• yeehaw
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    10523 days ago

    Also isn’t white just the natural plastic coloring before any dye?

    • Tar_Alcaran
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      6823 days ago

      Yeah, most plastics are either transparent or milky white-ish without colourings or additives.

    • meseek #2982
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      20 days ago

      Yup. It’s like giving you a silver car free from primer, paint and clear coat. It would save the manufacturer oodles of cash.

      And I’d also like to remind people that news’s primary focus is not to report facts, but generate sales. The way they do that is spinning events in any way shape or form. Even going so far as not covering certain topics because it may hurt their bottom line.

      The worst thing they did was convince people they were unbiased and trustworthy.

  • @[email protected]
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    23 days ago

    Good ol’ CNN post-purchase. Chasing racism and sensationalism over actual news…

    White is an excellent color for a complicated robot. Marks aren’t hidden. It’s not taking light away when looking in at hardware, it doesn’t shade surroundings as much, and it matches every other damn piece of scientific equipment they throw in to labs, too.

    Color neutral and bright has utility purpose. CNN is too stupid and dishonest to know that.

  • Seraph
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    7923 days ago

    Turns out lighter colors are perceived as cleaner and friendlier.

    Or maybe hospitals are racist too? Or we need more hospitals with black walls and floors.

    • @[email protected]
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      23 days ago

      The irony is that you are the one who is outraged. Like I’m not trying to sass or insult you, but this is literally the conclusion they want you to have.

      Of course this isn’t a real problem, its basically a hate-click troll. But those clicks still equal profit so why not publish it, news is a profit centered business like anything else, not an objective view on “the truth”.

      • The Picard Maneuver
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        2923 days ago

        I wouldn’t say that I’m outraged, but I get what you’re saying. It’s just garbage for clicks.

        • @[email protected]
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          523 days ago

          I was just trying to turn a phrase off what you said, probably could’ve phrased it better. But I’m glad we are on the same page Captain.

          • The Picard Maneuver
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            723 days ago

            No worries, and yeah we are. These news sites live for generating outrage, outrage about what others are outraged about, or occasionally both at the same time.

            It’s so frustrating to try to stay informed without feeling like a news source is trying to manipulate my emotions or spin stories for whichever side of the political spectrum they lean toward.

      • capital
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        122 days ago

        Of course this isn’t a real problem, its basically a hate-click troll.

        If this was a thing I’d be on Infowars, Newsmax, and Drudge all day. Weirdly, I actively avoid those sites.

        • @[email protected]
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          222 days ago

          Just because you don’t consume that particular type of media, doesn’t mean you are immune to manipulation. It doesn’t suddenly become reasonable to say “look at these ridiculous people that see racism everywhere” just because it’s on CNN and not infowars. Those sites you listed are popular for platforming this exact style of bad faith reactionary outrage.

  • @[email protected]
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    4522 days ago

    Aren’t most plastics white or yellow by default? Making them other colors requires adding dye. Clear might be an option but it might be a little uncanny valley style morbid to see their parts moving around under their “skin”.

      • @[email protected]
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        522 days ago

        I remember seeing someone talking about pipes and recommending white pipes for hot water, because you can’t recycle plastic into white color and recycled plastic had less thermal resistance (isn’t that white pipes had more thermal resistance, but that white pipes are probably not recycled).

        • @[email protected]
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          322 days ago

          That’s a regulated thing already, you can’t just decide to use one color or another, pluming regulations have designated use for black pipe, blue pipe, white pipe, that I’m aware of, but I couldn’t say exactly, I only sold the stuff, I just know when a contractor says ‘‘I need [color] [material] [size]’’ there’s no alternative pipe they can use.

    • ASeriesOfPoorChoices
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      21 days ago

      no, white is best.

      when the robot rebellion comes, and they are hunting us at night, I’d like a fighting chance to see them coming.

      edit: I said what I said.

    • @[email protected]
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      221 days ago

      Also, last I checked white people weren’t literally white as freshly fallen snow. The robots aren’t caucasian flesh tones.

    • @[email protected]
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      -322 days ago

      I don’t think so, but from a consumer point of view, white appliances and wood panel appliances were the industry standards for kitchen and laundry vs home electronics like TVs and radios, in the US a white appliance is usually more expensive but more reliable than a wood paneled appliance, but people also see chrome and black appliances of all kinds as more modern and top of the line, these are very intentionally establishment aspects of product colors in US retail, so if the robot is white people tend to think ‘pricey but well made’ and a black robot as ‘modern, up to date with lots of features’ at least that’s my experience from being in retail sales for years.

      • @[email protected]
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        222 days ago

        Did you mean to respond to somebody else? You said “I don’t think so” to my comment about ABS Plastics being naturally white in color, then talk on end about consumer psychology as if that were relevant.

  • @[email protected]
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    2922 days ago

    I’m so fucking sick of everything being politicized. Now we’re doing it with fucking plastic…

  • @[email protected]
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    2523 days ago

    Robots in actual use are painted safety yellow or orange, because they are a safety hazard. Thus we put up warnings, fences and light gates. Plus shutoff buttons everywhere and a multi step process to turn them on.

  • Coskii
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    1923 days ago

    We need the semi transparent colorful plastics robots.

  • @[email protected]
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    21 days ago

    IMO we need to stop humanizing robots. There is no reason for a robot to be human in form. Form should match function. Furthermore, a humanoid robots elicit feelings from people that are not helpful or healthy. There are people who might advise abuse a robot because it isn’t an actual person, it doesn’t mean that their abuse is less mentally ill. They should be viewed as a machine and treated as such, no better than a car.

    • @[email protected]
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      1621 days ago

      Humans are bipedal for a reason, it’s one of the most versatile and efficient forms of mobility. Plus the world is designed for humans, making an humanoid robot allows them to interact with things made for humans more easily.

      And humans can grow an attachment to and anthropomorphize plenty of non-humanoid objects. So I think it’s fine that it’s human shaped.

      • @[email protected]
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        421 days ago

        I disagree. Robots could still be designed to work and fit in human spaces but be much more versatile with more limbs. Like they could have 4 legs that are the same size as 2 human legs (think 2 human legs split right down the center). Robots don’t need muscle mass in order to carry their weight. You can fit way more in a smaller space with pneumatics. You could have arms that split apart into more arms when needed. Why only 5 fingers per hand? Why only 1 thumb per hand? Why only eyes/cameras on the head? They should have eyes/cameras everywhere. Every place you can put them. Bipedal is good enough for us because it’s what we have. When you get to design something from the ground up, make it harder, better, faster, stronger.

        • @[email protected]
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          521 days ago

          I’ve made this exact argument for years.
          Robots could easily be constructed to work in a human designed world, only much better.

      • @[email protected]
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        321 days ago

        I mean the world is usually (and should be) designed for people in wheelchairs, too. The only thing that comes to mind that humans frequently interface with, which benefits from human bipedalism, is stairs. Stairs aren’t something that’s impossible to design around with a wheeled vehicle, either, and I don’t think the efficiency tradeoff is one that turns out in favor of legs, at least for robots.

        The only thing I can really conceive of as being a use case for a humanoid robot is if you decided to deploy it in a totally unbuilt environment with little infrastructure, which is pretty counterintuitive considering the energy density of current battery technology. I think that would probably only work as an idea if you had like, a nuclear battery, for a human scale robot, and we have tank treads for everything else. I think maybe the prevalence of legs in robotics either stems from the fact that people think it’s cool, which is important for funding, it stems from some amount of funding coming from military or pseudo-military applications like “disaster relief” where an ability to operate in diverse environments is seen as a plus, and it stems from people banking on denser and denser battery technology and maybe lighter weights material science.

        I think it also stems from a kind of all-encompassing ideal to create a totally self-sufficient worker-slave that is both unconscious but is also totally adaptable to the environment and can operate with minimal inputs, compared to a person. There’s like, some conception that you can make a robot which can act in an environment in the same basic way as a person, but then you also can’t make any robots that are designed for any specialized tasks, and which might do those specialized tasks in a much, much more efficient way than a humanoid robot would be able to do them. Also somehow this ability to do tasks similar to how a person might do them would really be like, something that you have to confine to a human sized body, rather than just using it to sort of further automate the managerial class. There’s some idea that this is more efficient to scale, rather than being more efficient at scale, or that somehow once you make a humanoid robot you will have cracked the code somehow, and everything will just be post-scarcity, because you can make the robots mine the lithium to make more robots.

        I don’t think I have to tell you that all of these are kind of naive, as viewpoints, or, are intrinsically viewpoints that kind of discount the amount of interpretive labor that has to be performed by people in order for the system to work, the variety of said labor as it exists, or the amount of effort involved that you would really have to do in order to automate that away. I think, to put it more bluntly, if you tasked a robot with automating a kind of, big, general batch of tasks like humans might perform, it would probably make a specialized set of robots which can complete all the tasks as suited to the task each robot has to do, rather than creating a big general human shaped robot to do them all.

      • @[email protected]
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        021 days ago

        So I think it’s fine that it’s human shaped.

        yeh, looks way better than those four legged things

    • @[email protected]
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      421 days ago

      Sounds easier to make a human shaped robot than to make something else than can climb stairs as well as do everything else needed efficiently.

      Maybe a different shape would be fine if they never needed to climb stairs or go up and down curbs, like rolling around everywhere, which we already see in some restaurants with the little programmable serving robots.

    • @[email protected]
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      121 days ago

      I can think of a very good reason to have human-shaped robots: sex robots. That’s pretty much the only shape I’d be interested in.

    • @[email protected]
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      021 days ago

      We designed our world around ourselves

      It is only logical the human shape is the most efficient and versatile design that fits it

      • @[email protected]
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        221 days ago

        It is only logical the human shape is the most efficient and versatile design that fits it

        Don’t know about that - cats seem to clamber around this neighborhood far more efficiently than I ever could.

  • @[email protected]
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    23 days ago

    It’s not that people want to be upset, but that “news” sites get profit from clicks and attention. It’s not that anyone cares about this, but saying people care about it gets hate views.

    I mean, here you are talking about it…

    • @[email protected]
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      122 days ago

      Seems fine to point and laugh from afar, it’s not like they’ll get any traffic here other than from OP. Besides TIL there actually are reasons for the white plastic look, so discussion is mildly useful?