It's not about making machines smarter than us, it's about making machines that replace us in the workforce.

That quote bothered me, too. We've been simulating simple insects for decades, back when neural networks were clusters of transistors on flip-chips. We're at the point where we can build machines that can learn to move and navigate on their own. There was a Slashdot article a week ago about a fully mapped nematode neural network wired into a robot.

What is the point of this article? You would think that people have learned better by now than to attempt to make predictions as to where technology will go.

The writer also doesn't get exponential growth. By the time you see the singularity coming, it will be too late to stop it.
Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug....
Too late.

Ha ha ha... He said "synergies" ...

What you say has a ring of truth to it, but from what I've read in the car magazines auto ownership is certainly stagnant, and the growth saw in the past is gone, and car companies seem to not know what to do to get demand back. They've tried the idea of a car being a lifestyle, and that didn't seem to do much especially. Now they are trying to go the entertainment route, putting everything and the kitchen sink into the center console. I highly doubt that's going to do much. Basically car makers are victims of their own success. They've saturated the market, cars are quite reliable now with minimal maintenance, and they are perceived as commodity items (albeit expensive ones). I think your arguments are likely to hold for some time yet, but the article's arguments are likely to hold more sway in the long term. The number of teenagers getting a drivinglicense is steadily declining from 30 years ago. Now arguably one huge factor in this is that they depend on others to drive them (parents or friends), but as they become adults they are likely to take their car apathy with them into the next generation. To them cars are just tools. They aren't lifestyle items anymore or fashion accessories. Just tools. When these kids who aren't car crazy begin to vote they might start voting for better public transportation, autonomous cars, etc.

I have an old T-mobile Galaxy II (989) that supposedly has gorilla glass on the screen. I've dropped it numerous times and it's never once broken or shattered, and it's now an ancient phone by internet standards. Yet I've seen countless iphones with broken glass. Perhaps the more flimsy, plasticy Android phones actually have an advantage here by flexing instead of shattering? Or is there some other reason this is an Apple problem?

Everyone who works in ad-tech has some justification for why it's ok.

Angela Merkel has never led anyone anywhere. She just waits to see which policy is going to be most popular, and then she jumps in front of it.

Obama didn't promise to do anything either. Under American law, no international agreement is binding unless it is ratified by the Senate. Chance of that happening in this case: 0%.

What Obama "promised" is what America is on track to accomplish anyway. Vehicle fuel efficiency is rising. Shale gas is replacing coal. Electricity consumption is falling, as people go from incandescent to CFL to LED, and CRT to flat screen.

Why limit it to nations? Major corporations are as capable as most countries, and only a little bit more endangered if caught.

Despite the "only security through obscurity" meme, you need to understand it, not just say it.

There are only two types of security:
1) security through obscurity,
and,
2) security through inaccessibility.
They can, however, be intelligently combined.

Please note that private key encryption is security through obscurity. Cutting the phone line is security through inaccessibility. Saying that "it's secure because they can't get the prime factors of that key" is security through obscurity.

Despite the meme, security through obscurity is widely and properly used. What's wrong if false obscurity, which is common. If you don't properly assess just how obscure your secret is, then you have a security failure.

So having a monoculture is reduced security, because that means that there are a much larger number of entities seeking to discover the secret...and any breach in security cannot be easily contained. If you don't have a monoculture, then a single breach cannot be as widely damaging, and is thus also less valuable to find. This is a sort of network effect.

OTOH, a diverse community means that more effort needs to be devoted to security, because each branch is a separate thing to be maintained. So it's not all benefit or all loss, it's a mixture.

FWIW, I choose not to have flash installed on my system, despite the fact that it would have some utility, because I consider that the weakness that it presents is not worth the benefit. The ability of refuse to have such a service installed allows increased security...at a cost. For some people the cost is higher than they are willing to pay. This reduction of the attack surface is a form of security through obscurity mixed with security through inaccessibility, i.e., I have become inaccessible to some forms of attact, and I have reduced my visibility to many attackers.

Oh yeah, gripe about product placement all over SlashDice.com...

It's hilarious reading a bunch of French people arguing about who is more French! Just a Monty Python moment...