You say smaller political entity, but the city of Washington D.C has 100k more people than the entire state of Wyoming...

Good point - and also whoops on forgetting that, should have remembered from my DC history class where they drill in that we have a larger population than Wyoming and Vermont yet no rep

We'll probably end up with the doors from Philip K. Dick's Ubik that charge you money to open and threaten to sue you if you try to force it open without paying.

Caltrain stations' automated machines used to famously give $1 coins as change when buying tickets as well. Getting like 10 $1 coins as change for a $20 bill really weighed your pants down.

Why do you think a humanoid robot will be cheaper than a robot arm?

If humanoid robots can perform ok on a broader set of tasks then they could reach economies of scale that a robot arm might not.

To add to that, a good friend of mine is a welder and machinist (and still using Linux on the desktop years after I set him up). A robot 'helper' that just moves things around and maybe does basic machine work (cutting pipe and threading the ends, for example) would put his productivity through the roof. Same story with a guy who specializes in kitchen remodeling.

It's hard to find decent general purpose help these days and they would pay good money for a halfway useful helper.

Once it's able to weld... That's going to be a massive game changer, and I can see that coming 'round the corner right quickly.

Once it’s able to weld and climb then building skyscrapers will become a lot easier and cheaper as you don’t need safety equipment for them.

Yeah, just let them fall on top on someone/something below!

There are couple UR5 single arm cobots on eBay at $5.5k each right at this moment. The truth is that the value of humanoid is in it form, the novelty, the sense of accomplishment, not features.

If you found one for that price with the controller and pendent, please send me a link. I’ve looked a lot and have not seen any UR for remotely that cheap.

because they already are. an industrial arm from ABB is frequently over $100k. add in the cost to fit it with specialty equipment like vacuum suction for handling boxes, made by a small to medium size business, they'd probably charge another $50k. and if it breaks you need specialty mechanics and parts.

in a world with 500 million humanoid robots, parts are plentiful, theyre easier to work on due to not weighing 5000 pounds, and like the other person said, economies of scale

It is not cool or sexy, but a surface tablet makes a great travel device because it is a full computer that is also a tablet. You can also use it during takeoff and landing when laptops are not allowed.

Surface battery life is something like 1/2 of a Macbook or iPad in real world scenarios.

Certainly not a bad amount (5hrs) but enough that it becomes a conscious "I will have to charge this thing if I use it all day" thought.

I'm not trying to nitpick, this is genuinely what makes my brain hesitate.

My US-based company has the same policy for all international travel now to avoid any incidents coming back into the US.

I worked at Microsoft pre and post-pandemic. Microsoft has an extensive shuttle network, but the public transit (Sound Transit) to the office was nicer in many ways. It ran more frequently and the seats reclined!

The Connect shuttles are pretty bad if you live anywhere in South King County or north of U-village. The drop-off points aren't near transit stations.

The purpose of de minimus is to streamline small shipments, commercial or not. It can't really be abused unless the declared value is false and it is really over $800.

If you are taking issue with Temu-like shipments, that is more of a postal treaty issue.

The Digi-key situation is funny. Going forward, ordering from Digi-key will be cheaper for europeans than for folks in the US. Digi-key operates a bonded warehouse where they don't pay tariffs until it gets shipped to a customer. ICs that are sent from China to Digi-key and then to europeans will pay no US tariffs and often with free shipping deals as you mentioned.

Digi-key never offerred free shipping for US customers and now we will have to pay these high tariffs too.

They were still complaining about Solyndra over a decade later.