You really don't understand how the web works, do you? You are saying that everyone needs to write and maintain an app for each and every OS out there, instead of having an interface which they can support, which in turn is supported by each and every OS. You are calling for the web to return to the incredibly-limited mid-90s. "How it should be" for you is not how the rest of the world wants it.

With a proper SLA and a good backup solution it is no more risky than putting your data in any other system. For example, there are thousands of companies who use hosted CRMs for their entire sales workflow, generating billions of dollars in the process. I guess they're all dumb?

I sure hope his hack is free/open-source.

No one is forcing you to use it. Don't use it, and then you won't feel compelled to complain about an option you can easily ignore.

ROFL.

What a strawman. Which hypothetical investment banker will take Uber and what happened to his limousine and private driver?

Because other people will pay for your desire.

Economists are big fans of auctions and say that's the most fair method to distribute resources. Economists, however, are not known for taking social, cultural or human values into account in their simple models.

So yes, I would. Man, it really isn't so difficult. Get some history lessons on when and why the taxi business became regulated.

The security services infiltrate the group, which causes the group to talk to them. That is far more valuable than just sitting round hoovering up the entire internet and trying to filter out what you're looking for, as they can actually ask for specific pieces of information which might not have been shared. It also means that even if the terrorists use ultra-mega-super-secure one time pads, for example, the intelligence is collected. With your dystopian view of intelligence work, those messages would not be readable. The rest of your issues stem from this simple ignorance of actual intelligence work - you assume mass collection is the only way to achieve results, when decades of history before and after the birth of the internet shows otherwise.

I'm sure all Uber drivers are responsible, altruistic people and they will only offer you a lift if they are in possession of specially equipped and certified snowstorm-safe vehicles.

In Econ 101 you also learn about horizontal and vertical pricing.

Basically, if the surge price is reasonably high, most drivers will be available. From 1.0 to 1.5 you may raise the number of drivers considerably, but from 3.0 to 3.5 you will probably not motivate many more drivers to go out and drive - most available drivers will already be on the road, and the few who decide against it will not change their mind here because if 3.0 doesn't motivate them, then 3.5 most likely won't because they have important reasons to stay home.

A cap on such elastic pricing is almost always a good idea.

This exactly.

Why do rich people not live in Africa and Asia where the climate is good? Safety and convenience. If you don't want to spend your life in a castle defending your riches, you go somewhere where culture, society and government will do that job for you.

Strangely, many don't see this as a service worth paying for, which is largely a semantic problem. Maybe we should tackle it there, and instead of taxes, we should collect a "wealth-protection service fee".

From the very article you link to:

I am extremely sceptical about all these doomsday scenario media reports.

If you do not know something for sure, "follow the money" is always good advise. For example, why would someone who makes his money on the stock market give free advise to the rest of the world by warning them about an imminent market collapse? It makes no sense. If I knew (or were sure about) such an event, I would put my money into short options and become mega-rich.

But, of course, if you expect the opposite, such a press statement can lead a critical mass of people to disinvest, temporarily lowering prices, convincing others that you are right and the crash has begun, so they do the same, and then you buy at the low point.

The same with all the "super-rich are investing in getaways" bullshit. It's a really great tool to convince the wannabe-super-rich (aka the simply rich) to follow (or believe they are following), because that's what they do. In all layers of society, people tend to emulate the next-higher-up from their own status, because that is where they want to be.

Maybe I'm overly cynical or just blind, but thinking about not only what is being said, but also who is saying it and why seems to me to be a good idea.

Could be, as I rent and don't buy, I don't drive cars older than a few years.

I know the Toyotas and Hondas are famous for their reliability. My first car was a used Honda and it had almost no signs of being used before.

That said, old Mercedes cars are also legendarily reliable. My GF wants to buy a used SLK for exactly that reason - they are cute and almost as good as new, for a fraction the price.

You made some good points.

Of those hundreds of years there has only been thirty where large numbers of people can communucate and plan operations without ever meeting. The criminals are allowed to use modern technology by the police are not?

The police can use the same technology - they can cooperate with their counterparts the world over, they can communicate with their agents in the field, they can send video and images around the world in seconds. Being able to use modern technology and being able to subvert its use are completely different things. Bank robbers used dynamite to blow open banks and their safes - by your logic you have no problem with police using dynamite to blow up your house looking for robbers.

Surveillance does not make people less free. Does an audience at a theater make an actor less free? If repressive things happen with the gathered data then that would be a problem but not the surveillance itself.

So you'd have no problem with government-sanctioned cameras in your bathroom filming everything. Good to know. After all, if nothing bad will come from the recording of your personal activities, nothing bad happened.

Physically intrusive searches are very different than electronic surveillance.

Electronic surveillance is intrusive none the less. You can play games of semantics if you wish, but when the state rifles through your private property, you not only risk them finding things you've done which they might not like (either now or in the future), but you give them the opportunity to put things there for them to find. Once that barrier is down you can no longer be sure of what is what, and what was once your property becomes property of dubious origin.