Cameras and license plate readers, and Bluetooth readers, have already automated the data capture of your travels and no longer require you to voluntarily participate by running a state-provided transponder.

You're in a public place, in a publicly licensed vehicle, on a public road, and technology means that data is now a matter of public record. Welcome home, Winston Smith.

Yes. They don't lose anything by becoming citizens (there are tax issues but they are pretty minor), and being a US citizen has a lot of advantages, like the support of US consulate services.

I'm a dual citizen (born American, obtained British citizenship while I lived there), and while my default position would be "you should grant them US citizenship as that opens up more options to them if they ever want to live in the US" (and despite the many issues, there are still good reasons to want to live here for many people), it should be said that the tax bullshit really is onerous, and renunciation would be expensive. It is like the US congress has built a financial Berlin wall around the country ... sure, you're free to leave, if you can pay up (and pay for expensive tax preparers who specialize in filing US taxes for expats, as the forms are by no means easy), but good luck ever getting out from under our thumb.

It's not an easy question to answer, and as someone else suggested, I would involve your 16 or 17-year old child in the decision beforehand, with good financial and legal advice on the implications pro and con. Weighing the option of living here vs. the never-ending IRS headaches of living abroad--that's a tough one.

You may have noticed I don't care how it got there, only why they are acting now the way they are.

Many companies have this immune system response that if something happens that shouldn't have, they will at the same time punish someone internally, and defend themselves externally claiming everything is proper.

"In Soviet Russia, 3D printers print you!"
Turns out that's the headline, not the punchline.

Except you cant get a Quad i7 fitlet.

Problem is this NUC with a quad i7, 16gb ram and 256gb SSD costs a lot more than the mac mini in the same configuration.
I though Intel was supposed to be better performance at lower prices than apple.

They are taking a calculated risk knowing that very few GPL lawsuits actually went to court. They know it takes money to fight a legal battle and hope the opposing side doesn't have it, or will run out of it before reaching a final verdict. And finally, from the fact that they've been at this since 2012 - they probably think that it's a fairly cost-efficient way to buy more time and make business.

Not the last time I took the bridge from Detroit to Canada. The canada guy was a raging asshole, I almost thought he was the American guy and I went the wrong way for a moment.

"Detecting a malfunction in a sensor is hard, really hard. "

it depends. you have a known range the sensor will read and you have a known rate of change. For example the sensor in my BMW that measures steering angle will go from 10 to 65525 it can read from 0 to 65535 but the physical limits of the mounting will not allow it. which is fine. the computer system also knows that it is 100% impossible to have more than a rate change of + or - 3500 per second. so if any rate changes are high than that, like a glitch that causes it to jump? fail the sensor fall back to limp mode and illuminate the "bring your wallet to the dealer" light.

What if the sensor falls off and does not change? you can make assumptions based on time If I don't see a sensor change within a time frame, sensor is bad.

Systems with only one sensor does not exist in anything other than entertainment devices like your wall thermometer. A car has enough data points to easily identify sensor failures without redundant sensors on each measuring point.

If there is any way the driver can disable the 100% automated stuff. Then they need to prove they are not a drooling moron and get a license. If the manual overrides are all locked out, so if it goes off a cliff, the rider's only choice is to die horribly... Then ok, no license required.

The only way you can have losses that exceed your net-worth is if someone has given you a huge amount of money that they really shouldn't. Typically, it means the banks gave these guys credit beyond even the most loose definition of sanity.

More and more I'm thinking that the fantasy worlds we live in when we play roleplaying or computer games are much closer to reality than the fantasy world of the financial industry.

Yeah, I wonder if these two could be in any way related...

MS is a design and UI fiasco and always has been. The only reason few people realize how unusable the crap is, is that we are so used to it that we don't notice anymore - until the next major update, or if you don't use it daily and then suddenly sit in front of it and wonder who the fuck came up with this stupidity.

And everyone who knows anything at all about mobile devices and usability knows that nobody on the planet wants a windows desktop experience on their smartphone. People want a smartphone experience on their smartphone, what's so difficult to understand about that?

Oh, speaking of that: People also don't want a mobile experience on their desktop. They want a desktop experience on their desktop, that's not so difficult, either.

It works for bombs and tanks, but not for computer networks and communications. It might have even worked in the time of telegraphs and snail mail letters. But for encryption, it doesn't work. A cipher is either weak, or strong. You can compromise a foreign postal system without affecting the security of your own, but you can't secretly build a backdoor into an encryption algorithm that works only for you.

Now you're trying to reverse the chain of causality just to make a cute finishing sentence. :-)

When they dont have the money they need, they cant do squat. The entire ATC system has been underfunded even before the Reagan years.

Almost everyone that has seen the systems in place have know this for over 2 decades.

It's a mess, an unholy mess that they really need to dump a couple billion into to do a full upgrade and redesign. The whole ATC system is a giant ball of bandaids.