If the probability of a suicidal crew member is one in a million, then the probably of two is one in a trillion. That is close enough to zero that it doesn't matter. The plane would be more likely to be hit by a meteor.

No rational person is expecting 100% perfection. But there are about a half dozen incidents that appear to be intentional crashes by the flight crew. So these incidents are roughly as common as terrorism. We are spending billions to keep terrorists from crashing planes. We are spending $0 to keep pilots from crashing planes. That is not sensible.

There are several simple solutions:
1. Do what the military does: use a portable urinal.
2. Do what many countries do, including America: Require another member of the crew to wait in the cockpit until the pilot returns.

Option #1 costs $10, which is way cheaper than replacing an aircraft.
Because of this incident, option #2 is likely to be much more widely adopted. New Zealand announced yesterday that this will now be their policy.
 

No it doesn't. It means more demand. Read up on Jevon's Paradox. As a resource (including labor) is used more efficiently, demand for it goes up, not down, because of greater opportunities. It would only go down if the Lump of Labor Fallacy wasn't a fallacy.

If you owned a factory, and you had a way to make your workers ten times more productive, would you fire 90% of them? Or would you realize that your profit per worker was now ten times higher, and expand your factory and hire more workers?

That explains why high productivity like America, Western Europe, and Japan, are mired in poverty, while countries like Somalia, Liberia, and Afghanistan, which avoided the "productivity catastrophe" are prospering. Whatever.

It doesn't make it wrong, but it does make it dumb.

I know enough to answer that question, but I also know enough to understand that it is not an important thing to know. 99% of programmers do not need to know the difference, and the 1% that do, can learn it when it comes up.

No, we don't all agree with that. I don't. If you actually RTFA, it says that current STEM graduates are better than ever, and I agree with that. People that think otherwise are mostly engaging in false nostalgia. Some other countries are doing even better, but that is nothing new either, and is mostly because of different demographics and broader education opportunities in America. Many Americans go to college that in other countries would have been channeled into a trade school. That is not a bad thing, although it does pull down apples-to-oranges test scores.

It is interesting that news stories never mention that Ellen Pao is a lawyer. I don't know what Kleiner Perkins was thinking when they hired her, and made her a junior partner. If you hire a carpenter, that carpenter is going to try to solve every problem with a hammer. If you hire a lawyer, that lawyer is going to try to solve every problem with a lawsuit. That's what they do.

Why? You may value time off. That doesn't mean everyone does. When I was younger, I routinely worked 60-80 hour weeks, and loved it. My work was much more interesting than anything I could sit at home and watch on TV. I got a lot of bonuses for getting stuff done, and at that age the extra money was far more important than time off. Now that I am older, with a family, and stable finances, I prefer the opposite tradeoff. But I am not going to force my choices onto anyone else.

The flight recorder recorded the pilot getting up and going to the toilet. While he was gone, the co-pilot put the plane into a steep descent. The pilot returned, and clearly realized something was wrong, but didn't seem to be aware that the co-pilot was intentionally causing the rapid descent. He tried to pull up, but the co-pilot was continuing to push the nose down. Time quickly ran out.

But the pilot was never locked out of the cockpit. I was wrong about that.

Again, the drivers are the trucking companies.

Nobody is arguing that about whether SDTs are coming, but about who will drive the change. The "trucking industry" is unlikely to be an agent of change. They are entrenched incumbents who will fight, lobby, and bribe to stop automation. Progress is more likely to be driven by customers such as WalMart, or entirely new transport companies. They will be lobbying and bribing in the opposite direction.

As long as the insurance company is paying, why should I care who is "responsible"?

In many countries, insurance companies offer discounts for anyone using a dash cam. Why? Because cameras reduce disputes, thus lowering legal costs.

Why is this a problem? Several states already allow self driving cars on the road (although with a driver in the seat for now). The liability issue is already resolved. The party responsible is the insurance company. Duh.

The only thing that changes with SDCs, is that the insurance will likely be much cheaper. Not just because accidents will go down, but also because the camera, gps, and sensor data will make it very clear what happened, eliminating disputes over the facts, so legal costs will be much lower as well.

At least in America, the drivers are the trucking industry. When you see an 18 wheeler on the freeway, the chances are very high that the truck is owned by the guy driving it.

TFA says nothing about patents. The lawsuit is over trade secrets and breach of contract. This clearly implies that a contract was signed between BRG and Facebook, and that as a result of that contract, BRG disclosed their trade secrets to Facebook. So the only thing that matters here is what does the contract say? Since we don't know that, commenting further on this issue is silly.