back to article Here's 2018 in a nutshell for you... Russian super robot turns out to be man in robot suit

Every year Russia holds – and broadcasts on state television – a tech showcase of its latest products for an audience of hundreds of school kids. This year's PROJECT show, which took place on Tuesday, was dominated by Boris the Robot, who was able to not just walk and talk but also dance and do math. He was, the show and the …

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  1. Bog witch

    Overlords

    I for one..... Ah, forget it.

    1. BillG
      Devil

      Re: Overlords

      "The conference had never actually said it was a real robot. And the audience was schoolkids"

      Allow me to translate from the Russian: "It's okay, we only lied to children." Or to put it another way:

      "A lie told often enough becomes the truth." - Vladimir Lenin

      1. Steve Crook

        Re: Overlords

        It's not like we'd do that sort of thing. Certainly not at Christmas. Oh, wait....

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Overlords

          s/Christmas/April fools day/

      2. _LC_

        Re: Overlords

        This quote is often wrongly attributed to either Lenin or Goebbels. While this was surely Goebbels credo, I believe it is actually from the novel “The Crown of a Life” (1869) by Isa Blagden.

        Btw., Russians are rather surprised when you attribute this to Lenin. Even in the Western countries this misconception has only come up about a decade ago. But I guess if you repeat it often enough...

        There's your Goebbels again. ;-P

      3. Potemkine! Silver badge

        Re: Overlords

        "A lie told often enough becomes the truth." - Vladimir Lenin

        I thought the quote was from the orange Pinocchio?

    2. Jim 59

      Re: Overlords

      "And that is the world in 2018: where people go to great lengths to persuade you of one reality and then, when it is exposed, insist that they never did any such thing and it's all of you that are at fault for claiming it ever happened like that in the first place"

      And that has been Russia since 1917.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      You b*stard! Now I have that memory refreshed. Grr.

      :)

    2. Evil Auditor Silver badge

      ...and this is why nerds, auditors and stuff are not invited to parties.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Tik & Tok on the clock, but the party don't stop, no (Oh oh oh oh)

      "The fact that he had no external sensors and danced like, well, a man stuck inside of robot suit trying to dance like a robot, rather than a machine trying to approximate human dancing"

      Indeed. They should have got Tik and Tok out of retirement (assuming they're not still going!) instead.

      (Anyone else remember trying to do that "robotic head movement" thing as a kid in the early 80s?)

  3. David 45

    Action Man

    Wasn't Putin in there, was it? Make a change if someone else pulled HIS strings!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Action Man

      >Wasn't Putin in there, was it? Make a change if someone else pulled HIS strings!

      He was busy doing his own dance routine

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Action Man

        > "He was busy doing his own dance routine"

        I was expecting "Putin on the Ritz"...

      2. DuchessofDukeStreet
        Pint

        Re: Action Man

        Oh. My. God.

        Never mind beer o'clock, I now need vodka o'clock. On a loop.

    2. apalamarchuk
      Gimp

      Re: Action Man

      If this was the case the robot would be much shorter and slower.

    3. macjules
      Angel

      Re: Action Man

      From what I understand, there would have to be at least room for 2 in there if you wanted to include Little Vlad.

  4. jake Silver badge

    There's hope for the next generation after all.

    Included in my email this morning was a link to this. It was sent by my 9 year old Granddaughter. The Subject: read "Who do they think they are fooling?", the body read "Obvious fake is obvious."

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: There's hope for the next generation after all.

      A 9-year-old using email? I don't believe it! I didn't think they'd even know what that is nowadays...

      ("It was like Instagram, dearie, except that you didn't need to include a heavily-doctored selfie or an artfully-arranged picture of your lunch with every message")

      At least she has a healthy sense of scepticism.

      1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

        Re: There's hope for the next generation after all.

        A 9-year-old using email? I don't believe it!"

        If this is jake's grand-daughter, I'm prepared to assume she is a cut above average in the clue stakes.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: There's hope for the next generation after all.

          Or she's been indoctrinated into his archaic ways (not necessarily a bad thing), and it's the only way grand dad can be contacted and will respond to.

          1. jake Silver badge

            Re: There's hope for the next generation after all.

            If by "indoctrinated", you mean she is encouraged to think for herself, then I'm guilty as charged. However, I must take offense at your characterization of email as "archaic", Sir or Madam. Unless, of course, you can name a single Fortune-1000 that doesn't list email as one of their most important business tools. Until then, I expect a full and complete retraction of your heinous comment.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Not the first time - these are school competitions

    There is a very BIG incentive to rig things in state "tech" competitions in (ex) Eastern Europe. The tradition goes back decades :) If you win your school gets a massive chunk of funding direct or indirect in the next academic year. If you are somewhere in the middle of nowhere in a bankrupt region somewhere in the middle of Siberia the incentive to cheat is immense

    I have seen it myself and I have had blazing rows with refs myself as a part of a student team who tried to win fair and square in similar events (not in USSR, another Eastern Block country).

  6. disgruntled yank

    Question

    Other than in millions of dollars burned and perhaps hundreds of diagnoses bungled, how do we distinguish this from Theranos.

    1. Fred Flintstone Gold badge

      Re: Question

      It involves less blood?

      1. ibmalone

        Re: Question

        It involves less blood?

        While my coworkers may be wondering why I was laughing, my inner pedant wishes to point out it involves about 5 litres of blood.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Either way, it's bye-bye Boris and our hopes for a dancing robot this year."

    We still have the dancing Maybot. As she won her leadership ballot by a good margin tonight then Boris might still rue the day he supported misleading "facts" on the side of a bus.

    When someone apparently makes something difficult look easy - you need to examine their calculations.

    1. Prst. V.Jeltz Silver badge
      Coat

      The only way they would have got away with that would be to put Peter Crouch in the suit

    2. Androgynous Cupboard Silver badge

      I can't decide whether to upvote you for being correct, or downvote you because nothing related to this sorry tale could ever be worthy of an upvote.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      good margin

      Leading Brexiters have been very clear, 70:30 is not a good margin and there will be a new vote in 12 months to get a sensible result - on her leadership, obviously, not anything else.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: good margin

        More like 67:33 - an entire 3rd of the party don't support her - hardly a ringng endorsement

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: good margin

          "More like 67:33 - an entire 3rd of the party don't support her - hardly a ringng endorsement"

          It is more than the 66% majority that is usually reckoned to be the sensible threshold for major constitutional changes.

          The problem for many years has been the First Past The Past election system for Westminster. To game the FPTP system you need to be a large party. Such a party then necessarily combines many competing factions. Both the Tory and Labour parties are riven with civil wars between their factions. Often extreme minorities seek to hold the executive levers of power to implement their policies.

          In Europe various Proportional Representation systems allow the factions to be individual parties. A government therefore combines these as needed - usually producing more gentle shifts in overall left/right positioning. Unfortunately even PR governments can be dependent on an small extreme party - if there are one or two large parties dependent on their voting cooperation.

          1. magickmark

            Re: good margin

            The problem with PR can be, small extremist parties can hold a lot of power disproportional to their actual size. As an example look at Germany in the 1930's.

            PR allowed the Nazi party to gain a toe hold in Government, the rest is history!

            1. Ken 16 Silver badge
              Facepalm

              Reductio ad Hitlerum

              I invoke Godwin.

            2. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: good margin

              "PR allowed the Nazi party to gain a toe hold in Government, the rest is history!"

              The PR system then had a weakness that allowed very small parties to get a toe-hold - modern PR avoids that. The Nazi party was actually quite successful in elections at a time when there was violent conflict between extreme right and left groups in society - but its share of the votes was starting to decline. People caught in the middle, and business leaders, wanted stability.

              The big mistake was that politicians and business leaders thought that they could control the almost civil war situation by inviting the Nazis to join the government. In the meantime they had already passed an "Enabling Act" - only to be activated if the civil disturbances became worse and quick drastic action would be needed.

              When they gave Hitler the role of Chancellor they lost control of the situation. He activated the "Enabling Act" that then allowed him to rule by decree. From then on all branches of the government were purged and filled with Nazi appointees - especially the judiciary so that anything could be interpreted as legal.

              That precedent is what worried a lot of observers when the GOP supported Trump no matter how much they had to hold their noses.

              Poland's right-wing governing party have tried to bias the judiciary in the same way - except the EU has ruled it not permissible.

              1. Alan Johnson

                Re: good margin

                The merit and strength of first past the post is that successful parties have to have broad appeal and therefore can't be focusse don single issues but address most issues and the trade offs between them. The public vote based on these compromise positions and understand at least broadly and most of the time the general approach and platforms concerned. In PR systems, and this is worse the more faithfully proportional the system is, mainstream parties more or less draw and the power is given to minor often single issue or group focussed parties who are often quite unpopular. The decisions about broad policy are taken as part of coallition negotiations with the result often being directly against strong public opion with policies supported by as little as 5 or 10% of the population becomming the price for forming a coallition. It is not so bad when systems prevent very small minority parties getting representation but these are by definition not proportional systems. True PR is a democratic nightmare handing power to small minorities, encouraging political fragmentation and discouraging any real debate about priorities and trade offs.

            3. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: good margin

              "The problem with PR can be, small extremist parties can hold a lot of power disproportional to their actual size. As an example look at Germany in the 1930's."

              ahh, that explains why the damn tory party keep winning. but actually have less than 100,000 members..

              either that or I'm surround on this island by idiots.

              1. Solviva

                Re: good margin

                You don't need to be a paid up member to agree, support, and vote for a party.

                1. Anonymous Coward
                  Anonymous Coward

                  Re: good margin

                  "[...] to agree, support, and vote for a party."

                  What a voter believes they will get by voting for a particular party is open to debate. Manifesto promises are just that - promises that can be discarded, postponed, or re-interpreted once they are in power. Sometimes that is because they don't see the practical difficulties until later.

                  For the bigger parties - the local MP that the voter enables to be elected may be of a minority faction that has quite contrary ideas. Should that minority faction gain executive power then voters will rue the day they voted that way.

                  There used to be a time when our local candidates or party activists would knock on doors. For the last few decades round here the most one gets is a leaflet headlining some of their "promises" in a PR biased style.

                  I always try to dig deeper - and it is surprising how often an apparently anodyne party candidate turns out to have some personal incompatible ideas.

          2. This post has been deleted by its author

            1. werdsmith Silver badge

              Re: good margin

              It’’s more than the 60% of votes that she got from her own party in the second round of the leadership election that put her in to number 10.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: good margin

          But that's almost like saying if 48% of the country don't support brexit, that's hardly the will of the people to get as far away from the EU as possible. Pull yourself together, man!

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Here I am ...

    Brain the size of a pl... Forget it!

    1. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge

      Re: Here I am ...

      But I still think you ought to know I am feeling very depressed

      1. Giovani Tapini

        Re: Here I am ...

        Maybe spend some time with the doors. They may make you happier

    2. magickmark

      Re: Here I am ...

      And the diodes all down my left side!!! I think I'll just sit in a corner and rust.

  9. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge

    Russian TV has increasingly been creating entirely fake news segments and pushing them as real – a step that not even Fox News in the US has so far taken.

    Surely you jest?

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Clearly fake

    If it were a real Russian robot it would have broken down due to a lack of spare parts.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Roboflop

    Directives:

    1) Serve Putin's interests

    2) Protect the Kremlin

    3) Uphold the cold war

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Roboflop

      I'd buy *that* for a ruble!

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