@eichin

Onward robots! (also @eichin@mastodon.mit.edu mostly to follow and reply, at this time)

thok.org/bloggery
Joined April 2007
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  • Following1.4K
  • Followers597
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Fun #ornithology fact for the weekend. Chickadees increase the number "dee" syllables in their calls as the potential threat of a predator increases. Small predators are considered more dangerous than big ones. Source: science.org/doi/full/10.1126…
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MIT CSAIL
@MIT_CSAIL5 Jul 2024
Oh, how times have changed. #otd in 1993 @NewYorker published what’s now its most reproduced cartoon: “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” bit.ly/NYDogStrip (@plsteiner & @boingboing)
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Henri Nurmi@HenriNurmi5 Jul 2024
It may have taken a few years, but @GSGLabs #Cynthion is finally here.
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Tom Gauld@tomgauld29 Jun 2024
Beware of the book festivals! (My latest @GuardianBooks cartoon)
We see a stick figure running through a ravaged desert pursued by a mechanical claw. The text begins "2050ad: Society has collapsed and the book festivals have gone rogue. Their terrifying motorized venues patrol the wastelands, hunting for audience members" We can now see that the claw is on the front of an enormous, mad-max-style battle-rig, adorned with spikes, skulls and armour. The text continues "Programmer-Warlords brutally preside over a relentless series of interviews, discussions and poetry readings.” In the trailer of the truck, a poetry reading is taking place, in a tower above it, the huge, muscular, horned programmer raises his fists and yells orders to his minions. The monstrous vehicle thunders on leaving one lone stick figure behind The text concludes "Occasionally, dazed survivors are found wandering with a signed hardback book in a cotton tote bag."

ALT We see a stick figure running through a ravaged desert pursued by a mechanical claw. The text begins "2050ad: Society has collapsed and the book festivals have gone rogue. Their terrifying motorized venues patrol the wastelands, hunting for audience members" We can now see that the claw is on the front of an enormous, mad-max-style battle-rig, adorned with spikes, skulls and armour. The text continues "Programmer-Warlords brutally preside over a relentless series of interviews, discussions and poetry readings.” In the trailer of the truck, a poetry reading is taking place, in a tower above it, the huge, muscular, horned programmer raises his fists and yells orders to his minions. The monstrous vehicle thunders on leaving one lone stick figure behind The text concludes "Occasionally, dazed survivors are found wandering with a signed hardback book in a cotton tote bag."

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Stop what you are doing and dig the entire video to Birdhouse in Your Soul youtube.com/watch?v=LdgRYMdP…

They Might Be Giants - Birdhouse In Your Soul (official music video)

From They Might Be Giants album 'Flood.' Download Flood on Apple Mu...

youtube.com
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Oh. My. God. LEGO Apollo Lunar Roving Vehicle coming this summer. lego.com/en-us/product/nasa-…
A photo of the LEGO NASA Apollo Lunar Roving Vehicle set, provided by LEGO.com. It shows the box, and the technic set of the Apollo rover. It's beautiful.

ALT A photo of the LEGO NASA Apollo Lunar Roving Vehicle set, provided by LEGO.com. It shows the box, and the technic set of the Apollo rover. It's beautiful.

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Need big paper sheets? We got 'em! Find a tremendous selection of paper at our Spring Garage & Book Sale this Saturday! Museum of Printing Sat. April 13, 10 to 4 15 Thornton Ave., Haverhill, MA
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Jason Scott@textfiles11 Apr 2024
I Am No Longer Attending Vintage Computer Festivals ascii.textfiles.com/archives…

I Am No Longer Attending Vintage Computer Festivals

I spent some time trying to figure out when to make this announcement in a way that didn’t seem like direct sabotage; the day before the VCF East event seems about right. Years ago, clearing …

ascii.textfiles.com
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Riley Goodside
@goodside2 Apr 2024
New Anthropic research suggests if violence doesn't solve your LLM problems you aren't using enough of it.
Anthropic
@AnthropicAI2 Apr 2024
Replying to @AnthropicAI
Many-shot jailbreaking exploits the long context windows of current LLMs. The attacker inputs a prompt beginning with hundreds of faux dialogues where a supposed AI complies with harmful requests. This overrides the LLM's safety training:
A diagram illustrating how many-shot jailbreaking works, with a long script of prompts and a harmful response from an AI.

ALT A diagram illustrating how many-shot jailbreaking works, with a long script of prompts and a harmful response from an AI.

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Amazon Fresh failure. My third law of robotics, shared here yesterday is: 3. Technologies for robots need 10+ years of steady improvement beyond lab demos of the target tasks to mature to low cost and to have their limitations characterized well enough that they can deliver 99.9% of the time. Every 10 more years gets another 9 in reliability. Looks to me like Amazon did not remotely follow this when they introduced Just Walk Out to their Amazon Fresh stores in 2016. Touted as cameras seeing what you put in your cart there was no need to check out. Service cancelled this week. Turns out there were 1,000 remote cashiers in India: "It often took hours for customers to receive receipts after leaving the store, largely because offshore cashiers were rewatching videos and assigning items to different customers." This story reports that in 2022 only 300 out of 1,000 walk outs did not need a human review, so 30% reliability against an Amazon target of 95%. Their business model built in a 5% failure rate, and even that was not even close to attainable. Not the magic of AI that consumers believed they were partaking in. Hubris gets you every time in robotics (and AI...). gizmodo.com/amazon-reportedl…
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Geoffrey Thomas@geofft30 Mar 2024
Hey so maybe someone should do something about this before "Jia Tan" does github.com/libexpat/libexpat…
Screenshot of the top of the linked file, reading: Expat is UNDERSTAFFED and WITHOUT FUNDING. The following topics need *additional skilled C developers* to progress in a timely manner or at all (loosely ordered by descending priority): - fixing a complex non-public security issue, - teaming up on researching and fixing future security reports and ClusterFuzz findings with few-days-max response times in communication in order to (1) have a sound fix ready before the end of a 90 days grace period and (2) in a sustainable manner, - implementing and auto-testing XML 1.0r5 support (needs discussion before pull requests), - smart ideas on fixing the Autotools CMake files generation issue without breaking CI (needs discussion before pull requests),

ALT Screenshot of the top of the linked file, reading: Expat is UNDERSTAFFED and WITHOUT FUNDING. The following topics need *additional skilled C developers* to progress in a timely manner or at all (loosely ordered by descending priority): - fixing a complex non-public security issue, - teaming up on researching and fixing future security reports and ClusterFuzz findings with few-days-max response times in communication in order to (1) have a sound fix ready before the end of a 90 days grace period and (2) in a sustainable manner, - implementing and auto-testing XML 1.0r5 support (needs discussion before pull requests), - smart ideas on fixing the Autotools CMake files generation issue without breaking CI (needs discussion before pull requests),

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neoltitude
@ctrlcreep28 Mar 2024
The "alphabet song" is a fragment of a much longer ballad, a list of every glyph, every name, every planet—when the angels sing it, you'll remember
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EXCLUSIVE: PRIVATE US INTELLIGENCE TRANSMITTED BY MAD RUSSIAN COMMANDER TO BIDEN EARLIER THIS WEEK
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Replying to @ebpetroff
I have always wondered why you didn't call it the 'terrestrial microwave background'?
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Well, that's it. I've peaked in life having been cited in XKCD *and* making it into the alt text. Going to retire to nerd heaven now. xkcd.com/2886/

Fast Radio Bursts

xkcd.com
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Scott Manley
@DJSnM20 Jan 2024
I don’t care who’s in it, who’s doing the music?
DiscussingFilm
@DiscussingFilm19 Jan 2024
‘TR3N’ (Tron 3) has begun filming. Starring Jared Leto, Evan Peters, Cameron Monaghan, Greta Lee and Jodie Turner-Smith.
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NASA JPL
@NASAJPL21 Jan 2024
Good news today: We've reestablished contact with the #MarsHelicopter after instructing @NASAPersevere to perform long-duration listening sessions for Ingenuity’s signal. The team is reviewing the new data to better understand the unexpected comms dropout during Flight 72.
NASA JPL
@NASAJPL20 Jan 2024
The #MarsHelicopter executed Flight 72 on Jan. 18, but on its descent, communication between Ingenuity and @NASAPersevere terminated prior to touchdown. The team is analyzing available data and considering next steps to reestablish comms. go.nasa.gov/4b3wRN6
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When your garage is like mine, you accidentally pull out a box that contains.. a prototype of the world’s first smartphone, the IBM Simon. Still works! It will soon on its way to a good home
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Replying to @mattgodbolt @fenbf
The link for those interested: youtu.be/8VsiYWW9r48?si=-uKU…
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