This problem is easily solved by placing the liability of a "proper" locking system on the manufacturer and vendor of the car. If the system gets hacked, the manufacturer should be made liable to come up with a fix for that, or buy the car back from the owner at the original price of sale. In the UK most of the provisions for such a system are already in place.

The UK already has consumer protection laws that should be sufficient to cover this. Our statutory rights include that goods are 'fit for purpose' and 'last a reasonable length of time'. There are other relevant protections as well. I'm pretty sure that if the company that sold you a new car in the last ~8 years refused to rectify a security issue sufficient enough to make your car uninsurable you'd have grounds for a lawsuit.

And that's aside from the massive damage to the manufacturers reputation if they didn't resolve it anyway.

Seriously, if you have such a gigantic hard-on for Euros, I suggest you move there.

That old chestnut; always a clear sign of someone without anything worth saying who doesn't let it stop them. Thanks for providing a great example of the kind of idiocy he was joking about though.

My NFC credit cards work from inside my wallets outermost pockets. So it's actually faster to get wallet out, touch to NFC and put away than by Apple Pay etc. I've heard the argument that Apple Watch makes it faster, and possibly it does, but then so would attaching my credit card to my forearm and I have no intention of doing either!

Than opening wallet, removing card and swiping it, entering a pin / signing a signature, returning it to your wallet versus just touching a device to a reader and having your device authenticate via your fingerprint / continuous biometrics?

Went to London on Saturday. Got off my train, used my NFC credit card to tap onto/off all underground trains. Paid for lunch using NFC. Paid for dinner using Wahaca's app (you can pay and leave without having to wait for bill etc). Also went to the supermarket on Sunday and they have NFC payment. Didn't have to get my card out of the front pocket of wallet once all weekend. Phone payment has benefits, and downsides, but comparing to some some backwards implementation of card payment doesn't prove the need for it.

I use credit cards for everything paid off by direct debit at the end of every statement period. I get charged nothing for the card nor am I charged any interest. In return I get:
1/ Additional protection when buying things by credit card
2/ To keep an average of $1,500 extra in my current account
3/ Cashback/rewards from credit card provider. I've received $200 and 80,000 Avios (airmiles) so far this year.
4/ Perks including a number of free uses of business lounges, special offers inc 50% off a hotel stay I was making anyway
5/ The ability to spend ~$30,000 at no notice if I ever needed to, with a month or more to move funds to my current account to cover the direct debit.

There are people credit cards may be a bad idea for, and there are certainly bad ways to use a credit card, but only someone uninformed wouldn't know there's considerable benefits to be had from using them correctly.

It's just too bad we don't have a law like that in the US

Because you like it when the US goes full retard? Punishing people for the actions of their family members is stupid when Israel does it and it'd be equally stupid if America did it. There's no rational reason to restrict it to just terrorism offences, the only reason it would be is because people are completely irrational when it comes to terrorism.

I'm really not sure why you think the anecdotal evidence of one driver someone defines an entire industry. I'd also like to see something backing up the over 100% figure but I expect that driving is quite a high turnover role.

Are you contradicting this based on any more than a desire to be pointlessly argumentative?

It is a more reasonable assumption that the computational power will continue to increase in line with the long term trend than that it will not, lacking evidence to the contrary. Given that the most powerful computer currently is can reach 34 Petaflops and India is planning to build a ~130 Exaflop machine before 2018 it's clear that vastly more powerful machines can be built.

There's a *huge* market for this. My grandmother in law is 93....

This is why we'll have it sooner rather than later. There are so many reasons why people can't drive. So many people who shouldn't be driving but are allowed to because stopping them is controversial (the elderly). So much money spent on paying people to drive (Taxis, Couriers, Hauliers).

A human, I might add that's breaking the law. Distracted driving is illegal.

Do you have any idea how stupid that point is? I suppose the people being held by ISIS shouldn't worry because most people wouldn't behead them, only someone breaking the law and that's illegal! I can stop locking my house as well because entering and taking my stuff is a crime! That must mean I shouldn't be concerned about it because it's illegal.

It's pretty fucking obvious that illegal, distracted or poor driving causes the vast majority of accidents. Unfortunately there's a lot of illegal, distracted or poor driving. If you can suggest somewhere one can drive where there isn't then maybe people there don't need to consider it, but people everywhere else do.

This. The biggest obstacles left for autonmous cars isn't technical they're legal and ethical. Building a car that gets a new traffic light right 99% of the time is probably trivial, but would putting a car on the road that will get it wrong 1% of the time be ethical and/or a legal liability? A previous example of a google car failing was that it slowed to a virtual stop when passing people walking along the side of the road; that is seen as a problem because the normal human behaviour is to drive past within a few feet of the person at a speed that could easily kill them if they moved in the way. The car is being more cautious, in order to avoid a genuine life threatening risk, but we see that as 'failing'.

Are there technical hurdles left? Obviously, but they aren't the hardest things to resolve.

I noticed the disconnect as well. I use Facebook and I still don't think what it needs is for people to be more blindly trusting on there. It's blind trust that leads to people following links to malicious sites etc.

It works, for now, so it's hardly a shock that it's spreading. The best we can do is refuse to follow clickbait links and wait for the rest of the population to catch up.

I won't follow links in clickbait formats. I don't care if they might actually contain information I'd find interesting or informative. I will not encourage or support the use of unhelpful headlines to draw in readers. I had a look a while ago for a browser plugin that would remove them entirely but the best I could find was one that changed them into more realistic language "You won't find it hard to believe..." etc.

BUSH WAS RIGHT!!!

You're going to be killed. I'm bound to be right, because when you die of natural causes in many years a bunch of muppets will claim I said you were going to "die" and thus I was right all those years ago ;)