Robert Jakobson

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Robert Jakobson

Robert Jakobson

@newdesignideas

Art. Survival. Life. Design. Manufacturing. "Vir fortis ac strenuus in labore, non in deliciis probatur".

Tallinn, Estonia Katılım Şubat 2015
413 Takip Edilen34 Takipçiler
Robert Jakobson
Robert Jakobson@newdesignideas·
@SebJohnsonUK Europeans and Americans will work together anyway. This divide between Europe and America is a by-product of addiction to a narrative-driven economics and financials driven by people in Europe who would move to America at a drop of a hat and vice versa as well.
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Seb Johnson
Seb Johnson@SebJohnsonUK·
62% of European founders are reliant on US AI infrastructure. And fewer than 1 in 4 founders say they care about this dependency. There's A LOT of talk about the need for European sovereignty, but the truth is that most founders don't care. And why should they? It is not their problem to solve. Founders should not feel responsible for the geo-political risks of the entire continent. We should create an environment where the best companies in the world can be created.
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Mark Hanchett
Mark Hanchett@Mark_o1t·
The US is currently 5 years at best behind China in battery technology. Cell designs haven't changed in ~30 years. Chemistry is advancing, but we're over estimating defensibility. Manufacturing battery cells is critical to defense, robotics, and energy in the United States.
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VolundMfg
VolundMfg@VolundMfg·
Our CEO sat down to talk scale manufacturing with @BlackFlagVC Give it a listen.
Black Flag@BlackFlagVC

"I've watched a number of companies build what a lot of people call technical debt. When you want to be actually producing this at scale, like shipping the things in the boxes with UPS labels. How do you actually do that and have plans to do that early on I think is massively important." We sat down with Eric Hostetler, co-founder and CEO of @VolundMfg on this week's episode of Pirates Only. Link to full episode below! 🧵👇

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Robert Jakobson
Robert Jakobson@newdesignideas·
Even machines that have German maker markings or branding/logos on it are these days often made in China based on licenses. How do I know? Because the maintenance tools that come with the machines have written Chinese on them for sizing / specs. Nobody bothers to hide it anymore, denying it makes no sense. We literally did the meme: "Capitalists will sell us the rope..." with finalization of our economies.
camilo@AscendedYield

big L for Germany hold dat

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NOELREPORTS 🇪🇺 🇺🇦
NOELREPORTS 🇪🇺 🇺🇦@NOELreports·
Estonia’s P4P high-speed missile interceptor drone has been tested in Ukraine. Developed by Tallinn-based Alatyr Group, the system is designed to intercept jet drones flying around 500 km/h. It uses vertical takeoff with four electric motors, then engages a rocket booster for high-speed pursuit, combining multicopter launch flexibility with missile-style acceleration. #Ukraine
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Robert Jakobson
Robert Jakobson@newdesignideas·
In their minds, there is no "we", so the question "what have we gotten" does not enter their mind and not only that - is completely disqualified with a painful trauma-reaction. No "we" or sense of Western civlization at all. Not even the sense of self-interest or sense of self-worth.
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Blume Industries CEO Balding 大老板
Blume Industries CEO Balding 大老板@BaldingsWorld·
I am aware the Acela Corridor Galaxy Brains inside think tanks and universities do not stop and think but when they plead for engagement I ask them seriously what has that gotten us? What has that achieved? Other than their tenure so they can lobby for China money....nothing
Charles R. Smith🔹@softwarnet

@BaldingsWorld 30 years ago "engagement"... the high and mighty promised if we only traded with Beijing the PRC would become nicer, freer and less warlike. Total failure... Yet, the Zombie policy still screams... Shrieking from Wall Street and Capitol Hill for more money and technology.

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Jawwwn
Jawwwn@jawwwn_·
Palantir CEO Alex Karp on upskilling American workers at Panasonic to produce batteries for Tesla at Japanese-engineer quality: “We’re building batteries for a battery company—the people doing it in America are doing roughly the same job Japanese engineers are doing—and they went to high school.” “Now they’re very valuable, if not irreplaceable—because we can make them into something different from what they were, very rapidly.”
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Space and Technology
Space and Technology@spaceandtech_·
Morpho is a power plant inspection drone developed by Elythor, an EPFL spinoff company. It uses wind to extend flight time and has adjustable wings for vertical and horizontal flight. Used to inspect power plants, power lines, turbines, pipelines, and offshore platforms.
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Robert Jakobson
Robert Jakobson@newdesignideas·
There is truth in that in so far consumer electronics companies like Sony are transitioning a lot of their high-value activities like design to China (which I think they should not be doing, but whatever). Korea does that even for more "hard-core" industries and has a lot more parts of society like unions influenced by China as well.
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Rafael R. Guthmann
Rafael R. Guthmann@GuthmannR·
I have a theory why both Japan, Taiwanese, and Korean currencies are so cheap right now. It's because they are close to China, and considering that China is 88% of East Asia's population and it has a policy of keeping a cheap currency vis the USD forces down the price level of the whole region. Up to the early 2010s it was still possible for the Japan and Korean price level to deviate drastically from China's because China didn't compete on high tech exports, but now it does. As the Chinese economy converges to the technological frontier it is forcing the price level of it's developed neighbors to equality but it can keep it's price level much lower than the US's. This is in some sense nice: currently, Chile, Brazil, China, Japan, Spain, and South Korea are all similar in terms of price level, with PPP varying by about 20-30% relative to the exchange rate.
Phryne Astynome@PAstynome

The South Korean won breached the 1500 barrier a few weeks back which it last breached during the financial crisis. It’s a bit shocking because the country is running record current account surpluses but it seems like the capital keeps fleeing to the USD. Sort of like Japan.

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Robert Jakobson
Robert Jakobson@newdesignideas·
@Zac_Pundi Organised crime in Taiwan with the scooter gangs and what not is another low-key issue that just visiting Taipei hides.
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Zac
Zac@Zac_Pundi·
The TSMC boom has a dark side. If you work at TSMC >> US$110K/y. If you don't - US$22K/y (NT$700K). A 3-bedroom flat in Taipei runs ~US$1.19M. The city's house-price-to-income ratio is 15.4 — worse than Hong Kong. A booming index and a broke population can exist at the same time.
Zac tweet media
Zac@Zac_Pundi

All thanks to TSMC. Pumping the Taiwan stock market, solving unemployment, making Taiwanese have more sex, saving the island's future — 護國神山 in every sense. Graduates in Taiwan aren't debating whether to join TSMC, Acer, Asus or MediaTek anymore. They're debating whether to join TSMC Fab 1, Fab 20 or Fab 25. (Fab 20 is the most prestigious) TSMC hires ~8,000 people a year, and Taiwan had only 107k babies in 2025 — a record low. That's one TSMC badge for every 13 newborn. Gone are the 2010s when Taiwan wages stagnated for 20 years. Now everything is on the rise. And on that note about more sex — TSMC should just run a hiring slogan: "Real men have fabs and sex." 神山maxxing.

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Colby Badhwar
Colby Badhwar@ColbyBadhwar·
🇺🇸🇵🇱 Low-rate initial production of PAC-3 MSE Attitude Control Motors to commence shortly in Poland. Even prior to the new framework agreement, Lockheed Martin & subcontractors were working on supply chain diversification. Getting to 2000/year will involve numerous countries.
Colby Badhwar tweet media
L3Harris@L3HarrisTech

We’re expanding PAC-3 propulsion production beyond our U.S. sites. @PGZ_WZE_SA is now a certified supplier of PAC-3 Attitude Control Motors. By growing trusted international partners, we’re scaling production and delivering critical capability where it’s needed most. More: spklr.io/6017EMVqT

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Sebastien Roblin
Sebastien Roblin@sebastienroblin·
The Pentagon's Drone Dominance Program just announced qualifiers for its second 'Gauntlet' competition seeking low-cost FPV kamikaze drones --and instead of narrowing field, invited *48* companies to compete 78 different drones, 8 of which may be awarded production contracts.1/4
Sebastien Roblin tweet mediaSebastien Roblin tweet media
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Robert Jakobson
Robert Jakobson@newdesignideas·
@MsMelChen Bingo, China will be leading for the next decade to come. But it is important not to give up and keep working - regardless how the situation ebbs and flows. Because building up capacity takes time and previously built up capacity and chains are manifesting in n-dimensions.
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Melissa Chen
Melissa Chen@MsMelChen·
If you're a Westerner reading this, please do not fall into the trap of thinking "oh, China is scared. Freedom wins again. We’ve got the AI race in the bag.” This idea that closed authoritarian systems cannot innovate needs to be challenged. There are countless examples in history of these types of societies innovating ruthlessly, relentlessly, and often faster than we care to admit. The Soviet Union put Sputnik in orbit and Yuri Gagarin in space while half the West was still debating whether color TV was a fad. Nazi Germany built the V-2 rocket and the first jet fighters under a regime that made today’s CCP look like a book club. Imperial Japan industrialized at breakneck speed under militarist control. And modern China? High-speed rail networks, dominance in solar panels, EVs, batteries, hypersonic missiles, quantum research, and now - yes! - frontier AI models. SURE, tech transfer and industrial espionage means China's rapid advancement wasn't achieved without an assist from the West but that doesn't mean that China cannot innovate because they have stamped out individualism and hedonistic self-expression. Talent responds to incentives. Authoritarian regimes can offer massive incentives to engineers - priority access to compute clusters, blank check funding, zero regulatory friction, and the blunt threat of consequences if you don't deliver. Read China's move as an escalation in the AI race. They're now treating their AI researchers the way the Manhattan Project treated its physicists - as national assets.
*Walter Bloomberg@DeItaone

CHINA IS RESTRICTING OVERSEAS TRAVEL FOR TOP AI PROFESSIONALS IN PRIVATE FIRMS SUCH AS ALIBABA GROUP HOLDING AND DEEPSEEK

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Robert Jakobson
Robert Jakobson@newdesignideas·
Deep integration not only between Euro-America, but also between Southern/Central Chinese Coastal Area (vs North / Policy Centre) and Europe. Common thread: political leadership in both China & US is officially dead-set against European integration and belittles it. But in reality all sorts of capital centers in bot h countries are deeply integrating. @ektrit On top of that, consumer electronics companies are easy to take advantage for next decade for Chinese partners (Sony, Electrolux...) - but that is another topic.
Duarte@calltheball_

Chinese battery manufacturer Calb has broken ground on a €2 Billion gigafactory in southern Portugal which is expected to represent more than 4% of the country’s GDP when in full swing.

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Dominique Paul
Dominique Paul@DominiqueCAPaul·
We‘re off to Poland where we‘ll be spending the week working from an electronic factory floor. With us: two 5090 workstations, two bimanual arm setups, a Meta Quest, spare 3D parts and tools.
Dominique Paul tweet media
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Jason
Jason@jason_bennitt·
Manufacturing Twitter is fucking lit
SkinnyFat Tony@SkinnyfatTony

Man. Changing my algo from political slop to engineering and robotics has been so refreshing, so many new awesome people to follow and who are following me as well. I am going to keep posting content from current and past work from my career in robotics, my path moving forward, and stuff in between. Glad to be out of that rut of depressing x feeds. It didn't take long to change it up either. Here's a pretty cool robot EOAT I did for a customer who manufactured Amazon infrastructure hardware. I also did about 25 robotic welding cells for them.

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Lane Burgett
Lane Burgett@laneburgett·
While @SpaceX was launching rockets we were using @Starlink to remotely inference our excavator robot model that we trained with 2.5 hours of operator data. We are teaching heavy machines to do real tasks on job sites by learning from real operators in the wild. Soon, we will be expanding to more tasks and machines. Our model is built off of @physical_int's π0.5. Read more here: labs.actor/research/excav…
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Keşfet

@SebJohnsonUK @BlackFlagVC @Zac_Pundi @MsMelChen @elonmusk @BarackObama @taylorswift13 @cristiano