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Ben Schmidt@freeptop.bsky.social |
31 followers 57 following 82 posts
I tell robots how to do their jobs. Pragmatic Progressive. SFF fan. Pittsburgh Penguins fan. Former Industrial DJ. Huge nerd. He/him.
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Ben Schmidt
@freeptop.bsky.social
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One of my favorite parts of the CIA World Factbook that is available on-line is that it compares the size of other countries to states in the US. The UK, for example, is listed as "about twice the size of Pennsylvania".
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![Alexandra Merideth Erin [she/her] - in my Brain Damage arc's avatar](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/avatar/plain/did:plc:wp4qvglnypcemej6fh2kjvs4/bafkreiadcgiumtppqhqx7kueavjataxsyodiyy4rmsd3sc46xiywrocqma@jpeg){kind=small}
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Alexandra Merideth Erin [she/her] - in my Brain Damage arc
@alexandraerin.com
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"Your AI girlfriends are neither girls nor friends." is not even the second most barbed point in that string
8 replies 249 reposts 830 likes
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Swapna Krishna
@swapnakrishna.com
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The Apollo program wasn’t about space exploration at all, and that’s why we haven’t been back to the moon since the 1970s.
5 replies 14 reposts 102 likes
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Ben Schmidt
@freeptop.bsky.social
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This article absolutely nails it when it comes to “AI” hype.
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Larry Rubinow
@elrubino.bsky.social
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This piece by Dave Karpf is great. Been thinking for a while about the rebranding of machine learning as AI, and Dave nails it here.
2 replies 14 reposts 45 likes
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Ben Schmidt
@freeptop.bsky.social
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I mean, that's probably just because nobody needs to google the meaning behind the "oh no, it's the end of the semester, and I haven't been to any of the classes" dream.
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Ben Schmidt
@freeptop.bsky.social
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I didn’t expect the cloud cover to clear up enough, but we did get to see some pretty lights!
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Ben Schmidt
@freeptop.bsky.social
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While most of that is true, the funny thing is, it wasn't in the case of Uber. They genuinely tried to make self-driving cars. I know many of the people they hired to start up their self-driving efforts. Then they treated them poorly, so they left and founded a rival self-driving car company.
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Ben Schmidt
@freeptop.bsky.social
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One last note - I really hate how AI has become a buzz word now. Not all AI is LLM. And not all robotics involves AI, for that matter. (Personally, I'm in the camp that Machine Learning isn't really "artificial intelligence" just yet, but I realize I'm standing against the tide of marketing now)
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Ben Schmidt
@freeptop.bsky.social
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Overall, this restaurant doesn't sound to me like they're really trying to sell food there. They want media attention to point to in order to get money to fund development. If they were actually ready to go, they'd be going to the fast food companies and pitching their product directly to them.
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Ben Schmidt
@freeptop.bsky.social
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When automating, start by replicating the process people are currently doing, then look for ways that robots can improve things. For instance - don't do individual batches of fries. Do large batches. Have it just dump the fries into a bin for humans to salt and portion out - that saves workers' time
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Ben Schmidt
@freeptop.bsky.social
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Overall, if this was approached as an engineering problem, and not a "get VC funding" one, the whole approach would be different. It should be about automating the annoying and/or dangerous parts (the point about the hot frying oil definitely brings back unpleasant memories...)
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Ben Schmidt
@freeptop.bsky.social
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Second - someone in engineering is feeding a story to the marketing people. Timing things is pretty easy for a computer. But manipulating loose onions and freshly-ground beef? Yeah, that part is going to be hard. Humans don't always do great there, either.
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Ben Schmidt
@freeptop.bsky.social
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First - it's trying to do too much. Fast food restaurants don't grind their beef on-site. They have pre-made patties delivered, and they grill up those. That alone would cut down the time required by all this. Making individual orders of fries? Why?
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Ben Schmidt
@freeptop.bsky.social
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As someone who currently works in robotics, and back when I was a teenager, worked in a burger stand, I feel particularly qualified to comment on this. My immediate reaction? This restaurant is a tech demo that exists to get VC funding via media publicity.
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Ben Schmidt
@freeptop.bsky.social
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We went to see VNV Nation, who always give a great show. Kids were spoiled for their first concert 😀
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Ben Schmidt
@freeptop.bsky.social
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Not traumatic at all! We all had a good time!
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Ben Schmidt
@freeptop.bsky.social
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We're taking our kids to their first concert tonight, and I just keep thinking that we're now the parents from this old Bloom Country strip 🤣
www.gocomics.com/bloomcounty/...
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Ben Schmidt
@freeptop.bsky.social
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We hadn’t made concrete plans, which allowed us to change them last minute and head Northwest instead of due North. Managed to be clear of both clouds and crowds - couldn’t have hoped for better!
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Ben Schmidt
@freeptop.bsky.social
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Considering that the day before Subway started the five dollar footlong campaign, the 12" sandwich cost $4.29, this doesn't surprise me in the least.
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Ben Schmidt
@freeptop.bsky.social
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After having spent the first 7 years of my career in Silicon Valley, I can say that California is definitely the state that needs to pass such a law. I avoided buying a cell phone for years to avoid being on-call 24/7.
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skelly
@iid.bsky.social
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working in the area of math that led to this tech has been so fucking wild because there's just no way you can trick yourself into believing a lot of linear algebra is going to add up to consciousness unless you have been marinating in the bad brain juices for decades now
20 replies 254 reposts 762 likes
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Ben Schmidt
@freeptop.bsky.social
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Hopefully it at least means they bought it? (As an aside - I really enjoyed the omnibus Binti Trilogy!)
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Anthony Moser
@anthonymoser.bsky.social
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join me, please, in calling them what they are: predictive models ChatGPT is a predictive text model CoPilot is a predictive code model Stable Diffusion is a predictive image model they are not generative. they predict what something you described might be like. they do not make that thing
25 replies 554 reposts 1247 likes
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Kurt Busiek
@kurtbusiek.bsky.social
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THIS. "Boycotting" an election doesn't send the message that you're unhappy, because it doesn't lose them money like it would for a business. You're not the nation's customer. Refusing to vote sends the message that you're fine with whatever result you get, that other people can decide for you.
80 replies 1273 reposts 3307 likes
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Ben Schmidt
@freeptop.bsky.social
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Random personal story: Back when I had long hair and wore a black trench coat, I got approached, on multiple occasions, by people asking to buy weed off me. I've never smoked weed at all. A fact that has surprised even some people who know me. I'm weird enough without it, thank you!
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Ben Schmidt
@freeptop.bsky.social
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Most of the hockey reporters are still over at twitter, which has a tendency to keep most hockey talk over there, at least in my experience.
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Ben Schmidt
@freeptop.bsky.social
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Oh do I ever feel this one. I had a manager who repeatedly told me to make one at the start of each day. And then at the start of the next day, I'd promptly forget to do this as I dove into the high priority thing I'd been assigned at the end of the previous day.
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Ben Schmidt
@freeptop.bsky.social
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It is weird to me that as a card-carrying nerd, I'm even watching the Super Bowl, but somehow I ended up with a kid that wanted to watch it, so, here we are.
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Ben Schmidt
@freeptop.bsky.social
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The best indication that Gen X is now the target market for the Super Bowl is how many 30-40 year old references I've seen in the commercials already.
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Ben Schmidt
@freeptop.bsky.social
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From a scientific point of view, this actually makes more sense than any horror movie scenario around mutant wolves. Radiation-resistant wolves would survive to procreate. There's no survival advantage to becoming some sort of human-hunting monster when the humans already left.
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Ben Schmidt
@freeptop.bsky.social
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I baffle a lot of other software engineers when I tell them I don't use an IDE. I just use emacs and vi (and minimal configuration on my emacs, at that). But at least I don't end up proliferating an obvious typo in a variable name via tab-completion!
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alisonborealis (she/her)
@alisonborealis.bsky.social
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Amazon updated the desktop Audible app and deleted all my Audible downloads. They actually went in and removed the material I'd (completely legally) downloaded onto my computer. Physical media is important.
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Katie Mack
@astrokatie.com
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In clinical trials of new treatments, when the treatment is clearly and obviously immediately effective it is sometimes considered unethical to continue to withhold it from the control group. Pretty sure we passed that milestone about a decade ago with basic income experiments.
42 replies 1649 reposts 3649 likes
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Ben Schmidt
@freeptop.bsky.social
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So it became a bit of an easy retort, and an implicit "F you!" when someone who'd never been to Pittsburgh talked about the city being dirty or smokey. So, yeah, cringey videos. But we kind of loved them. You don't generally bring that sort of thing up to outsiders just to get mocked for it again.
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Ben Schmidt
@freeptop.bsky.social
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So when Pittsburgh was named "#1 most livable city" by some group or another, it was a _very big deal_ here. Because it was a validation that the city had changed. And it came at a time when Pittsburgh was getting hit hard by most of the mills closing.
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Ben Schmidt
@freeptop.bsky.social
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In the '70s, Pittsburgh started a massive program to clean up the city. This is the timeframe where Point State Park was created, for example. It was transformative. Growing up in the '80s, I never knew the smokey city. But believe me, I heard about it. Especially from anyone who didn't live here.
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Ben Schmidt
@freeptop.bsky.social
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But that does bring up some memories, which make me feel like providing some context for such a thing. At the height of the steel industry, Pittsburgh (rightfully) gained a reputation for being a smoke-covered city from the steel mills. "Hell with the lid off" was the line from a Boston writer.
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Ben Schmidt
@freeptop.bsky.social
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So, I actually watched the video, and discovered it wasn't even the video I vaguely remembered! But the length is probably the reason why. I remember 30-second commercials. That was probably for a local news program that aired once and that was it.
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Ben Schmidt
@freeptop.bsky.social
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Huh. I vaguely remember that from when it came out. It’s one of those things that just ended up in the memory hole, I guess 🤣
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Ben Schmidt
@freeptop.bsky.social
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Tonight, my brain decided to inform me that “roots bloody roots” and “whoomp there it is” have the same number of syllables by placing the latter words in Sepultura’s performance of the former…
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Ben Schmidt
@freeptop.bsky.social
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This is the ladder I climb to get to my home office. The cat got up there before me. She taught herself to climb the ladder about a year ago, because she was upset I was up there without her. Now she just goes up there even when I’m not there 🤣
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Ben Schmidt
@freeptop.bsky.social
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On a tangent note from this, I got three Lawrence Watt-Evans books for Christmas (they were on my wish list), and I finished reading them just the other day! His Ethshar books really are a genuine treat.
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Ben Schmidt
@freeptop.bsky.social
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I would think by now the importance of Supreme Court nominations could not be overlooked, following McConnell's corrupt moves to ensure Trump filled 3 seats there. That led directly to the overturning of Roe v Wade. Also, the decision preventing the forgiveness of student debt. And many others.
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Ben Schmidt
@freeptop.bsky.social
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Here’s the funny thing I’ve learned by working in robotics: even the fancy neural nets we learned about back then are really very sophisticated pattern recognition algorithms.
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Ben Schmidt
@freeptop.bsky.social
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If you want to know how my day is going, I went to get the coffee maker ready, and discovered a spider was in the water well. I should not have to deal with such a thing before I have my first cup of coffee, but at the same time, dealing with it after was not exactly an option
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Ben Schmidt
@freeptop.bsky.social
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The thing about what people call "AI" is that it isn't really intelligent. They're basically just pattern recognition algorithms. And like pareidolia, it can end up with plenty of false positives on those pattern matches...
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Ben Schmidt
@freeptop.bsky.social
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It's worth noting that this apparently requires being signed up for the SAVE plan (see the article), so if you fit the criteria here, make sure you're signed up!
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Ben Schmidt
@freeptop.bsky.social
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Happy Birthday!
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Ben Schmidt
@freeptop.bsky.social
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The original: www.bluemilkspecial.com/comic/many-b...
0 replies 0 reposts 5 likes