From the pics, it's a little difficult to classify it as a paddle board. Certainly doesn't look much like what I see if I search for "paddle board" or "offshore paddle board".
It's fairly large. There appears to be a hatch leading to an interior space. Presumably that's where he sleeps and stores supplies.
It's really more of a small paddle-powered boat. Given the shape and the ability to seal off the interior, it probably can survive a fair bit of rolling around in a storm.
This makes a lot of assumptions about the field service potential of humanoid robots. A humanoid robot is so much more complex than something like a washing machine. There are far more things to break. Assuming humanoid robot maintenance will look like general appliance maintenance may not be a robust assumption.
"Replace tiny parts" option - Which parts is the manufacturer making available for purchase and what does the supply chain look like for that? What tools are needed to do the disassembly, part installation, and re-assembly? Can a humanoid robot out in the real world replicate the clean room conditions in which delicate components were assembled then sealed inside some compartment so dust can never get to them? Are we going to put heat guns and soldering irons in the fingertips of every humanoid robot to support self repair? There's going to be problems that can't be resolved with the kinds of tools available in the average household.
"Replace modules / components" option - Having to buy a whole new hand when you really wanted to replace a single finger joint impacts the value proposition of self repair, it's not a 50 cent washer it's a $1000 pre-assembled component. The repair is now definitely doable in the field, at least.
You might also be assuming humanoid robot manufacturers would not work specifically against self-repair. They make more money if you buy a new robot, or you pay them to fix your broken robot. Maybe "fix this other robot" ends up on a list of forbidden tasks the robot will always refuse to do...
I think that you'd design it to use human tools as a bare minimum, so a soldering station, and a 3d printer, or even milling machines and lathes if needed.
But you're right, it'll be restricted from doing that. So the idea is you buy one, jailbreak it, and then get it to build a copy of itself.
It'll probably come down to a combination of regulation from an entity like the EU and the economic reality that it's easier to make a robot that has OEM parts that a consumer can access out of your supply chain.
You've retreated from "buy one humanoid robot and it can make as many more as you want from scratch, it's like asking a genie for free wishes" to "there could be a regulatory framework that would require the manufacturers of humanoid robots to make a retail parts pipeline that allows your humanoid robot to build another humanoid robot at a cost lower than what the manufacturer would sell one for."
You didn't talk about the cost, but what's the point of having your robot assemble parts that the manufacturer will sell to you, assembled, at a lower price? It only makes sense if it's cheaper.
That's the part I find frustrating as well. The Optimus demos I've seen show a product that is far, far, far from ready for prime time while Musk and others act like it's amazingly capable.
The recent clip posted by Marc Benioff was...painful. It took a few seconds to reply to a simple greeting. Its next bit of speech in response to a query of where to get a Coke has a weird moment where it seems like it interrupts itself. Optimus offers to take Benioff to the kitchen to get a Coke. Optimus acknowledges Benioff's affirmative response, but just stands there. Then you hear Musk in the background muttering that Optimus is "paranoid" about the space. Benioff backs up a few feet. Optimus slowly turns then begins shuffling forward. Is it headed to the kitchen? Who knows!
The reaction to that should not be "OMG I cannot wait to pay you $200-$500k for one of these!" It should be "You want HOW MUCH for THIS? Are you nuts?"
I wouldn't go so far as to call this specific implementation a dark pattern, but it is misleading. It suggests the data updated right when I loaded the page, which obviously isn't true as I can see the same 16->17 transition on a refresh.
I'd prefer a "Data last updated at <timestamp>" indicator somewhere. Now I know it's live data and I know how old the data is. Is it as cute / friendly / fun? Probably not. But it's definitely more precise and less misleading.
On that note, the font isn't symmetrical and the bar graph itself uses jagged lines. This makes it hard to read and much less precise. I'd prefer all websites in monospaced fonts with only the straightest of lines.
With AI content scraping, the people whose content was ingested aren't getting paid. That part does align to paywalls.
But there's more in the AI content situation. The scraped content is repackaged without any credit being given to the people who made the content. In most cases, the models trained on the content are intended to be monetized, and there is no intent to share revenue with the people who made the content.
When I bypass a paywall, there is no particular expectation that I'm going to take the content, modify it, and display / sell it as my own. In the vast majority of cases, someone reads some free content and moves on. The damage to the site or publication is limited to the unpaid viewing.
AI content scraping absolutely comes with an expectation that the content will be modified, presented, and sold. The damage goes beyond the unpaid viewing of the content.
People don't have to accept money and do work for terrible people. Google chose to enter this contract. Google could have chosen to not enter the contract. No one forced their hand. $45M is certainly not an existential amount to Google. They could have easily turned down the business. It was completely within their power to say no.
They chose to take the money and do the work.
Calling out businesses for doing business with terrible people is a good thing to do. As to your closing paragraph, that's kind of the point - calling out Google for doing business with a government that is committing genocide. If not for Netanyahu's treatment of Gaza, this contract would not be newsworthy.
"calling out" is what I am reacting to I think. Firstly, it feels very performative because what isn't happening is the "calling out" of Amazon, Azure/Microsoft, all the other cloud choices. All of them. Oracle, SAP, you name it. And, its doubly performative because people are going to step outside, spend money with stripe (cloud hosted) on coffee (traded by shipping companies using cloud companies) in clothes bought from people using cloud companies.
Choosing who to attack like this, is choosing to ignore the other 99% of the world equally tied up. All the cloud helps the war in Gaza, backs Netanyahu, indirectly or directly. Taking their money to be overt about government PR? Why is that materially worse than the other thing?
I get it. IBM helped the holocaust. It happened. Google is helping a modern day collective-punishment on people. It's similar. But without over-doing it. so is the maker of your sausages, clothes, your coffee, the phone company, Intel...
Qatar house the leadership of Hamas. I am not hearing people call for the boycott of the airline. I dislike moral relativism and whataboutery, but the situation here is complicated and simple at the same time. Both Hamas, and Netenyahu are evil and need to be condemned. Google cannot take money from Hamas because of US law. Do you think google would decline to take $45m from the government of Pakistan on principle? or Afghanistan? or dare I say it, China?
Netenyahu continues to call all journalists who report on the war antisemitic. I don't stop reading them. he repudiates the work MSF do. I continue to fund them. Haaretz reports regularly on the evils of the settler movement. read them.
Complaining about googles $45m income is not particularly helpful. De-googling won't help.
Particularly with Pi 5, any old brick that might be hanging around has a fair chance at not being able to supply sufficient power.
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