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Man’s best friend revisited — 38 Comments

  1. That’s not creepy at all. ‘Terminator’ is starting to look less like science fiction every day.

    I wonder if the folks in New Jersey have their orders in for this after the wonderful drone they deployed.

  2. I’ll stick with my Cats. Can’t see a robot Cat, it wouldn’t mind it’s handlers.

  3. Neo,

    Have you ever read Fahrenheit 451?

    What important element was missing from the widely seen movie, that was in the book? Apart from homicidal kids using guns in schools, and trying to run pedestrians down for fun, that is.

  4. Skynet smiles – no (man inside) Robocop is likely to be able to match the near future mech robot dogs & drone cops.

    Wonder if Wuhan won’t have streets full of such robots in the near future.

    (robotník — the Slovak word for worker) Except for sex doll slaves personal assistants, what most folk want are robots to do what they’re told, without getting in the way.

    Berserkers are coming.

  5. It’s the government in the book as well; that’s what the “firefighters” are part of IIRC.

    While I try to remember — the Terminator didn’t actually enforce anything – it just gave the canned speech like in my grocery store (if I had to work there I would shoot the PA system before the end of the first day) or like the drones in the States (whichever one it is).
    So, would it shoot out laser beams to burn the offenders, attack and chew their arms off, or what?

  6. There’s always something in a book that’s missing in the movie (short stories make the transmogrification more easily), but that is somewhat better than the movies which insert things that are not in the books.

  7. Thought I’d check before crashing to see if there was an answer. I’ll wait till tomorrow to give the answer. And go ahead and cheat if you want. LOL

    I can safely assume however that anyone who saw the movie on DVD never watched the bonus material with Bradbury discussing the book and film. The “bonus material” is usually more interesting than the movies, if they concern “significant” works. Or maybe it’s just me, and a very limited appetite for fiction.

  8. Definitely creepy.

    Looks more like a locust to me.

    Obligatory reference to Skynet inserted here.

    Amazing, as well, how many little dictators have emerged, all around the country.

    Can’t see this brightly colored pseudo “dog” lasting very long in many parts of the U.S.A., ditto these “official” hectoring overflying drones.

  9. The key to F451 is the mass addiction to social media. Not the book burning.

  10. Fred the Fourth, you got it exactly.

    It is the mechanical hound with the green glowing eyes and the procaine injecting needle in its snout. A robot that not only captures and dispatcnes vermin, but senses and signals and reacts to suspicious nonconformity among humans.

    In the film, the fire station pole serves as the only non human early indicator that something is out of joint with Montag and his fellows.

    The menacing mechanical hound, as well as the nuclear bombers, and certain human characters were left out of the screenplay or amplified. The bombers and exposition about the war, because they didn’t advance the movie. The hound was left out because it was too difficult to make as a prop, and possibly because the director thought it too science-fictiony.

    Don’t know about the old friend of Montag’s, seems to be a kind of plot elaboration that could be done without. It I really don’t know why it’s not in. The young school girl Montag encounters on his walks, who enjoyed the natural world and was frightened by her violent and nihilistic peers, was turned into and expanded to an adult political subversive and romantic interest

    https://i.pinimg.com/originals/5c/2b/4a/5c2b4a68e4bfc6f57a289c7d46335d99.jpg

  11. DNW,

    Didn’t 451 also feature a group of people who memorize books so that they can be written down again sometime in the future?

  12. Had trouble copying this link and pasting.

    https://s3.amazonaws.com/cdn.teachersdiscovery.com/images/uploads/4P2154LM_2.jpg

    I also think that Fred’s second comment is right on. In the novel, unlike the film, the written word still exists in technical manuals and instructions. It is suppression of dissenting opinions and retrograde ways through the stultifying effect of inescapable and constantly bombarding broadcast media; either frivolous or party line that seems to me to constitute the main theme.

    The effect on youth, similar to some of what we see today, is not seen in the movie and usually not mentioned. The are not like the adult semi zombies in the film, but violent and dangerous.

  13. Tuvea, yes.

    The movie ends with Montag joining an encampment of the “book people” at a lakeside settlement. The film editor recounted in the bonus materials, that it was developing as dangerously hokey, and he expected it to be and look ridiculous. And if you look at the actors used there, in their obvious incompetence as representives of hardened survivors, his alarm at the potential ridiculousness was obviously justified. But as he says, the flaws in the final scenes were rendered moot by a fortunate, and very real, snowfall on the last two days of shooting, which transformed a sketchy set up into an ethereal and mythic one. With the romantic musical score of long time Hitchcock collaborator Bernard Herrmann backgrounding the scenes, it was pulled off.

    In the novel, as I recall, Monday is chased through the night, finds refuge in a river, sees the bombers going overhead, encounters book people, witnesses the nuclear destruction of the city he fled, and migrates with book people companions to the north.

  14. I guess you missed the links i put up that covered that robot, and covered the two legged ones that do backflips and carry material.. then there is the miltary transport cow kind of critter.

    I warned and put up this a while back…

    now they are discussing direct war with china (as i also pointed out)
    becuse of taiwan… which is why we removed our planes from guam

    the assasination we are ignoring, is also important…
    as australia is showing that the virus WAS modified..

    the prior reports saying it wasnt was more about direct modification
    ie. changing genetic code directly which would show up pretty easy

    this modification is quite minor..
    it attaches in a bat strongly..
    and so if there was an intermediate creature, like a pangolin, it would attach to that, lets say, middle strong
    then humans.

    well, tests are showing that it attaches very strong to humans..
    and they cant find a middle critter, which it should be stronger..
    ie. an arrow of change…

    there is a heck of a lot more… but i dont bother wasting my time to be repremanded… we discuss trying to understand why WWII with germany started, and have decided to ignore why a conflict that is new and infront of us will start.

    and it HAS to start… there is no way to avoid it given China behavior
    the question is not if, but when, and what form it will take..

    given that china makes robots too, and have really good drone forces (using flocking software)… and nice AI it adapted from us.. and 30 years of tech stealing for the purpose, and planted people here for the purpose..

    i guess our leftist politicans were wrong (and china even wrote about it recently in a think tank report from the PRC) that we would not change them, but we were idiots for letting them have all that stuff… (so they look down on us)

    here is the Boston dynamics robot from TWO YEARS AGO…
    Boston Dynamics’ Atlas Robot Can Do Parkour
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSjKoEva5bg

    dont worry.. china has them too developed with technology we HAD to give them given the trade agreements, and technology they stole from left leaning academics who are helping them.. which i also pointed out more than 5 years ago, given i was watching it from academia myself..

    pish tosh..

    we are behind not ahead…
    mostly because we do not fund our companies from the state towards these ends and give rewards towards these ends or produce students capable of these ends… but we do have a plethora of racialists and feminists historiians if that helps.

    project sidewinder?
    confucious institutes
    973 project (i decided not to work with)
    211 projects
    2049 institute
    torch program

    we wont discuss these… so that way, we can be really suprised and have more fun discussing them AFTER.. because AFTER they lead to death and mayhem and more… they are more fun to pay attention to.. they are boring as heck before something happen..

    which i agree with .. its all fine… above is only my opinion and its not to change others opinions or anything like that… there is no reason to get upset at my worthless opinion… its just noise, and can be ignored

    project sidewinder

    They make for gripping headlines straight out of the world of John Le Carré: two hundred businesses operating in Canada that are secretly under the control of the Chinese government; a thousand Chinese intelligence agents based in Canada in order to carry out economic espionage, monitor Chinese dissidents and groups such as the Falun Gong, and recruit informants and “agents of influence”; two cabinet ministers in provincial governments and municipal politicians across Canada who are “under at least the general influence of a foreign government.” These are real stories, however, that have emerged in Canada over the last 20 years. All of them pertain to Canada’s relationship with China in the recent past and have relevance to the present and future relationship between the two countries.

    and

    First, there is the matter of espionage carried out by dual nationals. There have been a number of high profile cases in the United States of Chinese-Americans accused of economic espionage on behalf of the Chinese government. Both convictions and acquittals have followed, demonstrating the potential intricacies involved in such cases. Two different American studies found in the post-Cold War period dual loyalties as a growing motivation for those involved in espionage. This is in a country where more than 25% of workers involved in science and technology were born outside of the United States. Overall, the foreign born population of the United States is about 13%. These factors are even more prevalent in Canada where the foreign born population is 20% and the immigration system is constructed around prioritizing high-skilled immigrants.

    so when conflict comes, instant brain drain as they are recalled or prohibited.

    we may have to just give up on day one…
    [we certainly dont have the ability to manufacture things do we?
    our snowflakes are just as likely to sabotage things as learn to build]

    Despite the complexities around it, espionage remains easier to determine than the most obtuse category of “agent of influence” that has been alleged of some Chinese-Canadians. The concept most resembles the Cold War construct of subversion and is highly problematic in an era of multicultural and diverse societies based on high levels of immigration in which many newcomers have multiple loyalties. More reflection is required, including by intelligence agencies, on the implications of these increasingly post-national nation states for constructs that date from the Cold War. The reality of Canada and the United States in the 21st century might require rethinking the entire notion of an “agent of influence.” The alternative is the increasing suspicion and criminalisation of immigrants, be they from China or elsewhere.

    nice doggie…
    nice doggie…

    1,000 drones fly in formation! Watch the breathtaking show in China
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnTQTm7vNbY

    now that metalstorm is out of business..
    how you going to take care of 100,000 drones with a small high explosive payload?

    there is some more interesting stuff..
    the dog is not the most interesting..
    and its not that new…
    sadly, we ignore such things..
    which is ok… its only my opinion we shouldnt
    and we know that isnt worth anything..

    bring on the jello…
    Gelatin art | Gelatin art cakes – Gelatin art flowers compilation, 3d gelatinekunst
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SW9VZoyfEm8

    wife and i tried to learn to do the above.. 🙂

  15. “Can’t see this brightly colored pseudo “dog” lasting very long in many parts of the U.S.A., ditto these “official” hectoring overflying drones.”

    LOL…yes! Nothing a 12 gauge won’t fix. That’s what will happen to any drone in my backyard.

  16. Think about just the military implications of this 2017 demonstration of Chinese drones alone which, despite the light-hearted, cutesy background music, are pretty frightening, when you think of how these drones could be a huge force multiplier when used in warfare.*

    Time, I think, for us–despite his voluminous, stream of consciousness style–to pay a lot more attention to what Artfldgr is actually saying, and the points he is trying to drive home.

    P.S. With reference to what Artfldgr points out above about various Chinese espionage/influence programs–in a couple of comments here, these last two days, I have linked to articles about how four different Academics, working here in the U.S., have been, since just this past January, charged with/arrested for having secret ties to/doing secret work for China, and getting secret payments from them in return.

    * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnTQTm7vNbY

  17. That is so Singapore. I visited several years ago. A group of pedestrians encountered a defective street light which never departed from “don’t walk”. After several cycles of the car lights, some started to cross the street, a picture I captured and have titled, “People of Singapore, rebelling against 30 years of PAP rule, cross street against light”.

  18. ah, Snow on Pine…
    what happens if you combine it with YOLOv3
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=8&v=MPU2HistivI&feature=emb_logo

    yes You Only Look Once (you can download the software from git hub, and train it yourself!!!) V3 is great!

    then again… people in America (like me) can use YOLO with drones
    residential drone object detection using YOLO algorithm
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0v3Ama8Sgg

    we are now at the point where one can tell the drone, go get em..
    there are several on the market that will follow whatever you point to

    but bigger fancier ones… can use software like yolo to detect targets
    and with flocking, one person can control 1000 each..
    just think of it… 100 people controlling 100,000 drones..
    with the ability to be separately targeting anything they want to peel off the group and point at… and can be done remotely from the mainland..

    all with a bit of glue, tape, github software..

    IF you want to play with this like i do, just download it from git hub
    https://github.com/eriklindernoren/PyTorch-YOLOv3

    you dont even need to have fancy graphics cards..
    you can use some for free from google, or rent them if you need more
    here is the pricing
    https://cloud.google.com/compute/gpus-pricing

    but hey! you cant believe what can be done..
    the news wont tell you
    and people like me who write that kind of software..
    we know…

    [YOLOv3 is sooooooo cool… but so is using things like pytorch, tensorflow, etc… and NONE of this is the secret stuff… its trivial to connect it to a camera, and a guidance system or other such… really really trivial… ]

  19. Back in the mid 80s I attended a DARPA conference in San Francisco. One keynote was given by Lynn Conway (CS folks will know Conway and Meade).
    While discussing autonomous vehicles, she put up a slide clearly showing an armed drone (drawing) operating in the Fulda Gap area.
    The audience questions were, uhm, interesting.

  20. 25-30 years to get this kind of tech working well is not unexpected.
    I heard from a researcher observing early cruise missile navigation tests in the 70s. Stupid thing couldn’t even fly a “racetrack pattern” reliably.
    Fast forward 30 years to the Iraq war, and they could hit a specific part of a specific building from 400 klicks away.

  21. Fred, with the current level of AI and its ease of incorporation and use, hobby people can now surpass that kind of performance of that period.

    pytorch and tensor flow make creating nets and using them quite easy compared to even 10 years ago. most of the time now is in prepping data, and not in making networks. the network i created to solve the praetorian machine language challenge is only a printed page long.

    I use pytorch and my Titan X card, so i dont have to use google cpu rental.
    but the fact that there is such a thing as rental space and many using it will only hint at how much this is being used and how its going to explode over the next 5 years in terms of seeing products and stuff that uses it.

    one project i was working on was coding pancreas slides..
    https://www.kaggle.com/ will show you challenges people take using tons of databases and more for cash using crowdsourcing…

    the kind of thing needed to make weapons work well is now quite trivial..
    the guidance of missiles only requires fast enough computing to match their speeds… though sniping, drone, and other such systems are much much easier and trivial compared to hypersonic missiles.

    the new RTK (i think thats it) audio filters are incredible using your graphic cards
    and google has some systems that read your lips to filter out background
    text translation… electronic circuits.. medical slides… license plate reading… deep fakes of whole videos… your going to see long dead actors on the screen again… ai that plays games… heck.. Go just fell to machine… and deep thought taught itself chess in four hours with just knowing how the pieces move and the board layout…

    though dont worry about AI taking over..
    thats quite ridiculous..

    while Go just beat a human.. it required over 1700 processors, tons of graphics cards and i think a 17 person team, not to mention how much space and electricity… all devoted to one task… while the person that the machine beat was one human being with a brain that used about 20 watts, and could do much more than just play go..

    however.. AI can do lots of separate tasks real well, that we can piece together
    and weapons systems are not very hard.. a camera, YOLO, etc..

    i see police having drones that follow them (we have it) or are stored in quivers..
    you need to chase someone, throw the drown in the air and tell it with voice to track… we already have that level, but not that system yet..

    there are tons of systems i would work on if i had partners
    from cleaning up crime video (they are doing it, but i have my own angle for it)
    to ai enabled products that work better… lots of stuff i can see to target in terms of products and systems not on the radar yet… but they will be.. just a matter of time..

    even the military is scared..
    who needs hypersonic weapons when drones can float on the water
    store up power from the sun… and carry explosives as they wait
    sail into their area, and 10,000 of them wake up and fly in skimming the surface
    not easy to take out and quite deadly as its just a game of numbers

    tons of things

  22. Art, from your description it appears the more lucrative area to get into is counter-drone warfare.

  23. There is no easy way to counter it… in fact, the way our military works, its nigh impossible for people to participate. I tried when i had solutions to their yearly requests… they removed my subscriptions and never answered… unless your a college or affiliated… you cant do a thing… you CAN participate in China 973 programs as China is actually more receptive than our state… the money you get from the US is small and the path very hard, so a lot of this tech becomes open source rather than otherwise.

    one of the best ways to combat this was a company named metal storm. their electronic firing systems could handle swarmed drone attacks… but they went bankrupt and are gone as far as i know… (i lost money investing). their guns could do 100,000 bullets a second…

    the military is not thinking in this direction as far as i can tell… in fact, despite articles in the war journals on unrestricted warfare, they are still in ‘classical’ mode.

    also in the west, we think by not developing fighting robots that China and Russia wont… but they have robust programs for that, and are way ahead in terms of things like being able to manufacture them… as they use western tech to augment theirs, and we dont have theirs to augment ours.

    so our battle field robots are kind of restricted to carrying things
    Cow Robots Join The Military? – TechHive Update
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m1IK2_EBOo

    also, they are the source of the key materials for making such.. ie. things like the ingredients to the magnets… our mines were shut down… they make lithium for batteries.. they mine rare earth metals for the parts…

    China’s High-Stakes Robot Wars
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrhvZhPaxQ4

    We look to the young only, dispose of the old..

    The gigantic mech robots in movies and video games are being made..
    and they are turning them into real things.. [and some fake things too]

    but DARPA doesnt work the same way, doesnt fund it..
    it would be very lucrative to come up with stuff…
    but its not… mostly because as i said, you cant get the tech out

    I had some great anti submarine, anti ship tech…
    it was basically magnetic taggants you can drop in the water where oppostion ships go… they attach to the metal of the ships and get noisy… you would have to have lots of divers go out and get them… but if you combined that noisy process, with torpedoes that track it… you have a deadly combination… the sub version would replace the idea of depth charges.. long lines with such things that get shot out the back.. covering a large area… as the lines (over a mile long) sink, the sub would tangle them… as soon as it moved, they would make noise in the water…

    I had ideas for drones… but without being rich to start with, there is no way to do anything with your designs… darpa money is small… China pays better..

    Program 973 – The program was initiated in 1997 by the Chinese government to develop basic research, innovations and technologies aligned with national priorities in economic development and social development.

    it works with Project 985… making top colleges… they produce each year the total number of engineers the US has…

    863 Program a program funded and administered by the government of the People’s Republic of China intended to stimulate the development of advanced technologies in a wide range of fields for the purpose of rendering China independent of financial obligations for foreign technologies

    a lot of our brightest find it easier to work for China than be ignored by the US

  24. https://www.darpa.mil/

    Gamebreaker AI Effort Gets Under Way
    https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2020-05-13

    DARPA recently selected nine teams for the Gamebreaker Artificial Intelligence (AI) Exploration program, which held its virtual kickoff meeting May 5. mebreaker seeks to develop and apply AI to existing open-world video games to antitatively assess game balance, identify underlying parameters that significantly contribute to balance, and explore new capabilities, tactics, and rule modifications that are most destabilizing to the game.

    “If we can figure out a generic method to assess and then manipulate balance in commercial video games, my hope is that we might then apply those AI algorithms to create imbalance in DoD simulated war games used to train warfighters for real-world battle,” said Lt. Col. Dan “Animal” Javorsek, the Gamebreaker program manager in DARPA’s Strategic Technology Office.

    Sounds great… but its not structured to maximize anything…
    There is more work outside darpa on that for kids playing..
    the rewards are small so most of the work, like the drones is hobby

    The following lists Gamebreaker teams and their two video games:

    Aurora Flight Sciences is teamed with MIT and will use StarCraft II and Google Research Football
    BAE is teamed with UC Santa Barbara and AIMdyn and will use StarCraft II and the AFRL Strategem Wargame
    Blue Wave AI Labs will use SpringRTS: 1944 and OpenRA
    EpiSci will use miniRTS and StarCraft II
    Heron Systems will use DeepRTS and StarCraft II
    Lockheed-Martin is teamed with Cycorp and will use Multi-agent Particle Environment and SpringRTS: 1944
    Northrop-Grumman has teamed with Hazard Software and Matrix Games and will use Command: Modern Operations and TORCS
    Purdue University will use microRTS and StarCraft II
    Radiance Technologies is partnered with BreakAway Games and will use FreeCiv and Zero-K

    notice the teams? if you dont work for BAE, Grumman, Radiance or others… your not in… those are the only teams allowed to participate… without being conntected to them, you might as well not exist… and you dont..

    so even if you have great ideas, great ability, a solution on deck (like my computer chip design which we worked on and could prove it works), you might as well not exist at all.. so i dont.. .i dont exist…

    “We received many incredibly rich proposals from a diverse base of universities and small and large companies,” Javorsek said. “Since the teams aren’t competing against each other, we’re looking forward to a collaborative effort as performers develop their AIs across an array of games.”

    notice the SJW diversity words.. highly political.. without money you cant play

    DARPA Announces $2 Billion Campaign to Develop Next Wave of AI Technologies

    but the main military companies are the ones that participate..
    so little of it goes to independents…

    so the idea of someone like me and a few others working together to make PERRIGRINE drones to take out other drones is not really possible… even if we came up with something great… the odds are against us for not being connected.

    the ONLY thing i noticed over the years that made it was a rail gun design
    the young man was doing it in his garage as a project and on youtube
    at some point his website said no more as the military was interested
    he did a better job than those researchers who were hired like jobs did
    so his work went that way and no one heard any more about it…

    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

    old men without money dont get to work as they dont get to go to college
    however if your an old woman, you get to, as your college is available

    this is why i am waiting to die… nothing else to do..
    no resources, no team, no buddies, no ability to get to a college to do anything
    nothing to do about it either… just wait… keep nose above the water line.. and pass..

  25. Dogs are agreeable enough, but all dogs have the same problem. They are not cats. They will never be so sublime and dear.

  26. Art Deco:

    Aha! So you are a cat person.

    I am not.

    And yet, cats love me. In fact, in their catlike manner, they seem to love me because I’m not a cat person.

    And dogs love me too. They love me, in their doglike manner, because I am a dog person.

    So it’s love/love win/win for me.

  27. Artfldgr:

    About old people (men and women) and college —

    Many state colleges and universities have free tuition for people who are over a certain age to audit or even take courses for credit. The ages differ (anywhere from 50 to 65 are the usual entry ages) and the programs differ (credit vs. non-credit, and different limits on number of courses per semester). But at least on paper, there are no sex differences. The programs seem to be open to men and women equally.

    I have no idea how it works out in practice.

  28. they seem to love me because I’m not a cat person.

    They know who to troll, among other things.

  29. But at least on paper, there are no sex differences. The programs seem to be open to men and women equally. I have no idea how it works out in practice.

    SBA too SEEMS to be..
    lots of things SEEM to be..
    like scholarships..
    but then when you go to fill out forms…
    or you start researching..
    seems goes out the fricking window..

    there is HUGE help for women…
    and yet, the more women ignore it, the more we throw their way

    why do you think so many men are committing suicide in one group?
    cause it seems things are favoring them… right?

    4x as Many Scholarships for Women — a Disadvantage for Men?
    https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/loans/4x-scholarships-women/
    there are almost NO men only scholarships.. they almost all allow women
    and on top of it you have things like this

    take a look at this chart: https://assets.nerdwallet.com/blog/nerdscholar/files/2013/02/Screen-Shot-2013-02-21-at-5.34.45-PM.png

    300 scholarships for women vs 50 for men..

    and if you read the rest, they say 400% may not seem much of an advantage!!!
    cause of course women earn less than men (which has been disproved dozens of times… but like the russia conspiracy… keeps going on and on)

    might be why more women go to college, more women have degrees
    more men commit suicide.. more men go to jail.. women cant find men to marry
    and on and on.. eh?

    4x as Many Scholarships for Women — a Disadvantage for Men?
    https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/loans/4x-scholarships-women/

    AARP Foundation Women’s Scholarship Program
    Available to women who qualify as low-income and are at least 50 years of age or older.

    The percentage of men attending college rose quickly through the mid-1970s. But by 1995 women had closed the gap, and by 2010 women’s college attainment rate exceeded men’s by 8 percentage points. Today, men are the minority on college campuses nationwide.

    Last year, 37% of the total 5,595 applicants for the Ford Scholars program were male, and 36% of the total 120 Ford Scholars were male.

    and the higher that goes, the more we have to import people cause these ladies dont have children… (then hit 30 and are pissed off they cant find anyone suitable – cause the men dont earn enough)

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