The original press release contains more information. It seems like they are already using the drive system in race cars right now. The “Porsche Turbo Charging” seems to require special charging stations though.
I've read parts of his book. He had already been living in China as a student for a few years when he decided to start his trip, if I remember correctly.
Many European cities have height restrictions for buildings within the old city center to preserve the traditional architecture. The financial district just outside the center has no height limit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_D%C3%A9fense
Revealing my ignorance on this topic: Why would IBM care who owns their stocks, assuming the specific shareholder doesn't try to take influence on the development/direction of the company?
Buffett only owns companies at a level where he can influence. Usually, what he wants is profit paid as a dividend, but it depends on his level of investment. He usually does not invest for growth -- he thinks IBM is under-valued, so he's taking a position.
He never met with the CEO[1] and in fact messed up the name.
It is in the realm of possibility (and quite likely) that he talked with people inside IBM. But I don't think they were really pushing for him to buy it. At least it doesn't appear that way.
On CNBC this morning, Buffet made it sound as if it was more about liking the value based on the annual report he saw in March. He's been reading IBM's annual report for over 25 years. He did some diligence, and then began establishing a position.
Buffett is famous for doing exactly that, reading company reports (and other research) for a really long time before investing(I would imagine he must have read IBMs even earlier than 1986).
He would read company reports, even if he had no plans to invest. It is one of his hobbies (not only a job).
What's the state of the art in humanoid or multi-pedal robots in terms of robustness and flexibility of their movement and balance? I assume ASIMO isn't as stable and stress resistant as the robots of Boston Dynamics, for example http://www.bostondynamics.com/robot_petman.html
Asimo seems quite a bit more advanced overall than those robots. They are designed for quite specific purposes and domain - it's hard to tell but they also don't seem autonomous. With Asimo, Handa is going for a general purpose robot that can emulate a human while Boston Dynamic appears to be going for more specific military needs with things like BigDog.
From what I learned from a BD engineer, Japanese legged robotics use mostly static equilibrium in contrast with the (more advanced?) dynamic balancing of US and European robots. Asimo might look cute, but if you compare the gait of any of the popular MIT, Boston Dynamics or CMU robots to the Japanese, you soon notice that the latter don't look very natural or adequate to unpredictable terrain.
That's true enough, but only the military and EMS need robots that can instantly handle unfamiliar terrain. Meanwhile, the Japanese are most of the way towards a consumer product, since the interior of a building is highly predictable.
Good point, but if you don't need to handle unstructured terrain, you might just as well put the robot on wheels. The humanoids robot Justin from DLR [1] for instance has an omnidirectional wheeled platform that even allows for adaptive foot print. The only current advantage for ASIMO that I see at the moment, is that it doesn't have to take the elevator but can use stairs.
Running, jumping on one foot while turning 90 degrees. I think that is just remarkable stable.
Take a look at this slowmo-footage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ifl55QShWfE
It looks like the legs are constantly adapting. But ofcourse this could be programmed.
Although the Boston Dynamics robots seem more fluid and may have more flexible and natural overall movement, the ASIMO seems more autonomous. I haven't seen any of the Boston Dynamics robots actually performing a task adaptively (other than adapting to terrain and pushes/kicks). PETMAN looks really interesting but until it is turned loose untethered, ASIMO wins the best android contest.
Boston Dynamics robots like Big Dog use hydraulic actuators [1] which act somewhat like a spring and are hence very robust towards perturbations. They also have more power (= force*velocity). ASIMO in contrast uses an electric motor with a high ratio gear drive [2] that makes the robot very stiff and slow while allowing for high torques. This setup doesn't allow for backdrive and hence can't handle impacts well. I don't know about the new ASIMO legs but in the video you can still hear the screaming of the gears.
He mentioned that they don't spend any more money than they would have in the US. It shouldn't make a difference for the retirement plans then, I assume.
"Private nonprofit four-year colleges charge, on average, $27,293 per year in tuition and fees" [1]
And that's just the private schools. The public schools are considerably cheaper: ~8k USD for in-state students and ~12k for external students. 50k USD is the full prize for the top private schools like Stanford or the Ivy League. Imagine how expensive some schools would have to be for the average to come out at 50k USD.
I have no doubt that VC money is the lowest in Europe of those three. I wonder though how significant this metric really is, especially if the large developping countries of eastern Europe are included. Wouldn't a VC money per startup/founder be more interesting?
http://newsroom.porsche.com/en/products/iaa-2015-porsche-mis...