Odd Lots
- Southwest Airlines has just banned “human-like” or “animal-like” robots from its flights. Oh—and in checked baggage too. The concern is about biggish lithium-ion batteries, which does make sense. There’s also the issue of whether robots are considered passengers, checked baggage, or carry-on baggage that carries itself on.
- Interesting long-form piece about archaic homo sapiens, a genetic group close enough to modern humans to share a species name, but different enough to trace their rise and fall and eventual extinction. Modern humans carry some juvenile traits into adulthood, like friendliness, playfulness, curiosity and flexibility, in a similar way that our modern dogs carry puppy traits like playfulness and cuddliness into adulthood. Dogs are lifelong wolf puppies, and we’re lifelong cave-kids.
- Beef is not the big health risk that Certain Influencers have long been yelping about. Well, we’ve known that for a long time. Eggs are good for you too. As are protein and fat. The arguments will continue as arguments generally do.
- Keeping lithium-ion batteries on charge even after they hit 100% shortens the life of the batteries. I knew this, and don’t keep my phone or tablets on charge after they hit 100%, which I check for from time to time.
- Duke University scientists have created a 20-legged robot that merrily rolls along the Duke campus. Watch the videos; I’m a long-time robot fan and I think they’re cool.
- And if creating 20-legged robots isn’t your thing, consider scientists at ETH Zurich who have created (theoretically) perfect randomness using two superconducting chips cooled almost to absolute zero and connected to each other by a 30-meter long tube similarly cooled. I don’t quite understand it either (how do you prove a number is perfectly random?) but I have a hunch you could sell perfect random numbers generated with such a device and make a good buck. We’ll see.
- USB-C cables and ports can do a lot more than just charge your phone or tablet. Here are a few such things worth keeping in the back of your head.
- Well, this certainly wasn’t on my bingo card: A humanoid robot fashion show, where the robots and their, um, fashion models wear the same clothes on the runway.
- Here’s a map of America’s favorite house paint color—along with some discussion on when and why vivid colors fled from everyday American life. I remember when cars were all kinds of colors. The kitchen I grew up in was hot pink for a fair number of years—and then bright blue. Sure, all that was (many) years ago. Multiple colors increase costs for just about any product line. Shame, that—but a pretty solid explanation. (h/t to Rich Rostrom for the link.)
Posted in: Odd Lots.
Tagged: ai · food · hardware · math · robots
Public Service Announcement: Lazarus IDE 4.8 is now available via the official website.
Hmmmm. I don’t see it on https://www.lazarus-ide.org/. Will look in other places, but that’s the one I generally check every morning.
Ok, they posted something this morning or late yesterday. Will add to the next Odd Lots. Thanks much for calling it to my attention!
https://www.batteryuniversity.com/
Maybe you missed this, AI solves 80-year-old math problem:
1. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2527564-mathematicians-stunned-by-ais-biggest-breakthrough-in-mathematics-yet/
2. https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=9782
I don’t avoid beef, but I limit my consumption of meat. I get the rest of my protein primarily from beans, eggs, non-farmed fish, and nuts.
We’re car shopping and have just realized that 95% of the cars on the road are either white, black or silver. Remove the red and blue Tesla’s and the number goes up to 98%.
Largely true, here and probably elsewhere. I think a lot of people in AZ buy white cars because white reflects heat more than it absorbs it. That’s one reason we bought a white Subaru Crosstrek. But I reached back to reply to your comment because I’ve noticed an unexpected (and welcome) appearance of blue cars here, including a fair number of shades I would call “electric blue,” which is a color I’ve always wanted in a car but never found on a car I would buy. Red is still 4th behind white, black, and silver, but blue is definitely on the upswing. Other colors (orange, green, yellow, etc.) are so rare as to catch my eye when I see one.