Job DescriptionPlease Read Carefully & Fully Complete Both Steps Below to Be ConsideredWe’re offering an opportunity to join One Janitorial as a  Outbound Cold Calling Trainer Remote— a full-time remote role focused on building and leading a high-performance sales team. This position comes with consistent hours, strong earning potential, and the ability to directly shape the performance of new hires.CompensationBase Pay: $1,200 CAD per monthPerformance-Based Commission: Up to $2,000 CAD/month based on the number of successful trainee graduatesStep 1: Video SubmissionPlease record a 2–3 minute video answering the following questions:How long have you done training or team leading in an outbound cold calling role?What were you selling, and how many people per month did you train or manage?What did your training program or process look like?Upload your video to Loom, Google Drive, or YouTube (unlisted).Make sure your video is viewable by anyone with the link.You’ll submit the video link in Step 2 below.Step 2: Complete the Application Form + Attach Your Resume/CVFill out the short application form, attach your resume/CV, and paste your video link in the designated field:👉 https://5m2ng.share.hsforms.com/2JbQPoKDHTz6UHkr45HP9wgNote: Applications without both the video and completed form will not be reviewed.About the Role: Remote Outbound Cold Calling TrainerAs a Trainer, you’ll be responsible for overseeing the end-to-end onboarding and performance development of new appointment setters. Your core responsibilities will include:Reviewing applicants and selecting the final candidates for trainingLeading biweekly 10-day training classes (up to 6 trainees per class)Coaching and monitoring daily performance and script complianceEnsuring trainees meet the graduation requirements:Book a minimum of 3 qualified appointmentsWork 10 consecutive days without time offAchieve 100% script and process complianceAssigning leads, reviewing daily activity, and providing performance feedbackRequirementsFluent English communication (minimum 9/10 written and spoken)Previous experience training or managing outbound appointment settersComputer with at least 4GB RAMHigh-quality webcam and microphone headsetStable, high-speed internetQuiet, distraction-free home workspaceAvailability Monday to Friday, 8:30 AM – 5:00 PM MDTFamiliarity with cold calling, Google Suite, and remote coaching toolsHigh energy, strong leadership, and a results-driven mindsetOur Core Values at One JanitorialDisciplineEthical BehaviorResults-Oriented MindsetMaking an ImpactCommitmentResponsibilityIf these values align with yours and you’re ready to lead others to success, we’d love to hear from you.We look forward to your application.— The One Janitorial Team

Please Read Carefully & Fully Complete the Application BelowWe’re excited to offer an opportunity to join One Janitorial as a Lead Generator — a full-time remote position with consistent hours, a supportive team, and strong earning potential.CompensationBase pay ranges from $1,170 to $1,300 CAD per month, with additional commissions of $250 to $750 CAD monthly based on performance.To be considered, please read the job description in full and complete the video and send it to us.Video Submission RequiredPlease record a short 2–3 minute video answering the following:How long have you done outbound cold calling or lead generation?How many outbound calls did you make per day in that role?Why do you believe you’d be a great fit for this position at One Janitorial?Send your video directly to [email protected]. You can upload it to Loom, YouTube (unlisted), or Google Drive and share the link, make sure you authorize us to view it.Your application will not be considered without this video.About the Role: Lead GeneratorAs a Lead Generator, your main responsibility is to create sales opportunities by consistently making outbound calls and sending emails. You’ll be expected to:Make 150+ outbound calls per daySend follow-up emails to prospectsBook a minimum of 4 qualified appointments per week.RequirementsEnglish fluency — minimum 9/10 written and spokenA computer with at least 4GB RAMA high-quality webcam and microphone headsetStable, high-speed internet — run a free test by searching “internet speed test” on GoogleA quiet, distraction-free home workspaceAvailability to work Monday to Friday, 8:30 AM – 5:00 PM MDTHigh energy, self-motivation, and strong communication skillsA strong work ethic and commitment to hitting daily goalsFamiliarity with Google Suite (Drive, Sheets, Gmail, etc.) is a plusOur Core Values at One JanitorialDisciplineEthical BehaviorResults-Oriented MindsetMaking an ImpactCommitmentResponsibilityIf these values resonate with you and you're ready to contribute to a high-performance team, we want to hear from you.We look forward to reviewing your application.– The One Janitorial Team

To the list of jobs that will not exist in the future, we must add Janitor. Loki Robotics, a San-Francisco-based startup, is developing an autonomous cleaning robot (also called Loki). At first blush, it doesn't look like much: A single robot arm and two storage bins.Then you see what it can do in the bathroom:And in the kitchen:It's not clear how much of what the 'bot is doing in the videos is purely autonomous versus being teleoperated, as it has the capacity for both. But the company's goal is full-autonomous. At present they're using teleoperation to train the 'bot when it encounters tasks it can't yet handle autonomously.As with Somatic, the other cleaning robot we looked at, Loki Robotics plans to roll the robots out with a monthly lease model. And while their target market will be offices, with the 'bot to replace cleaning staff, the company's marketing copy is written as if addressing a different audience:"We spend over a year of our lives doing chores - time that could be spent raising kids, calling grandparents, making music, building things. We believe tasks like scrubbing toilets don't belong on a human to-do list."In other words, don't worry about the unemployed janitorial staff: Call your Nana and sign up for piano lessons!

May 20, 20255 min readNOAA Has ‘Ground to a Halt’ amid Backlog of Unsigned ContractsA NOAA official says that “everything has ground to a halt” at the agency as staffers have waited for Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick to review more than 200 agreementsBy Scott Waldman & E&E News Howard Lutnick, US commerce secretary, during an executive order signing in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, April 23, 2025. Samuel Corum/Sipa/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesCLIMATEWIRE | A growing backlog of hundreds of unsigned NOAA contracts has slowed agency operations to a crawl — so much so that even Sen. Ted Cruz, a staunch ally of the Trump administration, has raised concerns about the gridlock.The bottleneck is due largely to one man: Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, whose portfolio includes the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. After taking office in February, Lutnick insisted that he personally review any contract in excess of $100,000.Intended as an attempt to identify waste and redundancy, the policy instead has sown chaos at the nation’s preeminent climate and weather agency, say former and current NOAA officials.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.More than 200 NOAA contracts — including one aimed at helping local communities prepare for extreme weather events — are now stuck in limbo, waiting for Lutnick to make a decision. The impasse has forced NOAA to furlough employees, and it has created a work environment where NOAA staffers spend much of their time trying to justify their work — rather than doing it, they say.“Everything has ground to a halt,” said one NOAA official who was granted anonymity for fear of reprisal. “We prepare briefings and fill out new forms, nothing is addressed until the very last minute (or later), stress and urgency is very high.”The NOAA contracts that do make it through the wicket often are done at the eleventh hour, such as one designed to ensure two polar weather satellites receive the flight software updates they need. Others languish for days or weeks beyond their expiration before any action is taken.Both Cruz and a second NOAA official, who also was granted anonymity for fear of reprisal, say Lutnick typically reviews about two dozen contracts a week — a tiny fraction of the total.And Cruz warned the backlog could get worse — and cause trouble in his home state of Texas.“NOAA alone has 5,700 contracts set to expire this year,” said the Republican lawmaker at a Senate hearing earlier this month.“These contracts include everything from post-hurricane flood assessment to janitorial services,” Cruz said. He added that a data center at Texas A&M University was shut down for days, “depriving Texas emergency and water managers of critical drought forecasts that help them manage reservoirs and track storm surge data and hurricane forecasts in real time.”Cruz's office did not respond to requests for further comment.Commerce Department officials did not make Lutnick available for an interview, nor did they respond to a list of questions from POLITICO’s E&E News. But Kristen Eichamer, a Commerce spokeswoman, defended the agency’s approach in a statement.“NOAA is focused on modernizing the department by implementing cutting-edge modern technology,” Eichamer said. “We are immersed in NOAA’s mission-critical services and this administration will continue on delivering for the American people.”Former NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad said it’s perfectly reasonable for administration officials to review outside contracts to ensure they are an effective use of taxpayer money — especially if they cost millions of dollars.But he questioned whether it made sense for Lutnick to review every NOAA contract that exceeded the $100,000 mark, especially if he can’t keep pace with the paperwork. NOAA operations rely on a significant number of contractors, he noted.“The agency ceases and stops operations if the contracts are stuck and so that's what you're starting to see,” Spinrad said.He said too that Lutnick’s policy might be sending the wrong message to NOAA employees.“There's an inherent distrust in this, too, if you don't trust your staff to be making the right decisions, you start doing that,” Spinrad said.To be sure, Lutnick isn’t doing it all on his own.To even land on Lutnick’s desk, NOAA contracts must first go through an approval process led in part by Keegan McLaughlin, a former Temple University student who worked as a food hall monitor last year and lists his Eagle Scout award on his LinkedIn résumé.According to internal documents obtained by E&E News, NOAA officials who want to renew outside contracts typically must make their pitch to McLaughlin and Bryton Shang, who was part of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) operation championed by Elon Musk, the tech billionaire and Trump ally.NOAA officials — many with decades of government experience — have been asked to pitch their requests in the form of a slide show or to write a few bullet points, the documents show.“Keegan and Bryton will ask questions and make a ‘next steps’ decision at the end of the meeting, including requesting any follow-up needed (including needing the program manager to request another meeting),” the document states.McLaughlin and Shang reject some contracts, but any they do approve go to Lutnick’s desk for a final sign-off, according to one current NOAA official.And that’s where they sit.The contracts currently in limbo run the gamut. One has to do with shoreline mapping. Another deals with flood inundation modeling and networks for tsunami warning buoys. Others encompass internet maintenance that ensure key weather data can be distributed during critical events.Though Lutnick promised to keep NOAA intact during his Senate confirmation hearing in January, he hasn’t engaged much with the agency in his short tenure.Part of this is by design: NOAA composes only a piece of the Commerce secretary’s portfolio. Other divisions of Commerce include the Census Bureau, the Patent and Trademark Office and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.And Lutnick has taken on other responsibilities too. In recent weeks, he has been a mouthpiece for the Trump administration’s push to implement new tariffs on foreign goods. And he recently joined President Donald Trump on part of his tour of the Middle East.When Lutnick does get a chance to review NOAA contracts, agency officials say his default setting is to either reject them — or demand partial cuts to the ones he does approve.Also notable: The paralysis created by the contract delays is separate from the Trump White House budget proposal to effectively break up and dismantle NOAA.Taken together, it’s a problematic mix, said Spinrad, the former NOAA administrator, not just because potentially vital programs could be cut, but because the officials making those decisions often lack the institutional knowledge to understand the consequences.“If people don't know the history and don't understand the rules and regulations with respect to how you acquire things with contrasts, they're going to make mistakes,” he said. “And so I think the probability of mistakes is going up when you have inexperienced people doing this kind of thing.”Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2025. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.

Sludge Vohaul! Sierra made the games of my childhood. Are they still fun to play? Get ready for some nostalgia. Nate Anderson – May 17, 2025 7:00 am | 14 Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more My Ars colleagues were kicking back at the Orbital HQ water cooler the other day, and—as gracefully aging gamers are wont to do—they began to reminisce about classic Sierra On-Line adventure games. I was a huge fan of these games in my youth, so I settled in for some hot buttered nostalgia. Would we remember the limited-palette joys of early King's Quest, Space Quest, or Quest for Glory titles? Would we branch out beyond games with "Quest" in their titles, seeking rarer fare like Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist? What about the gothic stylings of The Colonel's Bequest or the voodoo-curious Gabriel Knight? Nope. The talk was of acorns. [Bleeping] acorns, in fact! The scene in question came from King's Quest III, where our hero Gwydion must acquire some exceptionally desiccated acorns to advance the plot. It sounds simple enough. As one walkthrough puts it, "Go east one screen and north one screen to the acorn tree. Try picking up acorns until you get some dry ones. Try various spots underneath the tree." Easy! And clear! Except it wasn't either one because the game rather notoriously won't always give you the acorns, even when you enter the right command. This led many gamers to believe they were in the wrong spot, when in reality, they just had to keep entering the "get acorns" command while moving pixel by pixel around the tree until the game finally supplied them. One of our staffers admitted to having purchased the King's Quest III hint book solely because of this "puzzle." (The hint book, which is now online, says that players should "move around" the particular oak tree in question because "you can only find the right kind of acorns in one spot.") This wasn't quite the "fun" I had remembered from these games, but as I cast my mind back, I dimly began to recall similar situations. Space Quest II: Vohaul's Revenge had been my first Sierra title, and after my brother and I spent weeks on the game only to get stuck and die repeatedly in some pitch-dark tunnels, we implored my dad to call Sierra's 1-900 pay hint line. He thought about it. I could see it pained him because he had never before (and never since!) called a 1-900 number in his life. In this case, the call cost a piratical 75 cents for the first minute and 50 cents for each additional minute. But after listening to us whine for several days straight, my dad decided that his sanity was worth the fee, and he called. Much like with the acorn example above, we had known what to do—we had just not done it to the game's rather exacting and sometimes obscure standards. The key was to use a glowing gem as a light source, which my brother and I had long understood. The problem was the text parser, which demanded that we "put gem in mouth" to use its light in the tunnels. There was no other place to put the gem, no other way to hold or attach it. (We tried them all.) No other attempts to use the light of this shining crystal, no matter how clear, well-intentioned, or succinctly expressed, would work. You put the gem in your mouth, or you died in the darkness. Returning from my reveries to the conversation at hand, I caught Ars Senior Editor Lee Hutchinson's cynical remark that these kinds of puzzles were "the only way to make 2–3 hours of 'game' last for months." This seemed rather shocking, almost offensive. How could one say such a thing about the games that colored my memories of childhood? So I decided to replay Space Quest II for the first time in 35 years in an attempt to defend my own past. Big mistake. We're not on Endor anymore, Dorothy. Play it again, Sam In my memory, the Space Quest series was filled with sharply written humor, clever puzzles, and enchanting art. But when I fired up the original version of the game, I found that only one of these was true. The art, despite its blockiness and limited colors, remained charming. As for the gameplay, the puzzles were not so much "clever" as "infuriating," "obvious," or (more often) "rather obscure." Finding the glowing gem discussed above requires you to swim into one small spot of a multi-screen river, with no indication in advance that anything of importance is in that exact location. Trying to "call" a hunter who has captured you does nothing… until you do it a second time. And the less said about trying to throw a puzzle at a Labian Terror Beast, typing out various word permutations while death bears down upon you, the better. The whole game was also filled with far more no-warning insta-deaths than I had remembered. On the opening screen, for instance, after your janitorial space-broom floats off into the cosmic ether, you can walk your character right off the edge of the orbital space station he is cleaning. The game doesn't stop you; indeed, it kills you and then mocks you for "an obvious lack of common sense." It then calls you a "wing nut" with an "inability to sustain life." Game over. The game's third screen, which features nothing more to do than simply walking around, will also kill you in at least two different ways. Walk into the room still wearing your spacesuit and your boss will come over and chew you out. Game over. If you manage to avoid that fate by changing into your indoor uniform first, it's comically easy to tap the wrong arrow key and fall off the room's completely guardrail-free elevator platform. Game over. Do NOT touch any part of this root monster. Get used to it because the game will kill you in so, so many ways: touching any single pixel of a root monster whose branches form a difficult maze; walking into a giant mushroom; stepping over an invisible pit in the ground; getting shot by a guard who zips in on a hovercraft; drowning in an underwater tunnel; getting swiped at by some kind of giant ape; not putting the glowing gem in your mouth; falling into acid; and many more. I used the word "insta-death" above, but the game is not even content with this. At one key point late in the game, a giant Aliens-style alien stalks the hallways, and if she finds you, she "kisses" you. But then she leaves! You are safe after all! Of course, if you have seen the films, you will recognize that you are not safe, but the game lets you go on for a bit before the alien's baby inevitably bursts from your chest, killing you. Game over. This is why the official hint book suggests that you "save your game a lot, especially when it seems that you're entering a dangerous area. That way, if you die, you don't have to retrace your steps much." Presumably, this was once considered entertaining. When it comes to the humor, most of it is broad. (When you are told to "say the word," you have to say "the word.") Sometimes it is condescending. ("You quickly glance around the room to see if anyone saw you blow it.") Or it might just be potty jokes. (Plungers, jock straps, toilet paper, alien bathrooms, and fouling one's trousers all make appearances.) My total gameplay time: a few hours. "By Grabthar's hammer!" I thought. "Lee was right!" When I admitted this to him, Lee told me that he had actually spent time learning to speedrun the Space Quest games during the pandemic. "According to my notes, a clean run of SQ2 in 'fast' mode—assuming good typing skills—takes about 20 minutes straight-up," he said. Yikes. What a fiendish plot! And yet The past was a different time. Computer memory was small, graphics capabilities were low, and computer games had emerged from the "let them live just long enough to encourage spending another quarter" arcade model. Mouse adoption took a while; text parsers made sense even though they created plenty of frustration. So yes—some of these games were a few hours of gameplay stretched out with insta-death, obscure puzzles, and the sheer amount of time it took just to walk across the game's various screens. (Seriously, "walking around" took a ridiculous amount of the game's playtime, especially when a puzzle made you backtrack three screens, type some command, and then return.) Let's get off this rock. Judged by current standards, the Sierra games are no longer what I would play for fun. All the same, I loved them. They introduced me to the joy of exploring virtual worlds and to the power of evocative artwork. I went into space, into fairy tales, and into the past, and I did so while finding the games' humor humorous and their plotlines compelling. ("An army of life insurance salesmen?" I thought at the time. "Hilarious and brilliant!") If the games can feel a bit arbitrary or vexing today, my child-self's love of repetition was able to treat them as engaging challenges rather than "unfair" design. Replaying Space Quest II, encountering the half-remembered jokes and visual designs, brought back these memories. The novelist Thomas Wolfe knew that you can't go home again, and it was probably inevitable that the game would feel dated to me now. But playing it again did take me back to that time before the Internet, when not even hint lines, insta-death, and EGA graphics could dampen the wonder of the new worlds computers were capable of showing us. Literal bathroom humor. Space Quest II, along with several other Sierra titles, is freely and legally available online at sarien.net—though I found many, many glitches in the implementation. Windows users can buy the entire Space Quest collection through Steam or Good Old Games. There's even a fan remake that runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux. Nate Anderson Deputy Editor Nate Anderson Deputy Editor Nate is the deputy editor at Ars Technica. His most recent book is In Emergency, Break Glass: What Nietzsche Can Teach Us About Joyful Living in a Tech-Saturated World, which is much funnier than it sounds. 14 Comments