Ian Dodds

Autonomous farming at @reservoirfarms in Salinas. When I got here joined a bunch of farmers from Florida who were visiting. But during the talks @bonsairobotics caught my attention. One of the first to use world models to drive autonomous farm equipment. Here's their CEO, Tyler Niday, talking to me about what's going on in farming around the world. And of course we talk about world models. My favorite topic lately. They have robots farming in Australia and here in America in a variety of places. He ran autonomous tractors for @JohnDeere for years. Reservoir Farms is an incubator—think of it like Y Combinator or Founders Inc., but for people who are making autonomous, AI-driven tractors and other farm equipment. It's a remarkable place. Worth telling anyone in farming about. @bernsteind, who runs it, used to work at Google in high tech and got the bug to help startups hit the farming market. He has a fairly big plot of land to do all sorts of testing, demos, and development work here in Salinas, with about 40 acres of a variety of different crops. That is something you can't do in Silicon Valley anymore. It takes me back to my childhood when Silicon Valley used to be all farms. It was a lot of fun hanging out with the farmers. They'll be doing some events and hackathons down here. If you're from Silicon Valley, it's only an hour south, and I highly recommend coming down to see what's going on. The AI part of farming is very similar to building an autonomous car or truck, so the kinds of jobs are very similar. The market is just very different, and the kinds of things a robot needs to figure out are different. You might be picking apples or spraying crops. You don't have pedestrian traffic, maybe, but you have other kinds of things you need to train and model on to work around. Anyways, I had a beautiful day hanging out here.

@vhaaaaannnnn 100p

@IanDodds_ valar team on top

vibes immaculate

@vhaaaaannnnn I just smash Claude with a hammer

@IanDodds_ now its built on Claude eh?

Modern society was built on the Anvil

there is a class of man who knows what steel can do, and there is a class of man who does not

🎤

@billetfearsme If you mapped innovation back what else is modern society built on? Transistor, steam engine, pasteurized milk. And then, what is considered “modern”. The Anvil might be too antiquated to be considered modern society, I agree.

@IanDodds_ Anvils, obviously

@arthrchen i like that mental model

@IanDodds_ anvil was high tech until it wasn't. maybe the goal of every tech company is to make high tech seem like low tech one day.

@billetfearsme Where the o rings and bearings come from?

@IanDodds_ Not to split hairs here but I’m pretty sure modernity is built on the strong shoulders of o-rings and bearings.

@Joe__Forti 🔥literally so true

@IanDodds_ the anvil never left, it was just upgraded

@MikaelEllingson A time where physique was your trade

@IanDodds_ Under a spreading chestnut-tree ⁠The village smithy stands; The smith, a mighty man is he, With large and sinewy hands, And the muscles of his brawny arms Are strong as iron bands. ( -- Longfellow)

And yet, we are content with a random screw loosely holding the towel rack

@stefan_salaices like what ?

I have a lotta things to think about

Me? Yeah I’m training a biological neural net

Real

@__el__toro__ Virtually impossible to get the concrete guys to miter all the form work pieces

Found out that Citizens Bank Park does not believe in corner chamfers on their concrete bases:

New nuclear aesthetic

@aphysicist @viktormacha Why no fume extraction?

in case you want some more electric arc furnace action, courtesy of @viktormacha

@bihanmahadewa All logos everywhere look alike

@IanDodds_ why is every hard tech logo lookalike lmao

Advanced Metal Research

@CassidyAWaters Best kept secret

@IanDodds_ This is the dream I signed up for.

Chevron Gundo core