This designation is usually reserved for foreign adversaries/companies, and so this is crazy to apply it to US company over a sudden contract dispute... that was previously agreed upon by all parties.
This should make any US company nervous about entering into an agreement with the government. Or any US company that already has a contract with the government. If they one day decide they don't like that contract, they can designate you a supply chain risk.
Not 1) rip up the existing contract and cease the agreement or 2) continue (but not renew) the existing contract or 3) renegotiate terms upon renewal but instead a full on ban of doing any business with an entire industry/sector.
Shame you didn’t donate $25 million to Trump, like the company we decided to give the contract to instead did, who will benefit tremendously from you being designated a supply chain risk. Maybe next time you’ll be a little smarter.
Well. Unsurprisingly fascists will do a fascism – an ideology somewhat defined by merging state and industrial powers. Many economically minded people, many technologists, including in this space, have afforded themselves the luxury of not talking about politics too deeply. As I said some years ago: Ignoring politics has its way of coming back to haunt you. Back then this was an unpopular take.
This is kind of crazy. Instead of just cancelling a mutually-agreed upon contract where Anthropic refused to bow to sudden new demands, the Dept of Defense went straight to the nuclear option: threatening to label an American tech company as a "supply chain risk" which is a heavy-handed tactic usually reserved for foreign adversaries (think Huawei or DJI).
It's also incoherent that the DoD/DoW was threatening to invoke the Defense Production Act OR classifying them as "supply chain risk". They're either too uniquely critical to national defense OR they're such a severe liability that they have to be blacklisted for anyone in the DoD apparatus (including the many subcontracts) to use.
How are other tech companies supposed to work with the US government and draw up mutual contracts when those terms are suddenly questioned months later and can be used in such devastating ways against them? Setting the morals/principals aside, how does this make for rational business decision to work with a counterparty that behaves this way.
They have not; a social media post does not satisfy the requirements of 10 USC section 3252.
They are required to notify Congress (they have not), prepare a report with specific sections (they have not), and the reasons must fall within a set of categories outlined by statute (this does not).
There will be a court fight and they will lose, just like they lost the tariff battle, because of poor competence.
(Trump's post on Truth Social was actually fine. He said the USG would stop doing business with Anthropic, which is within its legal right. Hegseth's follow-on post is the problem. It is possible that Trump did not expect or want Hegseth to do that, that this was meant as bluster to bump along the negotiations; Hegseth has a recent history of stepping out of line within the administration and irritating people like Rubio.)
If the USG can mandate that everyone who works for a company that ever took a federal contract be genetically engineered, then I think they can tell people to not use Claude.
That's part of the recurrent confusion with this administration. In previous administrations, including Trump 1, people didn't need to spend a ton of time thinking about what it means to make a legally effective proclamation, because there was a baseline of competence. When a government official announced "We're doing X", they would do so as a summary of a large amount of legal process with the intent and effect of causing X to be true. If you went to challenge it in court of course, you'd have to identify some specific action as the label, but everyone would understand that this is a formalism.
Here, Hegseth has simply made a social media post. He did not publish any official investigation which led to the report. He did not explain what legal power would permit him to impose all the restrictions the post claims to impose. There is not, five hours later, any order on an official government website about it. So we have a real question. If a Cabinet secretary posts "I am directing the Department of War to designate...", does that in and of itself perform the designation, or is it simply an informal notice that the Department of Fascist Neologisms will perform the designation soon?
A question - being considered a supply chain risk is the same as being sanctioned? Or does it only affect their ability to be a defense supplier in the US (even if transitively?)
It's an honest question by the way - not trying to throw any gothas.
Just trying to understand if comoanies or people that don't orbit defense contracting are free to operate with Anthropic still or risk being sanctioned too.
It's not the same thing as being sanctioned. In broad outline, a supply chain risk is a company that can't sell to or have its products or components resold to USG; whereas, a sanctioned entity is one that can't do business with anyone -- anyone who does so will be punished.
It is indeed kind of crazy. That's because the current US administration is composed of people whose sole qualification is being able to work for Donald Trump. Being competent, rational or ethical is career-limiting.
How about a battery electric cargo bicycle? Like a Tern GSD ($$$) or Radwagon ($)?
The tern gsd can carry 180 kg of cargo and has detachable batteries, so that at least gives you the option of bringing extra batteries for long range. Or haul people or wheat.
I'm a huge fan of the concept of super-lightweight EVs. I still think something like the ELF [https://organictransit.com/] is one of the best ideas in this space, and I hope someone takes over the brand or concept and figures out how to market it better.
This needs robust offerings for both lower-end and higher-end models, but it's hard to say which should be initially focused on these days. My instinct is to go for the low end & maximize volume. There has to be a sweet spot between usefulness and affordability. As has been pointed out elsewhere in this thread, designing for modular upgrades would probably help.
I failed (ran out of time) in one of the problems during Challenge 1 during manual play. The physics seem a little wonky to me. It's easy to miss running at a ball, the floor is slippery and takes a long time to reorient and build up speed.
You’re not the intended audience. This is meant for small research labs that are just starting up and want to enter the RL/Robotics research space and can’t afford a $400,000 PR2 or $150,000 shadow hand.
The main cost is the actuators. The servos they use are the only ones out there with integrated feed back from the sensors which is required so they can calculate hardware safety. They also have, albeit pretty bad, torque control which is necessary for many approaches to controlling legged robots and manipulators.
I'm skeptical that a stepper motor would be able to support it's own weight and more without a gearbox. This is especially important for making serial manipulators. Also keep in mind that what they're aiming for here is repeatability so that researchers can easily compare their algorithms. That means using parts that don't vary too much and minimizing the amount of assembly researchers have to do. There are much cheaper knock off versions of these actuators, although they may not be as repeatable. At the very least they aren't as well documented.
This is more about repeatable experiments than particular movements.
Regarding the price, the actuators seem to be ~240USD. A good stepper motor with the appropriate feedback mechanism to make it suitable for servo-like control plus a modern stepper motor controller that is suited for the robotics context will likely not be (much) cheaper and you have to hack together the servo functionality, tune settings, etc. - which seems detrimental if the goal is repeatability accross teams. I'm not in the target audience for these robots either but from the perspective of robustness and repeatable research they don't look too shabby.
I wonder how many people are upset that the vehicles had to drop them off in a valid passenger load/unload zone as opposed to the usual Lyft / Uber tactic of parking in a no parking / no stopping zone, bike lane, crosswalk, etc because it's most convenient for the drivers and passengers (at the safety and expense of everyone else sharing the space)...
That quote at the end:
> I guess Lyft has me spoiled. I like getting dropped off in front of the place im going too [sic] not just in the parking lot....
Cyclist here. In my experience, the majority of the time a driver stops or parks in the bike lane in an urban area in the US (e.g., I live in Austin), there's a legal parking/stopping spot within a reasonable walking distance, often within 50 to 100 feet. (If this isn't true where you live, consider the difference in the location. There are probably exceptions too. I'm told that legal parking isn't typically close in SF.)
Then again, my idea of "reasonable walking distance" seems longer than most people's. Having spoken to many drivers who have parked in the bike lane, I'm amazed by how negatively some have reacted to me recommending that they park as little as 50 feet away. In some cases the non-bike-lane spot is closer but the convenience of pulling to the side of the road rather than doing a more complicated maneuver seems irresistible.
If Waymo follows the law, good for them. Makes me more likely to be a customer of theirs in the future.
In the right light, this is a competitive advantage for Waymo. Prove that it's possible to have a ride hailing app that strictly follows municipal stopping/parking rules, and then encourage cities to start strictly enforcing those rules and ticketing offenders. Self-driving cars would presumably be better than humans at following those rules (at least, if we're imagining a world where self-driving cars work safely and consistently).
I often see waymo vans near San Antonio and El Camino in Mountain View. It's kind of a nightmare drive for all parties. Curbside parking is allowed, there are no demarcated bike lanes, and much of the road is in suboptimal condition. There is often construction going along sidewalks and buildings, and uber dropoffs are common. You occasionally see cyclists, though I suspect most stick to a side street.
What I suspect people are complaining about is that Waymo doesn't do curbside dropoffs at locations with a parking lot -- not common biking routes. I bet Waymo doesn't have the data to know whether a curb is painted yellow, blue, or red, and just avoids them, while a Lyft driver would probably put on hazards and drop people off at yellow curbs and bus stops.
Uber/Lyft drivers break the law dozens of times a day. In fact the entire experience is predicated on their ability to pick you up/drop you off in places they shouldn't e.g. out the front of your house.
I guess self driving cars will be closer to Uber Pool in terms of experience.
It seems like there's an overall issue where people feel they can't do anything if the car takes a weird route or drops them off in the wrong place.
Another comment mentioned in the story says the car skipped the drop-off location and inched passed a bus stop, and other people mentioned inefficient routing.
I don't know how the system works, so this might be user error of some kind, but plenty of people are not going to want to get in a taxi if they feel like they have no control over where it's going or where they can get out.
This is one of the issues with machines vs. people. For an able-bodied person, like I am most of the time, sure I'm fine with being dropped off half a block away. The driver may ask me and I'll be "fine." If someone is using a walker--not so much.
I have to believe the last block or two problem will be a big issue with self-driving whenever it eventually arrives.
- Uber and Lyft and more toe-stepping and will encourage their contractors to paint outside the line, deal with the consequence once the administration has caught up with them and is presented with the fait-accompli that this is voters’ expectations now.
- Google/Waymo has better relationships with local authorities and can obtain the permit to drop people off after they’ve proven they are playing within the line — and can wait for, and eventually finance urban furniture changes.
I'm glad to see entrants in this space!