Yep, it's not exactly an AI break through but it's really cool to see a practical application of machine learning in the consumer arena.

You do realize that Americans engineered many parts of the LHC right? Including some of the accelerator magnets and parts of the detectors? This has nothing to do with nationality, probably just technological advancement that happened in the 10-15 years between projects.

The app just collects publicly posted information about DUI checkpoints. It could be easily replicated in a for pay website which uses the browser API to grab GPS coordinates and fetch the relevant information. What happens then, are we going to come up with a mobile application website list?

His point is that the research field has been doing this (3D reconstruction with range sensors) for years, so long in fact they have created nice open source solutions for it. The tech news sphere, and most hobbyist it seams, are completely ignorant of this.

Not only is it trivial, it doesn't even run any optimizations passes over the resulting point cloud in order to reduce error and produce nice surfaces. This process is very similar to the work done here except the resulting solution will be quicker because you already have some decent depth information for the points.

It's not a body cavity search.

This is the guy that made google-maps as well, it is quite a loss.

No, midrange laptops use to come with 1400x1050 displays, I have one and it rocks. All of these displays that are only 900 high including uber expensive macbook pros are lame.

It is fully capable of snake like gates, but since it can grip and move a little different then a snake they are experimenting with other gates to see what is effective. If rolling up the tree is optimal for their snake like robot why not do it?

You, me, and pretty much every other engineer in existence shares this feeling. At its peak during Apollo NASA funding was 8 times the current $17 billion rate and I think it was worth it. You want more scientists and engineers here in the US, land a man on Mars. By the time we do it, I am pretty sure the world wide audience will be billions of people, easily toping the 15% who watched the Apollo landings.

It's also possible our "conventional" science and industrial means will extend to the point at which can build ships large enough and with enough fuel to make the journey's the hard way: sublight travel. Either putting people in suspended animation, having people that live for 100's of years, creating a self sustaining colony on the ship while it travels, etc. Heck, even with our current tech we could do this, it would just require a tremendous fraction of the earth's resources, mainly because its so hard to get into orbit.

Its more ergonomically to look down on your displays then up: http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/etools/computerworkstations/components_monitors.html

What kind of work do you do on that machine? I have that exact screen size and resolution and I have used ones that are 1024x768 and there is basically no room for anything. With 1400x1050 I can have two code windows side by side, or a large interface from something like GIMP or OO up at the same time as a document. 1024x768 feels like living in a small, small box, never seeing enough information to get any work done.

Probably doesn't help I have dual 1680x1050 displays at both work and home

Quick! Someone tell the puppeteers, before they run into *another* exploding galaxy.

Cisco IOS seems to return decent results for me. I am pretty sure people who use that OS have enough google foo to filter out iPhone results.