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Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd
The kitchen assistant, known as 'Flippy', was designed by a startup called Miso Robotics which specializes in "technology that assists and empowers chefs to make food consistently and perfectly, at prices everyone can afford."
[...] Flippy uses feedback-loops that reinforce its good behavior so it gets better with each flip of the burger. Unlike an assembly line robot that needs to have everything positioned in an exact ordered pattern, Flippy's machine learning algorithms allow it to pick uncooked burgers from a stack or flip those already on the grill. Hardware like cameras helps Flippy see and navigate its surroundings while sensors inform the robot when a burger is ready or still raw. Meanwhile, an integrated system that sends orders from the counter back to the kitchen informs Flippy just how many raw burgers it should be prepping.
Source: http://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/burger-robot-flipping-meat-0432432/
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday September 15 2017, @02:57PM (1 child)
It depends a lot of the state of the business.
- On the one hand, Joe's Auto Repair is likely surviving on relatively low margins, and Joe has to make sure that he's running an efficient operation and providing good service if he's going to make it.
- On the other hand, Apple doesn't have the same situation at all: They're making money hand-over-fist in a way that isn't really limited by their efficiency. They could be paying 2,000 completely useless employees, costing them an extra $500 million (estimating $250K per employee), and put up with it because that's really not all that big a dent in their bottom line.
Once a business is stable enough that it's closer to Apple's situation than Joe's Auto Repair's situation, the managers and especially middle managers no longer need to be all that concerned about what's good for the business. At that point, the goal becomes climbing the corporate ladder, and that has much more to do with making yourself look important and valuable to your superiors than it does with being efficient or providing quality products and services to the customers. And one way of doing that is to take on essentially useless employees whose real job (regardless of job title) is to back whatever plan you have and talk up your accomplishments in meetings, email discussions, etc.
One of the big mistakes a lot of libertarians make is thinking that Apple is playing remotely the same game as Joe's Auto Repair.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 15 2017, @07:07PM
Then they aren't essentially useless.
I think of this as more of a straw man. I'm pretty sure most libertarians get that there's a difference. It's not necessarily a relevant difference though.