Actually, even if you've managed to delude yourself into thinking that it's OK to steal from people you don't like, defrauding bankers hurts us all here. Here's why: 1) It costs the bank's customers through higher credit interest and lower debit interested 2) If the bank fails customers are likely to lose out (although most individual customers will have their deposits guaranteed by the state) 3) The state guarantees deposits of individual customers (up to a certain limit) so, if the state has to bail out those customers, we all pay.

What annoys me about slideshows like this is the complete lack of information provided about the photos. Captions like "Abandoned Space Program Facilities" just aren't very helpful - we already know that. What was it? Was it a lab where they tested different propellants, a workshop where the engineers could fab prototype components for Saturn V? That's all it takes to make the difference between "meh, pretty photos" and "this is really interesting".

In general terms the second law holds that every process that ever happens increases entropy. At some point (far, far, far in the future) energy will be distributed entirely evenly throughout the universe - at this point no physical process will be possible because there can be no net flow of energy. A truly "renewable" process, according to your definition, is impossible because it would have to not increase entropy; it would be a form of perpetual motion machine.

More specifically in this case: The water in your reservoir came from rain. Rain was evaporated from the sea using the sun's energy. The sun's energy arises from the fusion of a finite amount of fuel. Once that fuel is expended there can be no more evaporation, thus no more rain and no more hydroelectric power (ignoring, of course, the fact that by this point the earth will have been fried to a crisp by the expanded sun...).

The second law of thermodynamics begs to differ.

/pedantry

a) It's a reactive system though, so I think it's a stretch to call it monitoring. From the article you linked:

b) Nowhere in that article does it state Facebook will contact a third party regarding your mental health.

c) It's a separate issue, but I don't think it's necessarily wrong that when you hit the report link on abusive content Facebook look over that and contact relevant authorities if there's something unethical: that's called running a responsible business.

I wouldn't be so sure. We should have had driverless trains for years now, for instance. Unfortunately unions keep blocking it. (We're reaching the point now where every time they go on strike about driverless trains they bring their own obsolescence closer because guess what... computers won't go on strike!)

From TFA:

So it seems they don't.

FWIW I don't believe a word of TFA.

And then ask some Londoner's whether they think this fêted test is really worth paying for.

In places where the regulators aren't simply an extension of the taxi unions and want to see innovation and an improved service they work with Uber and Uber drivers have comprehensive checks too. If Uber are using unlicensed drivers in your city you've got the regulators to thank for not licensing them as much as Uber for employing them.

See above, although AFAIK Uber drivers are required to have appropriate liability insurance everywhere.

I can't speak for other cities but, in London, anyone can drive a black cab as a private car, you just can't use it as a taxi. The reason people don't is that they're designed to be practical as taxis, not private vehicles. (Interestingly a number of celebrities drive them precisely because it means they don't stick out like a sore thumb.) And unlicensed taxi drivers certainly exist and do drive black cabs (although they're a much smaller problem than minicab drivers operating a hail and ride service outside their license... but the passenger has made a conscious choice in those cases so I don't have a problem with that).

If this is so great then taxi drivers don't need to fear competition from Uber, the markets will choose their superior knowledge. Oh wait, it turns out this feted exam utilises obsolete technology (the human memory) to create an excessively high barrier of entry to protect the jobs of taxi drivers who don't want to face true commercial competition.

That depends heavily on jurisdiction. Again, if the regulators would work with Uber this could easily be overcome. It also ignore the fact that it's much easier to know I got the driver I ordered with Uber while if I hail a random cab I have no idea if the driver's license is genuine, even if it is a really rigorous process to get a genuine license.

Yet again Uber wins. They can review the route and arbitrate appropriately. With the traditional taxi even if you know the drivers details and file a claim it's basically he said, she said. But hey, the current system works so well why change it?

Yet he's still the last known point of contact with that person. If I were a psychopath that puts me a darn sight nearer the centre of the police's radar than I'd like. So yes, it's an effective deterrent.

Oh sure. Once you know which cab they hailed off the street you can review the footage. These solutions (trip logging/camera) are neither solving the same problem nor mutually exclusive.

I can't speak for other cities, but in London most taxi drivers operate either independently or in unliveried vehicles, so cabs don't pass your standard. I'm not sure why you think the technical difference between an employee and a contractor is relevant here either? It makes very little difference whether they sack an employee or terminate a contract. The effect is still the same.

Obligatory PSA regarding your butchered idiom.

On topic: Completely agree. In the Zero Punctuation review of The Orange Box Yahtzee observed that:

Over 7 years later we're still waiting... :(

Spoke too soon... it seems I can only swipe from the right (and get the charm bar), not the left, with my trackpad :s. Still annoying though.

I can swipe with the trackpad on my laptop. It drives me insane because it's, almost invariably, not what I'm trying to do. Usually I'm trying to move the cursor (you know, the reason my laptop has a trackpad....).

Enough commenters have said something along those lines that I think it deserves a response

Kickstarter is an investment platform. Investment does not require you to receive equity or similar (indeed, in the broadest sense, any financial transaction that offers a (potential) return can be considered an investment). In the case of Kickstarter the return is twofold: the formal reward the project gives you for the backing and the creation of a product you wanted to see, but that wouldn't have made it to market otherwise.

Really this latter one is the whole point of Kickstarter: I want to be able to buy x, but it isn't available. Some other people want to make it but don't have the money. I'm not a serious investor - I don't want to jump through the hoops of VC or Angel investing - here is a way I can help make the product a reality so that I can have it in my life. Call it a donation if you will, but it's not a traditional altruistic donation in the way that one might donate to the Red Cross or the local Scouts. And it certainly is an investment: You are giving them cash in the hope that you'll have the opportunity to get whatever product they're developing. But there's certainly no guarantee it's going to happen.

As for all the people calling it a rubbish investment platform: at the end of the day that decision is for the investor to make. If you think it's rubbish don't use it, simples.

Yes, I'm sure Ayatollah Khamenei and Kim Jong Un will join in with the ban and won't begin plotting the obliteration of civilisation. The reality is, even if the US, Russia, UK, China, France, India and Pakistan all claimed to have decommissioned their nukes we wouldn't know for sure. The state that secretly hasn't may gamble they're the only one and use them. And then you have states like Israel that probably have nuclear weapons but will neither confirm nor deny it. No, we're safest keeping a nuclear stalemate balanced between the major power blocs with the majority of the nuclear armed states openly so.

FWIW, out of the states listed above (excluding Iran and NK, but including Israel) I'm not most worried about east-west relations; it's the two states that are less than friendly with each other but share a large land border with sporadic violence between them (one of which could, not inconceivably, have an Islamist government at some point in the future) that make me most jittery (on the plus side they're probably only interested in nuking each other and neither of them are near me). Israel don't worry me too much because all the countries they're likely to want to nuke are close enough to Israel to make that a very unattractive option. Iran and NK are the wildcards - NK in particular because they're already almost totally isolated from the rest of the world and I doubt Kim Jong Un gives enough of a rat's arse about his people to care if they get atomised.

Why? Kickstarter is an investment platform, not a preorder platform; this is the single most important thing to understand about Kickstarter. In return for investing in the product you get some kind of reward, often the product, but you are not purchasing the product. You are investing in the product, and that carries a much higher level of risk than in a simple purchase - one of those risks is that the product will fail to deliver to the original spec. If you don't want the risk don't use Kickstarter, you can't get insurance on other forms of investment like stocks and shares. Also, it's most likely that purchase of the insurance would be heavily weighted towards more ambitious/higher risk products; so I'm sceptical that it would be viable. (Unless you make it mandatory... but I think that would drive profitable, low risk products away from the platform.)

Certainly in some cases there may be issues where a product team has misrepresented what they can do, squandered funds or created some other issue of fiduciary trust; in these cases there are legal routes to seek recompense. In cases where a project just fails for some reason... that's part and parcel of R&D, the backers knew the risk. And, this project, seem to have followed completely the correct course releasing the fruits of their labour to the community for others to build on: in this way the original backers don't lose out, they can still exploit the benefits of their investment.