UNUSUAL
A Chinese robot with exceptional capabilities… a perfect integration of a humanoid robot and a robotic arm!
A modular design and a 360‑degree work range with no blind spots allow the robot to perform diverse tasks with high efficiency and flexibility.
This technical synergy opens new horizons for deploying robots in complex construction projects, reflecting a notable advancement in Chinese automation solutions.
AI in robotics gets all the attention right now, but sometimes the most interesting work is very practical.
Viet built a small vision system that counts potatoes on a conveyor belt. No giant dataset. No huge model. Just a clear problem and a smart setup.
He used Ultralytics’ ObjectCounter, trained a tiny YOLO11 nano model, and because there was no potato dataset, he annotated a single frame with SAM 2 and trained from that. One frame. Still works across the whole video.
It is a good reminder that useful AI in industry often looks like this.
Focused. Lightweight. Solves a real task.
If you work in manufacturing or robotics, these small systems are usually the fastest wins. They save time, reduce errors, and do not need massive infrastructure.
Nice work, Viet.
His projects:
https://t.co/PCUV05CW24
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Researchers built a soft floating robot for indoor interaction.
It uses helium and flapping fins instead of propellers.
The result is quiet, lightweight, and safe to touch.
It can follow people, give reminders, and act as a study buddy.
Published at ACM DIS 2026.
HOI-DETR (Hand-Object Interaction) is a new zero-shot framework that integrates hand-object and object-object interaction
-Hand + tool detections
-Interaction links (+secondary object)
Huge for robotics training 🔥🔥
Remember the $TSLA will “grow 50% annually for the foreseeable future” comments in 2022? And that it would deliver 20 million cars by 2030?
2025 actuals:
- Revenue DOWN 3%
- Deliveries of 1.6M, DOWN 8%
2026 doesn’t appear to be much better. No new roadster demo (as was promised most recently for April and then silence), no semi still, super slow Robotaxi rollout, -0- Optimus deliveries, and even the energy business growth has slowed. Tesla proponents were expecting 2026 to be “the year” when Robotaxis and Optimus would add meaningful revenue. Robotaxi and Optimus appear as though they will be 0% of 2026 Tesla revenues.
Now it’s “pump $SPCX” time. “$1 trillion in revenue by 2030.” Cool! Why was Q1 2026 growth just 15%? Why is Twitter revenue down 40% since acquisition? Why does XAI’s main source of revenue come from renting data centers it made for its own use?
I say this as someone who believes SpaceX will achieve a trillion dollars in revenues, some day, but it’s just not gonna happen in 4 years! 10-15, maybe! That’s a big delta.
SpaceX investors who might be new to “Elon time” and the huge number of Elon promises that he simply abandons over time, should keep this in mind.
Starship was supposed to put humans on mars by 2020, “2022 at the latest.” We’re no longer even talking about Mars anymore! And 6 years later, Starship still hasn’t had a successful flight.
And one thing that’s made it more difficult for him to achieve any of these goals is that he’s eliminated access to AT LEAST 1/2 of the talent pool with his hyper-criticism of anyone who disagrees with his politics, often painting those people as wanting to end civilization.
I happen to agree with a lot of Elon’s political views, but if I didn’t, I certainly wouldn’t want to go work for someone who thought my views were intended to end humanity. This is the equivalent of shooting yourself in the foot.
To some, it might seem wrong to criticize Elon, who is one of the most accomplished humans in history. His vision and drive have brought so much to life that was often thought to be impossible.
To me, despite Elon’s accomplishments, it would be wrong to avoid criticizing someone, no matter what they did or said. His constant pumping of stock, completely irresponsible public timelines, and the never ending new promises of what his companies will do, but without realistic timeframes, and abandoning past promises with no explanation, are all worthy of criticism.
Nobody should be beyond reproach!
when you internalize this truth, you set yourself free
of the ~10 businesses i've attempted, ~2 have worked out. and most of them have been weird businesses that you'd be embarrassed to explain to your grandmother. like selling nicotine pouches online, or acquiring government defense procurement contracts for live ammunition
i've:
- failed due to a lack of 'passion'
- failed due to founder infighting
- failed due to industry obsoletion
- failed due to margin compression
- failed due to distribution constraints
- failed due to red tape, defensive incumbents
and these are mostly excuses for "i didn't care enough to push harder"
in my experience, you need to have 'passion' to make a lot of money. and you only develop a 'passion' for something once you're good at it. and the only way to get good at something is to sink your teeth in without inhibition.
so if your primary barrier to starting something is worrying about what other people think about you, rip that bandaid off immediately, and put something (half baked is ok) out into the world. and then, you will see for yourself, that literally
nobody cares
Breakdown of the paper:
The study found that a person's life satisfaction is very, very strongly connected to their personality traits. When they removed all the usual problems from how things were measured, they could predict how happy someone was with their life almost perfectly (like 80% to 90% accurate) just by knowing their personality traits. Even with just a few personality questions, they could predict life satisfaction very well.
They found that being emotionally stable (not getting upset easily), being extraverted (outgoing), and being conscientious (organized and hardworking) were the most connected to life satisfaction. Being open to new things or agreeable (kind) had a smaller connection.
These strong connections were found in all three groups of people, even though they spoke different languages. They also found that life satisfaction stayed pretty much the same over 10 years, and its connection to personality traits also stayed strong over that time.
......
my favorite ways to talk to a stranger:
- offer to take a photo for them in pretty places
- ask what food they ordered
- comment on how beautiful the weather is
- give them a casual compliment
- ask what they're reading
- ask for directions
- casual smile when you walk by
either it leads to a longer convo or it's just a positive human interaction of the day - both are perfect!