Apparently, they are using the robot in employee homes:
"We've been dogfooding NEO Gamma in 1X employee homes for weeks now, doing chores around the house. Under the suit, NEO Gamma has a lot of HW improvements that make it more reliable. The 1X AI team also pushed hard to get natural human-like walking, sitting, and bending down to pick things off the ground. My conviction that the humanoid form factor is the only viable shape for serving labor in a home has never been higher."
> the humanoid form factor is the only viable shape for serving labor in a home
I have never heard a good argument for why this might be the case. Anyone care to chime in? I know that "built environment" and "ergonomics" exist but generally there is a lot of open space in a home that allows for a vast array of possible form factors.
almost everything you have in your home is built for humans, so adopting this form factor is the likeliest to fit everywhere and be able to operate everything
Not all homes, even in America, have lots of open space. One device that can perform and interact with objects made for humans is a convenience thing. Most new-construction homes don’t even have “garages” for smart vacuums, despite being a decade old and frequently discussed.
Sure a team of robots could just trigger APIs and swarm around the house, but that’s a lot of moving parts. Alternatively, we could build our home for robots’ use, accept our homes aren’t made for us, and hope the form factors don’t change over the lifespan of the building.
The thing even sits on a couch, staring into the void, after doing all its chores. Seriously this stuff is unsettling at the deepest level. I already feel uneasy commanding an LLM at any time to do work for me. This human-shaped golem is dressed with a grey jumper that puts it exactly midway between a home appliance and a person. Will they sell more attractive clothes to dress them up a bit better? And then, will we end up asking them to check the mirror and tell us if they like them?
Because we elected a criminal who has promised vengeance for those who investigated his many crimes. This puts some sort of limit on the damage he can do to these people. I'm sure he'll still make their lives hell, but at least they won't end up in jail as political prisoners.
Your coffee maker is exposed to at most 100 degrees C. Spatulas are exposed to temperatures over 200 C.
Instinctively, I'm much more worried about the latter, though I admittedly don't know anything about the science behind what temperatures flame retardants or other undesirable contaminants might leach out of the plastic.
The article also speaks of a black necklace for children that was found to be 3% flame retardant chemicals by weight, saying
> Those flame retardants migrate into toddlers’ saliva and into the dust in our homes
Perhaps it's fine if you don't lick your coffee machine, or perhaps not. I guess being less worried makes sense but I'm not sure that we need not be worried about boiling our drinks in fire retardants (assuming they're present in these materials)
Ugh you reminded me how much I hate flame retardants and the horrible laws we have in America that have us spray it everywhere.
I was just recently looking at bicycle seats for small kids and the one I found interesting happened to recently have a recall (Thule) as they grossly over applied the flame retardant to a point where it was immediately toxic. I am guessing it was in the foam pieces but such a depressing idea that we need to make outdoor bicycle seats flame retardant.
The necklace, that sounded like a byproduct of recycling plastic.
In general though, through the 50s-70s there were some tragic events where people died in fires. Part of this is federal legislation, part of this is California who required household furnishings to withstand an open flame. Most of the legislation still stands, some of it like CA's has been reduced to a smolder test but it still requires some retardants.
People don't pay attention to this one but its in everything, mattresses, couches, baby sleep wear. And for me, a bigger issue than PFAS.
The people of the 1970s clutched their pearls and wrung their hands about flammable sofas in the same way that we today clutch our pearls and wring our hands about leeching plastics. The breathless articles were mostly the same except they were in places like Readers Digest instead of The Atlantic.
As another commenter stated laws were passed but more so than that the companies who make things were concerned about lawsuits and reputation damage so treating consumer textiles for flame retardants just became standard industry practice.
As an aside, I know a historical reenacter who had a need to make some char-cloth. The only thing he could find that wasn't treated was cotton work gloves.
All of them, I don't believe they serve any to the net of society and probably harm more individuals than protect.. YMMV like everything, flame retardants are generally just like PFAS, they are forever chemicals. The mains ones used up until the 2000-2013s were PBDEs, these bio-accumulate just like PFAS. THe EU and US have switched to alternatives but I don't believe these to be any better, just newer.
There is no way to tell, as stated in the article.
"Of the more than 200 black plastic products Liu bought at retail stores for her study, hardly any were labeled as being made from recycled materials, she said. Consumers have no way to tell which black plastics might be recycled e-waste and which aren’t. “It’s just a minefield, really,” Turner said."
I was under the impression that labelling something as "recycled" was a value add, and it would be done where possible. I suppose that is not actually the case.
The article is nonsense. Only engineering plastics carry UL94 ratings (and if it's got flame retardants in it, it's got a UL94 rating... otherwise no one would go to the expense!) and there are just not a lot of engineering plastics in the waste stream compared to consumer single-use plastics.
The point is that these plastics with flame retardants would go to recycling, and would eventually find their way into cooking utensils made of recycled plastics. Nobody adds the flame retardant there intentionally, but nobody removes the flame retardants from the recycled mass either, at least not in places where plastic recycling is normally done (not the richest countries).
Frankly, the idea of using recycled plastic with no control for its origin for cooking utensils looks weird to me. OTOH it should look like a great opportunity to cut costs, and shoppers very often try to save that last cent as a matter of principle and sport, so...
Coffee machines from reputable makers should be safe, I think.
"To investigate the extent to which kitchen utensils are contaminated with BFRs and the potential for resultant human exposure, we collected 96 plastic kitchen utensils and screened for Br content using a hand-held X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectrometer. Only 3 out of 27 utensils purchased after 2011 contained detectable concentrations of Br (≥ 3 μg/g). In contrast, Br was detected in 31 out of the 69 utensils purchased before 2011."
Let me emphasize: Only 3 out of 27 utensils purchased after 2011 contained detectable concentrations of Br.
Further vital information: "Simulated cooking experiments were conducted to investigate BFR transfer from selected utensils (n = 10) to hot cooking oil, with considerable transfer (20% on average) observed."
Fine, I don't cook with hot oil. I don't melt my utensils when cooking, I don't damage them at all. I see the reason for concern, but for my cooking styles this really doesn't affect me.
I am bit weirded by using recycled plastics for anything interact with regularly with my hands for example. Also stuff that get heated. Sure it has places like furniture, decking and so on where contamination doesn't really matter. But what about something like re-usable cup for hot beverages or disposable cutlery?
It's admittedly been a while since I've looked but there don't seem to be any (automated) drip makers whose use doesn't result in plastic coming into contact with hot water.
I'm well aware of and own many of the more manual options that don't have this issue. However, the automatic feature is killer (heh) and this seems like an obvious miss by manufacturers.
We make coldbrew coffee in the fridge. No need to heat up the coffee until it is in your cup with some extra water and into the micro. And it taste a lot better than anything else I tried. And I didn't even drink coffee a year ago because it taste so bad. Now I can even drink it without milk! :-)
I think Coldbrew is even more dependent on what coffee beans and roast you use, we have tried a few and they are very different. But so far I liked them all. Maybe you preffer the bitter taste of cooked coffee? That is something that is missing from all our tries with coldbrew.
> Maybe you preffer the bitter taste of cooked coffee?
Definitely not.
But the thing about cold-brew is that it tastes mostly sour to me and nothing else (which is unsurprising given our taste-buds are most sensitive at higher temperatures, and proper extraction of coffee can't happen at those lower temperatures as some compounds just won't dissolve at the same rate, and sour compounds in coffee dissolve the fastest). With warm brewed (+ warm drank) coffee things are more balanced (not just straight sour) and you get the interesting flavour notes from the bag.
I don't think the quality of the coffee I am using is the problem. It might be the variant, but I enjoy natural light roasts (and light roast is already difficult to brew without it getting too sour).
Ours is not sour at all and I'm pretty sensitive to sour stuff.
700 ml water, 50-60 g beans, 24 hours in fridge. When drinking we mix with 3-4 parts water. I always drink cold, wife drinks it hot. Lots of flavour and fun to try the local roasterys seasonal tastes.
There's quite a few, actually. They're all commercial units that are expected to make hundreds of pots a day and stay cleanable and serviceable. Bunn, for example, makes a bunch of machines for which everything in the 'wet' service is stainless. By default they use a black plastic grounds holder but you can pay extra for a stainless one.
They're substantially more expensive than consumer units.
The article does speak of black specifically, not just any plastic. Even if there aren't any that don't put the hot liquid in contact with plastic, it might be worth looking at the color (is my understanding from the article)
Yeah, sorry, that was implied. I would assume that's what they all use. Based on my recent personal experience, even the higher end options like Moccamaster and OXO use black plastic.
https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/releases