If you step back a bit and think about it, truck driving is kind of a strange profession. The long distance truck driver is actually, really essential for in-city driving and for unexpected events (like breakdowns). But the vast majority of their time is spent on the highway, and staying in a lane on a highway, likely convoying with other trucks, requires no human skill whatsoever.

The first phase will be for the AI to take over for this time, requiring the driver to be in the cab "on call" on a few minute notice. This is similar to the situation where trucks go onto trains, and the driver have nothing to do until it's time to unload. However, among truck drivers, even this is met with massive resistance. Perhaps they genuinely enjoy sitting behind the wheel for hours at a time? Or is it just that they see the writing on the wall, because the second phase will be to eliminate their jobs?

But truck driving - on the highway - is a low skill job. Free people to do something else. Seems like a great concept, but what about those people who currently have no other skills? Buggy whip makers all over again...

Thank you for your comment. I've been saying much the same thing for - it seems like - forever. But it's one thing coming from a guy (even though my wife is in tech, and agrees with all of this), and entirely another coming from a woman.

"there are sexist men out there"

I would put it even more generally: There are jerks out there. Men and women both. That is, unfortunately, just the way life is...

"You can have equality - a notion that assumes women are capable of all the things that men are, including handling their own problems - or you can have the notion that women are somehow handicapped and need gentler handling. Pick one."

This. Exactly this.

This "right to be forgotten" is impossible!

First, the government required private companies to take action, without any recompense. Few if any companies will invest time and effort in something that only costs them money. Note: it's not only Google (though they are always mentioned) - this applies to all search engines.

Second, the entire concept is flawed: It only requires search engines to remove the links; it does not require the source material to be deleted. Take, for example, the original case that caused all of this: a Spanish businessman who filed for bankruptcy two decades ago. His claim - likely correct - is that this ancient bankruptcy still causes him problems today. Fair enough - is the Spanish government willing to expunge their records? And require all Spanish newspapers to delete their articles? No?

If the academics want transparency, they should be willing to finance that transparency: pay Google to help run the requests the way they want them managed. And Bing. And DuckDuckGo. And IXquick. And all of the others. Alternatively, they could invest their energies in getting this abominable legal situation corrected: Either there is no "right to be forgotten" or else it should apply to the source data. The current situation is beyond stupid...

I listen to the free version of Spotify once in a while, but it's fundamentally irritating. They have commercials, and that would be fine (since it's free), but the only commercials they have are 2-3 Spotify commercials that they repeat over-and-over-and-over, telling me I need to upgrade to get rid of the commercials.

In other words, they can't sell their advertising, at least not in Switzerland. But they don't want the non-paying user to have an uninterrupted experience, so they put in their own interruptions. The result is just irritating, and that's why I don't listen to Spotify very often.

Lastly, I find their prices kind of high. As someone who listens to music maybe once a week, I just don't see paying $15/month for the privilege. If they have a problem with too many people not buying their premium service, maybe that's because it's overpriced for the typical user.

This is why "no fault" insurance was invented. Even with people, the liability in traffic accidents is often complex. Require no-fault insurance, you insurance is responsible for you, mine is responsible for me, and you are basically done - at least as far as car insurance is concerned.

What may be left is civil liability. If a manufacturer produces a genuinely faulty product, they can be sued in a completely separate action. The laws are already in place for that. The problem I see is the exact opposite of what you are worried about: People will sue, regardless of the quality of the product. Because bad things aren't supposed to happen, and if they do, someone must be to blame.

So someone without insurance t-bones my autonomous car, and I want compensated. The other driver is broke, so I sue my car manufacturer. Stupid, but entirely possible under US law. Loser pays would be the simplest solution: if you file a stupid lawsuit, you'll be paying the other side's legal costs. In the case of class action suits, the attorneys for the class should be liable for the loser's legal costs if they lose.

Before any company brings autonomous cars to market, the US tort system has got to be fixed.

I expect the number haven't been publicized, because they are still to limited to have any significance, and also because the cars have been running under fairly tightly controlled conditions.

When there are a few hundred cars, running in all kinds of weather and traffic conditions, with millions of miles - if the numbers are still good, you can bet that they will be plastered all over the internet

Is there really a need for new regulations? Or are government bureaucrats just feeling their oats?

Endangering a commercial aircraft? There are already laws covering that. Spying on your neighbors? "Peeping Toms" are nothing new. Flying over other people's property? Existing trespassing laws can be applied, since people have rights to their airspace immediately above their property. As other posters have pointed out, there are also all of the old rules for model aircraft and model rocketry.

"The new rules are almost certainly require RC pilots to have full FAA pilot licenses in order to operate them. That's just outrageous"

Yep, that's outrageous. But it's not really the fault of all the idiots out there. I mean, sure, they are idiots - but they are already violating existing rules. There's no need for new rules. The more serious problem are the bureaucrats who take every opportunity to create even more regulations.

" let educational professionals decide how best to invest that money"

That's a bad idea if there ever was one. The quality of schools in the US has been steadily declining ever since the federal government started sticking its nose in. More and more bureaucracy, regulations and administration. Less and less effective teaching.

You know, if federal control of schools were any good at all, the schools in Washington D.C. would shine. Instead, despite their huge budget (second highest in the country), D.C> schools are the worst in the country.

Send all of the "educational professionals" to flip hamburgers. Return schools to state and local control. Hire teachers who hold degrees in the subjects, instead of in education (this might be important). Some places will be disasters (but they already are). Others will finally be able to do something about fixing their schools. Without all the federal regulation, it'll probably cost a lot less, too...

I suppose there is some justice in the Prenda principals* living this trainwreck for years, as a sort of additional punishment before their inevitable jail sentences even start. However, I can't help but think that it shouldn't take this long. They spent years scamming people, before a court finally had the balls to actually take action against them (one somehow suspects special treatment for fellow lawyers). Now they are spending more years wasting judicial resources and time, meanwhile they may well be running some other, new scam to finance their modest lifestyles.

* Note to editors: it's not "principles" - those are what the Prenda principals failed to live by.

Organizing a deliberately provocative event is a clear statement of support for free speech. A clear statement that allowing potentially offensive speech is essential to a free society. Other reactions to Charlie Hebdo - how we have to tread carefully and avoid offense - are utterly wrong.

Terrorists are barbarians, and are a direct threat to civilization. Apparently, the Texan reaction to barbarism is "bring it on".

More power to Texas. I hope other places find the courage to hold similar events.

Um, you write: "[CA] could issue a bogus certificate in your name whether you work with them or not" and also "Your CA being in the US isn't a risk".

That's kind of a contradiction. Ok, so where my CA is located isn't the issue, but given "National Security Letters" and all, I'd say allowing any CA in the US to issue certificates is a risk, at least for non-US domains.

HTTPS is all well and good, but the certificate situation is just a mess. Currently, essentially any CA can issue a certificate for any website anywhere. That means that every time you surf, you are placing your trust in literally hundreds of CAs.

Meanwhile, self-signed certificates bring up horrendous warnings, or are simply refused. The chance of verifying a self-signed certificate (for example, getting the fingerprint via another channel) are a lot better than the chance of verifying that some random CA hasn't been bribed or pressured.

Can we please fix this mess, along the way to making HTTPS standard?

Pardon my cynicism, but...does this make any sense at all? Or is it just about a subsidy for big publishers, plus some stupid political games?

Provide ebooks? The problem this is supposed to solve, according to Obama, is "low-income children lag below their grade level in reading skills and lack books at home". There's a reason for that, and it isn't lack of access to books. It's parents who don't read and don't encourage reading.

And how are they going to read those ebooks? Why...on the upgraded "Internet services for schools and libraries". You know, if you can get those kids to a library, be it a public library or a school library, you could just let them read some of the books that are already there. The thing is: you aren't going to get them into the library, because - see above - they are being raised in families and in an urban culture that doesn't value reading.

Fix the urban culture problem. Get the parents to care about their kids education. Everything else is noise.

Isn't this a free-speech issue? Or, even more fundamentally, freedom of opinion?

There are people in the Southern US who refer to the American Civil War "the War of Northern Aggression". From their point of view, that's what it was - slavery was just the excuse. It's not a widely held opinion, but it's theirs to hold.

Russian history books present a very different view of WWII and the aftermath, as compared to Western history books.

If the Turkish government and people believe that what happened does not qualify as a genocide, that is entirely their right. I do not understand the pressure to acknowledge the events of 100 years ago. It's like the XKCD cartoon: someone in the world is wrong! It's history, it's past, and a formal acknowledgement by today's government isn't going to change what happened.

Ok, so someone educate me: what am I missing here?

"If the professor was at all smart, he would have identified the worst offenders built a solid case for them and crucified them before an expulsion board to send a message to the rest of the students, and any one taking his class in the coming semesters, that he isn't to be 'fucked with'."

Exactly this.

It sounds like Prof. Horwitz did just about everything wrong. He wasn't objective, he didn't grade students individually, and he blind-sided the school administration.

You do get crappy classes once in a while. I had a class a couple of years ago - it's a class that I teach every semester - but this particular group of students was just special. The social leader of the class hated the subject. He convinced most of the rest of the class to follow his lead: skipping lectures, or coming to class only to surf or game, not doing assignments, etc.. He was a total pain in the a**, and most of the class followed his lead.

Fine. You buckle down and teach. You focus on the students who aren't being idiots. At the end of the course, you write a final exam of exactly average difficulty, make extra sure that the questions are clear, and that the grading criteria will stand up to a formal review process. You warn the administration of what is coming. Then, you fail everyone who deserves to fail, based on absolutely objective criteria. In my case, it was 3/4 of the class.
Importantly, those students who resisted the peer pressure - they did just fine on the exam.