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Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

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Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#281

Post by seanmcdirmid »

jen20 wrote: post #279
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The computer of 10 years ago is still a lot cheaper than a modern model. Deflation stops basically only if hardware advancement stops. EVs are a great example: they keep getting cheaper for what they provide, even if the price stays the same. 200 miles of range 5 years ago is now 400+ miles of range today. Compared to ICEs, where advancement has stalled for the last 20 years, which seem like a worse deal every year.

> Compared to ICEs, where advancement has stalled for the last 20 years, It hasn't really stalled: VVT, VCR, Cylinder deactivation that works properly, and start-stop becoming commonplace are all meaningful improvements (though smaller than the ones seen in EVs over the same time frame, which makes sense given the relative maturity).

ICE advancements haven’t materially affected car performance like EV advancements have. Start-stop is considered an annoyance to most car owners, for example, not a feature.

It is mostly because ICE tech is mature and has no real place to go for improvements beyond incremental refinement. EVs can ride the wave of battery tech advancements for another decade or two.

Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#283

Post by what »

midnightclubbed wrote: post #196
Forgeties79 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're paying cash/under the table, then maybe. But even then a twice a week household cleaning hire is going to cost upwards of $1500/mo unless you're being particularly exploitative. If you're not under the table, you're paying payroll taxes, probably paying for a payroll service, etc. so you're talking $2000+. At best you can maybe stay under $20k a year. When you really look at the economics of it, a robot tha…

This comment seems insane to me. Like at $50 an hour thats 30 hours a month, or 8 hoursish a week. How dirty or huge is the house? And $50 an hour is way over what most hourly degree edgucated workers earn so definitely not exploitation.

I pay $40/h for 4 hours once a month. If the wife had her way, it would be weekly.

Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#284

Post by what »

midnightclubbed wrote: post #198
RussianCow wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But even then a twice a week household cleaning hire is going to cost upwards of $1500/mo unless you're being particularly exploitative. Sorry, what? Unless you're doing a deep clean of your house twice a week or you live in a particularly HCOL area, those numbers don't add up. You shouldn't be spending more than $1k/month on household chores, and even that seems high. Source: A client of ours runs a "personal help…

Even in high cost of living coastal Southern California these numbers are insane unless you have a $10mil house with 10,000sqft

Not really? I pay $40/h, it takes them 4 hours to clean a 4 bed/2 bath. I do it once a month, but they’re talking twice a week.

Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#285

Post by lobocinza »

spockz wrote: post #272
browsingonly wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI in its current form has limited usefulness for most people. That's not what I'm seeing. My mom always wanted Google to just answer questions, and now ChatGPT can. She uses it enough in her daily life that she bought a subscription. Yes, she knows it hallucinates and you have to double check everything, but so far she finds a ton of use for it even with those caveats. Now, I agree that a personal servant robot wo…

We already have robot grass trimmers and they work pretty well. Why would you want a crude, inefficient, facsimile of a human push or power an inefficient form of mowing the lawn?

For when they don't work pretty well and for a thousand other things besides trimming grasss.

Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#286

Post by generuso »

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #41
mlmonkey wrote: post #19

I still think dumping BD was one of the biggest mistakes of Sundar's career. And that's saying something.

There's got to be something wrong at the core of BD. They've been pawned off a bunch of times, and they still don't have products out the factory line like they should. I think the tech community has been impressed by their videos, but the fact that their most sold thing is a toy dog at a luxury car price point says a lot about the company. My personal take is that one of the reasons is their posture against ML. They…

Marc Raibert was a student of Ivan Sutherland. Sutherland had a lot of pull at DARPA. This facilitated the unique prototyping work done at Boston Dynamics to get noticed and supported by DARPA.

But as a flip side of this, Boston Dynamics developed certain idiosyncratic interests in getting the hydraulic valves just right, etc. Their machines required a lot of tender care, (expensive!) and were dangerous to be around.

When Google acquired them, many things were mismatched. Andy Rubin, the VP at Google who advocated for BD, got fired for alleged sexual misconduct. This cast a shadow on the whole plan that he was trying to implement. DARPA finding did not sit well with Google's ethics. They pushed BD to stop getting grants from DARPA.

Expensive and dangerous robots were not an ideal fit for AI experimentation. Google was buying cheap and much safer tabletop robots for that. All in all, there was no good fit, and after spending tons of money on it, Google have gotten rid of them. They did encourage BD to develop a cheaper, safer electric robot, and this became Spot Mini.

Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#288

Post by cubano »

So if three Tech companies (Boston Dynamics, Google, and Softbank), very smart ones at that, couldn't think of a way to make Atlas profitable, well for sure an automotive company should have no problem at all figuring it out.

Huh?

I mean...what evidence does the management at Hyundai have that shows them that these things aren't just YouTube stars? What teams does it have in place to start the transition from not profitable?

Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#289

Post by glitchdout »

stavros wrote: post #42
Hugsbox wrote: post #31

I don't understand why they would implement humanoid robots instead of purpose-built robots. The human form is not the most optimal way to do most tasks, especially as it relates to manufacturing. Robots don't need to look like humans, they need to be useful . Seems like putting in an awful lot of extra unnecessary work to end up with a worse result.

It's much cheaper to create one general-purpose robot for everything than many different robots, each optimized to each task.

War in Ukraine does not validate that assessment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiGwWwcnT7M

Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#290

Post by dehugger »

monocasa wrote: post #180
dehugger wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was trying to think about the why with Cursor, and the only thing that makes sense to me is they wanted experts in making harnesses so that they can pivot that expertise towards building harnesses intended for autonomous agents to use instead of humans. There's no world where a 60 billion IDE makes sense.

I think it's more that Space X's valuation is ridiculous, and they need acquisitions that are ridiculous to pretend that the emperor is still wearing clothes. When cursor is selling for $60B, then grok has to really be worth several times that, right?

I don't know that I disagree, but this had to be in the works before the IPO right? Acquisitions don't typically materialize in a timeline of <1 week (or perhaps they do when someone walks in and offers 60B...)
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