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zrobotics commented on The Walt Disney Company and OpenAI Partner on Sora   openai.com/index/disney-s... · Posted by u/inesranzo
bilbo0s · 9 days ago
This.

Don't believe for a second that Sora will allow you to make racist content with Disney characters.

That said, there are a lot of other models out there that care about neither licensing nor alignment. So those will allow you to make racist content. Then you can do whatever you like with that generated content.

A lot of IP owners will learn that there is more than one way to skin a cat. It's easier than people think to turn children's characters, like say, Hermoine, into a raging racist. And there's very little technically speaking that they can do to stop it.

But yes, on OpenAI specific properties, they can definitely stop it dead in its tracks. They can even get better at stopping it over time. In fact, the more users try to generate it, the better the system will get at stopping it.

zrobotics · 9 days ago
I'm sure that's what Disney's lawyers specified in the contracts and what their execs expect. However, judging by how LLM controls have gone in the past, I'm fully expecting to see a slew of awful content featuring Disney's characters in the days after this launches. OpenAI also probably won't ever be able to actually stop people from generating harmful content with the characters, but the volume of awful stuff will probably eventually slow down as people get bored and move onto the next controversial thing.
zrobotics commented on Kroger acknowledges that its bet on robotics went too far   grocerydive.com/news/krog... · Posted by u/JumpCrisscross
imroot · 11 days ago
I've always said that in the back of my mind, the most successful grocery store would be the 'walls' of the store -- bakery, deli, produce, meats, floral, cheeses, dairy and having a little selection of store brands in the middle where consumers can pick up (and vendors can pay a premium for endcap space, because they're the only non-branded products out there), with the rest of the SKU's behind the walls of the grocery store in a fulfillment only model.

Kroger should have pulled a Wal-Mart and turned to their shrink-heavy stores in urban centers to online fulfillment only -- basically only their delivery drivers can retrieve items for an order, and everything's shopped by an associate (Look south of the MicroCenter in Dallas if you want to see what one looks like: it still has the Murphy USA in the parking lot and is basically an unbranded walmart building with 'driver' and 'associate' entrances -- and then deployed the robotics there: less retail space, more online/fulfillment capacity (have humans grab produce and custom sliced/packed items, robots pick the dry goods), and while you lose some cashier jobs, you'll probably have net improvement in terms of time waiting to be picked.

zrobotics · 11 days ago
So what grocery stores used to be ~90 years ago, when the norm was you would give the clerk a list and they would grab your items from the back? The only stores I'm still aware of that are setup like this are auto parts stores, where 90% of the inventory is in the back.
zrobotics commented on LAPD helicopter tracker with real-time operating costs   lapdhelicoptertracker.com... · Posted by u/polalavik
shoddydoordesk · a month ago
Buddy, most of these are stolen cars. Do you think they are driving them home and parking it in the driveway?

If you are eluding the cops at 100mph you are a danger to the public, they are not going to let you go home.

>Why not just open up on them with antitank weaponry?

I've heard cops say something similar on body cam footage.

zrobotics · a month ago
"If you are eluding the cops at 100mph you are a danger to the public, they are not going to let you go home."

I'm not sure that the cops pursuing people at those speeds is doing anything besides making the situation more dangerous. Police in the US are grossly undertrained, I wouldn't trust them to actually be competent at what is very technical and difficult driving.

One would think that basic firearm safety would be the bare minimum, since we pay them to carry a gun. However, I have had to vacate a shooting range 3 times due to police showing up and being unsafe with firearms. I have had this happen in 3 different ranges, where off-duty cops have shown up and proceeded to ignore basic safety rules like not flagging people with guns. I'm not dumb enough to try to give a cop a safety lecture, so I've always packed up my stuff and left. However, if they aren't even given enough training to not figure out to point their guns downrange instead of at the firing line, they aren't trained well enough to trust with something technical and difficult like a pit maneuver.

One of these times was at a CA range, they were socal cops. Training standards for police in the US are woefully low, most cops aren't able to hit the broad side of a barn given ideal circumstances. They agitate about how dangerous their job is, but they don't train like it is. They fire a few rounds a year and have absolutely horrendous marksmanship standards. Don't get fooled, your average cop has roughly zero idea on firearms safety or even how to use the darn things.

zrobotics commented on The "Learned Helplessness" of AI   himanshusinghbisht.substa... · Posted by u/gilfoyle_7
dpoloncsak · a month ago
But should code be art? As much as there are '100s of ways to skin a cat', it is also deterministic at the end of the day. It either does, or does not, do what it was designed to do.

Sculptors can turn clay into wonderful pottery. Masons can turn it to brick. Both have their purposes, and it is wrong to assume everyone with a ball of clay is looking to make pottery.

I understand at the moment, part of the 'art' of code is ease of legibility, being concise, well documented, following standards, etc. But when I need a quick script to automate a process I've done 100 times, I personally can fumble around in python for an hour or two, or give the current trendy LLM a few shots and get to the same result. For me, I am happy to do it "quickly, cheaply, and good enough that people don't see issues." Even things like iOS Shortcuts, Home Assistant automations, etc.

I wouldn't build a start-up based on vibed code, though. I get the extents

zrobotics · a month ago
I would argue that your 2 first examples are exceedingly apt. Sure, sculptors can turn clay into works of art and masons can build cathedrals. However, a potter can throw a basic jug to hold wine that doesn't have any care out into it besides being functional, and a mason can build a retaining wall.

These second examples aren't any less valuable, they solve real problems and improve people's lives. However, they aren't really art. Writing code is the same thing. I'm not creating art when I hack together yet another CRUD app that is basically plumbing together existing modules with a tiny bit of logic sprinkled on top, but it improves how our business functions and makes the employees who use the software more productive. That isn't art, but it's useful.

There is code out there that is art. But most programmers aren't writing it. We're writing the boring everyday stuff. Very few masons built cathedrals, but building a retaining wall is useful too.

zrobotics commented on SlopStop: Community-driven AI slop detection in Kagi Search   blog.kagi.com/slopstop... · Posted by u/msub2
anal_reactor · a month ago
Hot take but I don't care if the content I consume is AI-generated or not. First of all, while sometimes I need high-effort quality content, sometimes I want my brain to rest and then AI-generated slop is completely okay. He who didn't binge-watch garbage reality TV can cast the first stone. Second, just because something is AI-generated it doesn't automatically mean it's slop, just like human-generated content isn't automatically slop-free. Boring History For Sleep allowed me to see medieval times in a more emotional way, something that history books "this king did this and then won but then in 1274 was poisoned and died" never did.
zrobotics · a month ago
I mean, that certainly is a hot take, but you are getting down voted without people responding why.

I can certainly understand just wanting filler content just for background noise, I had the history for sleep channel recommended to me via the algorithm because I do use those types of videos specifically to fall asleep to. However, and I don't know which video it was, but I clicked on a video, and within 5 minutes there were so many historical inaccuracies that I got annoyed enough to get out of bed and add the channel to my block list.

That's my main problem with most AI generated content, it's believable enough to pass a general plausibility filter but upon any level of examination it falls flat with hallucinations and mistruths. That channel should be my jam, I'm always looking for new recorded lectures or long form content specifically to fall asleep to. I'm definitely not a historian and I wouldn't even call myself a dilettante, so the level of inaccuracies was bad enough that even I caught it in a subject I'm not at all an expert in. You may think you are learning something, but the information quality is so bad that you are actively getting more misinformed on the topic from AI slop like that.

zrobotics commented on Samsung Family Hub for 2025 Update Elevates the Smart Home Ecosystem   news.samsung.com/us/samsu... · Posted by u/janandonly
robin_reala · a month ago
It’s really quite impressive how much this press release turns me off from every buying any white goods from Samsung at any point in the future. It’s a vortex of “no”.
zrobotics · a month ago
Just putting this out there: 4 months ago a friend's Samsung fridge (6 months old at the time, 2500USD price) failed due to a refrigerant leak. They had to spend 20 hours total on online chat and phone calls to get their warranty claim, and it took several weeks.

So you absolutely don't want any Samsung appliances, even the non 'smart' ones.

zrobotics commented on Advent of Code 2025: Number of puzzles reduce from 25 to 12 for the first time   adventofcode.com/2025/abo... · Posted by u/vismit2000
mid-kid · 2 months ago
This. The best I've ever achieved is maybe 15 puzzles on one year, with gaps for the days I missed. And this was when the puzzles were incrementally building upon implementing a bytecode interpreter, which was relatively little work per day.

Once I miss my first day, playing catch up is an effort in vain, as the puzzles start taking 4+ hours to solve each, solving multiple in one day is a full-time commitment.

Most advents of code I've fallen off sharply after day 7-10, if not sooner, and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in this. I think this is a welcome change.

zrobotics · 2 months ago
Most years, I end up finishing the puzzles in January. Same reason- I end up missing a day due to schedule issues. Since it's just a 'for fun' challenge, it isn't the end of the world if you fall behind a bit. That said, this doesn't work if you are doing this as part of a group.
zrobotics commented on Microsoft Teams will start tracking office attendance   tomsguide.com/computing/o... · Posted by u/thund
mcny · 2 months ago
My biggest pet peeve - Ctrl plus shift plus v pastes unformatted but right next to it is Ctrl plus shift plus c which starts a call in whatever chat you are in. Also there is no way within ms teams to remove this binding. Wat‽
zrobotics · 2 months ago
You should be able to capture this keybinding with autohotkey. I don't have my script handy, on mobile, but you can capture keys based on the active window. These keystrokes aren't passed to the active window, so you could have it take an alternate (or no) action.
zrobotics commented on Microsoft Teams will start tracking office attendance   tomsguide.com/computing/o... · Posted by u/thund
onionisafruit · 2 months ago
If you need software to figure out if somebody is in the office, then it isn’t important for them to be in the office.

The supposed benefit of being in the office is because teams work better in person. If everybody else is at the office, it’s obvious who isn’t there.

zrobotics · 2 months ago
Well, obviously the managers won't be working from the office, they're perfectly capable of WFH. Really funny in a way, since their work output is way harder to measure.
zrobotics commented on Alaska Airlines' statement on IT outage   news.alaskaair.com/on-the... · Posted by u/fujigawa
ethbr1 · 2 months ago
Mind control?
zrobotics · 2 months ago
No, that's what the fluorine in the water is for

u/zrobotics

KarmaCake day2660March 17, 2018
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