Now that Europe is mandating the existing micro-USB for all phones are they going to modify the mandate to include this connector or is it too late for that and Europeans will not be able to enjoy this marvelous new connector?

No, the real reason the whole car buying experience is horrific is that there is no competition, by law. Car dealerships have indefinite, irrevocable monopolies in the regions they cover due to historical events that occurred 90 years ago. The real solution is to erase outdated laws, break the monopolies and open the market to real competition.

Here is a podcast about it:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/02/19/172402376/why-buying-a-car-never-changes

I propose Google set their cars free in Belgium. If they can prove that they drive safely through Belgium I'll be somewhat convinced.

Why Belgium you ask? Belgium has a very extreme interpretation of yielding right of way at intersections to traffic coming from your right. So extreme that it often extends to blind intersections where you might not even be able to see there is a road intersecting on your right (think alleys in towns). You need to be familiar with the roads in question to know where to yield, otherwise there is no way for you to know what to do.

Let's mandate an inferior standard and kill a superior standard so everyone can be the same on paper.

If you bothered to ask iPhone owners, you would find three things:

1. They enjoyed the same 30-pin connector for nearly a decade (a decade!) while other handset makers changed their connector and chargers for every new handset. They will likely enjoy the clearly superior Lightning connector for another decade.
2. They have no beef with their connector, or the cable - it works really well.
3. They don't care what Android is using or dream of having a compatible connector because they don't have an Android handset.

It's uniformity for the sake of a pencil pusher's concept of uniformity - not for consumers.

It's too convenient an escape hatch for anything the government wants to sweep under the rug.

Scalability.

The chemical weapons attack in Syria was a small one. It included a relatively small number of rockets with a small total payload on a single night. It managed
to kill ~1.5% of those killed in the Syrian civil war. In one night. It killed at 10x the rate of the rest of the war.

The Syrian population is largely defenseless against it (unlike a prepared military in WWI, for example) as nobody has supplies of gas masks and related protective gear. This was a small attack. Full scale attacks could wipe out entire rebel held cities of largely unprotected civilians overnight.

It's only natural.

At some point you have to stop living in fear.
Stuff can go wrong - that's life. The correct thing to do is to go on with life, not find someone to blame so you can sue them. Somewhere this simple concept has been lost on a great too many.

Says one thing, does the opposite...

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/427790/july-16-2013/david-karp

Most RAZR users in 2005 were perfectly content with their phones and didn't notice the difference between what they had in their hands and what was possible when Apple was hatching the iPhone.
Users should not be expected to "know the difference" as that is not their job. It's your job, as the technologist, to know the difference and improve the user's experience. The user's sole task is to reap the benefits and reward those who provide the most benefits.

Part of the roach's success stems from its omnivorous diet. Removing glucose from its diet is likely a considerable hit on its caloric intake. If the aversion to glucose can be maintained while developing aversions to other abundant and nutritious food stuffs, like meat protein, we could bio-engineer cockroaches to become specialized eaters.

Specialized eaters are easier to control and eradicate. Furthermore, if they over specialize to the degree of Pandas and Koalas they may be bio-engineered out of existence. Personally, I wouldn't mind never seeing another cockroach again.

Tell the VCs how you are going to make them rich.

Obama should have used NK's threats of a nuclear strike on U.S. soil as cause to move forward more big weapons like THAAD and announce big missile defense projects, perhaps in Japan, like those cancelled in Europe. This would increase the pressure on China to tone down their bulldog as it is would be working against Chinese interests.

Sounds like a currency fork. You could conceivably end up with two currencies. Which raises the question: what is to stop groups of people (say China) from creating parallel systems?

If the answer is nothing, BTC is wide open for undermining by fragmentation.

So I don't need to remember my best friends' names.

Sarcasm aside, pasting people's names over their heads would make Dale Carnegie warm all over. It would be useful for bosses, politicians and other people who need to fake caring about others.