart from
| sponsor segments, natch).
|
| If it's the quirk of the individual producer, then of course
| it's his prerogative, no question. But if his goal is to grow
| his channel, such feedback may actually have value, given it
| might turn some viewers off.
| nativeit wrote:
| That's a great list. I enjoy Superfast Matt, and respect
| Matthias Wandel, the most out of those.
| jolt42 wrote:
| Pretty sure Mark Robar has a rant about this that creators
| are pretty much forced (mathematically) to make longer videos
| if they want to be successful.
| nativeit wrote:
| Wanting to be successful in a field that is driven by
| capricious technical whimsy and uncorrelated luck is
| generally a mistake. Do it for yourself, come what may.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Of course he has the right to do whatever he wants (as long
| as it is legal), but he shared it and even monetized it, so
| we also have the right to comment, including pointing out the
| parts we didn't like.
|
| I think it is fair, although personal criticism (I liked
| this, disliked that). The questioning is also constructive.
| Just look at the replies. They are interesting, as you can
| see why people liked or didn't like the "fluff". It also
| suggests a simple, but not obvious answer to the questioning.
| Creators do this because people like it.
| aaronharnly wrote:
| His about page ( https://www.thomasburns.net/about.html ) says
| that he worked for 20 years in the motion picture industry.
| There are some pretty cool pieces in his gallery page:
| https://www.thomasburns.net
|
| So I'd hazard that he just likes making beautiful and
| entertaining videos in addition to making beautiful and
| entertaining devices.
| throwuwu wrote:
| It's also a rather traditional format outside of YouTube. I
| didn't fault him for it, it's nice to see that kind of
| presentation sometimes instead of some presenter talking non
| stop for ten minutes.
| lawlessone wrote:
| "instead of some presenter talking non stop for ten
| minutes."
|
| Nothing i love more in Youtube videos when the person
| showing their idea/what they made/ their guide etc opens
| with "anyway lets get into it"
| pmx wrote:
| I really enjoyed the "fluff", especially when he first powered
| up the CRT and went into that montage.
| bilekas wrote:
| > I've rarely watched a video with more 'fluff' padding out the
| content. There were multiple sections of music and irrelevant
| images that stretched out to 30-40 second each which did
| nothing but waste my time. At least they're easy to skip.
|
| I felt the same way but didn't want to comment as it felt a bit
| rude, I even want to see his profile because the amount of
| production 'fluff' seemed excessive for a relatively low 84k
| subscriber count.
|
| A low amount of videos (14 right now) and ~80% of the video
| views on this one, it feels weird.
|
| All in all, interesting video and at least he pointed out the
| elephant in the room about merging to some GPT model.
| wholinator2 wrote:
| Well, to comment on the 80% thing, that's usually how these
| algorithms go. Someone makes video after video gaining some
| to little traction. And then they make their first video that
| scrapes above the margin, gets posted somewhere, gains
| traction and becomes vastly more popular than their other
| videos. What we're witnessing is this person's largest video
| yet, i mean it got posted here, and we're all discussing it.
|
| As for the disproportionally produced nature of it, sometimes
| smaller creators who have money to spend will pay producers,
| editors, artists to help them on their video. These people
| have a portfolio that they advertise and they sell their
| services with some personality. Either this individual has
| experience video editing and has created all the fluff
| themselves for some reason, or the person has enough money to
| spend they dicided to hire a professional editor, who has
| made all these sections and spliced them into the video.
| Possibly the creator gave the editor a minimum length to
| produce and not enough real footage. Possible this exact
| thing happened but the creator and editor are the same
| person.
|
| Youtube has changed a lot in the past 5 years. There a huge
| industry of video editors and artists who support the
| professionalization of even first time youtube creators, as
| the bar is raised ever higher and higher to be heard above
| the noise
| moffkalast wrote:
| > all hail the algorithm
|
| Superfast Matt reference?
| mft_ wrote:
| Yep :)
|
| (For me, a wonderful example of a channel that almost
| perfectly balances information and entertainment. One of only
| ~2-3 channels that make me want to drop what I'm doing,
| whenever I see a new video has been posted.)
| sgt wrote:
| Superfast matt also has a way of squeezing in a tiny joke
| in the last 0.5 seconds of a sentence.
| zzzcsgo wrote:
| I probably skipped more then half the video... Cool little toy
| though
| zoeysmithe wrote:
| We don't talk about this enough but those kinds of techniques
| are just manipulation techniques, the same way movies and tv
| are designed to affect our senses and emotion (rising music,
| etc). They exist to short-circuit our logical minds and appeal
| to the emotional parts of our minds to create attachment and
| familiarity and sympathy with the content and creator. Which is
| fine if that's what you're asking for.
|
| I dislike that you're being criticized. In a technical forum we
| should be demanding more efficient uses of our time and less
| manipulation and more facts-based presentation. I feel a little
| sorry for people who grew up in the youtube influencer age.
| These techniques are totally normalized for them and I don't
| think they realize how deeply manipulative your average popular
| youtuber is.
|
| A lot of us just want a fact-sheet kind of thing that is
| neurodiverse and "busy technical person" friendly. The
| marketing-style media is really meant for executives and
| potential customers. I always shy away from those kind of
| presentations, find them hard to focus on, get impatient, and
| just google for a fact sheet, credible review, or technical
| reddit posting or other text-based info. And if there is video,
| it should be justified. Like a short clip illustrating
| something that is hard to explain or appreciate otherwise.
|
| The other big bonus is how easily I can copy and paste these
| text items, make a bulleted list, etc to share with other busy
| people. "Hey Boss, check out this robot project, I think we can
| try that here," is going to be an easier sell with a page of
| text and some photos than "Hey Boss, here's a 40 minute video
| of a robot project."
|
| I can't stress how badly the move from a text based internet to
| a video-based one has badly hurt people like me. I'm autistic
| with adhd and the constant demands to "hey just watch this
| video if you want to learn this technology," is just too much.
| I seek out text tutorials with screenshots or code snippets or
| whatever. I think we're becoming what happened to the boomers.
| That is to say the rise of TV, TV news, etc moved them way from
| books and newspapers that were far less centralized and had
| more potential for merit, variety, and lower barriers to entry.
| For someone like me, I could never be a slick youtube video
| producer, but I could write a good hack-a-day article. Why
| should the former have more merit? Why should we be applauding
| slick production techniques outside the ability of nearly all
| technical people?
|
| I'm sorry if this rant is going odd places, but honestly, the
| mass videofication of all things has incredible downsides, but
| is incredibly profitable hence we're stuck with it, but we
| should be able to call it out if we are displeased with it.
| throwuwu wrote:
| They're also just techniques in art where the artist wants
| you to feel something specific rather than just dumping their
| creation on you without comment.
| mft_ wrote:
| Thanks; and I'm totally with you. Most informational topics
| (except perhaps obviously mechanical topics - e.g. changing
| an inner tube on a bike) are by far better dealt with in
| written/pictoral form. Funny you mention boomers - I remember
| my Dad, many years ago, complaining vociferously about how
| much TV documentaries were padded out with extraneous content
| versus those on radio. What goes around, etc. :)
|
| ---
|
| Even more of a tangent, but regarding the march of videos on
| the internet, I have been surprised by how much I've enjoyed
| (and even derived value from) TikTok, which I would have
| expected be the worst of the worst. But thanks to its nature,
| it's both far more efficient at enabling _discovery_ , and
| almost always far more concise, than Youtube. And oddly,
| TikTok has done a lot to drive off-internet pastimes, thanks
| to discovery of new books to read, recipes to shop for and
| cook, films to watch, exercise routines to try, etc. It's so
| weird so write this, but I find (my little slice of?) TikTok
| unbelievably _wholesome_.
| zoeysmithe wrote:
| Great comment! Totally agree here!
|
| A lot of boomers didn't like the TV-ization of the world.
| For a long time Neil Postman's "Amusing ourselves to
| death," was a top rated academic commentary on how TV is
| ruining society by moving us more towards sensationalized
| news, easy manipulation, centralization, etc. Its sad to
| think that war is long over and TV has won. And now that
| same war has been lost on the internet with things like
| youtube.
|
| I'd argue tik-tok is a new artform and not TV or youtube
| like at all, and works pretty well for what it does. It
| doesn't ever, at least for me, take the place of written
| materials or photo tutorials or technical articles, but
| youtube is doing its best to replace those items. Tik-tok
| is more a unique media that wants to create a new space in
| your life and badly constrained by its short video focus,
| but youtube trying to eat the internet by eating up
| traditional spaces like written media.
| cardanome wrote:
| I agree with you in general but you might have missed that
| this particular video is about an art project. The robot
| doesn't really have any practical purpose at all. The
| technical details are not the focus. The robot isn't that
| interesting from a purely technical side of things.
|
| The video is really about the sense of nostalgia for a past
| where we had a more optimistic idea of a future. The
| emotional level is the point of the video.
|
| So please call out the mass videofication of things but this
| is not an good example of it.
| titanomachy wrote:
| This is art, and entertainment. A guy made a cool project and
| he wanted to create an artistic and engaging video to show it
| off, not a fact sheet documenting how to reproduce his
| efforts.
|
| If you don't want to consume videos for entertainment, then
| don't watch it.
| kortex wrote:
| Just run SponsorBlock or similar then. If you still want to
| support creators, you can tune the plugin to only skip filler,
| or as I do, just prompt with a Skip button and I can choose to
| jump as needed.
| dtx1 wrote:
| It makes no difference to the creator when you use
| sponsorblock to skip sponsored segements, unless you intend
| to buy things they are affiliated with.
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| The "fluff" is really stylish and I don't mind it. What is a
| pity is that there isn't more of a demo of the robot,
| operating. It's nice "technopunk", it doesn't have to be
| practical. He himself points out that the plain old Echo device
| does the job and the bot just adds personality. So using an
| actual CRT just as an oscilloscope display is just fine!
| squirrel23 wrote:
| I completely get where you are coming from on this.
|
| However, I do find it enjoyable when you allow yourself to get
| lost in, for instance, a great opera song accompanied with cool
| images.
|
| There is beauty in letting go of this guilt for not being 100%
| productive all the time.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| if you install SponsorBlock and enable "skip to Highlight",
| you'll see a button that skips you right to the 'meat' of the
| video
|
| i use this to see if the rest of the fluff is worth it :)
| pengaru wrote:
| YouTube is insufferable for me without youtube-dl/yt-dlp and
| watching with a proper player like mpv locally.
|
| Skipping around without a bunch of buffering lag and ability to
| increase volume up to 300% in poorly recorded/mixed videos
| alone are game changers.
|
| The signal:noise ratio of the content there is awful, it
| requires better tools than what they provide for obvious
| reasons.
| pvg wrote:
| _Please don 't pick the most provocative thing in an article or
| post to complain about in the thread. Find something
| interesting to respond to instead. [...] Please don't complain
| about tangential annoyances--e.g. article or website formats,
| name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to
| be interesting._
|
| The trouble with such 'side notes' is they end up eating the
| thread and are effectively completely unrelated to the thing
| being presented.
| dazzawazza wrote:
| I imagined a world full of robots with personality as well.
|
| I never imagined that that personality would be working for it's
| real owner (Amazon, Google et al) and trying to control me.
|
| Until it's MY friend, I am not interested in lending some of my
| soul to it.
|
| We're not on the correct path are we?
| yetihehe wrote:
| In the end he suggsted that further development of AI models
| will help with such projects. I think there will be a lot of
| opensource personal AI's available in several years when
| reasonably cheap accelerator chips become available enough.
| ilaksh wrote:
| Some of the leading open source LLMs can perform about as well
| for what he demonstrated. It's not like it was writing code or
| something.
| elicash wrote:
| My experience hasn't been that my Alexa or that Siri tries to
| control me. I use it to set timers and play music and that's
| about it.
|
| On the generative AI front, OpenAI/Microsoft doesn't control me
| either. I use it as a coding assistant instead of searching
| StackOverflow, or when I want to brainstorm lists of other ways
| of writing the same thing when I don't like what I've written
| and am not sure the best way to improve it.
|
| Could just be you're approaching the tools wrong? But I can't
| imagine what you're doing where they're controlling you.
| svnt wrote:
| Prompt: Tell me you've never read Brave New World without
| telling me you've never read Brave New World.
| elicash wrote:
| None of this is anything like Brave New World.
| feoren wrote:
| You may be using a stricter definition of "control you" than
| GP was. Perhaps the better word would be "influencing" you.
| That can mean something as subtle as reminding you that pizza
| exists and it's yummy and mmm isn't pizza just so yummy?
| Basically what commercials have been trying to do since
| forever.
|
| Even if you don't believe Alexa and Siri are recording
| everything you say, I think it's pretty clear that asking
| them to play music gives them some power to influence you.
| You're telling them your musical tastes, and you're
| (presumably) letting them pick some songs for you. (At the
| very least, by simply not having the song you asked for
| available.) One reason, perhaps even the biggest reason, that
| Amazon and Apple created those products is to sell you more
| shit, and both of these give them _some_ power to influence
| your buying habits. Perhaps that power is tiny, and the
| tradeoff is worth it. They 're also trying to influence who
| you buy _from_ , or what services you subscribe to. Vendor
| lock-in and all that. Is that not them trying to influence
| you? Perhaps even to control you?
| kortex wrote:
| I actually think we are _mostly_ on the right path, with the
| greatest exception being the current cost and overhead required
| to train the very best language models. But we are already
| seeing smaller, fine-tunable, user-deployable models.
|
| I think (and hope) it'll track a similar trajectory to 3d
| printing:
|
| 1. Expensive systems only approachable to large corporations
|
| 2. Lower-cost but affordable as a business expense to cottage
| industry
|
| 3. Affordable to hobbyists, but requiring domain expertise to
| operate
|
| 4. COTS plug and play solutions for the wide audience
|
| Right now we are at (1) with the huge scale LLMs, but scaled
| models are runnable by hobbyists (2-3) and we are at (4) when
| it comes to things like image generation and music splitting.
| ganzuul wrote:
| We're on the correct timeline. It's just that people are
| extremely reluctant to embrace technologies which make part of
| the ego redundant.
|
| For example, an AI slave (lit. robot) is useless to you because
| then you have the master-slave mentality so half of you is
| still a slave. Once we're actually OK inside we won't even
| think we need technology.
| bloqs wrote:
| Was posted a while ago. So fantastically cool
| specproc wrote:
| I've actually had the pleasure of seeing this robot "in the
| flesh", as it were. The creator's an old friend and a real nice
| guy.
|
| He's got a really fun video with an old Soviet games console I
| particularly enjoyed.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mqXT-zj47s
| lucubratory wrote:
| He was shopping in Tbilisi for this video, does he have some
| connection to the USSR? That would be a really, really
| interesting perspective for a tech YouTuber.
| maximg68 wrote:
| On his page https://www.thomasburns.net/ he mentions "Our
| family runs a small computer repair business in Tbilisi,
| Georgia" (under the rotary phone tile).
| lucubratory wrote:
| Oh huh, he actually lives there. I'm so curious as to why.
| xwdv wrote:
| An exposed CRT like that is quite dangerous no? Capacity
| discharge could easily kill.
| demondemidi wrote:
| He's stuck in childhood. Computing should be ubiquitous in my
| opinion and completely non intrusive. Like the Universal Computer
| in Asmiovs "Nine Tomorrows". I don't ever want a 1980s goofy
| gremlin bot. I want the computer to completely disappear into the
| ether and only respond when spoken too. Less technology in sight
| not more.
|
| Edit: and if I need a physical robot I want its form to follow
| its function, not an outdated notion of a future we've already
| passed.
|
| Edit2: I think Alexa is the perfect model, but I don't have one
| because privacy is not taken seriously where I live (United
| States). Computing as a universal basic service needs to be
| wrestled away from the capitalism-winning megacorps, and that's
| about a century off.
| gumby wrote:
| Is there a quick NV;DW about what made a robot cool?
| F2hP18Foam wrote:
| How it looks, basically. It's an anthropomorphized Amazon Echo.
| rapunkill wrote:
| Reminds me of the old YTV's purple monster. "Snit"
| dansalvato wrote:
| I really like his point about how our realized future of the
| "robot companion" is so lifeless and utilitarian compared to what
| we used to imagine. I guess it makes sense given how the adoption
| of voice assistants predated widespread LLMs by about 10 years,
| and voice assistants were never even close to feeling "alive" in
| any sense.
|
| I'd love to see something like this manufactured at scale once
| the LLM ecosystem matures a little bit. As someone who has never
| quite felt comfortable using voice assistants, it might actually
| be the ingredient I need to make the whole thing feel enjoyable.
| kleiba wrote:
| I wish the people of the past hadn't forgotten to tell us that
| the robots of the future would collect our private data and store
| it on the computers of some gargantuan corporation so that they
| could profile us better.
| kridsdale3 wrote:
| Wasn't that like, exactly what the MCP in TRON was about?
| sim30n wrote:
| Very cool! Looks like Wall-E.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| We made some "One Minute Movie" robot reality TV spots at the
| Stupid Fun Club, about Empathy [1] and Servitude [2], written by
| Will Wright, who also participated in Battlebots with his
| daughter Cassidy and their vegetative robot Super Chiabot [3]
| [4].
|
| Empathy:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXrbqXPnHvE
|
| Servitude:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXsUetUzXlg
|
| BattleBots Missing Link vs. ChiaBot:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rx3VKd8yDqI
|
| BattleBots Complete Control VS Super Chiabot:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELZI2Cx6kWA
|
| The one minute movies never ran due to contractual problems
| between NBC and SAG. We used hidden cameras, and the humans were
| real unsuspecting people, but I'll admit it's true they didn't
| accurately portray the everyday lives of actual robots in the
| real world: the robot's injuries and Professor Johnson's phone
| number were fake, and the robot waiter was fired.
|
| The point of NBC's one-minute reality shows was to tell short
| entertaining two-part cliffhanger stories, which NBC would
| broadcast as interstitial programming at the beginning and end of
| commercial breaks, to compel people to keep watching TV and
| submit to more advertisements.
|
| But the point of Will's stories and performance was to explore
| how people interact and empathize with robots, discover what
| their beliefs and expectations are, and probe to test how easy
| humans are to fool or convince to play along with real-time tele-
| robotic wizard-of-oz man-behind-the-curtain mumbo-jumbo.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20141028194536/http://www.allent...
|
| >In 2003, NBC attempted to add a new feature to prime-time
| television with "One-Minute Movies." Each original movie unfolded
| in its first 30 seconds and ended with a cliffhanger, and then a
| conclusion in the last 30 seconds. The One-Minute Movies were to
| be used as interstitial programming between commercials and
| possibly where a show ends a minute earlier than its scheduled
| running time.
|
| >The idea for the series was brought to NBC by John Wells
| ("E.R.") and director Paris Barclay. The ten unique films were
| written, produced, cast, directed and filmed by assorted talent.
| Among the talent appearing in or lending their voices (one was
| animated) to the projects were Michael Richards, Tom Arnold,
| Carmen Electra, Bill Bellamy, Eddie Cibrian, Garcelle Beauvais-
| Nilon, Paula Marshall, Jackee Harry, Danny Masterson and Amber
| Valletta.
|
| >With mechanical robots designed and built by Will Wright
| (creator of "The Sims"), the two segments directed by James Moll
| are comedic short films featuring fully functional robots in
| hidden-camera situations.
|
| >The first, "Restaurant" features a robotic waiter. Coffee shop
| diners were asked if they would be willing to be seated at a
| table that will be served by a mechanical server. Then,
| surrounded by tables filled with hired "extras," the unknowing
| customer is approached by a 6-ft tall, fully functional,
| computerized, talking robot.
|
| >The second film, "Empathy," also features hidden-cameras. In
| this case, a broken down, severely damages robot was planted next
| to a dumpster on a side street in Berkeley, California. As people
| would pass the robot, it would suddenly move and talk to the
| passersby. "Help me," the poor helpless robot would say. Hidden
| cameras captured various reactions, everything from apathy to
| empathy.
|
| >After airing only one of the films - featuring "The Pussycat
| Dolls" -- NBC decided not to continue airing the remaining twelve
| films.
|
| After a short and unsuccessful career as a waiter, Slats
| eventually decided that his one true goal in life was to
| reproduce himself.
|
| So we took him out in public around Berkeley, and shot some video
| of Slats attempting to seduce men and women off the street.
|
| It was kind of like Speed Dating meets Demon Seed: he tried to
| talk people into giving him their eggs and sperm, because he
| needed their genetic material to reproduce himself.
|
| Demon Seed Trailer:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNUEp5A9eKU
|
| Demon Seed: The Birth:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyjrQfNtK0I
|
| Speed Dating with Cupid:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVUP9OXmHTM
|
| >Cupid $959 Are you tired of dating weasels, hedgers,
| pussyfooters and wafflers? Are you ready to dispense with all the
| beating around the bush you're forced to put up with just to find
| a yes at the end of a marriage proposal? Let Cupid, the E
| _quiver_ cator help you cut to the heart of things and land
| yourself the mate of your dreams. No need to wear yourself ragged
| trying to win the affections of the one you desire. Let Cupid
| help you secure the proposal, and then you can spend your time on
| more important matters: You've got a wedding to plan!
|
| The results of our research: It turns out to be a lot easier for
| a robot to talk a man out of his sperm, than to talk a woman out
| of her eggs.
|
| This is Slats, the unemployed robot waiter, roaming the streets
| of Berkeley:
|
| http://www.donhopkins.com/home/RobotMovies/Slats1.jpg
|
| http://www.donhopkins.com/home/RobotMovies/Slats2.jpg
|
| http://www.donhopkins.com/home/RobotMovies/Slats3.jpg
|
| Nancy the Van Seat - Stupid Fun Club:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvXG4gQ2FWI
|
| Creativity by Will, Slats & the Stupid Fun Club folks:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZljgktEr5E
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