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Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd
The majority of robots are white. Do a Google image search for "robot" and see for yourself: The whiteness is overwhelming. There are some understandable reasons for this; for example, when we asked several different companies why their social home robots were white, the answer was simply because white most conveniently fits in with other home decor.
But a new study suggests that the color white can also be a social cue that results in a perception of race, especially if it's presented in an anthropomorphic context, such as being the color of the outer shell of a humanoid robot. In addition, the same issue applies to robots that are black in color, according to the study. The findings suggest that people perceive robots with anthropomorphic features to have race, and as a result, the same race-related prejudices that humans experience extend to robots.
Source: Humans Show Racial Bias Towards Robots of Different Colors: Study
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday July 21 2018, @04:12PM (7 children)
I hear you - I never thought I'd be nostalgic for the old days of beige every-damned-computer-thing, but why black? Black contrasts with everything, demanding attention, while shrinking the visual space that it occupies (to clarify, it tends to shrink the apparent size of the room it's in, not itself). But while it contrasts with everything else, it blends together with other black things, including shadows, making it easy to misplace things, and difficult to see surface details and the shading that reveals shape, especially with indirect lighting, which is much more pleasant in every other respect. If I ever find the person who thought it was a good idea to put a row of important black buttons flush with a black surface, distinguished only by embossed black symbols... no jury in the world would convict me.
White is a lot easier to see the shape and surface, but still has the same high-contrast-with-everything-else problem that black has, though at least it tends to expand the visual space around it. It also tends to be a bit translucent and show any production contamination really well.
And of course, most actual colors will clash with the majority of color schemes, meaning you have to produce a wide range of colors if you want to market to color-conscious individuals, which increases overhead a bit in production, and a great deal in sales (especially for physical stores).
Grey seems like it has potential - but neutral greys tend to look extremely unnatural. While black and white are at the ends of the brightness spectrum of every color, nothing in the world around us is neutral grey. And as soon as you add tint, it starts to clash with other color schemes.
Beige was in many ways actually a rather brilliant color to settle on - brown is a relatively neutral color - it doesn't look great with much, but it doesn't look that bad either. It's different enough from everything that it tends to come off as a warm grey - except for one big problem: No two beige objects are ever quite the same shade, and if you put several of them side by side you end up with a non-unified mess of clashing colors.
Personally I'm a big fan of wood, to my eye you can have a huge jumble of different kinds and colors and they still pull together pretty well, but veneers are expensive, and even attractive contact paper is a lot more expensive than paint or a raw injection molded plastic surface. Leather is another nice one, as is metal (especially brushed or subtly embossed), and honestly I find all three substances tend to work fairly well together - but none are especially cheap.
Hmm, now I'm wondering why metallic shades of plastic injection molded with a "brushed metal" surface aren't more popular. I suppose surface texture probably makes unmolding more difficult, and it would tend to wear faster as the ridges are subjected to greater contact forces.
(Score: 3, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday July 21 2018, @04:26PM (2 children)
>Personally I'm a big fan of wood
Thanks for that. You gave my (admittedly not very deeply) inner teenager a good chuckle.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday July 21 2018, @05:04PM (1 child)
Ba-dum-*tish*
I didn't see that one coming. It's funny, as a teenager I hated such jokes - seriously people, can you not get your mind out of the gutter long enough to have a real conversation? These days though it's usually worth at least a halfhearted chuckle. Maybe the average conversation has really gotten that boring without me noticing?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday July 21 2018, @06:43PM
Maybe the conversations haven't really gotten boring - you've just stopped taking yourself so seriously.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday July 21 2018, @09:03PM (2 children)
I've been thinking bamboo would be a good candidate for casing. I tend to keep my machines a long time, because I buy at the high end and because I don't work with graphics or such computationally intensive uses much; Eventually the plastic they use for casing these days tends to crumble to dust. Don't think bamboo would do that, since there are antiques from the Japanese shogunate made out of the stuff that look as pristine as the day they were finished.
Also, it's sustainable, if such things matter to a person, and is bio-degradable after end-of-life.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 21 2018, @11:04PM
It's a nice idea, but the problem with bamboo materials is that it's not really bamboo.
It's just epoxy with bamboo embedded in it.
The heat stress will cause the epoxy to yellow, dry, crack and flake.
Source... I owned one of these...
https://www.brighthub.com/environment/green-computing/articles/108175.aspx [brighthub.com]
Lasted less than a year. :(
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Sunday July 22 2018, @06:12AM
Maybe if you found the right glue - as
I used to buy in the price/performance sweet spot and upgrade regularly myself, before I largely lost interest in stayin of the treadmill. The high point is still an aluminum and steel double-walled quiet antec p180 case that's seen... I think three motherboards now, and considerably more numerous component upgrades. Might be 10 years old by now? More? I'm rather impressed that the plastic bits are still holding together. At this point, as a "build it myself" PC guy, it's one of the most long-term satisfying PC investments I've made. Every metal edge is rolled, infrequently accessed cables are easily routed out of the way - an engineering work of art, and about as sleekly unobtrusive as a big grey box can be - though it's tucked out of sight so I rarely look at it.
Meanwhile one of my best friends, who got the same case at the same time, had it warp into non-functionality within a few years, so go figure. Maybe I just got lucky. Or maybe his 10-pound (I jest, slightly) ultra-quiet heat sink just ran a bit to hot for it to handle.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 22 2018, @01:18AM
I'm a fan of wood too, but not of tin
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=T70-HTlKRXo [youtube.com]