My understanding is that robots in warehouses like these are controlled by a central computer system that manages their movements, etc. It makes sense to have a central authority that manages all activity in an enclosed environment.
Whereas the Boston Dynamics ones are largely self contained. A number of years ago they developed a 4-legged “Pack bot” as a proof of concept. It was designed to carry hundreds of pounds of supplies and follow soldiers as they hiked through all sorts of terrain.
I used to work across the street from their labs and we would regularly see them testing their robots in the parking lot. There were lots of areas of uneven ground that made for great testing. Eventually they reached out to us and a few other companies to offer tours of their facilities.
When we took them up on the offer one of the things I immediately noticed in one of their indoor testing areas was that everything was marked with what looked kind of like QR codes. The guy giving the tour said that the computing power in the robots was still fairly limited, and they needed as much of it as possible to focus on the actual robotics. So rather than have a ton of image/video processing they opted to label things that told the robot “this is a box”, “this is a door”, “this is a table” etc.
They could then send an instruction like “pick up the box, carry it through the door, and put it on the table”. The robot would then look for the appropriate QR codes and figure out how to complete the task.
That was 10+ years ago at this point. I don’t think they need those QR codes any more.
First there were sharknados, now there are bearicanes. Where will it end?
That will trigger the trap door under the welcome mat.
We use Akamai where I work for security, CDN, etc. Their services make it largely trivial to identify traffic from bots. They can classify requests in real time as coming from known bots like Googlebot to programming frameworks like python & java to bots that impersonate Googlebot, to virtually any other automated traffic from unknown bots.
If Reddit was smart they’d leverage something like that to allow Google, Bing, etc. to crawl their data and block all others, or poison others with bogus data. But we’re talking about Reddit here…
Our greyhound knew what “road trip” meant. He LOVED going for rides in the car, and if he heard one of us say that then he’d immediately be at the door, jumping excitedly…
I thought Congress reacted to this by passing a law that states a self-driving system is at least partially responsible if it was in use up to something like 30 seconds before a crash…
But they are NOT different things. In every one of these examples:
The only thing that is different in this entire process is how the remedy is applied. Every single step other than that is identical.
By your logic, the software bug in my Honda’s ECU would be called a recall because it required me going to a dealership and having them perform the software update. An owner can’t simply download and install ECU updates themselves in the vast majority of cases.
But then by your same logic the software update that Toyota mailed to me on a USB stick for my Prius shouldn’t be called a recall because I was able to plug the USB stick into the car myself. The only reason Toyota mailed that USB stick to me and thousands of other Prius owners is because they were legally required to fix a software bug identified by NHTSA in a recall notice. Toyota decided the USB approach was better than having all of us drive to dealers to have them apply it.
And the various over-the-air software updates that Tesla, Rivian, and others shouldn’t be called recalls either by your same logic.
Why cause confusion over calling software updates different things based solely on who installs it and/or how it’s installed? In all these cases NHTSA received reports about a safety issue, opened a formal investigation, and ultimately issued a legally binding directive to the manufacturer that required them, by law, to address it. That legally binding directive is a recall notice, and it can apply to software that you have to visit a dealer to install, or to software the owner can install, or to software the manufacturer can install automatically.
That entire process is what makes something a recall. Not how it’s addressed in the end.
What’s confusing about it? A recall in the automotive world has a very specific definition, and it covers not only software related issues but hardware related ones as well.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is a part of the US Department of Transportation, and they publish a 20 page pamphlet that describes what a recall is. Here are the relevant parts from that brochure:
The United States Code for Motor Vehicle Safety (Title 49, Chapter 301) defines motor vehicle safety as “the performance of a motor vehicle or motor vehicle equipment in a way that protects the public against unreasonable risk of accidents occurring because of the design, construction, or performance of a motor vehicle, and against unreasonable risk of death or injury in an accident, and includes nonoperational safety of a motor vehicle.” A defect includes “any defect in performance, construction, a component, or material of a motor vehicle or motor vehicle equipment.” Generally, a safety defect is defined as a problem that exists in a motor vehicle or item of motor vehicle equipment that:
poses a risk to motor vehicle safety, and
may exist in a group of vehicles of the same design or manufacture, or items of equipment of the same type and manufacture.
Furthermore:
The National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act gives NHTSA the authority to issue vehicle safety standards and to require manufacturers to recall vehicles that have safety-related defects or do not meet Federal safety standards.
In other words, federal law gives NHTSA the authority to issue recalls for any defect that is considered a safety defect. There is no qualifier for it having to be mechanical in nature.
I’ve had software-related recalls issued for both a Toyota and a Honda that I used to own. The Toyota one resulted in them sending me a USB stick in the mail and telling me how to install it in the car (basically plug it into the entertainment system and wait). The Honda one required a trip to a dealer to update the software in the ECU to prevent the cars battery from dying due to the alternator being disabled improperly. Just because these were software related in no way means they weren’t recalls. They were both mandated by NHSTA, both resulted in official recall notices, etc.
Edit: Just for fun you might want to go to https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls and do a search there. If you enter “Tesla” in the field for “VIN or Year Make Model” you can browse all their recalls. The very first one on this page is titled “Incorrect Font Size on Warning Lights”. That’s most definitely a software recall. It’s assigned NHSTA recall #24V051000, and they list the affected components as “ELECTRICAL SYSTEM”. If you read further it also shows the remedy was an over-the-air software update.
Boston
While it apparently didn’t happen in this case, there are a number of examples of people who have gone to death row, been executed, then proven to have been innocent after all. That’s a huge reason for me as to why the death penalty should be done away with.
Cloudflare, like Akamai and others, provides a number of services that include proxying, CDN, web security (WAF), bot detection & protection, image optimization, and more.
Cloud providers like AWS, Google, and MS provide similar services as well, but typically to a lesser extent. I’ve worked with Akamai, Cloudflare, and AWS, and find Akamai’s to be the most powerful/flexible/customizable.
I’m really impressed with the breadth of devices homeassistant supports. It tracks the location of me & my wife via our iPhones. When we arrive at home after dark it turns on the exterior lights via zwave. We have 4 WiFi enabled ceiling fans from Big Ass Fans it can control, along with our Ecobee thermostats. Our washer & dryer use Insteon IOLinc modules to notify us when cycles are done. And in a few months we’re having a solar system & Powerwall installed, both of which have home assistant integrations as well.
DNS blocking is about the only way to block ads & tracking on things like streaming devices. You can’t install Firefox or uBlock on an Apple TV for example. You can block ads on many of the apps on the Apple TV as well as all the telemetry they try to collect with a well configured pi-hole and selected DNS blocklists.
A multi-layered approach is the best approach. My pi-hole blocks advertising domains, malware domains, etc. That helps tremendously with all the “smart” devices that include DVRs, streaming devices, etc. where you can’t install something like ublock. I also make sure something like ublock is installed wherever possible.
That’s yet another reason to use a DNS as blocker, and not let your browser use DNS over https.
I haven’t done it myself yet, but I figure that sooner or later I’ll need to update my router to block all outbound DNS that doesn’t go through my DNS ad blocker. Some devices try to use their own hardcoded DNS to get around them…
Counterpoint: such articles should automatically be processed through https://archive.is when submitted and only accepted if successfully bypassed.
Parks Canada has some YouTube videos from trail cameras they installed in order to see what wildlife actually uses these and how quickly they started using them once construction was complete. Pretty neat to watch.
I’d look up links but I’m on mobile and lazy…