The food religion says GMO is bad until one of them happens to need insulin and also happens to be allergic to "natural" cow insulin, then GMO produced humulin (secreted by a genetically modified e. coli bacterium to be chemically similar to human insulin) is a miracle.

And because tomatoes are delicious, we should all go eat a whole bunch of Atropa belladonna.

The GMO religion believes that every GMO is a good GMO. That no genetically modified organism can ever possibly hurt you, so you must not be allowed to know which foods are from GMOs. They've never heard about NewLeaf Potatoes or LibertyLink Rice.

You know the difference between GMO produced humulin and GMO produced food? GMO produced medicines are labeled. You know what else is different about them? The drug manufacturers who use GMOs have done a good job of marketing their products and the makers of Agent Orange have done a lousy job of marketing their products. Maybe if they used some of the money they spend lobbying congress to pass industry-friendly laws to market GMO foods to consumers, they might be able to sell people that genetically modified foods have worthwhile benefits.

Consumers don't care if their bread is made from Calingiri or Ytipi.

But consumers DO care if their food is made from GMOs, so just put a label on it.

Outside of GMOs, what do you normally think of companies that make decisions for consumers? Maybe Samsung doesn't think you need to know what kind of processor is in your cell phone, because well, it's pretty much the same, and you probably won't notice the difference. How about if a company that sells socks doesn't think you need to know if the socks you buy are really 100% cotton or a 60-40 blend of cotton and polyester? What if the company doesn't think you need to know if the socks in the package or green or brown?

Remember, it's consumers who are paying the bills. They're the ones paying for the GMOs, and for all the research and for the marketing and press releases like the one in the article and for the high-paid lobbyists that are working to thwart their preferences. In most things, the person who's paying the bills gets to decide. The fact that you don't think consumers need to know something doesn't mean you get to decide whether they get to know something.

And costs about a third as much to drive per unit distance.

The cost of a vehicle is not its raw purchase price.

While in general I think battery swapping is a stupid idea for cars (there's way too much need for different form factors, capacities, performance capabilities, etc, and it makes up such an integral part of the structure due to its size and mass and represents such a great amount of capital one would have to stockpile), I think it could actually work incredibly well for trucks. Rather than having them in the cab, I picture them slotting under the trailers (where various hardware is already often slotted), with a power connection to the cab. It would in such a situation be very easy to have a single form factor for the batteries and very easy to remove and reinstall them - you already have a standardized shape, easy undercarriage access, and the structural strength is already right where you need it. And whenever a truck picks up a new trailer that's been sitting around for a while, it could be already charged and ready to go. The cab would of course need its own batteries to haul itself around a good distance when not towing a load, but the trailers could basically hold the power for their own towing needs. And it would have little effect on an empty trailer's cost - it just needs the mounts for the batteries installed and the wiring to feed the cab, but would otherwise be a normal trailer haulable by any vehicle.

Indeed - and they can sell people on the concept pretty easily. Rather than saying "We're going to have you charge inside our store to tempt you to buy things", they'd sell the concept as "Remember back in the day when you used to have to fill up your car with gasoline out in the cold / heat / wind / rain / etc? Now we're enabling you to charge your car in comfort indoors in our stores because we love the environment so much and want to support people like you - you're welcome!"

Big rigs don't stop at your average corner gas station.

Indeed, the slower fill times on even 10-minute fast charging stations would probably give a much better rate on converting energy-customers into convenience store customers. It could even be a loss leader, so long as there's enough market penetration to justify the capital costs.

Now, for electric cars to put them out of business, they'd have to be a relevant percentage of total vehicles - and overall, that will certainly take time. But the case becomes different in specialty markets. Different states and localities will (and already do) offer different EV incentives, and the natural use case for EVs varies between locations (urban/suburban/rural, mild vs. hot vs. cold climate, terrain, geography (isolated islands or areas without good road connects to the outside world, for example), areas with different driver profiles, and so forth). So an overall EV adoption rate of 1% might actually be 10%, 20% or more in certain areas. That could well be enough to start driving gas stations out of business in such areas, creating a potential contageon effect.

That said, business owners aren't stupid, and one expects them to adapt. For example, where appropriate one would expect gas stations to respond to increasing EV penetration by adding rapid charge stations. Electricity is cheap, but if someone needs a rapid charge (for a road trip or whatnot), they'll pay the going rate, even if it's similar to the cost of gasoline per unit distance traveled. They're not just going to say "meh, I'll just plug into a wall socket and wait overnight". So if you have an existing gas station with all of its capital costs of installing tanks and pumps already paid for, one would expect them to keep selling gasoline even as an increasing percentage of their customers switch over to electricity. Maybe they'll find it cheaper to remove broken pumps than fix them. Maybe they'll eventually hit a point where it's no longer cost effective to maintain their fuel tanks and have to stop selling gasoline altogether. But neither of these things are a "suddenly going out of business because EVs just showed up" scenario.

(Of course, there's a counter to what I just wrote, which is that - given that only a small percentage of EV charging will ever be fast charging - you're looking at a smaller potential market)

Just because you want to know something that is not worth including on a label doesn't mean they are hiding anything.

No, the "hiding" part comes when you lobby congress to make sure no state can pass a labeling law.

Does it make anyone else uncomfortable that this story about industrial networks being vulnerable to cyberattacks follows immediately after a story about robotic surgeons?

How will we know the robotic surgeons have installed the most recent security updates? Will they be WiFi enabled so the teenager sitting in the hospital cafeteria can use them to play Operation and try to light up my nose while trying to take out my funny bone?

That's cute. You think that actual benefits of GMOs mean anything to the people listening to all the FUD that gets spread about them.

And you think that hiding the foods' provenance is the way to make people stop believing the FUD? That's very interesting.

Because when someone tells me I'm not allowed to know something about a product I'm buying, it immediately endears me to the company hiding the information.

... what's it taste like?

With all these miraculous properties, you'd think companies would want to let people know that their food is GMO. You know, like on the label.

I was thinking more along the lines of sending up an anti-drone drone to grab it and drag it back down.

Sounds good, but only if I can make a drone that looks like Snoopy on top of a flying dog house.

So, it's a remote exploit in that you can do it if you're within Wi-Fi range (and the gun has it's Wi-Fi turned on)

"Hello, Mr Zimmerman, I'm Brad from XYZ Firearms Corp and I'd like to walk you through a software update for your Smart SniperTM Rifle today that will make it much safer to use as well as 75% more accurate in hitting targets with black skin. There will be no charge for this update, but I'll need you to temporarily enable WiFi during this procedure."

I bet you'd get very high levels of compliance from owners of "Smart SniperTM Rifles" in many areas of the US.