>As a mechanical engineer, my first thought was, "How much fuel does it take to move that massive thing!"
That didn't even occur to me. I think you'd have to compare its carbon footprint to that of an average human worker. Maybe it's actually more efficient per brick! (Though I think that unlikely)
My actual first thought was much more ridiculous. I'd like to see a smaller robot, perhaps able to carry just a half-dozen bricks and mortar, that could crawl along brickwork laying a new row behind it and either returning to a supply station constantly or being 'fed' by another, larger, robot.
> You want to get the government to force others to behave according to your wishes
Actually, what I want is the government to represent the best interests of the population. In this case, by providing a single focus where change can be enacted.
It's a lot easier to have people send a letter to their representative saying they don't want companies to be able to sell products and then alter them after the purchase without recourse than it is to get everyone to shop the same way when it seems all the major choices are going in the same undesirable (and not immediately obvious to the average shopper) direction.
> I believe that capitalism already has a solution to this kind of thing, two actually. As a consumer, aware of this situation, you can choose another product... Or, if you have already purchased a product that is now known to be flawed and the manufacturer refuses to fix it because you don't like the new license terms, you can file a civil suit.
The first requires that enough consumers are aware of the problem and willing to purchase selectively to result in products with the intentional flaws being unprofitable to produce.
The second requires being willing to set your life aside to fight a corporation. You may win a small settlement up front, you may win a big one in 20 years... or you could ruin your life in the attempt.
There's a shift in the marketplace happening, and consumers are being pushed back into a feudal system except that instead of land its consumer products and instead of lords its corporations. Same end result - you're not allowed to actually own anything and what you do have in your possession is only so at the whim of your 'lord'.
That's something to be resisted, and it's better organized at the legislative level than continual boycotts and the occasional civil suit.
Unfettered capitalism is ultimately only slightly better for society than unfettered communism. Large corporations can act as a single entity, while consumers are sufficiently segmented that in most cases coordination is unlikely.
The response is to change the market via legislation, and let the companies adapt to the new reality, rather than attempt boycotting them. A boycott - even if successful - only ensures they get sneakier about future attempts at the same goal.
>I live in an older neighborhood that's seen a fair amount of teardown new construction and the basement foundations are almost universally made from form-based poured concrete from what I've seen. In the types of construction where concrete block is still used, the scale often seems small -- a limited set of block courses before switching to wood or steel framing. I'm not sure how much robotics works in this market.
I can see a future where a surveyor stakes out four corners of the foundation as reference for a robot that excavates, places a foundation form (perhaps made of vertical sections that link together), and then pours concrete. I could even see that being done with current technology, appropriately applied.
What I can't see (yet) is such a system working without close human oversight to handle exceptions and notice potential problems.
1) Ignored is another option. The same results as squashed, only depending on your outlook more or less ego damage.
2) When you're young, you have that righteous burning fire in your belly, built on an unshakable belief that you know better than the old fuddy-duddies. That makes obstacles more irritating but simultaneously more tolerable.
>I will be building a house this year and would kill for a solid masonry brick home.
If you're building it, it seems like (subject to money, skill, and building codes) there's a much simpler solution than killing for it!
As a LEGO enthusiast, I'd kill for click-together bricks made from an appropriate hard rubber compound. It's been done once or twice but never seriously. The idea, however, of simply assembling my house to taste once I have a concrete pad and utility hookups is fascinating to me. Disassembling the top floor if I want to replace a first floor door or window, not so much.
>Mortar is poured in from above into the hollow bricks.
I missed that step, and I'm fascinated to find out how that gets between the bricks, and doesn't waste a LOT of mass either making the bricks mostly solid or filling their voids with mortar.
I'll have to watch the video again and pay closer attention.
Bricklayers (the highly skilled ones) will simply work smaller jobs or oversee the robots while the lesser bricklayers will be looking for other work.
The transition will take the better part of a generation anyway, so mostly it will be attrition that takes care of the labour problem. I don't see these robots decimating the industry in less than a couple of decades.
The video in the article shows a rather large device laying bricks according to plan. Fine.. but bricks alone are more or less useless without mortar. And in most cases (at least in my region) bricks are a facing on wood frame construction over a poured concrete basement. This robot doesn't look like it can work on anything but an empty slab of concrete, limiting it to small industrial unit builds.
Now, the second bricklayer robot linked to from the main article... that looks more interesting. It lays bricks against an existing surface, it's smaller, and it appears to handle mortar.
I'm still more keen on the giant 3D printers that print layers of concrete, though as you'd expect there's still a long way to go before they can handle ceilings and other structures with large areas lacking support while setting.
As a Canadian, I'm pretty comfortable with where we usually draw the line - somewhere around "riling up people to cause harm".
What bothers me is that phrase in the summary... "anti-religious". Wow. So blasphemy laws then, where you're required by law to treat somebody's dangerous delusion with respect?
I say put some radical Jews, Muslims, and Christians in a room and let the lawsuits fly...
>Programmers don't dictate their code verbally to be transcribed into text format by someone else, so that is a really weird thing to try to use as a counter argument
Yet my post was in response to someone attempting to program by dictation, so somehow it seems completely relevant.
5.9% means it still gets more than 1 in 20 things wrong. That's a LOT when you're feeding the information into a system that requires pretty much a 0% error rate.
Second, there's a huge difference between standard language and specialist syntax. With programming, you're likely going to want a LOT of special formatting that you can type without thinking but it's cumbersome to communicate via speech in a way that won't confuse a speech recognition engine.
And finally - so long as they don't have a related disability - a proficient typist can already type about as fast as they can form decent code in their head. With a bit of 'mousework' for selection and cut-and-paste I don't see speech ever becoming the superior entry method unless and until we have genuine AI that understands your intent rather than your words.
It might be nice to use speech as a macro-invoker, though.
Stealth advertising; in a few days or a week or so, maybe we will see an article about a wonderful new repository system, and this post will have primed us to absorb it.
I very much like that idea. Presumably something like the Google Maps interface, where you're shown multiple suggested routes ordered by your preferences, then you can drag points off-route if you wish.
Assuming this is for a personal vehicle and not a self-driving taxi or rental, you'd probably also want to have it remember common destinations and routes for you.
Now... how about the display being a large vertical panel between you and the windshield that turns opaque when it needs to be a touchscreen display (to pick your route or to watch a movie or something during your trip) and turns clear if you want to see the world outside?
The thing is they figured out that while production is expensive, distribution and display is incredibly inexpensive so they can make a killing. Nobody stops to think that maybe, just maybe, mass distribution should have come with lowered venue prices, because they can gouge and get rich.
I imagine if you could get into the theatre for $5 (and another $5 for concessions), and they still had the occasional usher to remove disruptive people, attendance would shoot through the roof for a net increase in profit.
My standards for movies worthy of a theatre visit would drop significantly if it was $10/person/visit instead of $30, and I suspect I'm not alone in that.
In the unlikely event he lasts that long, AND wins re-election (which is possible, after all, his winning the party nomination and then the presidency were both so unlikely as to be laughable and they happened...), it will be due to his radial base of the ignorant and dispossessed and the remainder of the Republican party too greedy for power and too cowardly to accept the cost of standing up to Trump and his core supporters.
And it'll be the end of the USA's deteriorating international reputation.
>He may well be Satan incarnate, hell bent on the destruction of humanity, but he's increasingly competent at what he's doing, and what he's doing is, for the most part, what he promised to do during the campaign.
That's a lovely narrative you've built there, but it's entirely inconsistent with Trump's every tweet and recorded appearance ever.
He's a nightmare child who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and has bullied his way through life. It got him to the presidency because things were in a state where his particular message sold really well, not because he was a genius tactician, or even remotely qualified to do the job.
That's got to be some good stuff if they seriously think they can do away with the theatres (who get $30/person out of you by the time you hit concessions) without providing the big screen, big sound, or the concessions that are overpriced so the theatre can stay in business despite the ridiculous screening fees. Oh, and BOOST the ticket price an extra $20 just in case you have your spouse or kids in the room when you watch the movie.
Definitely some high quality product they're using to alter their mental states.
>He was jailed because he was a pro-domacracy activist, and they used the suppressive laws to silence him.
Which is something I just don't get. If you're going to arbitrarily apply laws in order to lock up dissenters... just lock up the dissenters. Everybody knows what you're doing anyway, the percentage in denial who would rebel if denial was made more difficult is insignificant.
>Most of us would just dismiss it as some hype, because it requires physical access to the cars.
Yep. Because someone with physical access can do all sorts of things, including putting a tracker on it, cutting a brake line, or attaching a bomb.
Nobody I know habitually checks their vehicles for those kinds of modifications before driving, and I doubt anyone's going to start checking their CAN bus integrity either.
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>As a mechanical engineer, my first thought was, "How much fuel does it take to move that massive thing!"
That didn't even occur to me. I think you'd have to compare its carbon footprint to that of an average human worker. Maybe it's actually more efficient per brick! (Though I think that unlikely)
My actual first thought was much more ridiculous. I'd like to see a smaller robot, perhaps able to carry just a half-dozen bricks and mortar, that could crawl along brickwork laying a new row behind it and either returning to a supply station constantly or being 'fed' by another, larger, robot.
> You want to get the government to force others to behave according to your wishes
Actually, what I want is the government to represent the best interests of the population. In this case, by providing a single focus where change can be enacted.
It's a lot easier to have people send a letter to their representative saying they don't want companies to be able to sell products and then alter them after the purchase without recourse than it is to get everyone to shop the same way when it seems all the major choices are going in the same undesirable (and not immediately obvious to the average shopper) direction.
It's coordination, not coercion.
>I'd argue that ultimately they amount to the same thing.
Both end up as utterly corrupt with a small ruling elite oppressing the masses?
> I believe that capitalism already has a solution to this kind of thing, two actually. As a consumer, aware of this situation, you can choose another product... Or, if you have already purchased a product that is now known to be flawed and the manufacturer refuses to fix it because you don't like the new license terms, you can file a civil suit.
The first requires that enough consumers are aware of the problem and willing to purchase selectively to result in products with the intentional flaws being unprofitable to produce.
The second requires being willing to set your life aside to fight a corporation. You may win a small settlement up front, you may win a big one in 20 years... or you could ruin your life in the attempt.
There's a shift in the marketplace happening, and consumers are being pushed back into a feudal system except that instead of land its consumer products and instead of lords its corporations. Same end result - you're not allowed to actually own anything and what you do have in your possession is only so at the whim of your 'lord'.
That's something to be resisted, and it's better organized at the legislative level than continual boycotts and the occasional civil suit.
Unfettered capitalism is ultimately only slightly better for society than unfettered communism. Large corporations can act as a single entity, while consumers are sufficiently segmented that in most cases coordination is unlikely.
The response is to change the market via legislation, and let the companies adapt to the new reality, rather than attempt boycotting them. A boycott - even if successful - only ensures they get sneakier about future attempts at the same goal.
>I live in an older neighborhood that's seen a fair amount of teardown new construction and the basement foundations are almost universally made from form-based poured concrete from what I've seen. In the types of construction where concrete block is still used, the scale often seems small -- a limited set of block courses before switching to wood or steel framing. I'm not sure how much robotics works in this market.
I can see a future where a surveyor stakes out four corners of the foundation as reference for a robot that excavates, places a foundation form (perhaps made of vertical sections that link together), and then pours concrete. I could even see that being done with current technology, appropriately applied.
What I can't see (yet) is such a system working without close human oversight to handle exceptions and notice potential problems.
Two thoughts:
1) Ignored is another option. The same results as squashed, only depending on your outlook more or less ego damage.
2) When you're young, you have that righteous burning fire in your belly, built on an unshakable belief that you know better than the old fuddy-duddies. That makes obstacles more irritating but simultaneously more tolerable.
>I will be building a house this year and would kill for a solid masonry brick home.
If you're building it, it seems like (subject to money, skill, and building codes) there's a much simpler solution than killing for it!
As a LEGO enthusiast, I'd kill for click-together bricks made from an appropriate hard rubber compound. It's been done once or twice but never seriously. The idea, however, of simply assembling my house to taste once I have a concrete pad and utility hookups is fascinating to me. Disassembling the top floor if I want to replace a first floor door or window, not so much.
>Mortar is poured in from above into the hollow bricks.
I missed that step, and I'm fascinated to find out how that gets between the bricks, and doesn't waste a LOT of mass either making the bricks mostly solid or filling their voids with mortar.
I'll have to watch the video again and pay closer attention.
>What will present brick layers do?
Bricklayers (the highly skilled ones) will simply work smaller jobs or oversee the robots while the lesser bricklayers will be looking for other work.
The transition will take the better part of a generation anyway, so mostly it will be attrition that takes care of the labour problem. I don't see these robots decimating the industry in less than a couple of decades.
The video in the article shows a rather large device laying bricks according to plan. Fine.. but bricks alone are more or less useless without mortar. And in most cases (at least in my region) bricks are a facing on wood frame construction over a poured concrete basement. This robot doesn't look like it can work on anything but an empty slab of concrete, limiting it to small industrial unit builds.
Now, the second bricklayer robot linked to from the main article... that looks more interesting. It lays bricks against an existing surface, it's smaller, and it appears to handle mortar.
I'm still more keen on the giant 3D printers that print layers of concrete, though as you'd expect there's still a long way to go before they can handle ceilings and other structures with large areas lacking support while setting.
It needs to be covered in a light grey mesh material, with a large circular feature somewhere on the upper hemisphere.
Make that thing an RC Death Star and you won't be able to keep it on store shelves.
As a Canadian, I'm pretty comfortable with where we usually draw the line - somewhere around "riling up people to cause harm".
What bothers me is that phrase in the summary... "anti-religious". Wow. So blasphemy laws then, where you're required by law to treat somebody's dangerous delusion with respect?
I say put some radical Jews, Muslims, and Christians in a room and let the lawsuits fly...
>Programmers don't dictate their code verbally to be transcribed into text format by someone else, so that is a really weird thing to try to use as a counter argument
Yet my post was in response to someone attempting to program by dictation, so somehow it seems completely relevant.
5.9% means it still gets more than 1 in 20 things wrong. That's a LOT when you're feeding the information into a system that requires pretty much a 0% error rate.
Second, there's a huge difference between standard language and specialist syntax. With programming, you're likely going to want a LOT of special formatting that you can type without thinking but it's cumbersome to communicate via speech in a way that won't confuse a speech recognition engine.
And finally - so long as they don't have a related disability - a proficient typist can already type about as fast as they can form decent code in their head. With a bit of 'mousework' for selection and cut-and-paste I don't see speech ever becoming the superior entry method unless and until we have genuine AI that understands your intent rather than your words.
It might be nice to use speech as a macro-invoker, though.
>Do not tie these apps to an autonomous machine on public roads moving at lethal speeds without intelligent oversight in between
My comments on a potential interface were based on a magical world where unicorns fart rainbows and self-driving cars work reliably in all conditions.
And I was talking about the style of interface, not the back-end algorithms and the data they work on.
Stealth advertising; in a few days or a week or so, maybe we will see an article about a wonderful new repository system, and this post will have primed us to absorb it.
I very much like that idea. Presumably something like the Google Maps interface, where you're shown multiple suggested routes ordered by your preferences, then you can drag points off-route if you wish.
Assuming this is for a personal vehicle and not a self-driving taxi or rental, you'd probably also want to have it remember common destinations and routes for you.
Now... how about the display being a large vertical panel between you and the windshield that turns opaque when it needs to be a touchscreen display (to pick your route or to watch a movie or something during your trip) and turns clear if you want to see the world outside?
Well, that didn't take long. Ignorance is the driving force behind the Republican base, after all.
"Guns and Jesus, women are property and keep out the queers!".
And you wonder why people with an education look down on you...
The thing is they figured out that while production is expensive, distribution and display is incredibly inexpensive so they can make a killing. Nobody stops to think that maybe, just maybe, mass distribution should have come with lowered venue prices, because they can gouge and get rich.
I imagine if you could get into the theatre for $5 (and another $5 for concessions), and they still had the occasional usher to remove disruptive people, attendance would shoot through the roof for a net increase in profit.
My standards for movies worthy of a theatre visit would drop significantly if it was $10/person/visit instead of $30, and I suspect I'm not alone in that.
> as you wonder why he won reelection in 2020
There's no need to wonder.
In the unlikely event he lasts that long, AND wins re-election (which is possible, after all, his winning the party nomination and then the presidency were both so unlikely as to be laughable and they happened...), it will be due to his radial base of the ignorant and dispossessed and the remainder of the Republican party too greedy for power and too cowardly to accept the cost of standing up to Trump and his core supporters.
And it'll be the end of the USA's deteriorating international reputation.
>He may well be Satan incarnate, hell bent on the destruction of humanity, but he's increasingly competent at what he's doing, and what he's doing is, for the most part, what he promised to do during the campaign.
That's a lovely narrative you've built there, but it's entirely inconsistent with Trump's every tweet and recorded appearance ever.
He's a nightmare child who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and has bullied his way through life. It got him to the presidency because things were in a state where his particular message sold really well, not because he was a genius tactician, or even remotely qualified to do the job.
That's got to be some good stuff if they seriously think they can do away with the theatres (who get $30/person out of you by the time you hit concessions) without providing the big screen, big sound, or the concessions that are overpriced so the theatre can stay in business despite the ridiculous screening fees. Oh, and BOOST the ticket price an extra $20 just in case you have your spouse or kids in the room when you watch the movie.
Definitely some high quality product they're using to alter their mental states.
>He was jailed because he was a pro-domacracy activist, and they used the suppressive laws to silence him.
Which is something I just don't get. If you're going to arbitrarily apply laws in order to lock up dissenters... just lock up the dissenters. Everybody knows what you're doing anyway, the percentage in denial who would rebel if denial was made more difficult is insignificant.
>Most of us would just dismiss it as some hype, because it requires physical access to the cars.
Yep. Because someone with physical access can do all sorts of things, including putting a tracker on it, cutting a brake line, or attaching a bomb.
Nobody I know habitually checks their vehicles for those kinds of modifications before driving, and I doubt anyone's going to start checking their CAN bus integrity either.