Rough night in El Segundo Accidentally flew a drone straight into an innocent bystander’s nuts 😔

The most impressive robot demo I saw at IROS was also one of the simplest. @agilityrobotics had Digit autonomously picking objects from a tote, walking them across the booth, and repeating the task until the tote was empty. I talked with the mastermind behind the demo, @chris_j_paxton, about how the demo worked: ~500 real-world teleoperated demonstrations for the manipulation policy A whole-body controller trained in simulation Deployed into a completely unseen environment at IROS Roughly 80–90% success in the booth despite crowds, harsh lighting, and plenty of distractions Chris was also very clear that this is still research, not something currently running in production. It was a glimpse at how quickly learned manipulation policies can move from controlled training environments into the messy real world. @lukas_m_ziegler you might find this convo interesting. #IROS2026 #AgilityRobotics #PhysicalAI #RobotLearning

So many venture investors are used to the last decade of underwriting where the main risk was the ability to capture demand - find pmf, scale sales etc… For many of the new businesses being funded today demand is no longer the issue - if you can make low cost reliable ballistic missile interceptors or high bandwidth low cost memory then ya obviously you will have insane demand. The risk moves to supply - ‘can you actually make the thing’ - a question literally no one asked in the era of HRISs & Neobanks - feels like a lot of faces will get ripped off people pricing ‘demand’ for magic beans that will never be delivered.

Visited CMU yesterday and they are training the robotic arm to whip Pepper’s butt…..

🤖 Try it in your browser, explore different robots, change their physical properties, or upload your own robot! Website: gamma-zero.com Robot playground: play.gamma-zero.com

El Segundo, CA - Part 6 Welcome @anduriltech

muse: "genuinely feels like living in the future" ⚡️

I left Silicon Valley 6 years ago Why? Because it's a monoculture The most extreme group think of any place on the planet Show up to a dinner party and everyone is in tech So what do they do? They start stack-ranking each other And it's a totally ordered set: being founder of co $100B market cap > founder of co with $50B market cap > managing partner of tier 1 venture firm > hired CEO of $50B public co > founder of $10B co > etc etc Pure toxicity that nerfs creativty And then as a corollary, people are especially afraid to speak truth to power as everyone knows their place in "The Hierarchy" Reject this nonsense. Stay weird. Think independently. Be honest with yourself. Have fun.