Latest news with #AaronPressman
Boston Globe
07-05-2025
- Business
- Boston Globe
Amazon's newest robot gains a sense of touch
In Amazon's vast storage warehouses, such as its Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up The company Advertisement Now Vulcan can also Humans will still load many items onto the shelving pods. Vulcan will concentrate on filling cubbies at the lower and higher sections of the eight-foot-tall pods. That should spare the human workers from bending and stretching in ways that could cause repetitive stress injuries. Advertisement 'Vulcan is really good at doing that part of the job,' Dresser said. 'So we provide better work environment, safer work environment, for our employees.' While that may require fewer workers loading the pods, Amazon will add jobs in robot maintenance, Dresser said. 'As we deploy more robots, we need more skilled folks that are helping us with maintenance,' he said. So far the Vulcan robots have only been installed at a facility in Spokane, Washington, and Hamburg, Germany. The plan is to deploy thousands of the touch-sensing bots at warehouses around the world, Dresser said. The team that designed Vulcan named the bot after the Roman god of fire and blacksmithing, he said. 'The team is a builder team and they like this connotation of a forge and building something new,' Dresser said. Amazon has already manufactured more than 750,000 of its other types of robots at its facilities in Westborough and North Reading. The Amazon Robotics unit was created more than a decade ago when the company bought local startup Kiva Systems, helping stoke Aaron Pressman can be reached at
Boston Globe
29-04-2025
- Business
- Boston Globe
How e-commerce sites are trying to help shoppers avoid tariffs
Some gadget prices are already higher, including Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Popular Chinese e-commerce site Temu, which Advertisement But as that stock runs down, Temu is showing the import charge at checkout on items that must be shipped from China, CNBC Advertisement At Kickstarter, a favorite spot for snagging cutting edge and specialty consumer tech gear, the site is giving sellers the option of a post-sale price hike to account for tariffs. Consumers agree to pay for products at a specific price on Kickstarter months, sometimes even years, before the products are ready for sale. With tariffs coming into play only recently, that could have left sellers unable to meet the price they originally promised. So Kickstarter is letting sellers The White House is not happy about import tax disclosures, however. After a But line item disclosures could be the least of consumers' tariff worries if all of the new levies take effect. Then again, the president has backed off multiple times. Aaron Pressman can be reached at
Boston Globe
14-04-2025
- Automotive
- Boston Globe
Massachusetts delays rules requiring EV heavy truck sales
Manufacturers, claiming they could not meet the minimums, then imposed strict limits on sales of diesel-powered trucks in the state. State officials initially rejected requests to waive the rules, citing the need to transition to electric vehicles to reduce air pollution and meet climate goals. That led to an impasse, with local dealers and buyers, ranging from tow truck companies to landscapers and freight haulers, Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up But on Monday, the Department of Environmental Protection, which oversees the rules, said manufacturers who could not meet the EV truck minimums in 2025 and 2026 would not be penalized as long as they sold diesel trucks in the state. Advertisement 'Manufacturers must continue investing in their manufacturing and distribution networks to ensure a smooth transition to electric trucks,' the department said in a statement. 'Massachusetts remains committed to making the transition to electrification work for all and will continue to advance our whole-of-government approach to support this transition in the transportation sector.' Advertisement Of more than 186,000 registered medium- and heavy-duty trucks in Massachusetts at the beginning of the year, only 301 were fully electric or plugin hybrids, up from 98 a year earlier, according to Truck owners have said electric models can cost double or more the price of diesel trucks and are not yet available for all uses. They also noted a lack of adequate charging stations on highways that can handle large trucks. Environmental groups said the state should not have backed down, and they accused manufacturers of failing to prepare for the rules, which were adopted four years ago with the 2025 start date. The minimum purchase requirements were 'imminently achievable, which is why delaying its enforcement is so regrettable,' said Jason Mathers, Associate Vice President for the Zero-Emission Truck Initiative at the Environmental Defense Fund. 'Massachusetts residents cannot afford to wait.' The Transportation Association of Massachusetts, representing truck operators and servicers, expressed appreciation for the delay. 'We are eager to collaborate with the Healey Administration, our stakeholder groups of end-users, and manufacturers to continue our efforts to reduce emissions from the transportation sector,' the group said in a statement. 'Our hope is that going forward, today's DEP decision encourages all stakeholders to work together to develop practical and attainable strategies for working towards the additional reduction of emissions from the transportation sector.' Aaron Pressman can be reached at
Boston Globe
01-04-2025
- Boston Globe
Why I abandoned Google search after 27 years — and what I'm using instead
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up I had taken note of all of this hubbub. Then two recent incidents catalyzed my decision to switch. They were online financial transactions that went awry in part due to my own carelessness. But it was a carelessness bred by a once dependable search engine that has lately become nearly unrecognizable to anyone who remembers the days of 10 blue links and the motto 'don't be evil.' Advertisement The first happened a couple of weeks ago when I was planning a trip to London. The UK now requires travelers from America to obtain an electronic travel authorization, or ETA. I wasn't sure of the exact name of the ETA, so I just searched 'travel to UK.' Advertisement The results were all about obtaining an ETA and I picked a link that looked like the official UK government site. It was not; the official site was lower, below an AI summary, some sponsored links, and other junk on the results page. Luckily for me, I did get a legitimate travel pass — but the site I picked overcharged me by about $70. In the second case, last week, I needed to book a hotel for a Passover trip to my brother's in Connecticut. I knew there was a cool hotel we had stayed at before near his house but I couldn't remember the name. I asked Google for hotels in the town where my brother lives. Sure enough, one of the top results appeared on first glance to be the official site of the hotel I wanted to book. It was not. Once again, somewhat nefarious search engine optimization techniques allowed a hotel aggregation site to jump ahead in the results. And this time my error was even more costly, to the tune of several hundred dollars in extra charges for two hotel rooms. Google has worked hard to eliminate truly fraudulent web sites from ending up in its results, and for that I am grateful. It is undeniable that, in both instances, I should have been a more careful consumer. But decades of relying on Google had taught me that I didn't have to be. After I learned my lesson, I did some research in search of better search. People I trust on the Internet, including the Advertisement I gave it a few test runs. A search for ' Run as a public benefit corporation and charging a subscription fee instead of relying on advertising, Kagi's incentives hopefully will remain pure. If not, I'll be searching for a new search site once again. Aaron Pressman can be reached at
Boston Globe
04-03-2025
- Business
- Boston Globe
Silicon Valley tech startup taunts Boston job applicants: Don't work here
The ads are running around Boston and Cambridge near the offices of major tech companies and universities Harvard and MIT, Anduril said. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Anduril's military projects range from Advertisement The company currently lists more than The 'Don't work at Anduril' campaign also placed posters in Seattle and Atlanta, advertised across LinkedIn, and Silicon Valley defense startup Anduril Industries plastered South Station with recruiting ads carrying the slogan "Don't work at (Aaron Pressman/Globe Staff) Aaron Pressman/Globe Staff Anduril was founded in California in 2017 by a group including Palmer Luckey, who founded Oculus VR and sold it to Facebook for $2 billion in 2014. The name Anduril is a reference to the sword of Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings series by JRR Tolkien. Formed at the beginning of the first Trump administration when many tech companies opposed working on defense or weapons projects, Anduril has taken the opposite approach. 'You need people like me who are sick in that way and who don't lose any sleep making tools of violence in order to preserve freedom,' Luckey Advertisement Aaron Pressman can be reached at
