Posts by admin
Robot apple pickers
I wrote about how robots are increasingly used in apple orchards for Wall Street Journal. Every piece of tree fruit is picked by hands (well, except for a few in orchards where researchers test these robots out). It’s grueling work even though orchards have been engineered to make picking as simple as possible—the trees are more like grape vines at this point, only about twelve feet tall and grown to keep apples on a two-dimension plane. Standardizing the trees also lets robots, which really struggle in outdoor settings, pick about fifty percent of the fruit right now. So despite the really out of pocket comments on this story, human workers are still needed and not going anywhere. (Gift link)
Want a job at this AI company? Don’t use AI on the app
While we encourage people to use AI systems during their role to help them work faster and more effectively, please do not use AI assistants during the application process. We want to understand your personal interest in Anthropic without mediation through an AI system, and we also want to evaluate your non-AI-assisted communication skills. Please indicate ‘Yes’ if you have read and agree.Why do you want to work at Anthropic? (We value this response highly – great answers are often 200-400 words.)
TIL: There are more ready-mix batch plants in the U.S. than there are Burger Kings
Most concrete in the United States is prepared to order at batch plants—souped-up materials depots where the ingredients are combined, dosed out from hoppers into special mixer trucks, and then driven to job sites. Because concrete grows too stiff to work after about 90 minutes, concrete production is highly local. There are more ready-mix batch plants in the United States than there are Burger King restaurants.
This makes it incredibly hard to decarbonize concrete, one of the biggest greenhouse emitters. But researchers are trying anyway! Great story on IEEE about greening concrete.
Hello, world! Or, how I want to own the means of production in a little way
The changes in social media over the last 18 months, but especially the last month or so, have caused me major whiplash. While I sort out what makes sense for me to do, both as a journalist (which, at the very least, keeps me on every platform to get a hold of sources) and as a normie/civilian/whatever (do I have to post? Nope), I want to control a sliver of the internet.
This will be part portfolio, part hobbies, part fun things I find on the internet. So that means a lot of AI writing, some surf videos, definitely some romance book musings, probably clips showing a Muay Thai technique or two, and bits about the new word games I find and obsess over for a week (it’s been a while, what’s good?)
Stay tuned while I figure out what controlling the means of publication looks like.