this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2025
741 points (98.3% liked)
A Boring Dystopia
14306 readers
239 users here now
Pictures, Videos, Articles showing just how boring it is to live in a dystopic society, or with signs of a dystopic society.
Rules (Subject to Change)
--Be a Decent Human Being
--Posting news articles: include the source name and exact title from article in your post title
--If a picture is just a screenshot of an article, link the article
--If a video's content isn't clear from title, write a short summary so people know what it's about.
--Posts must have something to do with the topic
--Zero tolerance for Racism/Sexism/Ableism/etc.
--No NSFW content
--Abide by the rules of lemmy.world
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Funnily enough my Roomba is the ONE thing I rely on to argue against the "robotic uprising". When people fawn over 1X’s Neo or Tesla humanoid I can happily testify that as relatively long term mobile robot owner... it sucks! In theory it's amazing right, in theory you program it, go out while it clean the place, go back to charge itself, etc. So much free time for you now, right?
No... you need to make way for it. You need to actually setup the place for such a basic task. Think you can just "wing it" and let it work while you sip on a cocktail outside? Sure, come back to find it in an enraged BDSM session, rope all over it as it pulls over a char with cable entangle deep inside.
Honestly it's like AI more broadly : the concept is so simple to understand and the result is something we ALL want... that every single time there is an improvement, no matter how small, we love to speculate that truly this time we are getting "close" to make it work. Truth is, we have no idea of the complexity of the problem.
Related https://rodneybrooks.com/why-todays-humanoids-wont-learn-dexterity/ who did make Roombas and more.
It sucked you say?
While it cuts?
I often use scanner / printers as an example. Its like a robot with a very specific and easy job - feed the paper through one sheet at a time. They've been around for 40 years, mass produced, they still cant reliably do that one thing.
With a lot of tech, it seems like solving the first 90% of a problem is easy, then the next 5% very hard and expensive, but the last few percent is impossible.
We see this with so many things - printers, roombas, self driving cars.
Definitely, that's why I do prototyping. The first 90% is super fun and empowering! It's exhilarating. You start to believe you could do anything. Then... the remaining 90% get harder, and harder, until you're done it and the very last 90% is even harder! /s
My best buy ever was a $ 20 "dumb roomba": It was just a little ball with a battery inside that made random movements, and you could put it in a little "cage".
It did a horrible job, like a 5 year old half-assing it, put hey - $ 20, 0 effort for a little help? Everything was slightly less dusty and hairy, and it pushed most of it into the corners. Saved like 3 minutes per day.