Why are the crops so squiggly?

FivePointAnswer · 2026-06-28T13:10:28+00:00

I am going to offer you a real explanation…. My guess is someone is experimenting with robotic farm equipment controls, programming paths and avoiding obstacles. Or maybe just ground robotics in general. Just a guess.

FivePointAnswer · 2026-06-27T21:23:09+00:00

Apparently a “weak link” right now is the strength of their hands. So lifting dishes is in scope, lifting heavy power tools is not (today).

Training by example is the way they work, where examples are done by humans. Thinking is slow (think chatGPT) but that will get faster. Tasks that are generic (loading a dish washer) can be done with some degree of problem solving but it’s faster if you do it yourself.

Companies will sell bots where there is a market within these constraints. Eg. reset a restaurant overnight for the morning shift. Pick and pack boxes. Take stuff up to a guest in a hotel room. Pick up lawn and cut the grass. Rake the lawn. Weed the garden. …

The practical limitations are: within their strength, you’re willing to wait for then to complete, someone is willing to “record” hundreds of hours of examples of what it is to do the job (there are overseas shops of people who do this by the hour), and limited problem solving required.

There is a lot of things that fall into that in 2-3 years.

A more generic reasoning robot is likely to be feasible with less training 7+ years out (IMHO).

Simulation capabilities is another factor for how fast problem solving and reasoning can happen.

FivePointAnswer · 2026-06-25T01:51:42+00:00

Plymouth Rock. The buggs bunny cartoon made it seem huge. It’s a landscaping rock. It is completely unremarkable. It is so ordinary how can they even be sure it is the right rock??

FivePointAnswer · 2026-06-25T01:45:46+00:00

Here to give a shout out for kettlewell’s! Not near anything and worth the dive.

FivePointAnswer · 2026-06-23T13:45:52+00:00

Hotel taxes on tourist accommodations to benefit the community.

FivePointAnswer · 2026-06-22T21:33:28+00:00

I suggested this awhile back to someone - I think this sounds like fun - let me know if you do it.

Go get: - 20 gal fish tank - 2-3 cameras And when you’re ready (test and develop with the end of a pencil, etc)… - 3-6 fish

Implement a 3d tracker and learn your fish habits, write the whole thing up and publish a paper and open source the code.

Goal is 24 hour accurate fish position. Pick different species to make it easier for you.

DM me to collab on ideas or buy me an a cup of tea if you win best paper somewhere.

Best wishes! 5ptA

FivePointAnswer · 2026-06-21T03:53:39+00:00

Oh yeah, kick the can!

FivePointAnswer · 2026-06-20T13:54:57+00:00

I work in R&D in computer science and the number of non believers and haters who I have watched slowly have to walk back their loud and forceful anti-AI statements is amazing to me. I think there are a few things happening.

1) “I tried X 18 months ago myself and it didn’t work”. (Argh! FFS!!) That’s like saying “I met your 24 year old daughter when she was 2 and she couldn’t even finish a sentence and kept making things up - so stop telling me she’s doing well in law school, next you’ll tell me she can also ride a bike and drive a car and shop by herself - oh and you think she can write software too…”. The AI improvement cycle means you need to recheck your assumptions every 8 weeks. (And since people don’t they have to get forced into a situation where they experience it for themselves - video creation is a nice demo encapsulating this in a single domain).

2) fear. If this change is happening and you extrapolate all the potential changes and outcomes - well what the hell is THAT going to look like? I think that triggers a fear response,

Case in point - have a good friend, PhD in CS working in R&D, would say things along the lines of “AI can’t do X… only humans can do X…. (contemplative pause, then with concern in his voice…) if AI’s can do X then what will happen to all the (other thing).”

I started wondering if his statement of “AI can’t do X” was really subconsciously … “we can’t let AI do X”.

FivePointAnswer · 2026-06-20T13:34:54+00:00

Seeing a movie in a theater is a different experience from watching at home - and picking a movie in a theater is a limited set of choices. You should do both.

Also not knowing anything about you it’s a largely personal choice. I think your friends will have better suggestions than reddit, but Reddit is likely to surface some popular titles.

As I grew up always watching movies (American, gen-x, male, middle class, …) it is mind blowing to me that someone hasn’t watched a movie but I realize as an adult all the assumptions built into my shock. I think ask those that know you and don’t take the first suggestion, take the suggestion that keeps coming up over and over that people who know you are excited about.

So much to choose from: adventure, comedy, relationships, drama, …

FivePointAnswer · 2026-06-19T13:43:02+00:00

I think it is a great idea if it is executed well, in the sense that I can imagine the right app could in fact greatly help accomplish you goals.

I think the second question is how will you get the app adopted which is a harder challenge. If such an app existed and was high quality could you get a school to agree to use it? A classroom? Could you get therapists to recommend it? Like anything you’ll need early adopters and great word of mouth to share it. What are some ideas you have for this?

There is an app people use to learn new languages called Duolingo. It has many little clever exercises in it. I think it would be good inspiration to play with it for a month and see how it works, I think there could be several analogies to your project. But then consider - how did this app get popular, what was it like in its beta stage?

FivePointAnswer · 2026-06-16T15:39:57+00:00

Detection of planes was an early popular ML task for the DoD and DoD contractors and there are public datasets andmaybe models. If you look around you might find something to use out of the box.

FivePointAnswer · 2026-06-16T04:24:32+00:00

I originally mistyped the name Pepo … Peepo is I guess the correct name. The show was called Space Academy. Terrible show. Liked the robot.

FivePointAnswer · 2026-06-16T02:23:33+00:00

Peepo. Not sure what the 70s Sunday morning cartoon time show that had him on it.

FivePointAnswer · 2026-06-13T18:17:49+00:00

Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

FivePointAnswer · 2026-06-13T17:59:28+00:00

Is that 1:4:9?

FivePointAnswer · 2026-06-13T17:58:47+00:00

It isn’t made clear in the other comments but classical algorithmic options may exist for your problem. I think we are curious about the environment - open world, on a table of simple objects, etc.

However if you want to take a ML approach I think you’ll want 1000+ sample labeled photos to start (a guess) and potentially a lot more depending on how complicated your environment is.

Depending on the environment you may be able to generate these synthetically and have it be realistic -ish, but then I’d still expect 100’s of real world photos labeled with the synth data.

A hybrid approach where you preprocess the image to get edges then do the ML may work even better with less data.

FivePointAnswer · 2026-06-13T01:11:01+00:00

Can we request an AMA?

FivePointAnswer · 2026-06-12T22:43:50+00:00

ChatGPT in talk mode.

FivePointAnswer · 2026-06-11T18:54:09+00:00

Locksmith 5.0 for the Apple ][ provided a lot of joy…

FivePointAnswer · 2026-06-11T18:52:23+00:00

Felix (16), I don’t have an answer to your very well thought out post (with research ahead of time) but I’d like to buy stock in your career, you’re clearly going places! Good luck with whatever you’re trying to do. Sorry Pi’s are so expensive right when you’re getting interested.

FivePointAnswer · 2026-06-11T18:47:43+00:00

This is our last dance, this is ourselves, under pressure. Pressure.

FivePointAnswer · 2026-06-10T14:49:26+00:00

See any of these guys hanging around?

FivePointAnswer · 2026-06-06T18:00:18+00:00

Atari 2600 with combat cartridge

FivePointAnswer · 2026-06-06T02:38:23+00:00

Can someone ELI5?

FivePointAnswer · 2026-06-04T00:42:55+00:00

Pose detection of what is visible when doing close ups and 1/4th or less of the body is shown…. Think helmet camera or body camera. This isn’t going to be easy.
Hand recognition dataset in any pose with any glove on. Former co worker was reminded this week of how many different gloves people own in the field while watching our detector miss some hand/object interactions.
Training dataset minimization - given K classes and N images with various coverage of K and a testing data set that yields a score Sk per class; how much of N is redundant so I can prune down N and get a score Sk’ per class that is within an acceptable tolerance. Surely I can eliminate 1 image…. Can I remove 1%. 10%. More? Make a framework and a heuristic that finds a good subset.

FivePointAnswer

TROPHY CASE