For Many Workers, Automation Seems A Distant Threat

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Warehouse Robots: For Many Workers, Automation Seems A Distant Threat

"His optimism matches the findings in a new NPR/Marist poll. The survey shows 94 percent of U.S. workers — across all industries — say it's unlikely they will lose jobs to automation. Interviews with numerous warehouse workers at Beatty's employer — Radial — and others employed by Amazon revealed their confidence about the future. But many forecasters aren't as sanguine. They point to giants like Amazon and Walmart speeding up warehouse work with machines."

January 25, 2018 Morning

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Good morning! Happy Thursday. Partly sunny and 13 degrees in Delmar, NY. ☀There is a northwest breeze at 11 mph. The current wind chill is -1. The next few days are expected to be quite cold but sunny. At least the sunrises are starting to get earlier and dusk doesn’t happen until after 5:30.🌄

🌻Only 54 days remain until the first day of calendar spring!🌼

Today will be sunny, with a high of 27 degrees at 2pm. Four degrees below normal. 🌞 Northwest wind 11 to 17 mph. A year ago, we had cloudy skies with some clearing in the afternoon. The high last year was 40 degrees. The record high of 61 was set in 1938. 9.5 inches of snow fell back in 2000.

The sun will set at 5:00 pm with dusk around 5:30 pm, which is one minute and 17 seconds later than yesterday. At sunset, look for mostly clear conditions and 24 degrees. 🌆The wind chill around sunset will be 12. There will be a northwest breeze at 14 mph. Today will have 9 hours and 45 minutes of daytime, a decrease of 2 minutes and 8 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will be mostly clear, with a low of 10 degrees at 5am. Five degrees below normal. Maximum wind chill around 10 at 6am; Northwest wind 5 to 9 mph becoming light west after midnight.🌌 In 2017, we had cloudy skies. It got down to 36 degrees. The record low of -17 occurred back in 1920.

Heading over the Normans Kill bridge on this sunny morning, it looks like the kill is free of ice. 🌉Been fairly warm last few days, well until yesterday. Got cold again. But bright and sunny. 

I do look forward to the warmer weather returning. 🌻It will be nice to go down to the park after work. Yesterday I did bundle up and walk down to the library but it was surprisingly cold. 

I finally patched some longstanding bugs 🐞in the blog, mostly things that had annoyed me for years but I was too lazy to find the problem and fix in the code. It turns out that the fixes were quite easy to make. 💻 I still use WordPress as the basis with many self crafted plug-ins and a highly customized daughter theme. This way I get the security patches and updates and don’t have to maintain the parts of the blog that I don’t really care about in the backend. Years ago, it was a totally custom Perl based design. ♒

I got the acrylic solvent / welding solution in the mail yesterday.📬 At $15 it is absurdly expensive but should last for a long while. My code is pretty much done for the first display but honestly I will change it for new holidays and make various improvements. I’m using the Arduino Uno I have at home but I plan to order a 5 pack of the Arduino Nano which will be a lot smaller and fit better in the project once I figure out how to make a nice looking box out of plexiglass. I plan to have this project substantially complete by the end of the weekend. Next project is going to be a temperature logging device I think. And more of the displays so I can use them for other purposes and have one for my desk at work. 

I am looking forward to a nice weekend with the Pine Bush hike and then an afternoon hike somewhere on my own. Then work on that project, do some cleaning and relaxing. 🚶👫 Should be a nice weekend, especially on Saturday. 

There are 🌼3 months until Memorial Day Weekend Starts🌼 when the sun will be setting at 8:21 pm with dusk at 8:54 pm (Daylight Savings Time). I look forward to those warmer days, even if it means I’ll be fighting the black flies all day long. 🐜But black fly season eventually ends.