Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Matías Mattamala @mmattamala.bsky.social · 26d

The new macOS is stupidly round

Reposted by Matías Mattamala

Rod Munday @rodmunday.bsky.social · Jul 31

Colleagues based at UK universities: please sign and share this letter to support Gazan students coming to study in the UK, in order to request Governmental deferral of the biometric data requirement and safe evacuation.

Open letter from UK university staff: Request for biometric deferral and safe evacuation of incoming Palestinian students and scholars from Gaza to UK Universities

More than 40 students currently trapped in Gaza with full scholarships to UK Universities are asking for a safe route to come and study. We, the academic community hoping to welcome these scholars, ca...

docs.google.com

17 16

Reposted by Matías Mattamala

Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.bsky.social · Jul 8

and a slide that explains illegal data torrenting by Meta, i also had to remove

In the end, it was either remove everything that names names (big tech particularly) and remove logos or cancel my talk.

2/

4 110 630

Reposted by Matías Mattamala

Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.bsky.social · Jul 8

a couple of hours before my keynote, I went through an intense negotiation with the organisers (for over a hour) where we went through my slides and had to remove anything that mentions 'Palestine' 'Israel' and replace 'genocide' with 'war crimes'

1/

Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.bsky.social · Jul 8

my keynote happening in a few mins. registration here to stream it

aiforgood.itu.int/summit25/reg...

38 690 1.4K

Reposted by Matías Mattamala

Merriam-Webster @merriam-webster.com · Jul 7

'Vacations.'

The word is 'vacations.'

FAST COMPANY Article:

While retirement typically occurs, after
completing a career and saving and investing for it, a new trend is emerging among Gen Z career professionals
called "micro-retirement." Micro-
retirements involve taking a one to two- week break from work every 12 to 18 months.
Gen Z is using micro-retirement to avoid burnout, find greater fulfillment in their work, and enhance their overall well-being. However, it's not just Gen-Z:

240 3.1K 11K

Reposted by Matías Mattamala

Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · Jul 4

I got tired of the nonsense some AI leaders were coming out with, and so I wrote this for @newscientist.com
www.newscientist.com/article/mg26...

The dangers of so-called AI experts believing their own hype

Beware the tech leaders making grandiose statements about artificial intelligence. They have lost sight of reality, says Philip Ball

www.newscientist.com

12 80 220

Matías Mattamala @mmattamala.bsky.social · Jul 1

Insane stuff

Photo of a hand holding a paperback copy of “Permutation City” by Greg Egan

3

Matías Mattamala @mmattamala.bsky.social · Jun 30

Sorry for the offtopic comment, but I was there too! You gave such a great keynote, and signed my copies of your books.

(back then I was an undergrad working on vision, now I'm a postdoc and still trying to help them see :) )

Signed copy of "Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us" by Rodney Brooks

6

Reposted by Matías Mattamala

Rodney Brooks @rodneyabrooks.bsky.social · Jun 30

1/2 Headline wrong: not "first". Robot Soccer has been an international competition for 30+ years. People newly aware of something often think it has just happened now and progress will be fast. See the ten+ year old photo in my second skeet. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

China hosts first fully autonomous AI robot football match

Footage of three-a-side game shows humanoids struggling to kick the ball or stay upright

www.theguardian.com

3 5 25

Reposted by Matías Mattamala

Maxim Raginsky @mraginsky.bsky.social · Jun 29

Just finished reading this well-researched and well-written piece. From a cursory look at Peter Putnam's papers, it seems that he anticipated ideas like neural Darwinism, enactivism, and Robert Rosen's notion of emergence relative to a model by creation of new observables. www.peterputnam.org

2 3 24

Matías Mattamala @mmattamala.bsky.social · Jun 14

This week I started as a Research Associate (aka Postdoc) at the School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh @edinburgh-uni.bsky.social.

I'll be working with @sramamoorthy.bsky.social in the new Centre for AI for Assistive Autonomy.

Let me know if you are around :)

Picture of the Edinburgh Castle in a sunny morning in Edinburgh

Photo of the main building of the Informatics Forum building, University of Edinburgh

Picture of a NAO humanoid robot, dressed up as a bagpipe player, next to a small Highland cow plushie

1

Matías Mattamala @mmattamala.bsky.social · Jun 10

Awesome, thank you very much for sharing!

Reposted by Matías Mattamala

David Picard @davidpicard.bsky.social · Jun 6

Reminder that the MSCA postdoctoral program exists. If you have a PhD and want to work in a European lab, you have until September to apply. Just contact them now.

ec.europa.eu/info/funding...

ec.europa.eu

24 30

Matías Mattamala @mmattamala.bsky.social · Jun 4

Awesomeeee, thanks!

1

Matías Mattamala @mmattamala.bsky.social · Jun 4

Varela’s re-edited book is already out 😲?

1

Matías Mattamala @mmattamala.bsky.social · Apr 28

I wrote an article for The Conversation analysing the robot horse presented by Kawasaki :)

The Conversation UK @uk.theconversation.com · Apr 28

Kawasaki has unveiled a concept robotic horse, but can it actually be achieved?

A robot that you ride like a horse is being developed. It will stretch current limits of engineering

Kawasaki has unveiled a concept robotic horse, but can it actually be achieved?

tcnv.link

1 1 5

Matías Mattamala @mmattamala.bsky.social · Apr 18

This is very cool work, and reminds me of some of the objectives of the LAGR project.

It's also pretty impressive to see robot experiments with different baseline methods in closed loop!

Rohan Baijal @rohanblueboybaijal.bsky.social · Apr 18

Long Range Navigator (LRN) 🧭— an approach to extend planning horizons for off-road navigation given no prior maps. Using vision LRN makes longer-range decisions by spotting navigation frontiers far beyond the range of metric maps.
personalrobotics.github.io/lrn/

🧵1/6

1 2

Matías Mattamala @mmattamala.bsky.social · Apr 17

Wholesome stuff

Keenan Crane @keenancrane.bsky.social · Apr 17

Here's a nice "proof without words":

The sum of the squares of several positive values can never be bigger than the square of their sum.

This picture helps make sense of how ℓ₁ and ℓ₂ norms regularize and sparsify solutions (resp.). [1/n]

2 2

Reposted by Matías Mattamala

Liuba Papeo @ljubapi.bsky.social · Apr 16

Very cool paper showing that Crows can spot the odd shape out of a set where all other shapes are similar.
@scinews.bsky.social
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
🐦‍⬛ 🐦‍⬛ 🐦‍⬛ 🐦‍⬛

Crows recognize geometric regularity

Crows spontaneously identify intruder quadrilaterals among arbitrary shapes, excelling with regular shapes over irregular ones.

www.science.org

7 21

Reposted by Matías Mattamala

Rodney Brooks @rodneyabrooks.bsky.social · Apr 12

Here is how I have been comparing the two big hype phenomena in AI and robotics, in my recent talks. Spoiler alert: the hype is unfounded.

13 59

Reposted by Matías Mattamala

Zack Furness @punkademic.bsky.social · Apr 6

Don’t remember where I saw this library flyer a while back but it’s great

32 1.6K 6.7K

Matías Mattamala @mmattamala.bsky.social · Apr 5

This is completely unrelated to this, right? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical...

(to be fair my brain can barely parse the first sentence, but I always remember the existence of this)

Musical isomorphism - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

1 1

Matías Mattamala @mmattamala.bsky.social · Apr 4

It's never too late to repost that the part 2 of the SLAM handbook is out!
There are really cool contributions from my colleagues (as well as the leg odometry chapter we wrote with Marco Camurri)

Frank Dellaert @fdellaert.bsky.social · Mar 31

Part 2 of SLAM handbook is out for public comments! let us know what you think :-) Issue tracker on GitHub awaits! Link: github.com/SLAM-Handboo...

4

Reposted by Matías Mattamala

Encephalophagy 🎃 @encephalophagy.bsky.social · Apr 3

It’s always “We launched these tardigrades into space!” “We froze them to absolute zero!” “We threw them into an erupting volcano!”

Never “We took these tardigrades on a holiday. They’re getting tiny massages and sipping little umbrella drinks on the beach.”

24 500 1.9K