Hacker News: robobenjie

New comment by robobenjie in "Benjie's Humanoid Olympic Games"

robobenjie — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 23:09:27 +0000

I think this is my favorite suggestion. All of them are super hard, but - Bronze: pillow in pillow case - Silver: Make a bed with fitted sheet, flat sheet and blanket - Gold: put a duvet in a duvet cover

Feels like it would be a good option for a round 2...

New comment by robobenjie in "Benjie's Humanoid Olympic Games"

robobenjie — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 22:28:42 +0000

This one is really hard for me...

New comment by robobenjie in "Benjie's Humanoid Olympic Games"

robobenjie — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 21:39:14 +0000

Sorry, this is me communicating like an engineer. In a technical sense risk of anything can only approach zero: never actually get there. I meant that there should be essentially zero chance, similar to holding a baby in your arms or putting it in a high chair, and probably less chance of injury than driving in a car with a baby in a car-seat. Basically zero.

New comment by robobenjie in "Benjie's Humanoid Olympic Games"

robobenjie — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 20:56:23 +0000

Ooh. I like full body manipulation. Humans use hips & elbows to move laundry baskets. Two robot collaboration is good too. I wonder who I can convince to wear another silver suit.... :)

New comment by robobenjie in "Benjie's Humanoid Olympic Games"

robobenjie — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 20:50:53 +0000

Interesting. Futurism is super hard, but "decades" too far away to me. I think with strong 2 finger grippers this is probably close to state of the art, especially with a wrist force sensor, like the TRI setup.

New comment by robobenjie in "Benjie's Humanoid Olympic Games"

robobenjie — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 20:49:22 +0000

This is a great one. The manipulation is hard, but we're probably on a trajectory to be able to do it in 1-3 years if you were tolerant of some risk to the baby, but, of course, your tolerance for injuring babies is basically zero. I think 'risk & reliability' is a good potential category: there is the bar of 'got it to do a task reliably enough that we got a video' and the bar of 'got it to do a task reliably enough that I'd risk an infant in its grippers.

Benjie's Humanoid Olympic Games

robobenjie — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 19:51:47 +0000

Article URL: https://generalrobots.substack.com/p/benjies-humanoid-olympic-games

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45609922

Points: 146

# Comments: 112

New comment by robobenjie in "Benjie's Humanoid Olympic Games"

robobenjie — Mon, 08 Sep 2025 16:29:53 +0000

Hey Hacker News. Curious if folks feel like I'm missing categories of challenge.

New comment by robobenjie in "A brief, incomplete, and mostly wrong history of robotics"

robobenjie — Sat, 21 Jun 2025 00:17:14 +0000

Yeah, having been there during Andy's firing I can vouch that the thunderdome era of replicant actually intensified after he left (and lasted until boston was sold off and the rest of us moved into X) but nuance is hard and less funny and I did warn folks that the history is mostly wrong... ;)

New comment by robobenjie in "A brief, incomplete, and mostly wrong history of robotics"

robobenjie — Sat, 21 Jun 2025 00:14:54 +0000

If I had known... Somehow I missed that story when it happened. Thanks for sharing. :)

New comment by robobenjie in "A brief, incomplete, and mostly wrong history of robotics"

robobenjie — Sat, 21 Jun 2025 00:13:57 +0000

There is exactly one joke by ChatGPT. For Stability AI's CEO's prediction that there are no longer any human programmers by 2028 I liked the idea of referencing Stanford's intro to CS class which is semi-famously a bell-weather for the tech industry. My original replacement class was "Growing food for Sustenance" which kind of worked but I thought was weak. I asked ChatGPT for alternates and it gave me about 15, of which "Barter Economics and Goat Management" was clearly the funniest, and annoyingly funnier than mine.

New comment by robobenjie in "A brief, incomplete, and mostly wrong history of robotics"

robobenjie — Sat, 21 Jun 2025 00:10:45 +0000

I had a dickens of a time with the ending. Having it end at the present seemed super abrupt (as it really feels like we are in the middle of a big shift) but I didn't really want to venture into my own predictions. One of my early readers had the suggestion of using prominent AI CEO/VC's predictions about the near future and treating them seriously as if they were inevitable fact, which I found very funny. And really this is all about amusing myself.

New comment by robobenjie in "A brief, incomplete, and mostly wrong history of robotics"

robobenjie — Sat, 21 Jun 2025 00:08:17 +0000

aww thanks David.

New comment by robobenjie in "To 'Reclaim Future-Making', Amazon Workers Published Collection of SciFi Stories"

robobenjie — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 16:27:12 +0000

My Favorite Le Guin quote on science fiction is very appropriate"

SCIENCE FICTION IS OFTEN DESCRIBED, AND EVEN DEFINED, as extrapolative. The science fiction writer is supposed to take a trend or phenomenon of the here-and-now, purify and intensify it for dramatic effect, and extend it into the future. “If this goes on, this is what will happen.” A prediction is made. Method and results much resemble those of a scientist who feeds large doses of a purified and concentrated food additive to mice, in order to predict what may happen to people who eat it in small quantities for a long time. The outcome seems almost inevitably to be cancer. So does the outcome of extrapolation. Strictly extrapolative works of science fiction generally arrive about where the Club of Rome arrives: somewhere between the gradual extinction of human liberty and the total extinction of terrestrial life.

This may explain why many people who do not read science fiction describe it as “escapist,” but when questioned further, admit they do not read it because “it’s so depressing.

Correct vs. Good

robobenjie — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 15:59:37 +0000

Article URL: https://substack.com/@generalrobots/p-159497808

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43507008

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Correct vs. Good

robobenjie — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 19:01:02 +0000

Article URL: https://generalrobots.substack.com/p/correct-vs-good

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43016786

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by robobenjie in "Launch HN: Azalea Robotics (YC S24) – Baggage-handling robots for airports"

robobenjie — Thu, 12 Dec 2024 00:32:03 +0000

Congrats David! I love your approach and your problem space. I'm rooting for you.

New comment by robobenjie in "Robotics Startup CEO Simulator"

robobenjie — Tue, 21 May 2024 16:50:36 +0000

This is a little tool I made to try and figure out how to make humanoid startups profitable. It goes with this blog post: https://generalrobots.substack.com/p/humanoid-robots-dollars....

I thought folks here might like to play with it.

Robotics Startup CEO Simulator

robobenjie — Tue, 21 May 2024 16:50:35 +0000

Article URL: https://robobenjie.github.io/humanoid_ceo_simulator/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40430843

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

Whats with All the Humanoid Robots?

robobenjie — Tue, 07 May 2024 15:32:13 +0000

Article URL: https://generalrobots.substack.com/p/whats-with-all-the-humanoid-robots

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40286971

Points: 2

# Comments: 0