I could be less convenient in many ways though. For one thing, this means that I have to bring my phone with me when I go to the pool or the gym. Also, I don't think that the current cards are that expensive to replace. If they were, they could just charge the client for unreturned or lost cards, same as if other things in the room go missing.

The only reason there's no such thing as carbon free energy sources is because so many human activities depend on sources of energy that aren't carbon free. Technically we need carbon based energy sources to make wind turbines, but if we switched over to 100% wind generation (assuming it was possible), then we could make wind turbines and produce wind energy in a carbon free way. Obviously nothing can be carbon free right now, because even if the maintenance guy drives a diesel truck to fix it, it's not absolutely carbon free. But as long as the technology itself doesn't require the use of carbon generated energy, then we should be able to refer to it as carbon free.

As far as other environmental impacts go, such as the environmental aspects of hydroelectric dams, those should also be taken into consideration, but those impacts have nothing to do with whether or not something is carbon free.

Exactly. Although I'm sure that Amazon has a lot of technical people that work for them, as do Google and Facebook, there's also a lot of non-technical employees, such as those who work in the warehouses, which you would likely not find at Google and Facebook. People like to compare them just because their main services are offered through a website, but other than that, they are about as unrelated as you can get.

The problem is that many places have laws that prevent electric bikes from going too fast. I'm in Ontario, and it's 32 km/h (20 mph) here. In some places in Europe and Australia it's 28km/h. I agree that it's a little slow, but you have to set the limit somewhere. Set it too high and you might have some problems. Some cheap e-bikes are quite heavy and could cause damage if they were going 50 km/h. Since bikes don't require insurance, there could be a few problems if they are travelling too fast.

Possibly. But in 5 years, I fully expect a phone that does everything I want a phone to do to cost $100 or less. $300 isn't that cheap for a phone. Sure it's cheaper than a $700 iPhone, but it's still quite high. I don't see the Apple being able to ask $700 for the latest iPhone in 5 years and maintain the level of sales they are used to. There's only so much you can do on a 5 inch phone, especially when they try to make it so thin. If there's a 5 inch device selling for $700 in 5 years, it had better have a full desktop operating system, with HDMI/Displayport out, and USB 3(or whatever version they are up to by then. Then I can carry around an entire computer in my pocket, put it in a doc, and use it like a desktop or laptop.

I think the problem is that because this is so much different from the other phones on the market, the price will end up being high. So the people with real concerns about the cost of upgrades won't be able to afford it. The people who will be able to afford it are the people who will go out and buy the latest iPhone or Samsung Galaxy every year. They have they money to get the newest phone all the time, and upgrading isn't an issue. This isn't going to help the person who buys a Moto G for $180 and uses that for 2-3 years, and then buys a whole new phone. For that person, it will still be cheaper to buy a whole new phone every time they want an upgrade.

What would really be awesome is getting phones with better support for upgrading the software. Google should figure out a way for people to keep using the same hardware drivers that came with their phone and upgrade the rest of the OS so that people aren't left with 2 year old bugs because they chose the wrong phone and the manufacturer decided not to issue an update. The updates should come straight from Google, and the manufacturer or carrier shouldn't be able to have anything to do with the upgrade process. If they are looking at the advantages of desktops over phones, this is what they should really be striving for.

I never really understood DLL Hell. In Windows I've had very few instances of any that I can think of where 2 programs had conflicting versions of the same DLL. In Linux, I've had all kinds of dependency hell. In the early days, before there was automatic dependency resolution, you had to track down dependencies by yourself, often leading to circular loops or being unable to find a certain version of a library that was needed to install something. Now that dependencies are automatically resolved, you can still run into problems where one package requires the old version, and a different package requires a new one, and you can't install both versions at the same time. The problem usually crops up as soon as you have to install something that isn't in the main repository. If something isn't in the main repository, and isn't statically linked, the odds of a successful install plummet quite low.

I think the problem isn't the lack of centralized computing resources but rather the lack of distributed sensors. The UK is quite small. If they would have spent the money on blanketing the country with sensors, they could give a much more localized and up to date weather forecast. I find that I get the best forecast for rain if I look at the radar map. But it requires quite a bit of time to read the map. I should be able to check on my phone, which has GPS anyway, and determine if it's going to rain, but I've never seen a weather app that takes your exact location into account. They all just give you the information for your city, which can vary quite a lot even within a few kilometers.

I think it just became too difficult for the average person to make a map as good as the ones that came with the game. I used to make a lot of levels for Descent 1 and 2 (same engine), but when Descent 3 came out, even with the included level designer, I found it quite frustrating even to get started. Maybe because I was stuck in the way of thinking for Descent 1, or because I was quite young at the time, but I remember not being able to get much done for Descent 3, even though I'm sure there was nothing wrong with the tool. I think this is why Minecraft is so popular. Things are built up from simple bricks, and anybody can pick it up and start building. You don't need to take a course to figure out how to build stuff. Even my 4 year old has no problem constructing stuff in Minecraft.

It won't be long before you can get a full x86 Atom board with SATA, USB3, etc. for the same price as a Raspberry Pi. There's Atom tablets coming out soon that include Windows and will only cost $100 with screen, case, storage, and charger included. They will use a little more power than a Raspberry Pi, but if you want actual low power, you should be using an Arduino or similar microcontroller. If you want to run a desktop OS and some basic multimedia stuff, or run a basic home server, which is what a lot of people try to use the Raspberry Pi for, the an Atom board will do a lot better job than the Pi.

The point is that you still want to limit the amount of time you spend in the car. If you had an automated car, you still wouldn't want to commute 2 hours each way to work even if fuel was free and the car required no maintenance, because you'd be required to spend 4 hours a day in your car. Sure you could do certain things in your car that would make it more interesting than actually driving, but you'd still be confined to your car. You couldn't use that 4 hours to go for a hike, go skiing, play boardgames with your kids, or do lots of otherwise fun things. Sure you'd be able to keep yourself busy, but you wouldn't have complete freedom of what you wanted to do.

And even for the ones that work, they don't work well enough to make most people pay the extra amount. None of the current systems are really meant to be completely automatic and lacking a driver. This means that businesses that want automated vehicles still need to pay somebody to sit behind the wheel, which is their greatest expense. Individuals who would like to use the system to free up some time also can't benefit because they would still have to be sitting in the driver's seat, paying attention to the road. For me, I will buy an automated car when it means I can sit and watch a movie or read a book and let my car drive me to work. And even then, only when the difference in price over a non-automated car is only a small amount. Because I'm still stuck in a car, and there's only so much I can do there. If I really want to get the most out of my time, I'll reduce the amount of time spent in the car, regardless of whether or not it's automated.

But what do you do when you only need 50% (or less) of the available people to actually work? How do you compensate those who must work with a fair wage. If you just dole out a living wage to those who are unable to find work, you have to be very careful how you set that amount. If you make it too low, they will be unable to survive. If you make it too high, then even those who have the ability to work may choose not to. I work because there are certain things I want in life that require money. If all those things could be provided to me without working, I wouldn't work. And I don't need an extravagant lifestyle.

It's not really true AI that we should be worried about, but rather how the increasing capabilities of computers, machines, and robots could effect how society functions. There are currently a lot of people doing jobs that could easily be replaced by machines in the coming decades. And none of these machines require a "true AI", just natural progression of existing machines. Sure machines have taken our jobs in the past, and people have been able to find new jobs, but that trend cannot continue for ever. Eventually the only jobs available will be those that require actual creative thinking and ingenuity. There's a sizable portion of people that really can't produce that. Rather it's because lack of bad child rearing, bad education system, or just lack of innate talent is hard to say, but I don't think it's a problem that can be fixed by telling them to get training for a more complex job, because they lack the ability to complete the training and do that job, even if you make the training free, or pay them a living wage while they attend training.

It would be a similar problem if there was a cheap way of producing energy. Such a large percentage of our economy is based around energy being limited and expensive that if we found a cheap, environmentally friendly, and sustainable way of producing vast amounts of energy, our economy wouldn't be able to deal with it.

Exactly. The point of taxes is that we all pay, and we are all supposed to get the same service from the government. If that is the case, why does one person pay more than another? Sure, it wouldn't be possible for everybody to pay the exact same amount. Children obviously don't have jobs and can't pay taxes. People who make less money can't afford to pay as much as those who make lots of money, so we try to come up with a balance that works.

Someone who makes $10 million (or more) a year could afford to pay 90% tax and still live comfortably. But in what way is that fair? Presumably this person is providing a service to a business that they have both agreed is worth $10 million a year, and that they are both happy with the arrangement. Why should the government be allowed to take such a large amount of money as taxes? The rich person doesn't really get much extra out of the deal. At the end of the year, they may have only paid $100,000 in taxes, which is 1% of their earnings, but the have paid the same in taxes than 10 people making $30,000 who may have paid $10,000 each.

Also, it's easy to point out individuals who don't do a whole lot and earn a lot of money, but most people who make a lot of money actually put a lot of effort into their jobs, and they are not easily replaceable. Otherwise, they would find somebody else to do the job for cheaper. Even sports stars who get paid to play a game actually have to put a lot into their jobs. They spend a lot of time away from home. They spend countless hours training, and they are among the best at what they do. People are paying a lot to see them play, and the money has to go somewhere. If it doesn't go to the players, it goes to the team owners, or the league or someone else.

Also, some may argue that the wealthy do get more out of their taxes, but that is something that should be changed. We should fix the system so that they get exactly as much as everyone else. Not make them pay more because we know they get more out of the system.