I don't follow this logic: in countries that ban guns, violent offenders use knives? Doesn't that prove that it works? The total damage inflicted by a deranged lunatic with a knife has to be, on average, a lot less than a deranged lunatic with a firearm. That chinese guy who went berzerk with a sword on the same day as the elementary school shooting a little while back... didn't it end up that nobody actually died from that?

First of all, it can't determine if you're a driver or passenger, so it will then disable your phone if you're a passenger. Not a huge deal if this is just a punishment, I guess. However it's still easily defeated by getting another phone. The right solution is to take away their driver's license for a period of time (2 weeks to start, and increasing amounts after that). Use your phone all you want, but don't drive.

I don't know if this is too beginner level, but I think it's worth a mention: Snap Circuits. It's kind of like those old learn electronics kits with the spring connectors, but in this case they snap together with magnets. I would think if you went through all the kits you would learn all the basics pretty quickly, and then you'll be more comfortable moving on to the arduinos, etc.

Also checkout RobotShop for more advanced stuff.

The US already used its rather effective kill switch technology: precision guided bombs. Simple, effective, and just like any other solution you can dream up for this problem, expensive.

Obviously I mean voluntarily.

Um, it doesn't matter. It may not be appropriate for a woman to stand there fully naked in the middle of the street, but that still doesn't make it OK for anyone to do anything to her (other than ask if she needs assistance or call the police to deal with the situation).

That would actually be illogical for an individual to do if they're mostly interested in themselves and their offspring (and people do it which shows how generous some people are, sacrificing themselves for the greater good). A single person giving up 1/8 of their income for the benefit of everyone instead of themselves is just putting themselves at an economic disadvantage. Those are resources that can't be put towards better education for their kids, buying bigger/newer (i.e. safer for themselves) vehicles, etc. This kind of stuff will only work if we agree as a society that everyone has to play along by the new rules, for the benefit of everyone as a whole. A lot of people are completely against this idea (government intrusion on freedom, etc.) but that's the only way we've ever solved problems based on the "tragedy of the commons". If there's a common resource that people have an incentive to exploit, with no limit, for essentially free (e.g. the atmosphere) then they will do it. Sure, we all breath, but there's little/no incentive to breath "more". We can, however, use more energy by burning inexpensive fuel which consumes O2 and releases CO2 into the atmosphere, and we don't, as individuals or as companies, have to pay for that "externality". Therefore we will *never* stop doing it until we all agree as a society to regulate CO2 emissions.

I had one of those cheap 12V switching power supplies (came with a 3D printer kit actually) and the power cord that came with it was getting very hot. I looked at the cord itself and it had 10A stamped on the plug end. That should have been more than enough current capacity, so something was definitely wrong with the cord. I took an old PC cord out of my junk box and noted that it also said 10A, then cut the PC end off of it and compared the wire gauge between the two. The faulty one's wire was much, much thinner than the one from my junk drawer. I wired it in and voila, the new cord ran cool as a cucumber. I believe the 10A stamped on the plug only referred to the actual 3-prong plug, and not to the wire itself. In the end this is just bad quality control from some knock-off supplier in China, so it's not surprising. I assume this HP mess is a similar problem. Just a bad batch of wires on the market, either because the original manufacturer screwed up in buying the wire, or maybe something more nefarious.

Well, sorry, that's not so bad design, but the really bad design is if the default password is in the downloadable manual and is active all the time, or doesn't require you to change it on first login. Still, I think my point is the same.

Except the terribly bad design we typically see in embedded design is normally to provide a back-door way to prevent just this kind of problem. "Oh, you lost your password? No problem, hold down these three buttons and cycle power and it'll reset everything to factory defaults, and then you can login with this default password."

Manufacturing has returned (slowly) but it's been in the form of automation, not jobs.

At this point nobody's going to be surprised if any device tested has blatant security flaws. The only interesting story would be if someone found a device with no actual flaws. That would be news.

I don't see why bricklaying couldn't be automated.

We used to just call it "pouring cement" and "laying bricks" but now that additive manufacturing is such a big hit we have to call it 3D Printing.

If that were the case, I can see how it would promote the introduction of invasive species. That is, if you have a fishing lodge on Lake Somechamacallit, and you have to pay for a license to fish native species, why not then just import a breeding pair of invasive species, let nature run its course for a few years, and then fish all you like?