Disagree, it was a bad move in two different ways. It was anticlimactic emotionaly and it didn’t convey the right message rationaly either.
Anticlimax because the first robot hyped up the entrance of the second robot. It was emotionaly conveying that “hey you think these groovy movements are great? Check out this guy.” But once it become clear that the next guy is just a dumb statue it deflated. How lively the first one was made the second one that much worse in context. A step back.
That is the emotional fail. But perhaps you don’t care about that. Think about what additional message the stage presence of the second robot conveys. The first robot estabilished that they can make a smooth robot. They drove home that the robot is usually autonomous, but in any way it is not pupetted by a guy in a motion tracking suit. The presentation covered how the robots will be used, who will be the first pilot costumer, how will it be introduced and how will it be manufactured. These are all great answers to a concern someone from the audience might have.
But what is the concern to which the second robot is the answer for? Did you doubt even for a second their ability to make the same robot you can already see on the stage but in blue? Because i didn’t. Not before they shown the static demonstration. If they just said “we are working on a production optimised, and streamlined v2” i would have totaly accepted that they can do it.
The only message the second non-working robot communicates is that they are having trouble with their production model. They couldn’t even make it stand in one spot and wave politely! Something is cooked with it and badly. It adds nothing positive to the message of the presentation while introduces the very visible sign that something is wrong.
Now, do I think they won’t be able to solve the problems eventually? Of course not. Heck maybe it will be up and running within days. But why show something which is not working? It is such an unforced error. The first robot could have just done the dance then pointed at the screen and then walked out and nothing would have been less about the whole presentation.
I'm not trying to say you're wrong. I'm trying to say that it did not kill the "vibe" for me, so to say. For all I know they _wanted_ the second one to move, but it wasn't ready in time, and situations like that are completely legitimate. I still am very impressed by what they _did_ demonstrate. Can't win them all!
> Decisions will not be made based on emotions from a demo at CES.
Sure. It is not a mistake with grave consequences. Something can be a mistake and not matter much in the long run. Like the CEO could have went on stage wearing mismatched shoes, or wearing a red clown nose. It wouldn't ruin everything. Wouldn't bankrupt them. If the robots are good they will be still sold. But it would just undermine the message a little bit. For no good reason whatsoever.
The fundamental questions will be: Do the robots work? Are they cheaper than the equivalent labour from humans? (including all costs on both sides of the comparison.) Nothing else matters in the long run. They could have just never went to CES and it would be all the same.
> Im sorry, but this is just too much.
ok :) if you say so. But then tell me. What did the stage presence of the second robot add to the show?
Collecting analytics like this is effectively the same as play-testing physical board games in-development. People play a game, information is gathered, and the game is tuned in response to that. If zero information were ever gathered, games could not be balanced or tuned for other things like unforeseen problems.
Please, show me a piece of software, or game, that is perfect the first time it is made.
So long as personal information is not collected, consent is not morally necessary.
If I collect information on how often a coin-op Street Fighter II game is played in an arcade, while collecting no personal information, consent is not needed.
You are not entitled to play the game, which is hosted on their server which requires bandwidth and other resources. In the same way that you are free to make demands about how software runs on your machine, the author is free to make demands about the use of their software.
If the data gathered is only on gameplay, and not something that can be used as PII like IP addresses or device information, then it should be fine. Gathering things like the score and time spent completing the level, isn't a problem. This could be used to rank the levels, without gathering any user information.
There are games that let you opt-out, hell even ones that ask you when you first open the game. There are bad apples, but there are plenty of good ones too.
If it asks you then it's neither opt-in nor opt-out. Then it depends on how it asks you. If it's a simple yes/no, it's fine. If it's typical tech bullshit where your options are a big "I want to make the world a better place and save the whales by sending my data" or a tiny button in the corner labeled "maybe later" that takes you to another screen saying "please confirm you want to opt out of data collection and kill a bunch of kittens" then not so good.
How is it not obvious to everyone reading HN that janky Android "TV" boxes (like the article references) are a by-default threat?
Like seriously, many of them are sold for stupid cheap prices like $5/ea. Or advertise unlimited movies/shows/etc for similarly unbelievable prices.
Putting aside the copyright infringement aspect of it, to me it's extremely obvious "wait... _why_ am I paying so little here?".
No, it's not because movies and shows are 99.9999% profit (spoiler: they aren't), it's because you're _paying_ to install a backdoor that will rip and tear everything on your network it can.
You like having a credit card? That's precious, it's mine now.
Brand damage; The big players have more to loose from being caught installing backdoors on devices sold to the general public, and will probably put in something in the T&Cs to deflect their responsibilities.
> it's because you're _paying_ to install a backdoor that will rip and tear everything on your network it can.
I mean, maybe. More likely imo you're paying for the absolute cheapest hardware and fastest never-updated software someone could throw together and make _any_ profit on. Someone probably had 100k shitty little chips sitting in a warehouse and this was a way to do something with them.
The outcome is really the same, it's just the steps to get there are more human nature.
Even many TVs with "reputable" western brand names, on the shelf at major US retailers, are often sold at a loss on the hardware and the difference is made up by collecting advertising data.
At a price tag of $5/ea the cost of just advertising and distribution exceeds the cost of the product itself. There is zero room for profit. The business model is installing back doors to the "clients" and stealing money, information, and anything else from them. Consider that even the cost of the included remote is a huge part of the actual hardware cost, and nobody is going to buy something like this without a remote.
Shit man my Pet Feeder setup a back door to my network.. ended up reverse engineering the entire tuya piece of shit just so I could keep the automatic feeder running.
Fucking everyone is spying. I started downloading and decrypting apps from the App Store. It’s a god damn nightmare. Random apps are storing keys in the keychain (thanks expo!) that never leave our apple account. They follow us forever. You can’t delete them. Well.. there’s one way but it involves backing up your phone, putting it in recovery mode, and restoring from backup.
> Or advertise unlimited movies/shows/etc for similarly unbelievable prices.
I mean, it's pretty obvious the services are paid piracy. But it's got to cost something to pull VOD movies from wherever and serve them with an http server limited at 8 mbps even for content that exceeds that. Obviously someone doesn't want the content they stole to be easy to steal... too bad you can't reasonably play it either. :P
Well the first thing to check is, do you own and operate any of these janky Android "TV" boxes sold by companies nobody has heard of? If yes? Then there's probably your answer.
Certificates are only as good as the number of companies that recognise them as worthwhile.
A CCNA holds a lot more water than Google certifications, despite there being plenty of alternatives to CCNA such as Network+ etc.
There are loads of certificates out there, IT and otherwise, that are just cash grabs by the issuer. Their relevancy is also industry-specific. Accounting certifications hold a lot more validity than many IT certifications.
As an IT vet I doubt Google certs will really get much traction. And with the specific aspect of AI certifications, I doubt they will stay relevant for long due to how much the AI ecosystem is in flux year to year.
I think where these could find some value is as an alternative to going through a possibly paid video/coursicle type tutorial for self-learners. Ostensibly, learners would be getting up-to-date information straight from the authorities, although this could age poorly if Google fails to update the content regularly.
I'd make the case it depends on who's defining what is and is not a crime.
Consider that the POTUS is a 34x convicted criminal, and yet he not only has total freedom, he literally has the highest quality personal protection ecosystem on the planet, and so much more.
So, who is the criminal here? Which are the crimes? And what is _actually_ going to happen?
He was charged 34 times for the same payment, multiple times per check, because they were entered as payment for lawyer instead of hush money for porn star.
"Falsifying business records" is a not a crime, unless it's done in the pursuit of another crime. The other crime was trying to influence the election (literally his job as a candidate). This is despite the fact that the books were cooked as payment to lawyer in 2017, after the election.
Alvin Bragg, the person who convicted Trump, specifically ran on prosecuting Trump.
It was entirely a political prosecution. If Trump had paid cash, he would have 10000x counts against him, one for each dollar bill.
34x of 4 years means he could have been convicted for a maximum of 134 years. One count for 4 years wasn't enough, they had to give him more time than some serial killers.
The judge specifically postponed the conviction after the election to see if he should receive prison terms or not. He absolutely would have had he lost.
When you're talking about changed laws, are you referring to the civil case against E. Jean Carroll? And when you are talking about "charges that the banks said weren't even an issue" are you talking about the civil fraud case? No banks were victims in the hush money case, which is where the felonies are from.
There was no victim in the hush money case which is why the prosecution was clearly political. Even Andrew Cuomo, Democrat and former NY DA, said that those charges never would have been filed against anyone other than Trump.
What made it a felony under New York law is the claim that the falsified records were intended to conceal another crime, specifically efforts to influence an election.
To a decent approximation, if Trump had not been running for office when he did this, then it wouldn't have been a crime. But then, he wouldn't have cared to cover it up.
Covering up that he got off with a porn star isn't the problem. Like Bill Clinton, it's the actual particulars of the coverup rather than generically that there was a desire to cover up an extramarital affair itself that's the problem.
Technically opening up your neighbor's mailbox is a felony. But in practice you will never be charged for it. Same thing with the hush money case. There is no law that makes covering up an affair illegal while running for office and Trump was not charged with any campaign finance violations. He was charged with the vague crime of "falsifying business records" which, while technically illegal in all cases, in practice is only ever charged if there is a victim who has been defrauded by the falsification. In this case there was none.
The Clinton case is exactly the same concept and is also 100% a politically motivated prosecution. So is the Hunter Biden gun charge. Nobody else ever would have been charged for that.
Yea, I read through the court cases. He got 3rd party valuations on property and just decided to change it on his whim to get a better deal on loans.
I understand that the rich are usually not prosecuted for this fact but if one of us plebs did that and the banks found out, they’d be all over us for fraud.
No, they really wouldn't. People do this all the time. Take the example of the (politically motivated) charges against Leticia James for mortgage fraud. Everybody lies about the house being their primary residence to get a better interest rate and nobody who doesn't piss off politically powerful people are ever charged for it. Fraud is essentially never charged if the loan is paid back.
From what I've heard, "primary residence" is a different issue, something along the line of US banks asking this at time of issue and never checking about updates.
Saying the property is worth more or less than it is… I don't know how this would even happen. The countries in which I've looked at mortgages, the banks don't give an option for a self-assessment. Is the US not like that? Or is it specifically a thing for getting a loan secured on a property that you already own rather than a new purchase?
The point is that in both cases it was a lie on a loan document, which is fraud. Donald Trump's loan was not a simple residential mortgage so the same underwriting process does not apply.
He got materially better rates than he would have based on lower valuations.
Banks have never given me or the other plebs the grace of fucking the risk profile of their investments to our own benefit when it’s found out.
You’re conflating the fact that it’s usually not worth the cost of investigation and enforcement in the event that the loans are paid back, with the idea that it’s not enforced in general
If the bank is stupid enough to give a loan on Donald Trump's own valuations rather than insisting on seeing the third party valuations then they have some employees that need to be fired. The criminal justice system just doesn't get involved in these matters where there are no civil damages, whether you like it or not.
The bank was unaware he had changed the valuation.
Also wasn’t it just for the fraud, it was because this fraud was connected to his attempts to manipulate the election.
If we are going to go further in this conversation I need to know if you can point to an action he has taken that you think is bad, other than appointing someone he turned on later.
You need to stop repeating things that are not true. His charges had nothing to do with the election. They were "falsifying business records". This law has nothing to do with elections and it is not a arguable point. Also, "manipulate the election" is a completely meaningless phrase.
Nope, you can't argue out of both sides of your mouth on the electoral bit.
Yes people are rarely prosecuted for this crime, because its usually not worth finding out and dealing with. His was found because in this particular instance his crimes were found because he was committing them while trying to manipulate the election via hush money payments that were connected.
You're either one of the sanewashers for this guy or the ones who fell for his shtick, but just because he's constantly committing crime all the time, including while engaging in politics, doesn't mean he has an aura of protection because of it
That isn't manipulating the election. It has absolutely nothing to do with the election whatsoever. NDAs to cover up embarrassing personal matters have always been legal.
I don’t have anything to say further to you. I cannot help you reason your way out of an emotional position and if you think the stormy Daniel’s shit wasn’t done to hide the story during a campaign then you are in an emotional position.
Of course it was done for the campaign. But that isn't illegal, which is why he was not charged with any campaign finance related charges. You really can't seem to get that through your head, can you?
You do know that "it" can refer to two different things at different times, right? In this case the action, which had everything to do with the election, and the charges, which had nothing to do with it.
You are confusing different cases. The one he was convicted for was falsifying business records. That was an open and shut case where no banks were involved and no law has to be changed.
There were a couple of dpdgy cases against him but he was not convinced of any of them.
I'm a Norwegian without direct skin in the game, but according to these[1][2] sources it was "§ 175.10 Falsifying business records in the first degree"[3], stated to be a class E felony in New York.
Penal Law Section 175.10
Falsifying business records in the first degree
A person is guilty of falsifying business records in the first degree when he commits the crime of falsifying business records in the second degree, and when his intent to defraud includes an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof. Falsifying business records in the first degree is a class E felony.
Falsifying business records with intent to defraud includes an intent to commit another crime.
The 'another crime' was never specified.
I guess he joins all the other people convicted of falsifying business records with an intent to commit another crime unspecified.
It does seem a bit made up for him. I'm sure lots of people have errors in their business reporting and how do you defend against being accused of an unspecified crime?
I'm not really a Trump fan but I think it would have been much better to prosecute him for something real like trying to steal the 2020 election than the above silliness that was just ignored and let him get back into office.
> Consider that the POTUS is a 34x convicted criminal
To be fair, they were political persecutions and show trials just so that people like you could write that sentence and help the Democrat Party keep the presidency.
I’m not saying Trump is innocent in life, so don’t mistaken what I am saying for that. I am clearly and specifically saying that the 34 convictions are a joke and that only the gullible and the zealots buy into them.
Isn't the 34 counts due to the fact that the trial concluded that Trump paid Daniels via Cohen but hidden the payment as "legal expenses" and therefore falsified 34 different documents?
It is not like they invented extra fake actions that Trump did not do, it is all part of the same fraud. Either you recognize that Trump was guilty in this affair, and he gets X counts of fraud, X being a large number due to the number of document involved (and maybe someone can argue on the exact count, but 34 or 28 is not a big difference, so it is a different argument that move the goalpost), or Trump was not guilty at all. You cannot really say "well, Trump is guilty for the first 2 counts, but then not the 32 other counts": how can he be guilty in one document and not be guilty in the other which is basically identical except for the date?
Also, isn't a large number of counts of conviction pretty common in case of fraud? (for exactly the reason I've given: the falsification of each document counts for 1 count)
People who claims that 34 counts of conviction is the result of a political persecutions seems to have no idea that 1) this is usually how it works, this is usually what people get for fraud, there was no special treatment for Trump, 2) pretending that it was maybe 1 or 2 counts of felony but not 34 does not make any sense, 3) even if they wanted, it would not have been possible for the trial to conclude "just 1 or 2 counts", and it is therefore ridiculous to pretend that this number is the result of a political bias where they choose the higher number just to be mean toward Trump.
> and help the Democrat Party keep the presidencty
You're writing your own narrative there bud. I'm not even a USA citizen, I have literally zero ability to influence the USA electorate to any degree. So cut the rhetoric, it's tiring and frankly destructive to real discussion.
I'm neither gullible nor a zealot. Trump has a long standing history of ripping people off for many millions of dollars, regardless of the currency. There's an endless supply of receipts, give me a break.
And that's long before we even consider that he's literally operating illegal wars (not approved by congress), which _is_ breaking USA law.
There are different categories of crimes and violations.
You can call it "The penal code", "Common law", or "Crimes" (as opposed to violations).
And in almost all countries in the world the list is the same and has been for hundreds of years: Murder, robbery, theft, rape, battery and so on.
Do you think people walking the streets of Washington DC are less safe because of crimes such as those Trump was convicted of? Or are their main concern murder, robbery, theft, rape, battery and such?
Edit: Of course my comment nets a hacker down vote instead of a discussion, but for example Nordic countries make a difference between "crimes" and "illegal things" in their laws. And so do South American countries.
The United States has the "felonies" category, which is very comparable. But they also include victimless and non-serious crimes such as tax evasion and copyright infringement.
One batch of crimes is awfully much worse than the other. That is what law takes into account. Dismissing Trump's public safety measures in Washington because he himself has been criminally convicted is what I myself would call "intellectual gymnastics". But sadly also typical of hackers, who seem to forget to feel empathy with the victims of street crime.
Trump definitely killed probably 100s of thousands of people, with how he handled COVID, and USAID. The law doesn’t consider those as murders, but it’s quite obvious that they were.
Also, the laws of the world have definitely not had the same list for hundreds of years, and the old ideas of those things are somewhat different to the modern versions. For example, for most of those hundreds of years, "rape" wasn't just about intercourse, it was about kidnapping (same etymology as "rapture": snatch and carry off). This is specifically why spousal rape, in the modern usage of the term, needed to be added to the statue books: little to no thought given to the idea of a husband kidnapping their own wife.
Also on that list for hundreds of years: charging interest on loans.
Trump's "grab 'em by the pussy" quote sounds like an admission of sexual battery to me. Now, it's important to note that I'm not a lawyer, but here's the thing: lawyers have also said this about that quote.
Even if you ignore all the stuff about Epstein, even if you limit yourself to just that self-chosen set of goalposts, he's a wrong-un.
> Also, the laws of the world have definitely not had the same list for hundreds of years
You're correct. The list has been the same for thousands of years, not hundreds. Since the great Hammurabi. Then it has been added on to, and very rarely redefined. As in the good example you give.
> Also on that list for hundreds of years: charging interest on loans.
Usury is still a crime, but has been redefined away by legislators. Just as rape is again being redefined away in some countries right now.
Now back to the topic at large:
> Trump's "grab 'em by the pussy" quote sounds like an admission of sexual battery to me.
> Trump has lost lawsuits related to sexual abuse
If you go to walk the streets in Washington DC, would you be afraid of Mr. Trump charging out of the White House to sexually abuse you, perhaps grabbing you by your genitals? Or stealing your purse? Or would you be more concerned about your more common criminal doing something like that?
Because the hacker above claims Trumps crimes somehow negates public safety campaigns in Washington DC.
> You're correct. The list has been the same for thousands of years, not hundreds. Since the great Hammurabi.
No it hasn't.
First, I've read some of the code of Hammurabi. Fun stuff like this:
7. If any one buy from the son or the slave of another man, without witnesses or a contract, silver or gold, a male or female slave, an ox or a sheep, an ass or anything, or if he take it in charge, he is considered a thief and shall be put to death.
…
110. If a "sister of a god" open a tavern, or enter a tavern to drink, then shall this woman be burned to death.
…
282. If a slave say to his master: "You are not my master," if they convict him his master shall cut off his ear.
(Also, bit of fun, number 6: "If any one steal the property of a temple or of the court, he shall be put to death, and also the one who receives the stolen thing from him shall be put to death." - to which I point at the photos of all those documents he was supposed to return after his first term in a bathroom in Mar a Lago).
Second, I've also read Leviticus. Fun stuff like this:
Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, If any man of you bring an offering unto the LORD, ye shall bring your offering of the cattle, even of the herd, and of the flock. If his offering be a burnt sacrifice of the herd, let him offer a male without blemish: he shall offer it of his own voluntary will at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the LORD.
and
Ye shall keep my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind: thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed: neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woollen come upon thee.
To quote others on this:
The "Law of Moses" in ancient Israel was different from other legal codes in the ancient Near East because transgressions were seen as offences against God rather than solely as offences against society (civil law).[6] This contrasts with the Sumerian Code of Ur-Nammu (c. 2100–2050 BCE), and the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi (c. 1760 BCE, of which almost half concerns contract law).
> Then it has been added on to, and very rarely redefined.
Oh gods no. Even the Christian Bible has seen significant politicised re-translations, famously with the King James Bible, but also fundamentally the New Testament itself is a refutation of almost all Torah law.
Even just within European Christian nations, there's been huge variations of what was allowed. 1066 England, Normans became a ruling military elite over the now-conquered Anglo-Saxon population, a native Englander killing a Norman triggered severe penalties, but a Norman killing an Englander did not.
And I've not even touched on Islamic law, the range of things in pre-contact Americas, across Africa, across the east Indies, in Asia.
Not all cultures even have a concept of personal property for theft to be a coherent concept. You may object that you said "countries", but go back pre-Westphalia and you don't even find something we'd really recognise as countries.
> Usury is still a crime, but has been redefined away by legislators.
That's tautologically false: if something is "still" a crime it cannot also "have been redefined away by legislators".
> Just as rape is again being redefined away in some countries right now.
"Away"?
At most, I'm seeing a return to the old definition (IIRC, this would include Russia?)
> If you go to walk the streets in Washington DC, would you be afraid of Mr. Trump charging out of the White House to sexually abuse you, perhaps grabbing you by your genitals?
Given I'm not his type, too old and too male, that's a silly question.
If I had a teenage daughter, I'd avoid DC just in case.
> Or stealing your purse? Or would you be more concerned about your more common criminal doing something like that?
I would not fear a common criminal stealing my purse before or now.
Trump, however, I would fear ordering his people locking me up with a demand that I hand over money to make the problem go away.
It's not like he's obeying the constitution or anything.
> Because the hacker above claims Trumps crimes somehow negates public safety campaigns in Washington DC.
Just look at the subject of this very thread: he's essentially just stolen an entire nation.
The run-up to this involved ordering the deaths of 114 confirmed dead plus 1 more missing presumed dead, by way of the strikes on alleged(!) drug boats, when actual convictions even if those boats had reached US waters would not have been death penalties: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_strikes_on_alleg...
This, *by itself*, is about twice the difference in DC homicides between 2024 and 2025, 187 -> 128.
I would add that for vast swaths of time in a lot of areas of the world in between Hammurabi and now, there wasn't even a written code of law, it was more based on customs. Rome did not have written laws for the first 300 years of its founding. A friend I was talking about this was in disbelief when I mentioned this.
Good point. That Rome fact raised my eyebrow, but then I remembered how low literacy has been historically, and the eyebrow returned to the usual position.
Because the basic crimes are so universally understood and detested, that there needs to be nothing written. Murder, theft, robbery, etc. Every person knows from birth that those things are wrong, and it takes severe brain washing for people to change their minds on it.
Have inconsistent definitions over time. Hence my example of legalised murder in post-Norman conquest England, and cultures without personal property where theft is a nonsensical concept.
Also, just ask around left- and right-coded answers to "is taxation theft?", or in the US specifically "is abortion murder?" or "is the death penalty just state-sanctioned murder?"
"Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's"
And, pertinently to this thread, when is a military action murder vs. not murder? There's lawyers looking at the videos of Venezuelan boats being destroyed saying "the US murdered those people". Is one of the sides here, pro or con it doesn't matter which, a victim of "severe brain washing"?
Similar disagreements (albeit by non-lawyers) are had regarding all wars I recall in my lifetime.
The existence of grey zones doesn't negate the existence of clear cut cases.
You can argue for or against anything by quoting edge cases. That doesn't mean that every case is an edge case. Very few cases are edge cases.
> There's lawyers looking at the videos of Venezuelan boats being destroyed saying "the US murdered those people". Is one of the sides here, pro or con it doesn't matter which, a victim of "severe brain washing"?
What's the argument being made? That's war, which is of course murder. A soldier's job is to murder the enemy.
As for your examples, they are probably not as certain as you think. Good luck secretly taking somebody's favourite hunting spear from him and then tell him that personal property doesn't exist.
Congratulations on knowing that people have different perspectives on most things, and that these can vary through time and through places. You are not the only person who knows this. What is interesting are the common values which sprung up in different cultures, different times and different places.
If somebody murders your child or your sibling, you are going to be outraged if you are a human. Only severe brainwashing and total dehumanization could make a person react in a different way.
I appreciate your reply very much, it was nice reading. But between you and me, I sense that you might be getting a bit too high on your own supply of intelligence.
Certain crimes tend to be low in dictatorships, so I don't think that's a good indicator of anything.
What about the storming of the Capitol 6th January? The criminals got pardoned and the people investigating the crimes conducted that day were fired. This shows that Trump does not care about law and order at all, only about personal power and control.
reply