It's not a question of technology... many states don't have toll roads.

Which is why Uber now provides a $1M policy covering all of their drivers. Does that address that issue?

Okay, but is there any evidence that actually accomplishes anything? Assuming that there is, and that it's useful, then why not just require a background check?

Is there any evidence their screening is inadequate?

And what about a medallion? Bonding? And is race discrimination a problem at Uber or Lyft (or in any cab company these days)?

I do have to give you that you're the first to even attempt to dig into the underlying issues, though. Kudos for that.

I'm not arguing that there shouldn't be regulations. I'm arguing that the regulations should exist for actual, important reasons not "just because that's they way we've always done it", which is essentially what people arguing that Lyft and Uber should have to follow the taxi regs are saying.

Step back a moment and think. What are the regs supposed to accomplish? Do they solve actual problems in the new context?

I notice that no one who has responded to my questions actually even tried to answer them.

Well, I like their direction. Quite a lot. Different strokes, I suppose.

Meh. You don't typically spend enough time on system screens for this to matter, and all of the regular apps do their own thing anyway. The apps which cause me to keep the screen on for a long time are video players (which are all black except for the video which mostly isn't), games (which are all over the place palette-wise, depending on the nature of the game) and e-books (which I switch to a sepia-on-black mode anyway).

You're assuming they don't already adulterate it as far as they can get away with. I don't think that assumption is valid.

While I think that's a good initiative, it seems to me that deficits like those mentioned in the summary will take care of that. There must be stocks of cocoa on hand which are being depleted, and when those run down the law of supply and demand will drive the price up. If farmers are abandoning cocoa because it's more work than it's worth, then the only way to motivate them to produce enough to keep up with actual demand will be to pay more. Your initiative will hopefully avoid the need to hit a real shortage before prices readjust (and, for a time, overcompensate) and farmers switch back to cocoa, but it'll ultimately happen regardless.

(BTW, fellow Utahn here. What is your company? I'd like to try your chocolate :-))

Oh, actually, I think I missed an assumption of the author. He said "widescreen" tablets, by which I think he meant that he's holding the tablet in landscape orientation. In landscape you can get to the menu by swiping the edges, but you probably do have to use an index finger to operate the controls, because they're a long way from the edges. I suppose they could have had the menu come down wherever you swiped to fix that, but then the location would be inconsistent which creates its own issues.

So... I guess I do see the problem, though I can't say that it bothers me. At all.

I have a Nexus 10 with Lollipop on it and I really don't see the complaint, at least not the one mentioned in the summary.

Yes, the two swipe-down menus have been unified... but you can still swipe down from the edges to get at it, and in fact you get all of the functionality that used to be in the left and right side swipes from either side now, which means you can get to all of it even if you don't have a hand on each side. Or you can swipe down from the middle. After the unified menu comes up you have to reach over to it with your thumbs to operate the controls and I suppose if you have very small hands that could be an issue. I just asked my wife to try it (she has small hands) and she can reach everything with a thumb while holding it two-handed. She does have to move the thumb hand, but it's a pretty natural motion that doesn't require letting go of the device.

I'm not saying there isn't substance to the complaint, just that the example quoted in the summary isn't really an issue.

Note that getting to the full quick settings UI requires swiping down twice; the first swipe gets you notifications, the second one adds the quick settings. Alternatively, you can do a two-finger swipe down and you get straight to the quick settings. I can't reliably do that with two thumbs (too hard to synchronize the swipes), so that method really does require fingers. But two quick swipes work fine.

On a related note, I like that it works exactly the same from the pre-lockscreen (pops up when you press the power button to turn on the display). The pre-lockscreen shows notifications (whether sensitive notifications can be seen on a locked device is configurable), as though you'd swiped down once, then another down swipe brings up the quick controls, without unlocking. I especially like this when I'm reaching for the flashlight on my phone; no need to unlock, just hit the power button to wake up the screen, then swipe, tap and there's light.

(Disclaimer: I'm an Android engineer at Google, though I work on the low-level security subsystems, not on UI, and have no problems criticizing changes I don't like. I have found very little in Lollipop that I don't like, however, and a lot that I really do like. My only significant complaint so far is the fact that the encryption by default means that when the device boots it can't read any of the storage until you enter your password to unlock it... including any alarms you have set. This means that if your phone/tablet randomly reboots during the night (rare, but it does happen), then your alarm won't go off. This hasn't bitten me, and I doubt it will, but it's not good. On the UI, though... when I go back to a device with KitKat it just feels clunky. Wow, this turned into a lot more than a disclaimer.)

That's good, but there are other ways that fstab could get out of sync with your hardware, e.g. a drive dies, or just screwed up, say, you added something post-installation and got it wrong. It's important that there be a way to boot the system up far enough that such repairs can be made, without having to get some other media to boot from.

That makes no sense. While analog computers have inherent accuracy limitations, digital computers provide arbitrarily-accurate computations.

I suspect the problem was speed, not accuracy. More precisely, that digital computers couldn't compute sufficiently-accurate results fast enough.

That they are. I recently taught myself to use one; it's fun. I can't say that I'm proficient, and I'm sure I never will be fast, but it is fun.

You forgot social programs. Whether or not you think they're a good way to spend money, or a good reason to go into debt, you shouldn't leave them out because entitlements are a huge chunk of the federal budget. More than military or bailouts.