quote:

Originally posted by DoctorSolo:
It's typical speculative, alarmist drivel.

No substance, no real attribution, and an awful lot of "could be's" and "maybe's" and "what if's".

What's really annoying, is that it had the potential to be a good story if the author wasnt so lazy.

"Take it from me, some serious shit might happen, look Elon Musk says so!"

I think I just hate journalists now.

It's certainly pretty easy to hate many journalists now, and the Telegraph quite probably has slid backwards in a few areas over the past several years. However, overall, I think their coverage of most issues is well above average when compared to the competition.

I doubt if this piece was designed to be in-depth look at every aspect of the issue. My take on it is that it probably arose from a press release from one of the involved parties cited, most likely either the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots or the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. Then an editor probably told the reporter to give him x-number of words on it. Given the short length of the piece, I think there's enough there for anyone truly interested in the subject to use it as a blueprint for delving into it in more depth. I was totally unaware of both parties cited earlier, for example, and there are also a number of names associated with various aspects of the issue to provide a starting point for further investigation.

As far as the alarmist aspect, not all that long ago, had someone written about about an unmanned aircraft which could track and destroy a specific moving target while remaining unseen and unheard, that would undoubtedly have been considered speculative and alarmist.

It's not going to win any awards, but I don't think I'd go as far as to characterize it as having no substance.

quote:

Originally posted by Rey HRH:

quote:

Originally posted by FiveFiveSixFan:
They're quite real. Check out some videos of their humanoid robots. Pretty amazing.

I like how the legs speed up to prevent tripping like a real human would.

I found the ability to navigate that very uneven terrain in the snow to be most impressive.

And they learn from their mistakes. First time it picked up that 10lb box, it got a lumbar strain. Now, it lifts with its legs, not with its back.

I did more searching on YouTube and found this on TedTalks posted in August 2017...

It's pretty cool!

https://www.bostondynamics.com/spot-mini

James in Denver

Spot was pretty cool. I imagined it a dogs fur and could already see some usefulness.

I just realized I didn't post the link of the TedTalk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AO4In7d6X-c