Boston Dynamics has integrated Google DeepMind into its robotic dog Spot, giving it more autonomous reasoning for industrial inspections like spotting spills and reading gauges. Spot can also now recognize when to call on other AI tools. IEEE Spectrum reports: Boston Dynamics is one of the few companies to commercially deploy legged robots at any appreciable scale; there are now several thousand hard at work. Today the company is announcing that its quadruped robot Spot is now equipped with Google DeepMind's Gemini Robotics-ER 1.6, a high-level embodied reasoning model that brings usability and intelligence to complex tasks.

[T]he focus of this partnership is on one of the very few applications where legged robots have proven themselves to be commercially viable: inspection. That is, wandering around industrial facilities, checking to make sure that nothing is imminently exploding. With the new AI onboard, Spot is now able to autonomously look for dangerous debris or spills, read complex gauges and sight glasses, and call on tools like vision-language-action models when it needs help understanding what's going on in the environment around it. "Advances like Gemini Robotics-ER 1.6 mark an important step toward robots that can better understand and operate in the physical world," Marco da Silva, vice president and general manager of Spot at Boston Dynamics, says in a press release. "Capabilities like instrument reading and more reliable task reasoning will enable Spot to see, understand, and react to real-world challenges completely autonomously."

You can watch a demo of Spot's new capabilities on YouTube.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

John from Brisbane has added a photo to the pool:

My Window Wednesday image yesterday was taken from this side of the jetty on Coochiemudlo Island which is situated ten minutes by ferry off the coast of Victoria Point in Moreton Bay, Queensland. You can see one of the ferries just arriving at the jetty.

I regard Coochie as one of the most relaxing places easily reached in the region. It only more or less has a cafe and a Bowls Club and the rest of the small island is mostly an idyllic bedroom community devoid of noise and unpleasantness with a few holiday homes thrown in. Arrive on the ferry and immediately your stress and blood pressure drop. Read about it below. Relaxation and quietude personified. Image taken December 2025.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coochiemudlo_Island

Two coffee makers AND a trap door

WASHINGTON (ANP) - De Verenigde Staten hebben aangekondigd hun sancties tegen de Iraanse oliesector aan te scherpen. Dat verklaarde de Amerikaanse minister van Financiën Scott Bessent in een persbericht.

De sancties zijn met name gericht op de transportinfrastructuur, waaronder een twintigtal personen en entiteiten die banden hebben met het netwerk van oliemagnaat Mohammad Hossein Shamkhani.

"Het ministerie van Financiën voert krachtige maatregelen uit in het kader van de operatie 'Economische woede' en richt zich daarbij op de elites van het regime, zoals de familie Shamkhani, die zich ten koste van het Iraanse volk proberen te verrijken", aldus Bessent.

Mohammad Hossein Shamkhani is de zoon van Ali Shamkhani, een naaste adviseur van de voormalig hoogste Iraanse leider Ali Khamenei; beiden kwamen op de eerste dag van de oorlog om het leven.

Senator’s fourth attempt for resolutions fails, but votes show growing appetite among Democrats to impose limits

Bernie Sanders on Wednesday led a failed effort to block the sale of bombs and bulldozers to Israel, but the votes revealed a growing appetite among Democrats to impose limits on US weapons transfers to a longtime US ally.

It was the fourth time Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Senate Democrats, had forced consideration of resolutions cutting off military aid for Israel in the Senate, all of which have been rejected by the chamber’s Republican majority, and many Democrats.

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Stretched across a boulevard and shaped like an ‘amoeba’, the divisive Geffen Galleries open next week

Two decades ago, the new director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Lacma) began a project to revitalize the space for the 21st century. On Wednesday, the institution unveiled the results of that $724m effort: the David Geffen Galleries, a hulking, curving concrete building that spans Wilshire Boulevard.

In a city of striking modern architecture, from the Getty Museum to the Disney Concert Hall, the opening is a landmark event. The project, whose unconventional shape has been likened to an amoeba, has inspired praise and polarization.

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Greg Adams Photography posted a photo:

Browser fingerprinting is everywhere

Google markets its Chrome browser by citing its superior safety features, but according to privacy consultant Alexander Hanff, Chrome does not protect against browser fingerprinting – a method of tracking people online by capturing technical details about their browser.…