Training a robot to play tennis (with video). “The imperfect human motion data consist only of motion fragments that capture the primitive skills used when playing tennis rather than precise and complete human-tennis motion sequences from real-world tennis matches.” They […]
Specialized robots, not humanoids. “Humanoids have their place, but there’s a lot of room for specialized robots that do things in an efficient, sort of industrial-scale kind of way, which is sort of where we play,” Kalanick said about his […]
The 10x lawyer arrives. “This creates, for the first time in the history of the legal profession, the conditions for 10x lawyers.” Zack Shapiro argues AI breaks BigLaw’s leverage model by making individual judgment, not hours or letterhead, the thing […]
Paul Graham’s on status brands. “Branding isn’t merely orthogonal to good design, but opposed to it.” Paul Graham uses the Swiss watch industry’s quartz crisis to explain how, once performance becomes a commodity, companies learn to sell status and distinctiveness […]
Investigators played poker undercover in Austin. “Agents were given $600 each to play some cards on the first trip.” The warrant says the TABC ran multiple undercover visits, with agents tracking chips, drinks, security, and wins and losses as part […]
NES Mario in Unreal Engine. “If Nintendo’s NES Super Mario Bros was made with Unreal Engine.” A quick little brain-bender clip that reimagines an 8-bit classic as glossy modern 3D. ~ learn more
You were training Google’s AI. “At peak, 200 million reCAPTCHAs were solved every single day.” Sharbel argues those clicks were free data annotation from people just trying to log in, and that it helped train computer vision for products like […]
The origin of Erewhon. I just learned that the name came from an old science fiction book. “In Erewhon, illness is crime and crime is illness.” Samuel Butler’s 1872 satire flips medicine and morality, with doctors acting more like judges […]
Gold supraballs trap almost all sunlight. “This results in ~90% absorption across the solar spectrum” by stacking self-assembling gold nanospheres into textured coatings that soak up UV, visible, and near-infrared, then turn it into heat for thermal devices. The payoff: […]
Influencing dreams. “Another dreamer was cued with a puzzle about jungles and woke up from a dream in which she was fishing in the jungle thinking about that puzzle.” Northwestern researchers played puzzle-specific soundtracks during REM sleep and got 75% […]