Ahmet Karapinar

AI for Factories in 21st century SWE @ManevaAI , prev @IBMCanada

[Eren Karapinar @manufacteren]

If you are not building with your brother then what are you doing ?

[Eren Karapinar @manufacteren]

Get in debt if you must but build that project

[Ahmet Karapinar @ahmetkdev]

@KuphDev Does blue background helps with training dataset? Planning to create a enclosure as well.

[KuphDev @KuphDev]

Why am I spending all this time training a robot arm to move colorful rubber ducks?
Fair question.

On the surface, this is absolutely a silly project.
I’m literally collecting demos, training AI policies, debugging, and spending way too many hours trying to get a small robot arm to pick up ducks and place them on a target.

And part of the answer is simple: It’s fun.
But that’s not the whole reason.

I’ve noticed a huge gap in education and excitement about AI and robotics in the X tech community vs the frequent doomerism on mainstream social media.
And I want to counter that narrative.

So what is this project?
It is an interactive livestream where the chat can control a robot.

Why a livestream?
Mainstream short-form social media platforms like TikTok and YouTube Shorts have been massively amplifying live content.
And in a world of brainrot and slop, live content is one of the best ways to engage an audience in order to share the message of techno-optimism.

How does it work?
The idea is simple, you send a command like:
“put the green duck on the target”
The system then parses the command, checks the current state of the workspace, picks the right robot policy, and the arm executes it live.

It works by combining:
• An SO-101 3D printed robotic arm
• A top-down camera
• Hugging Face LeRobot imitation learning
• 8 ACT policies: 1 to place or remove each duck color
• An LLM to parse commands
• Multimodal AI to check the workspace state
• Text-to-speech audio feedback so the robot can explain what it’s doing

In the end, colored rubber ducks are the hook.
The bigger goal is to use fun, interactive robotics content as a gateway into tech education and inspiration.

People are not just watching the robot.
They are participating.
They are giving it commands.
They are seeing embodied intelligence interact with the real world.

My hope is that projects like this can make AI and robotics feel less scary and more approachable.

I’m not a robotics researcher, just an at-home builder that asks ChatGPT a lot of questions.

And if this colored duck robot is the trojan horse that gets someone to care about robotics,
That's good enough for me.

[Eren Karapinar @manufacteren]

Get in debt if you must, but build for your country!

W/@ahmetkdev

[Eren Karapinar @manufacteren]

If you are in software and your table ain’t looking like this, you are ngmi..

[Ahmet Karapinar @ahmetkdev]

Sales and GTM bros in shambles rn... if you are in GTM pivot immediately while still there is time. This is just beginning.

@revnu_app just made hiring a growth person obselete. Technical founders eating good. Build product AI does the selling.

[Y Combinator @ycombinator]

Revnu (@revnu_app) makes growth a solved problem. With AI now anyone can build a product, but with Revnu anyone can sell it.

You never have to hire a growth person again. Technical teams focus on building, while Revnu handles the rest.

Congrats on the launch, @artfreebrey & @GeorgeJeffersn!

https://t.co/0SfWw9kGAY

[Howie Liu @howietl]

We’re giving away $10,000,000 to founders building agent-first businesses.

Autonomous, proactive agents will run tomorrow's companies.

We're backing 500 founders building them.

The Founding 500.

https://t.co/u8mxRWEXiT

[Y Combinator @ycombinator]

🚀 @InLoopRobotics deploys robot employees you can hire by the month.

It packs, kits, and fulfills — no capex, no integrators, no 6-month PoC.

Paid pilots are live today: 300+ picks/hour. DM them if you run ops.

Congrats on the launch, @FeduniakS, @Zakariea_sh, and @PashaRizali!

https://t.co/PXAppW2hbx

[Ahmet Karapinar @ahmetkdev]

@Hikari_07_jp do you recommend buying even if i have to get into to debt?

[Eren Karapinar @manufacteren]

If you are still in software and your garage isn’t looking like this you are ngmi…

[Ahmet Karapinar @ahmetkdev]

If your job involves even a little bit of Linux, networking, containers, Kubernetes, and/or everything in between, Just do yourself a favor and subscribe to labs[.]iximiuz[.]com really great product. Thanks for creating this @iximiuz

[Eren Karapinar @manufacteren]

Get in debt if you have to. But defend your country

w/ @ahmetkdev

[Ahmet Karapinar @ahmetkdev]

@pham_blnh nice office space you got there

[Ahmet Karapinar @ahmetkdev]

Networking is just an excuse for mediocre people to cosplay progress. They delude themselves that one coffee chat will save their already crumbling goals.

[signüll @signulll]

networking as activity is mostly cope.

e.g. the conference circuit, the warm intros, the moving to sf discussions or whatever, oh & the “grabbing coffee” economy.. all of this is overwhelmingly negative selection esp with vc (lol). the ppl worth knowing are usually too busy doing the thing to be farmable, & the ppl available to be networked w/ are available cuz they have literally nothing better going on.

do the work, then publish it loudly enough that the right ppl can find you w/o you having to chase. one way broadcast > two way schmoozing. this is why x matters a ton now more than ever before.

[Ahmet Karapinar @ahmetkdev]

🤣

[BURKOV @burkov]

This is what a useless hype lifecycle looks like.

[Ahmet Karapinar @ahmetkdev]

Slowly making progress for bimanual robotic arm setup ( and getting gpu rich in the process ) 🦾

All the parts 3d printed and arrived for second follower/leader arm pair

[a16z @a16z]

Narrative violations abound:

- Demand for software engineers is rising
- Software devs are rising as a share of new jobs
- AI exposed industries are seeing above-trend wage growth
- Open PM jobs haven't been higher since 2022

More from a16z's David George on the "AI job apocalypse" myth: https://t.co/7sbadmEElG

[Linas Beliūnas @linasbeliunas]

✅ Claude Code
✅ Claude Cowork
✅ Claude Design
✅ Claude Finance
🔲 Claude Marketing
🔲 Claude Sales
🔲 Claude Finance
🔲 Claude HR
🔲 Claude Operations
🔲 Claude Customer
…

[Jason Fried @jasonfried]

The last 20% isn't most of the work, it's all of the work.