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Friday’s Forum
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19 responses to “Friday’s Forum”
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Trump’s Texas-Tennessee matchup visit may have caused massive price drop
If you were waiting for some better-priced tickets to Texas vs. Tennessee this weekend, President Donald Trump’s impending presence just made that possible.
Trump announced he would attend one of the biggest college football games of the year, the University of Texas’ Saturday matchup with the University of Tennessee. Since the announcement, prices for the highly anticipated game have dropped pretty sharply.
The game pits No. 1 Texas against No. 13 Tennessee. Trump attending the game at Neyland Stadium in Knoxville adds even more spotlight to the matchup, which was already drawing heavy interest as the featured game on ESPN College GameDay this week. According to Ticketmaster, the cheapest game tickets now start at $368, a reduction of more than $100 from prices before the announcement.
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Might apply to any President. People deciding not to go because of the much longer security waits that will be happening.
Interesting impact on the game itself. ESPN has an article quoting coaches from other games Trump has attended. Every time the President changes location within the stadium — one coach says “decides to go the the restroom” — all of the communication between the sidelines and the spotters up high, and between the coaches and the players on the field, is cut off. This happened at the national championship game earlier this year, apparently w/o the coaches being advised of the possibility in advance. No word on whether the same applies to sideline reporters’ wireless gear.
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A little bit of military history.
Montford Point Marine and oldest-living MLB player just turned 102
The Rev. William “Bill” Greason, a Montford Point Marine, Baptist minister and the oldest-living Major League Baseball player and last surviving Negro Leaguer, just turned 102.
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Before Greason teamed up in the Negro Leagues with Hall of Famer and U.S. Army veteran Willie Mays — and decades before he preached the Gospel from the pulpit — he was a Montford Point Marine, America’s first group of African Americans to serve in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II.In 2012, Greason joined roughly 400 Montford Point Marines in Washington, D.C., to receive the Congressional Gold Medal, the nation’s highest civilian honor. Today, fewer than 400 Montford Point Marines survive among the 20,000 who served during the war.
Long article with a lot of history. Well worth reading.
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This is about Tesla’s new humanoid robot, Optimus. They are ramping up production to hundreds per week, but they still don’t have a viable product – or a use case. No viable product because, well several reasons, but not the least of it is the in-ability to generalize to new tasks. Traditional (non-humandoid) robots that also need to be programmed for every task are present in virtually every high speed manufacturing plant to the tune of dozens, hundreds or even more. And they are orders of magnitude faster than a humanoid robot will ever be. And so much cheaper.
And that’s why they don’t have a use case. Or rather, a use case that justifies a $1.5 trillion dollar market cap*. Unless you believe that they are the leader in fully autonomous cars (they aren’t, not even close). Or that they have something other energy storage companies don’t have (they don’t), then the majority of that $1.5T valuation has to be based on Optimus. They could sell a few thousand of these a year for odd jobs in a plant that people perform now. But if you go into a modern plant you will find astoundingly few people to begin with. 30 years ago I walked into a Gillette razor plant with the production manager and he waited for my reaction, because this was a big, big floor with lots of lines running and I could only see maybe 4-5 people total in the whole place. Things have gotten even more automated now.
My guess is that Musk is having Tesla build these robots for stock because he’s trying to keep the investor fantasy alive until he manages to merge Tesla and SpaceX, because when that happens he is set to get his entire $1T payout regardless of performance.
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I think we need a new Kathy’s First Law: People are really that stupid.
Consider Adolf spent hundreds of millions of dollars to elect El Taco, who then promptly killed the EV tax credit, which drove sown Texla’s sales, and the need for carbon credits, which was Texla’s big source of revenue. Not to mention he alienated the bulk of Texla’s customer base.
A couple of years ago, Adolf showed off the concept robotaxis, and the mobile toaster* (allegedly a van), long with a gaggle of humanoid robots who served snacks and poured drinks and talked to the atendees.
I watched the video Marques Brownlee made of the event. He regularly reviews tech and cars in his youtube channels. The robots seemed impressive, until one realized they were remotely operated by humans behind the scenes. They can walk autonomously, meaning they can balance on two legs while they advance, and that’s no small feat. But that’s about it. I would pay for a robot that would clean, wash dishes, make beds, etc (though hiring someone to do that would likely be cheaper in today’s subscription-based economy), if I could afford to. I would not pay for a robot I need to operate step by step every time to do all the above; I’d rather do it myself, since operating the robot would be doing it myself anyway.
So, he’s lost EV sales, he’s lost market share globally, he’s lost carbon credits, he has a useless and likely expensive robot that can walk, and still his company is valued higher than companies that do have billions of dollars in revenue and make higher profits.
People are really that stupid.
*Between the rolling fridge and the mobile toaster, the man seems to have a fetish for kitchen appliances as well as the letter X
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This is the same reason people fall for phonies like Trump. A con man running this type of scam compares their fantasy product with ones that actually exist. Their fantasy always comes out on top by an order of magnitude or more because, well, it’s just words. The dupes that fall for it can’t tell the difference between fantasy and reality.
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I’ve seen video of at least one other humanoid robot, this one from a startup, that also can walk autonomously, but otherwise needs to be operated step by step by a human.
The notion is that using it this way to perform household tasks will train the AI to perform them.
As far as I know, the robot could do two tasks completely on its own without any remote operator. It could open the door if the doorbell rang. It could hook itself to the wireless charger when its batteries ran low.
As I recall, Heinlein posited something like this in The Door Into Summer. Except if you showed the bot how to wash dishes once, it would know how to wash all the world’s dishes in all the world’s kitchens, and so would the following production models later. Of course, this was fiction.
Industrial robots are not AI powered, as far as I know, but instead are programmed to perform specific motions using specific tools for specific tasks. This makes perfect sense in manufacturing It’s not too dissimilar from prior forms of automation (like metal stamping machines to make cutlery or coin blanks, or other types of metal pieces). And when you want a machine to perform the same actions over and over thousands or even millions of times per day, working with standardized parts and materials, because then you want perfect consistency.
Something not standardized, like folding clothes or washing dishes, utensils, and glasses, is harder for a machine.
I think I said before people prefer a narrative over the facts. That’s why many still think trickle-down economics works, and we need to keep slashing the taxes of plutocrats if we’re ever going to be able to make any money.
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From Kathy in this thread (ran out of reply depth) :
Industrial robots are not AI powered, as far as I know, but instead are programmed to perform specific motions using specific tools for specific tasks.
I’m an engineer but have never worked on robots, although years ago I did some work on an autonomous vehicle, and I’ve worked on manufacturing machines. Even thirty years ago we were using tools under the broad category of machine learning, and so I have no doubt that such tools were used in the development of the various robots out there. But today “AI” primarily means LLM, and these are substantially different. I would be surprised (but not astonished) if things like the Boston Dynamics robot was running LLM’s. Here’s an example of a BD robot from 10 years ago that was definitely not under remote control managing to stay standing under extreme conditions. And here’s their current version. If you watch the video you will see that it can’t be being tele-operated and mimicking human motion because it has taken “humanoid” to the next step and people can’t do things like that. Tesla’s Optimus is so far behind this in terms of Mechatronics. But of course BD doesn’t claim that theirs can operate autonomously. Musk promises that, but of course, doesn’t deliver.
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I should have said LLM rather than AI: I do know the difference.
Boston Dynamics seems like a more serious company, though I’ve no idea what they actually make. In any case, it makes sense for a robot to be able to move in ways humans can’t. A car is not designed to run on two legs, right? Aircraft don’t flap their wings, either.
I can see a humanoid robot as a general tool, especially if it can grasp and use ither tools, which could be programmed, or “trained” for specific tasks. I see no reason why such robots could not have four arms and hands, either.
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I have been interested in Elizabeth Holmes since reading BadBlood . Her story was a great combination of science fiction (fantastic results from a drop of blood!) and a caper novel (ripping off rich people who think that having money makes them smart). She was sent to prison for 11 and a quarter years in 2023. A few weeks ago she was assigned to a halfway house starting in August 2027. I am good with this; I have no appetite for harsh punishment.
Along these lines, the current issue of the New England Journal of Medicine has a report of a study showing disappointing results from blood test screening. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2505723?query=featured_secondary_home
I hope that early detection technology will be found. -
In the “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” division.
“MAGA is dead”: Marjorie Taylor Greene calls Trump supporters liars and hypocrites
Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene chronicled her political journey from a diehard ally of the president to someone he labeled a traitor, saying “MAGA is dead” at The Texas Tribune Festival Thursday.
Greene, who described herself as “politically homeless” in the wake of her experience, resigned her House seat earlier this year after a series of public spats with the president that escalated into death threats against her family.
Despite her break from Trump, Greene called herself a believer in the America First movement that Trump coined — a series of policy preferences that she defined as a smaller coalition than the broader Make America Great Again group that backs the president. The larger MAGA movement, which she was once one of the most recognizable members, is now a “cult,” she said.
“When you vote for someone, not only are you supporting them, but you’re holding them accountable,” Greene said. “And if they can’t be truthful and hold [Trump] accountable to his campaign promises that affect the entire country, then they’re liars, and they’re hypocrites and they’re in a cult.”
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More evidence that MAGA is cratering….
Three organizations representing thousands of ranchers in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas issued a joint statement Friday warning operations by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are disrupting the agricultural community and will make beef prices spike again. Their statement is the beef’s industry latest salvo against policies and actions by the Trump administration.
The Texas Cattle Feeders Association, Kansas Livestock Association, and Oklahoma Cattlemen’s Association said they are closely monitoring ICE’s activity and the impacts it’s creating. They described hearing reports of delays in shipping thousands of cattle to processors and workforce disruptions in important links of the supply chains such as dairies, feedyards, transportation hubs as well as feed and grain companies.
“These ICE operations are having a massive chilling effect on the legal, documented, skilled workers that put beef on the table and keep the supply chain moving,” the groups said. “Additionally, these types of disruptions will lead to higher beef prices for consumers.”
If only someone had warned them…..
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