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Read this this morning in the train, what a story! Awesome guy, I wish him all the luck kicking against the established companies... Seems he has a bet with Elon Musk to outperform the current autonomous driving algoritms using his AI techniques. He is actually driving a lot with his car via Uber, to gain material to train his NN on :)

my old question: how could we use it for space?

It will depend on the alloys used, I am not sure but bainite might magnetic and I am not sure if nickel alloy based (stainless) steels can be processed at this low temperature... Metallurgist RF?

did you read this one? "When my wife and I started dating she invited me over for dinner at one time. Her kitchen had something called Bauhaus chairs, which are full of holes, approx 5-6 millimeters in diameter in both back and seat. During this lovely dinner I was forced to liberate a small portion of wind and was relieved that I managed to do so very discretely. Only to find that the chair I sat on converted the successful silence into a perfect, and loud, flute note. We were both (luckily) amazed and surprised and I have often wondered what the odds are for something like that happening. We kept the chairs for five years but despite laborious attempts it couldn't be reproduced."

Maybe it is not yet too late for ESA to stop our plans of outsourcing IT ... Sometimes it is good to be late :-)

Just over six years ago, we reported that Nissan had developed a "Scratch Guard Coat" paint designed to repair scratches on not only cars, but on painted surfaces in general. ... The Scratch Shield paint is made from polyrotaxane, which has a chemical structure that is able to react and change back to its original shape and fill the gap that results from a fine scratch.

hmmm, I was wondering how many ESA employees do know that ACT does exist....

And my son studying at Stanford (he just sent me the same link !) follows the courses this semester of two of the teachers mentioned in the article, Thrun - very good and Ng - excellent

Charged like your electric toothbrush by lowering the receiving coils to 4cm above the ground.

nice; there are similar trials ongoing a bit all over; there is one I know of in Mannheim, where i think they have quick charging coils at each stop to reduce the battery mass they need to carry; I have seen a demonstration of this in Kyoto university about 13 years ago on a normal car - even one where they had an entire road equipped with these chargers and tested with charging as you go , charing at traffic stops, parking etc ....

Interesting insight indeed, I see quite some overlap with the ACT mantra, athough they have 250 people and an outdoor playground.. To Teller, this failure-loving lab has simply stepped into the breach. Small companies don't feel they have the resources to take moonshots. Big companies think it'll rattle shareholders. Government leaders believe there's not enough money, or that Congress will characterize a misstep or failure as a scandal. These days, when it comes to Hail Mary innovation, "Everyone thinks it's somebody's else's job," Teller says.

Interesting ideas - though some metaphors are a bit far fetched. Personally, I think it could be interesting if every scientific article would also have a how-to or tutorial section that gives a recipe of how to apply the newly gained knowledge. Of course, that might be tough to do... :-)

The API of the world is already there (a bit), it is the previous knowledge developed by others. Open Source projects such as the wheel or the brick, allow everyday amazing new APPs to be build such as buildings and cars .... There still is merit, though, in learning from software developments techniques in the everyday world projects. This is indeed the motivation for the ACT to do work in open source (SOCIS, GSoC) and push its members to use stuff like wiki, svn, github, jenkins, and alike. This way we are performing and fostering (http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/foster) research into working methods in the hope we will be able to export some of its benefit to the larger ESA.

If you pry open one of today's ubiquitous high-tech devices-whether a cellphone, a laptop, or an electric car-you'll find that batteries take up most of the space inside. Indeed, the recent evolution of batteries has made it possible to pack ample power in small places.

solidstate batteries would be perfect indeed, but up to now I know of no solid electrolyte that can do the trick. The article itself does not mention any material beyond superionic lithium-ion conductors, but does not specify which one in particular. The premis seems to be "if it conducts fast enough, the battery can conduct efficiently"

My favorite is the "Device to Sense if a Pedestrian Was Hit by a car" invention

Pretty close to what we suggested for "system of systems." Was an excellent exercise in bullshitting, but of course ESA is not innovative enough. Now it's too late, Daimler did it...

not sure they will end up needing a lot of "space" though ...

There is no "space" yet, at least I didn't find any. But that's because they didn't consider specific hardware, but normal mobile phones. The step to include "space" is obvious, though, and I'm sure they thought about this as well...

Where do you want to go to do academic research and still have a decent salary ? certainly not sweden, France or Germany... prefer the UK, US or the top... Switzerland !

Sure, 44k for a full professor, that's a bad joke! Just my experience from conferences: high saleries do not make good research, I rather suspect there's something like an optimal salery. People with too high saleries often seem to feel obliged to make much noise (whatever the reason might be), the result is not research but PR campagns.

I agree ! Just a correction, net salary for a full professor starting in France: 36456 euros/year... For a McF (equivalent junior prof.): 20160 euros/year, and of course a shitload of admistrative tasks and teaching. I don't know why i still dream to have a position...?

breakthroughs vs. accelerated deployment in climate change mitigation technologies.

indeed. puts me in mind of the often reinvented private ACT idea. actually there's a bunch of interesting looking articles on his website. http://www.khoslaventures.com/khosla/papers.html . No sps in the solar one as far as i can tell :) found this bit intriguing too in that, albeit presumably out of context, it doesn't make sense ""The solution to our energy problems is almost the exact opposite of what Khosla says," declares Joseph Romm, who is the editor of Climate Progress, an influential climate blog, and a senior fellow at the Centre for American Progress Action Fund, a think-tank. "Technology breakthroughs are unlikely to be the answer. Accelerated deployment of existing technologies will get you down the cost curve much more rapidly than a breakthrough."" found this seemingly not very well considered piece (to be fair a blog post) by the guy http://climateprogress.org/2010/07/02/is-anyone-more-incoherent-than-vinod-khosla/ . maybe he's written some more convincing stuff in this vein somewhere.

"Mr Khosla (...) is investing over $1 billion of his clients' money in black swans" Well, with his own money his approach might be a little different :-)

I know, it is not a new concept, but apparently the guys from BMW put some money into it to make is series-proof. Could we - in principle - put something like that onto a spacecraft to solve thermal and energy problems at the same time?