Not only that, but the sovereign debt of the U.S. is issued in U.S. dollars. Lots of governments and individuals around the world own U.S. debt, and they are all invested in the dollar remaining strong so as to maintain the value of that investment.

And this ignores commerce conducted in U.S. dollars, like the international oil market, which while beneficial to the dollar as a whole, could probably be swapped out for another currency (the yuan renminbi I assume at this point, given that the euro doesn't look too good) if given enough notice.

Yeah. Same with cruise control.

You are defining "driving" to mean exactly what you want it to mean. To the vast majority of people operating the gas pedal is a component of "driving" yet you just dismissed cruise control as not "[taking] the driving from you and [doing] it for you." Same for adaptive cruise control (automatic acceleration and braking), lane keeping (automatic steering decision). Go back enough decades and ABS brakes (automatic brake pumping), timed windshield wipers (automatic periodic windscreen cleaning), auto tranmissions (automatic shifting) are also "doing the driving for you".

I think we're wired to see new things as annoyances once we get old enough. That's why people stop liking new things. In every case of something that existed when I learned to drive, it's a useful component that lets me concentrate on something else (except automatic transmissions - those just make driving less fun), while everything that's come along later (adaptive cruise control, lane keeping, Tesla's autopilot) could be seen as new annoyances. Same for whatever that music stuff is they put out on the radio now between the DJs laughing.

One guy has died. There will be an NTSB investigation into this accident due to its unique nature. They may find that the accident was unavoidable i.e. neither the driver nor the car would have seen the trailer and stopped in time.

Meanwhile, Tesla likely has reams of data showing the vehicle using adaptive cruise or lane changes to avoid accidents, and there's growing data (only possible because this feature hasn't been banned yet) showing that Tesla cars are statistically safer when using this mode.

Eventually that data will trump knee-jerk gut-feel reactions and should be used for sensible regulation. We'll see. The government is good at banning things in ways that make it difficult to research why they should be unbanned.

So I'm going to a special outdoor event and a guy is directing me to turn right up a dirt ramp that's bridging a curb to take me into a grassy field where another guy tells me to turn left into a row being formed by the cars parking on it where a third guy tells me to turn right and angle-in park.

Until we have a singularity no vehicle AI could manage that.

The aftermarket cruise control in my '97 Miata shuts off when I tap the break but not the clutch; the car just revs to max if I put the clutch in without turning cruise off first (oops).

That's not what he meant. He's describing neurotic parents having neurotic children, and assuming that sufficient neuroses are indistinguishable from autism.

My friends who have used Uber said that they were getting like 3-4 mail advertisements a week about this, plus emails, texts, etc. Some who otherwise wouldn't care voted against it because they were so annoyed at the spam.

Austin still has a driver service besides taxis. Get Me operates here and complies with the background checks.

The term "gadget" usually implies a connotation of "small", whereas "appliance" in the traditional sense does not. An electric can opener, for example, is both a gadget and an appliance, and in that way they are synonyms, but a fridge is an appliance but not a gadget, just like an iWatch is a gadget but not an appliance.

Exactly. People who point out that Canada will become more arable (eventually) don't usually realize that Canada might not want a large influx of Americans, nor will America want a large influx of Mexicans who can no longer farm their lands. Even assuming the same total amount of land remains capable of producing food, the migrations necessary to get people near those lands will spark several wars and lots of pain and suffering.

Note that, in previous studies, the baboons lived for minutes before a reaction to the pig heart led to a deadly blood clot.

Were I on the waiting list for an organ, I think I'd rather stay on the list and try to live another day than get a heart that would kill me before I left the operating room.

Now that the study is complete, they can figure out why the hearts only lasted 1-3 years, and try again. They probably still aren't ready for humans.

How do you run a locked-down VM on your phone? What exactly is a known-good site?

They may know very little about the policies and culture that lead to gun violence, but I daresay that medical professionals know far, far more than you or I do about the consequences of gun violence.

It seems reasonable to me that a group of people who regularly operate on, or autopsy the consequences of gun violence might want to look at its sources. Whether they are looking in the right place or not is a matter for future study.

It's linked by others above, but in case you don't see those posts:
http://healthland.time.com/201...

http://www.cnet.com/news/man-p...