Something I've lately been wondering: has anyone yet figured out how to get a robot vehicle to recognize when a cop is behind them with flashing lights and to pull over? Or, if an emergency vehicle is approaching with siren blaring, do likewise? Seems like that would be a good way to hijack the load of a robot truck.

Since Nye is in effect saying we're mostly a bunch of barely-literate, benighted voodoo practitioners in terms of science, I wonder where he'd come down on having a poll test for scientific literacy? Or maybe just eliminate voting altogether and adopt rule by technocracy.

The danger comes from your victim possibly being armed himself and, fearing being shot, initiating a shootout himself. That would be a lot more dangerous than using a knife since anyone involved could potentially die, not to mention neighbors, bystanders, etc.

If the US imposes this tax, while crediting the company for any tax paid overseas, then the smartest response would be for the foreign taxing jurisdiction to impose its own 19% tax rate and just take the money for itself. The company ends up no worse off, and the country where the money is gets the dough instead of the US. Or maybe US companies will just reorganize and make their foreign operations separate corporations and take shares in them instead of keeping all that stuff under one corporate roof.

In crises, you get rationing no matter what. If you don't regulate prices you'll get rationing thru price. If you do regulate prices, you'll get rationing thru scarcity. Putting limits on Uber means you deny some billionaire fat cat some money, but you also deny the people who really need a ride and are willing to pay for it the ability to get one. I'd rather have the latter system where I can get what I need and am willing to pay for, because I can always decide I don't need it that bad, but I can't conjure a car out of the air when prices are cheap but cars aren't available.

If Uber were smart, they'd do just that in order to establish themselves as a reliable resource during emergencies. It would be good PR and also make it politically tougher for the local power structure to shut them down. Sure they'd lose money during crises, but they'd make up for it with a ton of revenue during normal operations.

According to Wikipedia, a Claymore weights 3.5 pounds. The "Mexican Meth Drone" that crashed in a Tijuana parking lot recently was carrying 6 pounds of drugs, and pictures of it don't scream "military grade hardware". Granted they got greedy and overloaded it, but sounds like 3.5 pounds would have been no problem.

No, it makes him another participant in rent-seeking, which is what net neutrality is about, at its core..

I had just submitted an order for Turbotax on Amazon, then came here and saw this. I just canceled that order while I assess what to do about this situation. Hope Intuit loses a lot of business.

That's not an answer. Slashdot headline says, "Driven largely by oil price weakness." Where's the evidence for that statement? It makes no economic sense that renewable energy investment increases because its competition gets cheaper unless 1) It's due to subsidies, and/or 2) It's due to the coming on line of projects that were in the pipeline before oil took a dive.

If the LAPD uses the same policy as other departments with body cams, the officer will be instructed to activate the camera whenever about to interact with the public. In which case, the Taser activation would be backup just in case that didn't happen for some reason.

If services like Google Fiber are made Title II, watch how fast those sorts of projects come to a screeching halt. Telling a company that the return on its investment is going to be subject to somebody else's view on how it should be run is a recipe for shutting it down.

1. Profess shock 2. Start an investigation 3. Promise to do better 4. Apologize and abase yourself to every aggrieved group you can find 5. Throw some money at anything related, esp. self-appointed "community spokesmen"

Looks like Intel has hit stage 5.

Couldn't one write a program to detect Stingray presence by having a database of all possible cell tower IDs and matching the ID of the one to which you're connecting against that list? Since the Stingray relays your intercepted call to a real cell tower it presumably doesn't spoof a real ID. Now that I think about it, I guess in order to prevent the Stingray just using an ID for a cell tower that's out of range but real, you'd have to add in knowledge of your geolocation so as to exclude distant towers.

Why stop there? Let's force more companies to GO INTO the health care business, and sell the products the government mandates at prices government specifies. Google and Apple have a lot of cash on hand, let's make them put it to work for the benefit of "humanity, as a whole".