They don't even need to solve the tremendously difficult problem of a driverless car that can handle a parking lot. Apple and Google and the other companies could pay for a Personal Rapid Transit system with lunch money. And it might even be possible to get the city's notoriously ridiculous approval system to buy in to that idea. It's Green. It's Safe. It's Electric. It's basically a Buzzword Bingo for the Bay Area. Done with a little thought and planning, it could be a boon to tourism, too.

Antagonizing the (at times) most valuable corporation in the world, with by far the largest cash reserve in the world, doesn't seem to be a very good idea. It doesn't take a magical driverless car to eliminate drivers in transportation. All it takes is rails.

Only if you're willing to accept sort-of-ok software. The 80/20 rule has not been repealed. That first 6 weeks is the easy stuff. The REALLY easy stuff. The last 20 weeks is the hard stuff, if somebody cares about polish, fit, and finish. These days a lot of people are skimping on the polish, because it really does chew up an inordinate amount of time.

Why wouldn't it? I've used a cookie press for years. The dough that comes out of it acts like any other sugar cookie dough, and the cookies are much better than anything that comes in a plastic package. Dough in general is very amenable to be smushed, smashed, mushed, and extruded. Every kind of noodle made is extruded, after all.

You didn't read the parent post very closely, either, or you would have noticed that chefs use a TON of machinery. Chefs have been using machines to make stuff for a couple of hundred years. Other posters have already pointed out that there are specialty ravioli-making machines, for both large and small scales. "3D printing" for food is more like "robot that assembles food" than it is like plastic 3D printing, and that's a very reasonable progression of a very long term trend.

If you've ever watched one of those TV shows about catering, you would have a better idea of the possibilities. There are all kinds of things that a chef would be happy to assign to a robot, rather than a junior staff member, were a robot available. The OPs example of petit fours is one of many.

Remember all those stories about robots taking low skill labor jobs? Remember Humans Need Not Apply? This is that process in action.

Assuming, as other people have pointed out, that its programming interface is within the grasp of your typical chef and that loading and cleaning it is no harder than loading and cleaning a stand mixer. It will be a while before they reach that stage.

Well finally, something surmountable. Intel just has to keep grinding on Moore's Law for a few more years...

They rehired that person in 2012. They're hoping he can perform the same magic twice.

Legalized marijuana.

High efficiency solar panels (>40%) suffer from all three of those issues. They are made of high efficiency solar cells, which are patented. The panel can not exist without the cell. The cells are exclusively manufactured in places where it is patented (so far), and the cells have no non-infringing uses. They can be used to convert light to electricity, and aren't good for much of anything else.

That's the sole example of any significance—nobody gives a shit about the patented super-water-efficient toilet (literally). But that example is a problem even in the developed world. The cheap panels being imported from China are cheap because they contain no patented technology and are therefore legal to import without a license. They're also miserably inefficient compared to the (patented) state of the art. The owner of the world record (patent) holder boasts that there are 80 MWp installed worldwide. Judging by the fact that there are zero consumer products available, a license to make them can not be had at any price, let alone a reasonable price. The manufacturing contributes little to the price. It's still made of semiconductors, and if there is one thing southeast Asia knows how to produce in spectacular quantities for dirt cheap, it's semiconductors.

What does movement have to do with anything? Do you even know what torque is? Here, let me help you with that. In a nutshell, it's force. There's all kinds of forces in the world that don't result in movement. Lucky for you. You're sitting in a chair, aren't you? Demonstrating an instance of force without movement all by yourself. Amazing, isn't it. Forces get applied before movement starts.

Tesla P85D 0-60 mph 3.2 s
Audi S8 0-60 mph 3.9 s
Yes, the sports cars can beat it. It's a SEDAN. A five door liftback sedan. For crying out loud... And for the record, the curb weight of the Audi is 4685 lbs. The curb weight of the Model S is 4647 lbs. The Model S is lighter than the gasoline car in the same class and price bracket.

Really? Truly? Sorry, those links are probably too hard for you. They require you to calculate the efficiencies yourself by dividing. Here, let me help you.

2012 Coal 33.8%
2012 Internal Combustion 32.8%

Coal is more efficient. Not a lot, but it is. It's definitely not radically worse, or even slightly worse. So shifting from petroleum to coal for transportation is a gain, made better by the fact below about the efficiency of electric motors in transportation applications.

Really? I guess you haven't made it to high school yet. I'll just describe the graph for those who won't follow the link. At 10% load the tested 25 horse power premium efficiency motor hits 80% efficiency. At 40% load, it hits 97% efficiency and it never drops below that, all the way out to 160% of its rated load.

My infernal combustion car is 14 years old, thanks. Right now, if you care about pollution, and can afford the gasoline-competitive electric cars (either of them), you can also afford to cover your roof in solar panels from one end to the other. I can't, just yet, but someday I will. At which point I won't care what "industrial power production" is doing.

I replied with links. With numbers. You didn't. You should stop typing now.

And watch how the posting counts on Slashdot stories are triple that of Tesla stories, with the most vicious pro-electric commenting and moderation you've ever seen. It'll make Tesla supporters look like lazy, staid, boring old people. You hear me? OLD PEOPLE!

Everybody will HAVE to have the new hotness. If they don't, they'll just DIE.

Obviously you have never actually looked at the Model S specifications. The performance edition of the all wheel drive version has 691 horsepower. The rear motor alone has 443 ft lb of torque at zero RPMs. Can you get a more powerful internal combustion engine? Sure. But where? The 2015 Corvette tops out at 650 horsepower. The 2015 Mustang tops out at 435. The 2015 Camero tops out at 580. And none of those seat 7. The 2015 Cadillac XTS tops out at 410 horsepower. The 2015 Cadillac CTS tops out at 420. The 2015 Audi S8 tops out at 520 horsepower and it is NOT cheaper than a Model S.

And then in the same paragraph, you start talking about efficiency. You do realize that high performance and high efficiency simultaneously is ONLY possible in electric vehicles? Internal combustion can't do it. When you punch an electric motor, it stay 98% efficient. When you punch an internal combustion engine, its already miserable efficiency drops into the single digits. When an electric vehicle recharges, it's power source is NOT being pushed to the performance limit. It continues to operate at its best efficiency.

Most importantly, the energy source to recharge an electric vehicle is 100% fungible. If you live near a nuclear power plant, recharging your car is already producing 0 CO2. Zero. None. That is never possible for your fossil fuel car no matter how efficient your car gets. It will ALWAYS produce more than zero CO2. Build more nuclear power plants, or solar plants, or windmills, or all of the above, and the more electric cars there are, the less CO2 is produced by transportation. That's physically impossible with a fossil fuel fleet.

You must try really hard to be wrong about literally everything you said.

My money is on the raccoons. They already have the opposable thumbs.

It was a little weak, I admit. My muse failed me, what can I say.

In the case of the ongoing collapse formerly known as SOE, they buy it for the trademarks and copyrights. Watch for bastardized bundles of patheticness bearing the EverQuest name showing up on mobile phones by this time next year.

In the case of Nokia, that was done for the purpose of utterly eliminating and destroying a Windows Phone competitor, in the certain knowledge that Windows can and does "succeed" when it has no surviving rivals. Because they've done it before.

It was Ballmer being Ballmer, doing the only thing he knows how to do. He is, was, and ever shall be a monopolist, and he only knows the plays of a monopolist. The fact that he can not treat Samsung and Apple the same way no doubt wrankled in his sodden breast, but he took some solace in extorting patent royalties for every Android-equipped device.

It's inexplicable to anyone as innocent as yourself, who thinks all that guff he was fed in school about playing fair, and level playing fields, and value for money, and benefiting the customer is actually real. It isn't. None of it is, as exhibited by the behavior of every large multinational corporation, which are universally dominated by sociopaths. Those phrases are for other people, to such minds.

It's easy to understand, as long as you can understand a certain special kind of insanity.

And the one before him and the one before him, right back to.... Reagan! Mr. Deficit Spender himself. Practically invented it in the modern era.

So, yeah. Really? Reaganomics? Why is the trickle on my head yellow?