Alastair
@atomalom
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Coordination dynamics, machine design, manufacturing. Currently research @ Cambridge.
United Kingdom
Joined March 2018
I'm going to laugh so hard when this turns out to run off hidden tendon cables but they went to the effort of adding all those ridiculous gears as kinetic decoration because aesthetics matters more than actual functionality when it comes to marketing hardware startups atm
Sharp Robotics of Singapore has officially unveiled SharpaWave, an impressively dexterous hand. The 1:1 life-size model boasts 22 degrees of freedom, with over 1,000 tactile sensors per fingertip. It can crack eggs, play the piano, or use scissors, combining strength, speed, and
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@parismartineau Think this is the question that did it:
@parismartineau @ConsumerReports Given that many other normal foodstuffs have similar lead levels, and given that Huel shakes are well below FDA guidelines for lead (which themselves have a 10x safety factor built in) why have you engaged in alarmist reporting by doing things like - using an in-house
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A little illustration to show how ridiculous Consumer Reports are being here:
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This is pretty hilarious. Everyone getting scared about Huel having dangerously high lead levels - 6 micrograms per serving! Want to know what the UK legal limit for *tap water* is? 10 micrograms per litre. Huel is absolutely fine. All media is driven by clickbait now.
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I think this is the engineering answer to "write a horror story in 3 words"
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This whole idea of banning landlords is so bizarre. I like renting! I like being able to move and live in a new place for a new job without having to buy a whole damn house to do so! I’m grateful to my landlord for providing a service that makes the world better! What’s the
If you ban landlordism, it doesn't stop private companies building houses. It doesn't stop anyone from owning a house if they want too and can. We need to stop people owning MULTIPLE houses. We need to stop exploitative rents.
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Kind of crazy how our vestibular system is so well tuned that it can keep us balanced on our feet even when the rest of our brain is floating around somewhere on the other side of the solar system
This scene is so surreal that part of me half-expected them to suddenly break into the choreography from Michael Jackson’s Thriller. https://t.co/k2UyQ79cbv
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Today I had to go the Netherlands Embassy to renew my passport and had to print a form I was wondering why my new Brother printer kept printing everything double sided? So I tried to disable it in the printer's own display menu where it's hidden 6 levels deep: > Settings ->
I just got a new AC installed by Mitsubishi Electric I was wondering why it was so weak and tried to find the Powerful (or Turbo?) button like any AC has On the images on the internet the Powerful button is shown below the Econo Cool button Weirdly, on my remote the button
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A good articulation of a problem that lots of relationships I see seem to have: the complete rejection of interdependence and shared compassionate growth, in favour of a nebulous ideal of unconditional “acceptance”
With respect to Scott, there is nothing insecure about asking someone you love to change their behavior. People are perfect as they are and could also do with a little improvement. It's very often the needs of our relationships that demand personal growth; love is among the
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We put hundreds of billions each year in our education budget, but we can’t spare a few million to chuck all our science and engineering knowledge on a public server to reduce friction for the people who actually keep our society functioning. Absolute madness.
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The fact that the state doesn’t just pay for the public to have easy, open and free access to all academic journals and ISO/ASME standards is actually retarded. China publishes the full texts of their national standards for free online; why the hell do we have to pay to get
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Wonder if some of the rationale behind the popularity of otherwise inefficient humanoid robot architectures is to sort the hardware out in advance to be ready for the next big data gathering paradigm that comes after we’ve moved on from AI trained on text to AI trained on video:
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British people aren’t that upset about attacks on free speech per se; there’s much less support here for free speech absolutism than Americans think. They’re mainly upset about selective application of the law. Left wing agitators and fundamentalist Islamist preachers say
The offender actually said “Every man and their dog should be smashing fuck out Britannia Hotel…” among other things (it’s cut out of the video). So: literally incitement to violence. But the verdict is too harsh given the rest of what the judge says. https://t.co/8nvS2NmpDa
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quick history lesson for those learning about the current state of manufacturing: companies used to design and manufacture their products and be vertically integrated (1800 to 1950), then we convinced ourselves that manufacturing was too expensive. we decoupled everything,
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The most trivial counterpoint to the “parenting doesn’t matter” crowd is that so many of its proponents are also very excited about innovative new schooling methods and the advantages of private tutoring.
Simon lucidly explains why studies that tell you things like “parenting doesn’t matter” are probably untrustworthy, just like the rest of sociological research.
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