In Japan, humanoid robots will be trialled for baggage handling at Tokyo’s Haneda airport amid a shrinking population of workers. CC-licensed photo by Bernal Saborio on Flickr.
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After this week, The Overspill will be on a break for two weeks. Plan accordingly.
A selection of 10 links for you. The inhuman touch. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. On Bluesky: @charlesarthur.bsky.social. Observations and links welcome.
Humanoid robots start sorting luggage in Tokyo airport test amid labor shortage • Ars Technica
Jeremy Hsu:
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Humanoid robots are getting a new gig as baggage handlers and cargo loaders at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport—part of a Japan Airlines experiment to address a human labour shortage as airport visitor numbers have surged in recent years.
The demonstration, set to launch in May 2026, could eventually test humanoid robots in a wide range of airport tasks, including cleaning aircraft cabins and possibly handling ground support equipment such as baggage carts, according to a Japan Airlines press release. The trials are scheduled to run until 2028, which suggests that travellers flying into or out of Tokyo may spot some of the robots at work.
This marks the latest foray for humanoid robots after they have already begun pilot-testing in workplaces such as automotive factories and warehouses. Most robotic productivity so far has relied on robotic arms and similarly specialized robots that perform the same predictable tasks on assembly lines and in warehouses. By comparison, humanoid robots face a much stiffer challenge in dealing with more open and unpredictable work environments, and it remains to be seen whether the latest robotic software and hardware will be up to the task.
Japan Airlines is interested in testing whether humanoid robots powered by some of the latest AI models can adapt more readily to human work environments—such as airports—without requiring dedicated work stations or other significant workplace modifications. The airline’s subsidiary, JAL Ground Service, has teamed up with GMO AI & Robotics Corporation to oversee the demonstration.
The Japanese companies will test the G1 robot and Walker E robot from Chinese companies Unitree Robotics and UBTECH Robotics, according to The Asia Business Daily. Humanoid robots still typically cost tens of thousands of dollars per unit despite Chinese robotics manufacturers scaling up mass production, although the Unitree G1 robot costs as low as $13,500 for the baseline model.
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Japan’s population is shrinking and ageing – with about a million more deaths than births among its 120 million-odd population – so this is a logical move. Perhaps the baggage handlers can run marathons at the weekends.
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Two million electric vehicles registered in the UK • Transport and Energy
James Evison:
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More than two million electric vehicles (EV) have been registered across the UK, according to new Department for Transport statistics.
The figures show that the Electric Car Grant (ECG) has assisted more than 100,000 drivers save up to £3750 off a new EV.
EV registrations are up 15% on last year, with March 2026 seeing the highest demand ever recorded.
Electric cars are now cheaper to buy, on average, than petrol models for the first time, according to recent figures from Autotrader.
The UK Government said it is also investing £7.5bn to support businesses in the transition to EVs, and there has “never been a better time to switch” due to the ECG, it added.
Included in the top five EVs sold under the ECG were the Ford Puma Gen-E, Vauxhall Frontera Electric, Renault 5, Skoda Elroq and Volkswagen ID.3.
The UK Government also added that renters, landlords and businesses can also claim up to £500 off an electric charger, covering around half the cost of installation. This means drivers can save up to £1,400 a year on running costs, as compared to a petrol car when accessing cheaper domestic electricity rates.
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There are about 34m cars on the road in Great Britain, so that’s just 6%, but this – especially with the Hormuz crisis – could really trigger the upward shift of the S-curve of adoption.
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How OpenAI’s $500bn data centre venture Stargate has shifted shape • Financial Times
George Hammond, Stephen Morris, David Keohane and Tim Bradshaw:
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OpenAI’s $500bn Stargate plan to secure computing power is being reworked and, in places, abandoned. Yet its willingness to strike whatever deals are necessary to secure capacity has given it an edge in the race to build AI infrastructure.
In recent weeks, the group has halted planned data centres in the UK and Norway, declined to expand its flagship site in Abilene, Texas and seen several senior figures tied to Stargate leave for rival Meta.
Originally announced in early 2025 by Donald Trump as a $500bn joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle, Abu Dhabi fund MGX and Japan’s SoftBank, Stargate was designed to finance and build dedicated data centres for OpenAI’s use. The idea was to pool capital to tackle the cost and complexity of AI infrastructure.
That concept has rapidly given way to a more flexible approach, with OpenAI increasingly relying on third-party providers, leasing capacity rather than building and owning its own facilities.
“I don’t know what ‘Stargate’ means at this point,” said a person who was involved in the data centre buildout at the outset. “I think it is a completely antiquated line right now.”
…Oracle has played the most prominent role, agreeing last year to supply OpenAI with 4.5GW of computing capacity under a five-year, $300bn agreement.
…Questions remain over whether it can afford its huge infrastructure spending. On Tuesday, a report that OpenAI had missed internal targets for revenue and user growth led to share price falls at companies linked to the start-up including SoftBank, Oracle and CoreWeave. OpenAI said in response that its business is “firing on all cylinders.”
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The first cracks starting to show.
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Spending millions of dollars to be completely irrelevant • Garbage Day
Ryan Broderick:
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I am surprised by how completely and totally depressed short-form video clipping has made me. I can’t really think of something I’ve covered as a reporter over the last 15 years that has put me in as dark a place as reporting on the state of short-form video has this month. In fact, I think I’m slowly losing interest with the internet as a concept.
Bloomberg has a big piece out this week on the industrial clipping complex, picking up a lot of what we’ve covered here in Garbage Day. It features an interview with Anthony Fujiwara, the head of Clipping, the company responsible for the torrent of Kick clips invading feeds right now. “In the case of Clavicular, we take advantage of every single social media algorithm so he’s unavoidable,” Fujiwara told Bloomberg. All but admitting this whole thing is rigged. Also, worth mentioning here is that the company that owns Kick also owns the casino app Stake and almost all of these clips are not-so-covert ads for Stake.
But it’s not just that all of the views on all of these viral clips are completely inflated, whether by Kick itself or a company like Clipping. Though that’s certainly part of it. It’s also the content that’s in the clips that’s making me feel so insane. Spending the last few months consuming short-video gutter culture has made me seriously question if the internet is even a place I want to be anymore. I started putting stuff online to get away from these kinds of people!
At the very bottom of the algorithm across every platform right now, you basically only see a couple kinds of videos:
• AI slop
• The occasional meme, usually from years ago
• Movie and TV clips, with subtitles, AI voiceovers, and anti-piracy watermarks
• Softcore porn (and hardcore porn on X)
• Gambling ads
• Celebrity podcast clips
• And, of course, livestreamersViewing the world through clips is, frankly, awful. I would rather stare a wall in a dark room than spend my time watching the endless parade of sweaty vape store-tier sweatpants men sitting around staring at their phones in unfurnished McMansions, playing dorm room icebreaker games with bored OnlyFans models. An unceasing portal into a desolate Other America dictated by Bang Bus physics. I wouldn’t even say that Streamer World is part of the Zynternet. It’s something dumber and more hideous than that. A 12-year-old boy’s psychosexual fever dream of what life must be like outside of his gamer nest.
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Feels like Ryan needs a holiday.
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Sam Altman and Elon Musk sure dislike each other • The Atlantic
Matteo Wong on the big trial in Oakland, California:
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[Elon] Musk is asking that [OpenAI CEO Sam] Altman be removed from OpenAI’s board, that the company convert back to a nonprofit, and for the return of allegedly “ill-gotten gains”—some $150bn—which Musk says would go to OpenAI’s charitable trust. Outside legal experts say that Musk is unlikely to win all or even much of this. His argument is confusing: OpenAI has certainly evolved from a nonprofit lab to a revenue-chasing, consumer behemoth, and a chorus of critics has alleged that it has deviated from its original mission of ensuring that AGI benefits humanity.
But Musk himself appears to have insisted that OpenAI couldn’t keep up as a nonprofit—for instance, in early 2018, he wrote an email to OpenAI leadership saying that merging the firm with Tesla “is the only path that could even hope to hold a candle to Google.” And even before he sued, Musk launched a rival for-profit company, xAI. “Mr. Musk’s lawsuit is a pageant of hypocrisy,” William Savitt, a lawyer for OpenAI, told the jury today, later adding that Musk had “sour grapes.” (OpenAI, which declined to comment, wrote yesterday that the lawsuit is “a baseless and jealous bid to derail a competitor.” Musk’s legal team did not respond to a request for comment.)
The substance of these claims is important to the AI industry as a whole. The ramifications of this lawsuit go beyond any company or executive: The conflict between Musk and Altman has itself directly shaped the course of the AI industry. It is, in effect, the AI boom’s founding feud. The next few weeks of the trial will illuminate tensions about the development of AI that have grown only more urgent—between profit and social good, and over who can be trusted with this technology.
…The trial makes the AI boom seem sordid and small. In his sworn deposition, Altman wrote that Musk used to message him complaints that he wanted more credit for the success of OpenAI and took offense at not being included in an anniversary photo. Altman has also said, of Musk and his lawsuit, “Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity. I feel for the guy.” In the courtroom, Altman sat stone-faced next to Brockman and departed right before Musk took to the witness stand.
Musk, for his part, has said that he would drop his lawsuit if OpenAI changed its name to “ClosedAI.” Yesterday, as jury selection began, Musk began furiously posting on X and repeatedly called his co-founder “Scam Altman.” Before the start of opening arguments today, Gonzalez Rogers admonished Musk and Altman for their social-media use, asking them to limit their “propensity” to post about the trial; both meekly assented, “Yes.”
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10,000 litres of water for one litre of ethanol: India fuel push to worsen water crisis • India Today
Aryan Rai:
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India’s push to mix ethanol with petrol, something pitched as a clean energy fix, is deepening the country’s water crisis.
At the heart of the problem are crops that already drink more water than almost anything else grown in India, like maize, sugarcane, and the country’s favourite grain, rice.
“Ethanol blending can worsen India’s water crisis mainly because most of the raw material—sugarcane and increasingly maize—is extremely water-intensive to grow and process,” said IPCC author Anjal Prakash.
Ethanol blending means mixing a plant-based alcohol, called ethanol, into petrol to reduce India’s dependence on imported crude oil.
The country has been aggressively scaling this programme, and rice has become a key raw material. The government allocated 5.2m tonnes of rice for ethanol production in 2024-25, and is now targeting 9m tonnes in 2025-26.
To free up this grain, it plans to reduce the share of broken rice distributed to the poor under the public distribution system from 25% to 10%, diverting the savings straight to distilleries to be used to facilitate ethanol blending.
Producing one litre of ethanol from rice requires around 10,790 litres of water, which includes water used for irrigation during cultivation, according to Food Secretary Sanjeev Chopra, who shared the data at a global conference in Delhi in 2024.
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This shows how bonkers these “clean fuel” schemes are. You use water that people need, and rice (or farmland production) that people could eat, and you divert it into feeding cars, which then burn it and put it beyond use. Couldn’t make the case for electric vehicles charged from renewables more clearly, to be honest. And that’s before you consider that water crisis India may face this year due to low snow levels in the Himalayas.
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Apple reportedly questioning whether iPhone should drop MagSafe • MacRumors
Hartley Charlton:
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[Weibo leaker] Instant Digital claims that confidence around MagSafe has given way to uncertainty. The leaker says Apple is weighing the costs of including MagSafe magnets in the iPhone against the strength of the accessory ecosystem that has grown up around the feature, though the nature of the debate and what any change might look like remains unclear.
The iPhone 16e launched without MagSafe , making it the first new iPhone in years to omit it. Many iPhone 16e owners, as well as users of older iPhones without built-in magnets, turned to third-party cases with embedded magnet rings as a workaround, though the experience is generally considered to be inferior to native MagSafe support. The decision nonetheless drew criticism, and Apple reversed course with the iPhone 17e, restoring MagSafe support when the device launched earlier this year.
There is no indication that MagSafe is at imminent risk of disappearing from the iPhone lineup. However, the upcoming foldable “iPhone Ultra” may be a different story. Dummy models of the device show no visible indentations for the internal magnet array that MagSafe requires, suggesting the feature could be absent at launch. The iPhone Ultra is rumored to be just 4.5mm thin when unfolded, and it is thought that the device may simply be too slim to accommodate the magnets. If that proves accurate, the iPhone Ultra would be both the most expensive iPhone ever, with a starting price rumored at around $2,000, and the first new high-end model to ship without MagSafe since the iPhone 11 Pro.
While the wording of Instant Digital’s post is somewhat ambiguous, it raises the possibility that Apple could be at least considering pulling MagSafe from its standard iPhone models, potentially making it exclusive to higher-end devices. Recent reports suggest that the standard iPhone 18 is being downgraded to cut costs.
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Read on: it’s that time of year when Apple’s physical designs are locked down for production and so people get hold of 3D casts and start drawing all sorts of wild conclusions from them. Charging the foldable iPhone via MagSafe seems a bit strange, but the iPhone Air does/did have MagSafe, so removing it would allow an even thinner phone.
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Apple has likely abandoned ‘iPad Ultra’ plans • MacRumors
Hartley Charlton:
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Apple has reportedly abandoned plans for a foldable “iPad Ultra” following years of disappointing sales performance for the iPad Pro.
The claim predominantly comes from the Weibo leaker known as “Instant Digital,” who posted the remark in response to a question about whether the iPad would join a rumored “Ultra” series of Apple devices. Instant Digital listed the Apple Watch Ultra, M-series Ultra chips, “iPhone Ultra,” and “MacBook Ultra” with an OLED display as products in the pipeline, but explicitly excluded the iPad from that group, citing weak market performance for the iPad Pro . They added that Apple now has “no plans” to release an iPad Ultra.
The iPad Pro ‘s sales struggles are well documented. In October 2024, it was reported that shipment projections for the M4 iPad Pro had been significantly cut after weaker-than-expected demand following its launch earlier that year. DSCC analyst Ross Young lowered his full-year 2024 forecast from up to 10m units to just 6.7m, with shipments of the 13in model projected to fall by more than 50% and 90% in the third and fourth quarters respectively.
Young attributed the sluggish reception in part to the high price point, with the 11in model starting at $999 and the 13in at $1,299, levels that deter buyers who view tablets as secondary devices alongside a smartphone or laptop. iPad revenue has declined for three consecutive years, and the category accounted for just 6.73% of Apple’s total revenue in 2025.
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Those revenue figures are pretty damning. I get the feeling that after the announcement of John Ternus as incoming CEO, there’s going to be a clearout of products that aren’t reaching targets, on the “write two letters”* principle.
* A new leader takes over the country. His predecessor left two letters, 1 and 2, and said “When troubles start mounting, open letter 1. When they seem impossible, open letter 2.”
Things go well but then the new leader faces problems, and opens letter 1. “Blame everything on your predecessor,” it reads. The leader does, and the troubles recede.
But after a while they return and then get worse. So letter 2 is opened. It says: “Write two letters”.
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Apple has given up on the Vision Pro after M5 refresh flop • MacRumors
Juli Clover:
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Apple has all but given up on the Vision Pro after the M5 model failed to revitalize interest in the device, MacRumors has learned. Apple updated the Vision Pro with a faster M5 chip and a more comfortable band in October 2025, but there were no other hardware changes, and consumers still weren’t interested.
The Vision Pro has been criticized for its high price tag and its uncomfortable weight. The device is over 1.3lb (0.6kg), and even with the more comfortable Dual Knit Band that Apple added to redistribute weight, it continues to be hard to wear for long periods of time. The M5 chip added a 120Hz refresh rate, 10% more rendered pixels, and around 30 additional minutes of battery life, but the price tag stayed at $3,499, and it ended up not selling well.
The Vision Pro has been unpopular since it first launched, and Apple only sold around 600,000 units in total. Insider sources told MacRumors that Apple has received an unusually high percentage of returns, far exceeding any other modern Apple product.
Apple has apparently stopped work on the Vision Pro and the Vision Pro team has been redistributed to other teams within Apple. Some former Vision Pro team members are working on Siri, which is not a surprise as Vision Pro chief Mike Rockwell has been leading the Siri team since March 2025.
There have been mixed rumours about a new Vision Pro over the last couple of years, with Apple rumoured to be working on a lighter-weight Vision Air that’s much cheaper, but the project was stopped last year. If Apple finds a way to create a much cheaper, more comfortable VR headset in the future, the Vision Pro line could be revived, but right now, the company has no plans to launch a new model. Apple has not discontinued the Vision Pro and is continuing to sell the M5 model.
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My criticism was always that it’s a content device, and Apple didn’t get the right content for it. Perhaps it’s just going to continue to be made, but with nobody really pushing it forward; the iPod Hi-Fi of VR headsets, a category that nobody seems to be able to make work.
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CATL says sodium batteries are mainstream-ready, signs massive 60 GWh deal • Electrek
Fred Lambert:
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CATL, the world’s largest battery maker, signed a 60 GWh sodium-ion battery deal with energy storage integrator HyperStrong — the largest sodium-ion battery order ever placed. The three-year agreement is equivalent to half of all energy storage batteries CATL delivered in 2025.
The deal marks what CATL calls proof that it has “overcome the challenges of the entire sodium-ion battery mass production chain.” Industry observers are already calling it a potential “DeepSeek moment” for the global energy storage industry.
…Sodium-ion batteries use sodium instead of lithium as the charge carrier. Sodium is roughly 1,000 times more abundant in the Earth’s crust than lithium and far cheaper to source, which makes sodium-ion batteries a compelling alternative for applications where cost matters more than maximum energy density — particularly grid-scale energy storage.
CATL’s energy storage sodium-ion cell is a 300 Ah large-format product with an energy density of about 160 Wh/kg, a system energy conversion efficiency of 97%, and a cycle life exceeding 15,000 cycles at 80% capacity retention. It operates across a temperature range of -40°C to 70°C, which is significantly wider than most lithium-ion cells.
Critically, CATL designed the sodium-ion cells with the same dimensions as its lithium-ion products, making them compatible with existing supply chains and installation infrastructure. That dramatically reduces adaptation costs and shortens deployment timelines.
As we covered last week, CATL is also pushing sodium-ion into electric vehicles, with its chief scientist confirming mass production by the end of 2026 and a target of reaching LFP-level energy density (enabling 600 km / 370 miles of range) within three years. The first sodium-ion EV, the Changan Nevo A06, debuted in February.«
Basically: sodium-ion batteries presently are big and heavy, but they’re cheap, so they’re great for grid-level storage.
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| • Why do social networks drive us a little mad? • Why does angry content seem to dominate what we see? • How much of a role do algorithms play in affecting what we see and do online? • What can we do about it? • Did Facebook have any inkling of what was coming in Myanmar in 2016? Read Social Warming, my latest book, and find answers – and more. |
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