Ian Loughead

@ianloughead.bsky.social

Museum Conservator, Runner, Fermentor, Friend to the Robot Vacuums

Testing out a robot vacuum (Roborock) with larger capacity mapping and multi week maintenance free mopping. Will this one be a big step in our larger museum storage areas? Also works in the dark with LIDAR instead of cameras.

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When choosing a robot vacuum for your museum spaces, a simple feature some companies overlook is the "home" button. Issues occur and robots get lost of stuck or have wifi errors. The home button can be an easy reset. Relying on the app to do it all leads to more problems.

Perhaps the scariest thing I saw in this article “I think the NRC has been frozen in time,” said Brett Rampal, the senior director of nuclear and power strategy at the investment and strategy consultancy Veriten. “It’s a great time to get unfrozen and aim to work quickly.”

ProPublica@propublica.org · 6mo ago

When DOGE arrived at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the operatives had no real background in nuclear issues. They boxed out experienced hands, forcing resignations and massive exodus of talent. Over 400 people have since left or been forced out. Our full story: https://propub.li/3OBQMwk

Graphic displaying how hundreds of staff who do work related to nuclear reactors and their safety have left and not been replaced. The data is categorized into six sections: Nuclear Reactor Regulation, Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, Nuclear Regulatory Research, Nuclear Security and Incident Response, Regional offices, and Other offices. Each orange square underneath a category represents a loss in staff, while each gray square represents an addition of staff. The graphic shows that there have been 443 losses and 57 arrivals across all six of these categories. Note: The data is from the week ending Jan. 24, 2025, through Feb. 13, 2026. Source: Weekly Information Reports from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Go away on vacation and when I return the robot vacuum fleet are all being whiny brats. I have never seen the group get stuck on so many odd things, or just flat out fail to remember where home is.

Watching the tech evolve on robot vacuums has been fun. It is also sad to see the classic Roomba struggling compared to others in the category. Eufy and Roborock are leading the charge in my head to head tests.

AI "vibe" coding is not as easy as the bros try to make you think. Yet, it does have some good uses for really random small, non-essential "programs" that people can create for themselves. For me, creating converting programs has been super useful. They aren't pretty but very useful

IRobot (Roomba) versus Eufy branded robot vacuum cleaners. I have tested both for awhile now and so far, the Eufy come out on top as more user friendly, better bang for the buck and just less likely to have annoying little issues.

If algorithms are designed for maximum engagement and AI is learning from them, how will these be useful tools? If I ask ChatGPT questions it does its best to keep me all more and more things. This does not seem productive.