The lights are out at a junction. How does "good accuracy" help the car figure out when it's safe to proceed, or the order to proceed when there are buses, cars, trucks coming from all direction with an implied priority based on conditions and time people have waited?

Now a cop turns up to direct the traffic because of a fender bender. How does the car with "good accuracy" know to obey the cop's hand signals?

Now the repair crew turn up to fix the lights and put cones out so people turning have to do so from the adjacent lane. How does "good accuracy" cope with that?

Now a crazy person turns up and begins directing traffic. How does "good accuracy" tell the difference between the cop and the crazy person.

That's just a trivial demonstration of the problems a self drive vehicle would face. It's trivial to think of others - road flooding, narrow roads, diversions, vehicle break downs, animals running out, snow / leaves obstructing sensors etc. Of course in every case the simplest answer would be for the driver to override the car and manually drive it. But that naturally puts a dampener on some of the absurd expectations people have for these vehicles (e.g. that they can drive off and park themselves, self drive taxis, sleeping or drunk drivers etc.). And if the car gets confused too often or "fails to safe" for no reason then it will be infuriating.

It would be far more productive to concentrate on advanced driver assistance - cruise control, distance maintenance, lane tracking / marker detection, collision / hazard avoidance and parking assistance.

Anyone who thinks self drive is coming to a vehicle near them soon is living in cloud cuckoo land.

Self drive cars might work on a closed track where the number of external factors are limited and can be controlled. e.g. an airport loop, or a theme park transfer. It might even work on some stretches of public road e.g. some motorways although it is more likely to be an advanced driver assist mode.

It sure as hell wouldn't work in urban settings, or for atypical conditions. It's trivial to think of scenarios that would boggle the mind of a computer and cause it to stop for no good reason, or get itself stuck, or do entirely the wrong thing. e.g. in following a traffic cop's directions. At the very least such vehicles would have to have a conscious, unimpaired driver at the wheel ready to take over at a moment's notice and chances are that self drive would suck so hard that most people leave it turned off or in some reduced mode such as hazard / collision detection, cruise control etc.

I expect the predominant use pattern for editors (in a console) is to be fired up to quickly to edit a file, save and exit, e.g. to commit files in source control. Longer term activity has moved out to the desktop and editors / IDEs running there - the likes of Eclipse, Notepad++, Sublime Text, Gedit etc.

So I wouldn't be surprised if emacs does lose out to lighter rival editors that better suit the quick-fix pattern. All the power and flexibility and add ons that emacs has built up (and which weigh it down) are largely redundant on a modern desktop. I think I would prefer nano or joe to vi/vim (and its annoying split personality modes) but the latter tends to be ubquitous so its a good idea to learn it.

The code.org site is a great resource for teaching kids to program. Personally I'd have liked to see the BBC contribute their project to that where it would likely enjoy a lot more popularity.

Wow your anecdote changes everything. Aside from the cleanliness I'm sure you made sure to check the car & driver's insurance covered you in case of an accident. And that the vehicle road safety certification was in order. And that the driver had no past criminal convictions. No?

They're not parking their billions there. They're funnelling money through Irish registered companies which are domiciled in places like the Cayman islands. Ireland might make some money but it doesn't get much out of it. Ireland is changing the rules so that Irish registered companies must be domiciled in Ireland and therefore liable to Irish corporate taxes.

I doubt the patent covering this stuff has long to run.

To be fair to Microsoft, they did have handwriting recognition in PocketPC devices too - several modes in fact from simple Palm-like chars, to handwriting and a keyboard. That said I found my Palm Pilot's system to be very reliable once I learned all the funny strokes for each letter. PocketPC was always hit and miss and I used the keyboard mode the most.

It seems pretty obvious to do something like this in a watch and I guess it's better than nothing but it highlights why smart watches have such a long way to go to be useful for much.

There are plenty of apps which will hail a licenced cab, e.g. Hailo. It's the car and driver that matter and not the manner in which they were dispatched.

Thing is, a taxi is usually treated as a form of public transport. The standard that you the driver and your vehicle are held is consequently that much higher. That's why the regulation exists.

It's bizarre that you conflate the issue with how much tax someone might pay on their wages.

Operating a taxi in most of Europe requires a taxi licence, a criminal background check, a "knowledge" test plus additional road safety requirements for driver & car. Uber is not exempt from this and if drivers don't meet the requirements they're going to be treated like any other unlicenced driver and fined. Sucks to be them but its not bullying. These laws existed before Uber turned up and if the company and their drivers didn't bother to do the due diligence then whose fault is it when they run afoul of them?

I bet you could stick them up your arse for all the good they'd do you.

Well they could dip a few seabirds in crude oil and then clean them up again.

Perhaps these luxury yacht owners like getting from A to B in the fastest time and the sails are just an emergency precaution in case the engine packs in.

It looks like Greenpeace has different priorities - the sails mean they can turn off their engines to save fuel, extend their operational range and it naturally fits with their image. Looks like a really cool boat.

Biodiesel can be made by recycling vegetable oil from fryers. It has to be filtered and blended with alcohol. Presumably Greenpeace could use that if they wished although I expect pragmatism and the reality of operating a boat out of many ports means they have to take what's available.