271–280 of 284 posts
Lots of folks here are talking about the latency and throughput, but nobody is amazed at what the robots are doing. Plugging in cables and putting down tape is fiddly and hard. I'm super impressed that they elected to automate those things based on cost merit. Massive kudos to the manufacturing engineers who managed to pull that off.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had invested in a semiconductor factory early last decade, and it had started making bitcoin miners, it had reminding me of Zion from the Matrix because it seemed like the first time that a machine could make another machine which could immediately start earning a negotiable asset and then transacting for resources. Very surreal to think about.
There is a very interesting and creepy story about this called The Gig Economy [1]. Machines end up sending gig workers to do inane tasks, like photographing a certain building at a particular time, to take advantage of bizarre arbitrage opportunities too complicated for a human to notice. Eventually, everyone is just a peripheral of this enormous, inscrutable system skimming money off the real economy. [1] https://z…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I love my PS4 but.. it's really slow. From turning on to getting in a party will take minutes, especially when loading the friends list and their profiles. Beyond this, getting everyone into the same lobby is also tedious due to host issues. I don't know if the Xbone has similar issues but I remember the 360 being able to sign in, be in a party with my friends in under 30 seconds and it just worked.
the ps4 is very fast (1.84 tflops, effectively a supercomputer 15 years ago). what you're describing are network issues. the internet is slow!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I love my PS4 but.. it's really slow. From turning on to getting in a party will take minutes, especially when loading the friends list and their profiles. Beyond this, getting everyone into the same lobby is also tedious due to host issues. I don't know if the Xbone has similar issues but I remember the 360 being able to sign in, be in a party with my friends in under 30 seconds and it just worked.
Xbox is better but still not as good as the Xbox 360 imo. In terms of software (excluding games), it feels like both consoles took a major step back this generation. Aside: Voice controls got a lot worse with Cortana than what was available in the Kinect, not that anyone cares about that in 2020. ‘Xbox pause’ was magical in 2012. Universal search was better in Xbox 360, too. I don’t know why they took such a major st…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
cryptocurrency needed faucets and it helped adoption
Cryptocurrency is the biggest backwards step for the climate since CFCs.
Would you be willing to accept or at least corroborate that cryptocurrency mining is one of the cleanest sectors and a boon for sustainability?
70-80% of that energy use is renewable energy or reducing pollution - specifically hydrocarbons. So existing energy is not being wasted or reallocated, and additional unclean energy is not being ramped up to facilitate mining, and previously wasted energy that was going into the atmosphere is now being used.
The educated discussion is to make sure it stays this way. As nation states are the only actors that could mine at a loss with inefficient ways.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Controls engineer here - no, that's pretty normal. I'm accustomed to automotive work, but I believe the electronics assembly lines are similar. The flexible materials handling stuff (connecting flat flex cables? Applying Kapton tape?) is indeed super impressive, but the timing is ordinary. A sizeable 6-axis robot like those used here has a minimum cycle time of a second or two for the simplest possible "move in, plac…
Can you, or someone else, share your experience in becoming a Controls Engineer? Is your educational background in Mechanical Engineering or Electrical Engineering? I’ve always found programming robots to be fascinating. And especially when building a robot to build other robots. I’m sure others will be interested in learning of this as well.
One of the most important parts of my education learning that there is no black magic in technology. Everything we manufacture is a pyramid that builds complexity using leaky abstractions. At the lowest levels, you have atomic physics of doped silicon and charge carriers. At the highest levels of abstraction, you interact with those atoms by saying "Hey, Siri, do I need an umbrella today?" Someone, somewhere, either understands or wrote a tool that understands every layer between those two. We're a few decades out from the time when someone could think about the whole stack all at once.
If you want to really program robots, you need to understand a bit of the technology with which they're built (encoders and servomotors, control loops, motion planning, real-time operating systems) and then just pick up a teach pendant, and apply what you know. Do be aware of the value in abstractions, and don't try to reinvent the wheel, but if you don't know the fundamentals you'll be tripped up every time the abstraction leaks a little.
I didn't touch a PLC or robot until after college when the job required it. It's true that working effectively is all about familiarity the toolsets provided by various manufacturers, but I don't think that would be an effective thing to teach in a university setting. If you posted a listing for a recent graduate controls job requiring experience in your particular flavor of robots or PLCs, you're going to have a bad time - anyone with a CS/CE/EE/ME background could do it. Learn how to work, learn how to learn, learn how to plan, and by that time picking up a teach pendant and getting the robot to run a loop from point A to B and back to A will be the easy part.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A piece of wisdom I decided to follow recently. If you are entering a new hobby, buy Japanese for the best value/price ratio. Served me well when buying a guitar and amp. Can anyone else support this? Does the type of manufacturing outlined above play an important role?
Out of interest, what music gear did you purchase, and how did you find it? I'm currently looking to expand my guitar collection (from 1 to 2!)
The Pacifica was a bit hard to find. I think the next batch is shipping in early August from what I can tell.
r/guitar and r/guitarlessons are good resources.
If you enjoy that you will probably also enjoy the fully-automated Valve Steam Controller assembly line (including video)[0]. [0]: https://www.theverge.com/2015/12/11/9890914/valves-steam-con...
Amazing stuff. I imagine soon enough people will stop asking for "Made in [your own country]", and start asking for "Made by humans"
I wonder if this speaker to its nature of being a Japanese article but the tone is largely awe and pride of the accomplishment lacking the usual fear of automation and jobs lost I see in other such articles. >“If you keep watching them long enough, they will start to look like humans,” said one engineer. The look in his eye is gentle like a father watching over his children. Unlike large robots that lift heavy items,…
I don't know if it is just cliche, but I have heard that Japanese people have a very different relationship to robots/automatization than western countries. Were we immediatly think Skynet, they see something that helps them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. Things built for vertical assembly, like the Sony Walkman and the Apple Macintosh IIci, are easy to assemble automatically. All the assembly moves are straight down. This has those annoying cable connectors that have to be slid in edgewise. Yet they got that to work. I'm amazed that Sony let out detailed pictures of the cable connecting operation. Looks like they use both a camera and a force feedback wrist.
> Apple Macintosh IIci Insert meme "Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time" But I still have one somewhere in a cupboard.