You can climb a ladder with two limbs. I'm sure it won't be graceful, but there's no physical reason you need four limbs to climb a ladder.

The ladder is easy, the entire thing can be solved before the robot even starts moving. The terrain isn't easy, but it's been done enough before to the point that it won't cause a huge amount of trouble. The real problems show up when trying to do things that humans use fine motor skills for. Operating screwdrivers, ratchets, a lot of actuation that has to be compliant to some degree. The tractor presents the same problems, attempting to grip the steering wheel won't be easy, but it's certainly easier than replacing any kind of pump.

As you mentioned, the self-containment issue is a big one. You've got to pack an enormous amount of processing power into a very small chassis and have enough energy left over to run your actuators. I bet we'll see some experimental batteries with stupidly high energy densities.

You'd think so, yes. Of course, DARPA isn't so much about making useful things as it is about spurring research that can be used to later create useful things. I suspect that's why they are going with a competition that no one will be able to complete in the next 3 years, and certainly not in a reasonable time frame.

This has happened before. It took two years before any competitor was able to even finish the off-road DARPA grand challenge, and that was just driving. A bi-pedal robot is orders of magnitude more complicated.

I predict that they're going to have to start each section of the race separately. They'll put the bot in the tractor, start the race. Then they'll move the bot to the door, start it again, etc. No way in hell anyone is going to be able to do these tasks in sequence. Some they probably won't be able to do at all.

When you consider how amazingly big space is and how incredibly fast debris can travel, that's actually really close.

"if your average picture is worth a thousand words, then a picture from lunar orbit may be worth a classroom full of engineering and science degrees"

This is the dumbest thing I've heard in my life. And I don't say that lightly, this is, quite literally, the dumbest thing I have heard anyone say, ever.

Exactly, the entire point of a conference is to make things public, not exactly a security issue.

And the author mentions something about "I could have installed keylogging software on a demo computer". Who cares? I guess he could have stolen the generic "admin/admin" and "tester/tester" accounts from all the machines. Unless someone is stupid enough to hook their demo computer into a real set of confidential data, this isn't a problem. And if that is, in fact, the case then it's the company's issue, not the conference's.

And that doesn't even take into account the fact that they're going to make literally no money on this drug. If they release it open then every company will make generics. They can charge a lot less because all they have to do is retool their machines and hit "go" to start producing this drug. This "open" company has to somehow recover their R&D expenses.

It's a terrible solution to the problem of pharma companies profiting from the suffering of people. Switch to the universal healthcare option and on top of that start funding drug development. You'll end up with a lot more drugs that work a lot better and cost everyone less money. No more drug patents, no more incentive to create derivatives of the same drug so you can keep patenting one damn formula, no more incentive to create fifty pills for some stupid thing like erectile dysfunction instead of a harmful disease, no more reason for two companies to expend money doing the same research to race towards the same drug.

Why does this argument keep showing up? I thought we debunked this already.

You don't do anything wrong when you sleep, use the toilet, or make love to your significant other and yet these things are still private and I think we would all agree that the government has no right to monitor them.

Then he's a terrible engineer. 0.3% of $8000 is $24. Transferring to another university would cost more than that in transcript fees alone (which vary but can be about $30). Once you take into account moving expenses you blow that out of the water.

0.3% is insignificant for just about everything engineers do. You're going to use a factor of safety of somewhere between 1.5 and 2 for even the most well-known situations, 0.3% is well within this limit.

Getting in trouble with the law? This seems like an outlier case to me. I would be extremely hesitant to chalk this up to modern technology. Sure, some slight differences in behavior, a general negative trend wouldn't be outside the realm of possibility; but something this serious likely has other, much larger, factors involved.

All these girls nowadays aren't developing normal social tendencies! I mean, they're out in the street wearing pants! Not a single one in a dress. How obscene!