Ryan Taylor

Designer of bits and atoms.

[Ryan Taylor @ryantaylor]

@ThighDoctor

[Ryan Taylor @ryantaylor]

Did the Onion hack NY Times?

[The New York Times @nytimes]

From @TheAthletic: Reports have surfaced before the Winter Olympics that allege ski jumpers are injecting their penises with hyaluronic acid to fly farther. The World Anti-Doping Agency has vowed to investigate. https://t.co/cFW4v25jm0

[horse dentist @equine__dentist]

butt types

[Morgan Cameron Ross @Morgan_C_Ross]

Behind the scenes with Bob & Doug McKenzie in 1981

[Ryan Taylor @ryantaylor]

@dpjanes Counter punch tech.

[Ryan Taylor @ryantaylor]

So hockey is like Tron?

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

New researsh shows ice is slippery because of electrical charges — not pressure and friction.

For almost 200 years, the prevailing explanation for ice’s slipperiness was that friction or pressure from a skate, boot, or tire melted a microscopic film of water on the surface, creating a lubricating layer. A new study from Saarland University has overturned that long-standing idea.

Instead, the true cause lies in the electric fields generated by molecular dipoles. When any object contacts ice, the partial charges in its own molecules interact with the highly ordered dipole arrangement of water molecules in the ice crystal. This electrostatic tug-of-war loosens the topmost layer of the ice lattice, transforming it into a thin, disordered, quasi-liquid film—without any need for heat or significant pressure.

Remarkably, this self-lubrication mechanism works even at temperatures approaching absolute zero, where thermal energy is virtually absent and conventional pressure-melting or frictional heating theories completely break down. In those extreme conditions, ice remains slippery simply because its surface molecules are electrically vulnerable.

The discovery fundamentally rewrites our understanding of one of nature’s most familiar phenomena. Beyond settling a centuries-old debate, it has immediate practical implications: from designing better winter tires and non-slip surfaces that actually work on ice, to engineering superior skis, ice skates, and even advanced nanomaterials that perform reliably in cryogenic environments.

By revealing the dominant role of intermolecular electric forces, the research opens entirely new avenues for controlling friction and adhesion at the molecular scale—potentially transforming fields from winter sports equipment to aerospace and nanotechnology.

["Cold Self-Lubrication of Sliding Ice", Physical Review Letters, 2025]

[Ryan Taylor @ryantaylor]

https://t.co/iFn3PmlTnZ

[Nilesh Christopher @NilChristopher]

My latest for @latimes: I travelled to southern India to document the rise of the AI "arm farms" — where young engineers strap GoPros to their foreheads and fold laundry or pack boxes to teach humanoid robots how to do chores.

https://t.co/o6dgEtbuEN

[Ryan Taylor @ryantaylor]

Halloween is like the Drone & Robotics demo Super Bowl. This might be better than the Drone Witch from last year.

[Logan Olson @jloganolson]

Still keeping crawl at half-speed but it works with the costume on!

[Ryan Taylor @ryantaylor]

Anthropic seems to be testing Claude’s GFY interaction model on me. Don’t like.

[Francesco Capuano @_fracapuano]

🤯 We are releasing a ✨ robotics course ✨ on @huggingface -> https://t.co/Akx1el2jgP

Start the course *today* to learn:
🔴 The basics of classical robotics
🔴 RL for real-world robots
🔴 Generative models for imitation learning
🔴 The latest in generalist Robot Policies

[Ryan Taylor @ryantaylor]

Hard pass.

[RoboHub🤖 @XRoboHub]

Noematrix Secures Alibaba-Led Funding to Accelerate Embodied AI Deployment
Noematrix, the 2023-founded embodied intelligence firm, just announced a new funding round led by Alibaba Group with follow-on investments from existing shareholders, adding to their multiple hundred-million RMB Pre-A++ and Pre-A+++ rounds. The capital will be deployed to accelerate technical R&D, real-world application deployment, and ecosystem expansion.

The core of their strategy is the Noematrix Brain 2.0, an integrated soft/hardware platform built on "generality" and "intelligence." Key platform upgrades include enhancing the physical world large model with Object Concept Learning and introducing a User Preference mechanism, allowing robots to understand and recall user habits, environments, and human relationships. To address data and model efficiency in commercial deployment, Noematrix has developed a no-ontology data collection plan, general end-to-end models, and a human-robot collaborative system aimed at establishing a full data-to-deployment closed loop. The company has already partnered with retail and home goods leaders to push for the bulk delivery of their integrated solutions.

The company is backed by a powerhouse founding team. Co-founder Wang Shiquan holds a Ph.D. from Stanford (BDML/AI Labs) under bionics pioneers Mark Cutkosky and Oussama Khatib, and previously founded Flexiv Technology. Co-founder Lu Cewu, a special researcher at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and former Stanford AI post-doc, is recognized for his significant academic contributions, including the original AnyGrasp grasping algorithm, a Scientific Exploration Award, and an MIT TR35 honor.

[Ryan Taylor @ryantaylor]

This is so awesome. Thanks for making opensource @tamutamu3D

[タム/ Taniguchi Tomohiro @tamutamu3D]

応力解析を元に力が掛かっている部分にのみインフィルを密にするためのソフトウェアStrecs3Dを開発しています．

材料や造形時間を短縮しながら指定した力に非常に強い部品を作ることができます！

オープンソースで公開しているのでぜひ！

#Strecs3D
https://t.co/pnPAbT7pZJ

使い方の記事は↓

[Ryan Taylor @ryantaylor]

These Oakley x Meta glasses are a HUD it’s odd how hard they’re marketing teams calling it one.

[Ryan Taylor @ryantaylor]

Amazon review of a Japanese soldering iron.

[Ryan Taylor @ryantaylor]

The ⁦@PitViperShades⁩ web design is perfect. *chefs kiss*

[Pascal Bornet @pascal_bornet]

I still remember the first time I saw a 3D printer at work.
It felt like magic — objects appearing layer by layer, as if from thin air. But also limited. Flat, rigid, constrained.

Now? The game has changed.

🤖 6-axis robotics × 500°C extrusion × multi-angle precision.
No longer just printing layers — but printing in curves, angles, and forms nature itself would approve of.

💡 Here’s what most people don’t realize: this isn’t about size or speed. It’s about geometry. Printing along force lines instead of grids. Eliminating wasteful supports. Creating parts stronger, lighter, and closer to the way bones or shells are formed.

That shift is massive. It means lighter aircraft parts. Smarter prosthetics. Custom furniture. Even buildings grown instead of built.

Props to Massive Dimension × ABB Robotics for pushing the frontier. And to Florian Palatini for sparking the thought 👏

👉 Question for you: if factories can now print like nature grows, which industry gets disrupted first?

#3DPrinting #Innovation #FutureOfManufacturing #Robotics

[Ryan Taylor @ryantaylor]

I would very much like to read the structural engineering studies. Because this is terrifying.

[Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) @MIT]

More than half of the nation’s 623,218 bridges are experiencing significant deterioration. But mechanical engineers at MIT and elsewhere have successfully demonstrated that 3D printing may provide a cost-effective, minimally disruptive solution. https://t.co/7HFO6b8NBy

[Chris Fralic @chrisfralic]

RIP to Bill Atkinson, one of the greatest programmers who ever lived. At Apple he created MacPaint, QuickDraw, HyperCard and was a critical part of making the Macintosh magic. He co-founded General Magic - go watch that documentary.