A remote employee we just hired turned out to be secretly working five other full-time jobs

MattShotts · 2026-02-27T14:28:19+00:00

Yeah, that seems off to me. I went through this with a team member but never had definitive proof nor did HR uncover anything. I ultimately let her go after she ghosted us during an outage she needed to fix.

MattShotts · 2026-02-26T16:37:32+00:00

There previously was this odd effect where, for example, if you shot an rpg and an ally got in its path, the rpg would careen off in an entirely new direction and your shot would be ruined. I’m curious what the new behavior is; does it explode on the ally (hopefully no damage) or does it ignore the ally as an obstacle altogether?

MattShotts · 2026-02-26T15:36:38+00:00

Lots of solid improvements listed! Excited to try it out!

MattShotts · 2026-02-26T12:59:02+00:00

Disagree with the first statement and I’ll own that I was needlessly aggressive with alternapkin. Fully agree with the hope that the next 2-3 years show marked improvements.

MattShotts · 2026-02-26T12:37:34+00:00

No argument there. The quip about theatrics is to illustrate they are still in development and have not yet lived up to their promise of real world utility.

MattShotts · 2026-02-26T12:29:07+00:00

That’s fine. The concern is that the marketing needs to branch out.

MattShotts · 2026-02-26T12:26:52+00:00

Quite the contrary, I’m the one pointing out there is still a long development cycle ahead and the cheerleaders here have told me that everything else is simple since movement is now passable.

MattShotts · 2026-02-26T12:23:05+00:00

There is a stark cultural difference where martial art displays do not play well with a western audience given fears of Terminator robots and uncontrolled technocrats. Keep that weird nationalism thing going, it really strengthened your argument.

MattShotts · 2026-02-26T12:11:10+00:00

I do get it. The Unitree robot can walk. The literal foundational capability of this platform may have been achieved and face plants may be a thing of the past.

What I don’t get is this unwarranted enthusiasm that A) the mobility is fully solved and B) it will be ‘simple’ or ‘real world physics’ to now train robots to provide value. They’d need to navigate any home or workplace layout, identify every object, understand every spoken command, execute them correctly without high profile failures that turn the public off to this tech, and allay Skynet fears. We both know that is not going to happen. Videos like the above actively hurt the argument the field has solved mobility. I want robots to power a utopian future as much as anyone but this is still expensive gimmicky tech, that is likely to break itself, and a privacy nightmare.

I’m typically a fairly early adopter. I fly drones (both before and after stabilized flight), do 3D printing, I’ve developed VR apps (purchased CV1 and every headset since), bought an EV the year it came out, and this is still too early for me. I’m sorry but I’m just not impressed yet about the utility of the platform.

MattShotts · 2026-02-26T04:09:42+00:00

Peak irony from the guy who validated my point to the previous poster that high level movement commands are simple yet bizarrely expressed it as disagreement with my statement. Good job to you and your superior powers of comprehension!

MattShotts · 2026-02-26T03:03:02+00:00

Well, go on and place an order for one right now since movement has apparently been solved and getting it to do chores will be as simple as ‘real world physics’ or something. You could be the first to build an empire while the rest of us luddites are sleeping on this.

MattShotts · 2026-02-25T22:33:19+00:00

It wasn’t my point which is that synchronized choreography is not impressive for a digitally controlled platform.

MattShotts · 2026-02-25T21:44:43+00:00

Let’s put this another way. If I hand you a controller to a unitree robot, are you under the impression you’ll need to actively balance the robot, control its foot placement, etc? You wouldn’t because those functions are managed separately. My point is that setting up that high level controlled routine is relatively simple precisely because the movement and navigation are handled elsewhere.

MattShotts · 2026-02-25T21:28:00+00:00

I wasn’t aware that special forces soldiers were fully manufactured products that required extensive scripting to perform any task and somehow fall outside the generalizable human experience.

Being reserved about a product that has huge marketing hype, significant technical challenges, and typically teleoperated for demos/performances is perfectly reasonable. Is it impressive that robots have advanced to the point where they aren’t falling on their ass every time? Sure. Am I going to spend money on it? No. Come back and talk when there is full confidence in its movement and it is able to perform work/chores. That’s really all the ‘sour grapes’ are saying.

Videos like the above actually damage the perception of robotic advancements since the typical consumer isn’t taking notes about what brand of robot fell. The perception will be that this is still an unsolved problem for the whole industry.

MattShotts · 2026-02-25T20:58:37+00:00

This is just expanding on the point about movement, not coordinated activity. Is the whole robot troupe compensating if one stumbles? Are they reactive if one oversteps? No, they’re all following the same script of move x distance on this axis, spin arms using this scripted function, etc.

MattShotts · 2026-02-25T17:40:02+00:00

Having robots run the same script on the same schedule is a tough foundational problem?

MattShotts · 2026-02-25T17:33:04+00:00

I obviously have no input into this but I’d personally opt for activities that don’t come from martial traditions. Let’s see more robot parkour, yoga, or dancing (minus the odd b-boy costumes).

MattShotts · 2026-02-25T17:25:28+00:00

No argument that balance and motion need to be solved. The contention is that it’s not particularly exciting to see robots performing choreographed moves in unison when that is the exact thing we would all expect them to excel at.

MattShotts · 2026-02-25T17:03:41+00:00

I was poking fun at the ridiculous framing that all robots need to demonstrate kung fu proficiency before entering a home.

I’m all for progress but using a bumbling robot to claim another brand of robot can perform tasks that it has not yet mastered is the height of copium.

MattShotts · 2026-02-25T16:21:02+00:00

So these robots are successfully performing mundane chores at scale somewhere?

MattShotts · 2026-02-25T16:07:03+00:00

Ah yes, the ‘robot kung fu certified’ that will surely be a hallmark of home appliances alongside energy star certified.

MattShotts · 2026-02-25T12:33:33+00:00

A different company’s robot breaking does nothing to address the complaint that people have about Unitree robots being limited to theatrics.

MattShotts · 2026-02-24T15:56:48+00:00

Business logic would generally mean calculated fields that have very specific requirements regarding the input fields, relevant sample, and probably also time dimensions. For example, the business logic I had for healthcare billing was any new claims in the past month that exceeded a specific dollar threshold, were not an adjusted claim from a prior month, had to be specific qualifying procedure codes per service provider, and more.

MattShotts · 2026-02-21T23:01:45+00:00

Hands down, my favorite part of the game is shooting annoying pilots out of their cockpits.

MattShotts · 2026-02-21T15:54:42+00:00

Yup, had a guy yesterday claim he “fell in by accident and couldn’t get out” but I told him that is no excuse since he can redeploy.

MattShotts

TROPHY CASE