Ex-Googler's startup comes out of stealth with simple, clever robot design • Hacker News Board

Re: Ex-Googler's startup comes out of stealth with simple, clever robot design

#321

Post by macrolime » Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 5:47 PM UTC

kwhitefoot wrote: post #315

macrolime wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call your neighbor every time you need to put some dishes in the dishwasher or do some laundry? You could have a maid but then you need to have them around all the time or you need a lot of space. Also many places in Europe it's essentially illegal to have a maid.

> illegal to have a maid Utter bollocks!

I said essentialy. There's certainly companies providing cleaning services, but you may find thats it's essentially impossible to find locals who will clean and cook for you every night. The alternative is then an au pair, but they're allowed to do only limited housework and some people have even gone to jail for having multiple au pairs working as maids, tough technically mostly for breaking immigration laws for having more than one au pair.

Re: Ex-Googler's startup comes out of stealth with simple, clever robot design

#322

Post by zaroth » Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 5:50 PM UTC

orestarod wrote: post #316

notJim wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, what did happen to them? The implication of your statement was that they were obviously totally fine, but is that a given? It's possible they were miserable and then died. Switching careers is not always easy and smooth.

I believe cost cuts to maximize profit consistently cause an enormous number of people to lose their jobs, yet no one addresses that.

I mean this is absolutely true in the sense that 99.9% of the hours that humans used to spend doing things across history have already been automated away.

The amount of time we used to spend making a single yard of cloth, or creating 10 pounds of flour is almost unfathomable today.

The prevailing economic theory was that we would automate away so much work that leisure time would prevail. Instead our massive increases in output have just driven greater consumption.

But the difference made by housecleaning robots isn’t the straw the breaks the camels back.

It would take a massive breakthrough in AI to eliminate the majority of knowledge workers at the scale that agriculture and textiles have already been transformed.

Re: Ex-Googler's startup comes out of stealth with simple, clever robot design

#323

Post by macrolime » Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 5:53 PM UTC

patrickaljord wrote: post #189

macrolime wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call your neighbor every time you need to put some dishes in the dishwasher or do some laundry? You could have a maid but then you need to have them around all the time or you need a lot of space. Also many places in Europe it's essentially illegal to have a maid.

How is it illegal to have a maid in EU? Never heard of this one so genuinely curious. It's super expensive for sure but not illegal at least here in France.

Maybe this is mostly in Northern Europe. There's certainly companies providing cleaning services, but you may find thats it's essentially impossible to find locals who will clean and cook for you every night. The alternative is then an au pair, but they're allowed to do only limited housework and some people have even gone to jail for having multiple au pairs working as maids, tough technically for breaking immigration laws by having multiple au pairs, it's judged harshly because a lot of people believe the concept of maids is nothing but oppression of poor women.

Re: Ex-Googler's startup comes out of stealth with simple, clever robot design

#324

Post by callalex » Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 5:56 PM UTC

jamesrcole wrote: post #281

Noos wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's something darkly funny about people so embarrassed to have a cleaning person in their house, that they create a solution that would put most cleaning people out of a job. The knowledge workers automate jobs away, leading pundits to say the future for low-skilled workers is to provide boutique services for the upper class. The end being that the upper class is too ashamed to actually consume those services if…

I have never hired a cleaner, but I imagine there are also people who are uncomfortable having strangers in their house and handling their things. I have also heard about people getting cleaners who initially do a good job, but whose work quality degrades over time. You wouldn't have that problem with a robot.

Until it gets a million software updates to add “features” that are really just ploys to slow the device down and encourage you to upgrade ;)

Re: Ex-Googler's startup comes out of stealth with simple, clever robot design

#325

Post by callalex » Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 5:59 PM UTC

greeniron wrote: post #246

bananamerica wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s obviously not just about cost. Human beings have schedules and lives of their own. They must eat, drink, shit, fuck, and watch Netflix. I cannot keep a human being in my closet to serve me anytime I want. I’d be willing to pay a premium for a mindless servant that’s available nearly 100% of time.

move to Singapore then. they have full-time, live-in maids from indonesia or phillipines that can cost as low as USD 300-400 a month. i grew up in Singapore, where I had 3 maids on staff at all times, and they took care of everything, 24/7.

Not everyone is ok with treating a fellow human like a robot.

Re: Ex-Googler's startup comes out of stealth with simple, clever robot design

#326

Post by memco » Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 6:04 PM UTC

jamesrcole wrote: post #281

Noos wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's something darkly funny about people so embarrassed to have a cleaning person in their house, that they create a solution that would put most cleaning people out of a job. The knowledge workers automate jobs away, leading pundits to say the future for low-skilled workers is to provide boutique services for the upper class. The end being that the upper class is too ashamed to actually consume those services if…

I have never hired a cleaner, but I imagine there are also people who are uncomfortable having strangers in their house and handling their things. I have also heard about people getting cleaners who initially do a good job, but whose work quality degrades over time. You wouldn't have that problem with a robot.

Assuming that the robot is properly maintained and no parts break.

Re: Ex-Googler's startup comes out of stealth with simple, clever robot design

#327

Post by michannne » Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 6:11 PM UTC

PedroBatista wrote: post #262

From a customer and person outside the SV Chocolate Factory bubble perspective this is a $18K Roomba with coat stand.

Silicon Valley never ceases to amaze me with how willing they are to overpay for underperformance with the promise of future overachievement

Re: Ex-Googler's startup comes out of stealth with simple, clever robot design

#328

Post by 0xffff2 » Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 6:13 PM UTC

kwhitefoot wrote: post #317

koheripbal wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is funny. The main chore I want a robot to do is laundry. I'd pay good money if a robot could simply put the clothes of the hamper in the laundry machine, transfer to the dryer, and then put them away.

Just buy a washer drier. Don't have a hamper just put the laundry in the machine until it is full then switch it on. Go out to work, come home to clothes washed and dried. Granted, you do have to take them out and put them away.

>Just buy a washer drier.

I live in an apartment with shared laundry

>Granted, you do have to take them out and put them away.

Which is by far the most time consuming part of doing laundry

Re: Ex-Googler's startup comes out of stealth with simple, clever robot design

#329

Post by mav3rick » Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 6:15 PM UTC

koheripbal wrote: post #204

semi_good wrote: post #68

> ex googler Does this mean we get lots of hype and an inferior product that is eventually phased out an replaced by an acquisition built by non-google engineers?

I'm going to just start putting that on all my PR. Ex-Googler. No one is going to check, and if it biases the opinions of idiots... so be it...

The sooner you're exposed as a fraud the better. So please definitely use it :)

Re: Ex-Googler's startup comes out of stealth with simple, clever robot design

#330

Post by snowwrestler » Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 6:26 PM UTC

espadrine wrote: post #131

spyckie2 wrote: post #26

Things it can't do: - go up stairs - get up after a fall / reset itself - pick up heavy objects - precise motion (so no cooking) - interact with buttons or touch screens (so laundry might be hard) The one use case I think it might be worth it is if the robot can take a room full of toys and return everything back to where it belongs. Kind of like a one click, reset this room. If it can help me keep organized and clea…

> I'd gladly pay 5k for a robot that can auto-organize my stuff around the house The main equation for general-use household robots is: can it beat human fares? A good weekly cleaner (4 hours) is about €22/h in Paris, or €4.5k/year. Let’s say your robot lives 4 years, similar to your computer (which seems fair, since it is one, and an abused one at that). Since you amortize its price over 4 years, its initial cost mu…

I use a good weekly cleaner, and she does not organize my stuff. If anything, hiring her has forced me to organize more frequently so my stuff is not in her way when she comes to clean.

It's a totally different use case to have a labor-saving device available 24/7. For example, I did not stop using my dishwasher when I hired a cleaner, and my cleaner does not do my dishes or put them away.