Martin Villig 🇪🇪

Imagine being lowered into a gas chamber while fully conscious. The gas causes pain as it dissolves into the moist tissues of your eyes, nose, mouth and lungs. Breathing becomes extremely painful. And you may remain conscious for up to 60 seconds before finally blacking out. This is what happens to around 9 million pigs in the UK every year. That’s over 25,000 intelligent, sentient creatures dying in this horrific way every day. The UK Government’s own Animal Welfare Committee says the method causes conscious pigs pain, respiratory distress and fear, visible through gasping, vocalisations and attempts to escape. For how much longer will millions of sentient animals have to endure a method we already know causes avoidable suffering? Months ago, the UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), announced it would consult on banning CO₂ slaughter for pigs. The consultation still hasn’t been released. Compassion in World Farming is calling on the UK government to act. Project Slingshot has been doing important work to drag this hidden practice into public view, taking its campaign onto the London Underground and into public spaces across London. If you believe pigs should not spend up to 60 seconds conscious, in extreme pain, panicking and gasping in a CO₂ chamber, add your name to the petition right now. No matter where you live, you can sign the petition called “URGE DEFRA TO CONSULT ON CO₂ SLAUGHTER FOR PIGS” by Compassion in World Farming. Share it with people across the globe who care about animals. Help build enough pressure to end the delay. https://lnkd.in/eWUkvNFF Picture: Farm Transparency Project. #AnimalWelfare #Pigs #FactoryFarming #EndFactoryFarming #AnimalEthics

The Dutch🇳🇱 don't arrive by bike at the #TrainStation. Instead, they arrive by train at the #BikeStation! 🚆 50% of train travellers arrive by bike | 🚲 33.000 bike parking spots around Utrecht CS | 💰 30 million Euro investment. (📹: De Filmende Fietser)

Wayve is announcing a global strategic partnership with Mercedes-Benz AG! Through this definitive production agreement, we’ll bring our AI Driver to future Mercedes-Benz vehicles starting in the next two years. This is the world's first integration of the Wayve AI Driver in the premium segment and builds on Mercedes’ strategic investment in our Series D and years of technical collaboration between our teams. It's also the third production deal we’ve announced for consumer cars in the last 9 months following Nissan Motor Corporation and Stellantis. This pace reflects the industry's growing conviction and convergence around the Wayve AI Driver as the scalable path to autonomy. Mercedes is an iconic company with a strong reputation for automotive innovation and engineering excellence - they built the world's first car in 1886! I couldn’t be prouder to build the future of autonomous driving together. Thank you to Ola Kaellenius, Joerg Burzer, Michael Hafner, Dr., Dr. Martin Hart, Joachim Missel, Thomas Klein, Andreas Zygan, Roland Wenger, Alexander Nediger, Christoph Starzynski, Mathias Geisen and the entire Mercedes team. This agreement follows a multi-year technical partnership. I've been deeply impressed with the rapid pace and deep technical alignment between our teams, integrating Wayve's frontier embodied intelligence with Mercedes-Benz's leading vehicle engineering and safety expertise. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/euigqeTE

You know the "I'm attending…" template images everyone's using to announce they are attending this or that tech event? Well, here's my version after asking The Machine God to go a bit edgier on things. Apologies to the How to Web team for bastardizing your logo! Anyhoo, I'll be back in Bucharest October 6-8 talking to founders, angels and fellow investors. See you there?! Bogdan Iordache - like it? :)

BREAKING: Bolt is set to launch a fleet of 25k robotaxis in Europe via a partnership with luxury vehicle manufacturer Lucid.  The rollout would be the most ambitious plan yet for autonomous ridehailing vehicles in Europe, where deployment is behind the US and China. Fully autonomous robotaxis remain largely confined to testing or require supervision from a human sitting behind the wheel.  Lucid Motors CEO Silvio Napoli said it’s planning to roll out the first batch as early as 2028 according to Kana Inagaki and Kieran Smith in the Financial Times.  “The idea is as soon as possible,” he said.  For Bolt, the partnership with Lucid is part of the Estonian company’s plan to have 100k robotaxis on its platform by 2035. In June, the company signed a deal with Stellantis and Pony.ai for a autonomous vehicle programme in Luxembourg and more.  You can read the full report here: https://lnkd.in/exnKArtc (Image credit: Bolt)

Four countries. Different communities, different ways of studying, and very different daily realities. But all fuelled by the same very human aspiration: to build a better future and a new life trajectory by learning new skills. koodtech turned five this September. Almost like a birthday gift, five years after our very first learners started their //kood journey in September 2021, Selection Sprints were running simultaneously across our growing community: 🇲🇩 in Chișinău at kood/Moldova 🇫🇮 in Helsinki at Hive Helsinki 🇪🇪 in Tallinn at koodtech 🇺🇦 in Ukraine, with kood/Odesa and kood/Zhytomyr coming together for a //kood in Ukraine Online Sprint — taking place in conditions very, very different from the others. I couldn’t be in all these places. But even watching the Sprints unfold on our product screens — seeing people move through the challenges and imagining the thrill, the angst, the frustration and those proud aha! moments — gives our team an immense sense of pride and motivation. Behind every bar on that progress screen is a person who was curious and brave enough to try. Five years in, that still feels like the heart of what //kood is about. Thank you to everyone making it happen.

Olen öelnud, et õpetaja kannab oma õpilast enda õlul niikaua, kuni õpilane iseenda jalad maha saab. Täna sai mulle aga osaks erakordne au saada oma kooli, Tallinna Tehnikaülikooli 88 tuhande vilistlase hulgast 2026 Aasta Vilistlaseks. Pidasin aulas ka kõne, kus rõhutasin, et * ajad muutuvad ja ülikool koos nendega * täna lahendavad uue aja päriselu probleeme noored, kes veel eile olid koolipingis * insenerid peavad tegema töökindlaid asju, mis on ka majanduslikult kasulikud * Eesti tark majandus seisneb selles, kui insenerid ja ettevõtjad loovad koos kasulikke ärimudeleid; mitte doktorikraadiga masinaoperaatorites Olen südamest tänulik ja uhke selle tunnustuse eest. Elagu TalTech – Tallinn University of Technology Mente et manu PS! Vilistlane, uuri asja ja tule ka tagasi ülikooli #taltech https://lnkd.in/daT5rkPs

The latest signals from 🇺🇦 are not good - technological war has entered a new, very dangerous stage, where Ukraine needs to build new high-end solutions for air defence to counter jet-powered Shaheds. But they can not do it alone - they need 10x more capital  & most importantly, European builders need to step up now!  So far, cheap Frankenstein-type solutions have given Ukraine an edge, but they don't help anymore against 3x faster drones. Given that new Shaheds/Gerans can reach up to 600 km/h, you need ultra-fast cameras, sensors & 10x more compute in interceptors. And you usually can not just upgrade existing interceptors - you need to build a totally new product.  Building an airframe for new small rockets is not so difficult. But it could take a year or more to build a working seeker and targeting solution. And it also needs a different type of builder with totally new skill sets. And there is not enough tech talent left in Ukraine anymore. Majority is already joined the army or is building some sort of tech already. Or simply fled the country. With all those details - we are talking about absolutely different prices. Successful interceptors agains usual shaheds are between 2k - 5k. High-end interceptors against jet-powered drones will be easily 10k - 40k. Yes - 10x more.  But most critical is the time. The enemy will produce tens of thousands jet powered shades this year alone. And these drones will have a live data link that lets an operator guide the drone onto the target. This means operators could correct targeting in real time, making attacks way more accurate.  Yes - indeed there are some teams with promising solutions. Some from Ukraine, some from Europe. But none of them will have a scalable solution this year - maybe in the first months of 2027. And many many teams are still hacking new Frankensteins. But Shahed terror in the next 6 months will be very damaging.  But the biggest threat here is that Russian innovation speed has increased significantly. And they are constantly upgrading & building new solutions that Ukraine needs to fight. Like the Banderol cruise missile.  We are already working with some very sharp teams. But we need MORE - please connect with me: hardcore builders - computer vision engineers, seeker and sensor makers, guidance and control specialists, or embedded compute teams - we will help speed up development or connect you with the best other teams.

We are partnering with Lucid Motors to design and deploy 25,000 autonomous vehicles across Europe. 🌍 Autonomous driving in the EU requires a higher bar than anywhere else in the world. The car, the software and day-to-day operations need to work as one system, built for European regulations and safety requirements. So our partnership starts at product development. Lucid and Bolt will co-design the vehicle and the software on NVIDIA Hyperion, using Bolt's data and our experience running mobility services for over a decade. Optimising for safety, speed of scaling and the most efficient cost structure per km. Bolt will also own and run the fleet. More on that in a separate post soon.