That might be true.... but I've never known a web browser to include documentation either; it's good enough that people were familiar with the first browsers, so if you make a good web browser, then you don't in general need to produce much documentation for end users.

No, it's fear mongers like you who are the problem. Ebola is spread by coming into contact with bodily fluids of an infected person. I don't know how you interact with people on the bus, but rarely do I get bled on on my way to work.

Ebola can be transmitted through saliva. Often people cough, and there is a "fine mist"; if any of this lands on your skin, you can contract the disease through micro-abrasions in your skin

They are forming a reasonable (but false) hypothesis which they cannot prove, given that they do not understand health or disease, and they do not believe the explanation people give them, because they lack the obedience training that westerners have.

As the quarantine centre has been looted, maybe they should try to contain the outbreak by extending the quarantine to the whole city. Declare martial law and not allow anyone to enter or leave the city.

Agreed. Armed military blockade around the city and lockdown of major thoroughfares to minimize travel, even quarantine neighborhoods with infected people, until the infected can be re-isolated and those responsible for the riots can be rounded up.

For example, take steps to disable 'data communication ports on the device that you don't use.

Disable the ability to pair over USB or bluetooth.

Use nonstandard filesystems.

Analysts attempting to execute an illegal search of your device are not going to be "technical gurus"; too few of those to go around.

They'll be using standard software tools they bought from some vendor.

Make sure no "standard" tools will work as expected on your device, and their costs go up tremendously.

For example, if the browser is allowed to make network connections then it can run a spam-bot.

A script running on a page can make network connections; HOWEVER, it can only connect back to the same hostname that displayed the page.

Also, the connection can either be to a non-well-known port, or it can be to a HTTP/HTTPS URL with the same hostname.

Resorting to fines is not a solution, its battling a symptom that won't change the fundamental trend.

Since the change is economically driven... the government is quite in a position of changing the economics of the situation.

Imagine a required 'permitting' and 'taxing' process for certain commercial uses of fully automated cars and other drones that changes the Cost/Benefit and Risk/Reward ratios of putting robots in the job instead of humans.

For example: a requirement to calculate "wages" for every robot as if it were a human employee, including witholding taxes, remit the entire amount to the government as a tax for "Commercial operation of a robot or automaton working on a task traditionally conducted by humans", and the "wage" must be no less than 120% of the minimum wage TIMES the work volume done by the robot per day DIVIDED by the work volume a normal human would be expected to do per day, for each robot or automaton.

Once the robots cost as much as or more than a human worker, then the perverse incentive to get rid of humans and replace them with robots goes away.

were found to be issuing bogus certs for the government to compromise people, they'd get their roots pulled by browsers. That's a death sentence for a CA, hence my skepticism in response to the proposal that they're actively assisting governments.

They might engage in this indirectly by CROSS-SIGNING an intermediate CA which the government would have control over.

Verisign would then have plausible deniability, since the government agency produced all the required "audit papers" indicating compliance with the required policies.

Nothing bad would happen to verisign --- at most some browsers would add the rogue government CA to the "Untrusted certificates list", and maybe some other root CAs would add the intermediate CA to their CRLs in order to invalidate the CA.

Yep, that's called a browser. Arbitrary code is exactly what a webpage or video is.

No. Full stop. A webpage or video is a page which may contain some script language which is to be executed within a certain restricted context pertaining to the webpage domain.

It is code execution, but not arbitrary code execution. A webpage is not supposed to be able to run arbitrary code within the meaning of arbitrary instructions on the CPU; only certain safe instructions within a highly limited scope.

Could a computer write an entertaining movie? A sitcom? I wonder.

No real reason to believe it cannot be done or that it won't be done eventually.

However, one sitcom entertains millions of people. There is only a limited appetite the population as a whole has for entertaining content.

The demand certainly isn't sufficient for the jobs needed by this one sector of the business arts/entertainment to gainfully employ a significant percentage of the population.

reducing human employee's productivity & increasing their cost will only re-enforce the case for replacing them.

How about a "fine" for reducing the number of workers doing any particular job?

For every X workers you have doing job Y, no matter who you fire or hire, regardless of reason, you are expected to at least meet or exceed worker count for the job; if the 12 month rolling average of workers doing this job TIMES median salary OR total number of workers doing a certain job decreases by 10% or more workers (or workers X median compensation) from what the average was 12 months ago, then you pay annually on a recurrent basis, until corrected, 0.5 times the decrease times the median annual compensation as an extra tax/unemployment insurance penalty during that year, plus an additional 1 time penalty of 75% of the median annual compensation payout decrease for the Job amortized over 2 years.

If your average number of workers doing job Y increases and your average value of number of workers X annual compensation increases 10% or more, then there is a tax credit for 20% of the amount extra being paid to workers.

Up until now capitalism has sort of worked because every human was born with a valuable asset that could not be owned or controlled.

I hate to break it to you, but capitalism thrived on slavery. The slaves were largely replaced by machines, which mechanization and the industrial revolution, steam engine, etc. facilitated.

Right now, without the robots.... much of the population are essentially "wage slaves". Free in name, but bound by the need to work in exchange for $$$.

Further mechanization will put an end to businesses hiring wage slaves.

How society will handle the influx of all these freed lower and middle-class wage slaves, will be an interesting question.

They don't provide entertainment, and can't do any sort of work requiring any creativity.

If you watched the last part of the video, you would understand that creative robots can be made.

However.... the technological singularity approaches.

By the time the robots take over the economy We will be the robots; the essence of what makes us us will have been stored on computer media.

The robotic and cybernetic forms of humans takes over. Cybernetic in the form of: robots, with a small amount of biologically-inspired elements.

Once this happens.... the biological form of the human race will have been the only species to obsolete itself, thereby causing its own extinction.

The sun may very well be setting on the times of natural born biological humans, and rising upon the new mechanical humans.

Anyway, "being on welfare" doesn't mean "no income to garnish." In fact, statistically most people on welfare are working anywhere between 30-50 hours a week, albeit at one or more part-time jobs.

There are restrictions on what can be garnished legally; for example, a minimum wage employee cannot be garnished --- an employee paid more than the minimum wage can only be garnished some fraction, and it will essentially never be sufficient to repay the bill with interest. If these people are at the poverty line, it is likely that all of their wages will be excluded and they be incapable of being garnished, if not all their wages, then perhaps 95% or so, due to claims of financial hardship this would cause.

They may also avoid garnishment by switching jobs, and ensuring the party holding judgement does not know and cannot discover their employment, or being employed in a cash payment business. For example: waiters/waitresses commonly receive direct payments as tips, which the employer doesn't have access to, therefore is incapable of garnishing.

Do you have a source for that "over 50% on welfare" claim? Because it sounds either dubious, or like a gross misinterpretation of facts.

Number of the Week: Half of U.S. Lives in Household Getting Benefits

rt.com:

More than half of the US population – 165 million of 308 million Americans – is now dependent on the state in some form. Of these, 107 million Americans rely on government welfare, 46 million seniors collect Medicare and there are 22 million government employees.

The number of Americans on welfare have increased from 97 million to 107 million since President Obama took office, according to research by Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee Jeff Sessions. The number of Americans on food stamps during the president’s term has risen by more than 14 million.

They paid. Also, if you're uninsured and cause a wreck, the other drivers' insurance co. can and will sue you and have your wages garnished until the debt is paid.

This only works if you have wages. Over 50% of the US population is on welfare, and many might not have any wages to garnish. Yes, your insurer can go through months of extra work to secure a civil judgement, but you can't enforce it against someone with no non-exempt assets.

As for Uber or Lyft..... the victim can always sue the company, claim the company is liable. Even if the driver was just using the app, the litigant can claim the driver was distracted and Uber/Lyft designed their app such that they knew or should have known it would result in distracted drivers.

And in judgement against the driver, secure the payments for fares / order Uber/Lyft to withold or freeze the driver's payouts