I actually went to a talk last night by someone from the Ohio State University that has been working on autonomous cars for ~20 years.

He talked specifically about licensing in Nevada - they have licenses available now but only for testing purposes: http://www.dmvnv.com/autonomou...

Huh. That sounds like a good idea. Take a little from everyone and use it to benefit people as they need it. You might not need it now, but others will, and when it's your turn it'll be glad it's there.

Nah, probably too crazy to work.

I'm a paying Dropbox customer.

I would love a feature that lets me client-side encrypt my files before they go to their server; one where the keys never left my machine - being aware that if I lose them, I lose all my data.

I would want the client software to be open source though and suspect that might not be in their interests.

Ultimately though I think they've made a conscious choice to not offer a feature like this not because they don't want to or because NSA, but because they see it as a support nightmare.

I tried a few of the alternatives that do client side encryption - Wuala and SpiderOak. I found them completely painful compared to the simplicity and elegance of Dropbox.

The 1% are just playing the game that US politicians were happy to sell to them. I can't fault them for their scummy behaviour. I can't hate them for taking advantage of a system that is broken.

Your elected officials are supposed to be standing up for the citizens, not selling out their office - and their country - to the lobbyists that basically seem to control the fate.

The really sad part is everyone feels stuck in this two party system, this horrible false dichotomy that has been carefully manoeuvred by interest groups to accomplish basically nothing - except preserving the status quo. Well, and sending it on this downward spiral into a scary police state.

I wish I could contribute to Lessig's Mayday campaign, because it is one of the few genuine attempts at reform, but I'm not a citizen or permanent resident (though I currently live in the US). I volunteered some time to help their technical team and wish I could do more.

His biography First Man is a great read. Armstrong seemed like a classic "Right Stuff" guy; I'm sure the book paints him in a positive light but after reading it I couldn't think of anyone else I would want to be the first person to set foot on the moon in the name of humanity.

I think a better tribute from NASA would be to get us back to the moon. Maybe they could name the first permanent settlement there after him?

I would say you are 100% correct - in the Android ecosystem. I am exactly the same; I have a relatively new Nexus 4 and before that I had a Nexus One that I used until it was basically a painful experience because it just kept running out of space.

The N5 is basically the same phone and there's not a lot the Samsungs offer that interest me.

But Apple has a different model - they don't have thousands of different options. It's just one new model every couple years. They have a prestige associated with the iPhone that has almost /nothing/ to do with what the phone can actually do - it's just about having the new phone.

Most of the people I know who live in the iPhone world are largely non-technical types. With few exceptions they all want to be on the latest version - baffling to me as someone that actually looks at features.

Maybe this will taper off but so far I think Apple are just killing it.

Didn't New York flood last year? http://www.nytimes.com/newsgra...

Isn't that what NY's argument was here? Let's agree to do something to reduce the health care burden by "working together" to reduce the impact of gigantic sugary drinks?

Attempting to limit the problem of unplanned pregnancies by increased focus on planned parenthood is an awesome idea. I'm just not sure how different it is, conceptually, to trying to limit the problem of obesity/mass sugar intake/etc by limiting the size of sugary soft drinks - which I think is a stupid idea. Just not sure how I can reconcile those feelings.

FWIW, I have several friends that ride bikes. None of them are the sort of people that I would classify as the type that would do something just out of some sort of inferiority complex.

They uniformly tell me that they see loud pipes as a critical safety measure to make drivers aware that they're there.

I do not know if drivers in general (i.e., around the world) are uniformly bad at paying enough attention to notice riders (of bicycles or motorbikes), but certainly here (Brisbane, Australia) people seem to be pretty woeful at their situational awareness when driving.

For me, that is enough to keep me off the road on a bike. I don't even like driving much (my car was new in ~2004 and now has ~38,000km on it).

One of my motorobike riding friends was recently hit by a clueless driver while on a bicycle.

tldr: enough drivers are so bad at being aware of what is aorund them that loud pipes help make riders safer (... or at least, feel safer. I don't know if there is data showing that they are).

But that can happen anyway, right? Presumably doctors change what insurance they accept at certain times depending on what market conditions exist and how they go with the various insurance companies they have to deal with?

That actually makes me wonder if that would be a more efficient way of making it stop. Instead of trying to brake, deploy some surfaces that give lift and just point straight up, pop some parachutes and deploy some landing bags.

I'm sure trying to make it aerodynamic enough to do that would just be massively complicating the whole design to the point that it is worthless, but it'd be a fun way to stop.

This is dumb. They have made the a car that is a tech status symbol like nothing else. Ferraris are unaffordable to all but the super rich, but a Tesla ticks off so many boxes it's not even funny:

- super cool? tick
- eco-friendly? tick
- high tech? tick
- way more expensive than average? tick
- genuinely, actually not a piece of shit? tick

I can't justify buying one at the moment (Australian living in the USA temporarily) but every time I see one here I am struck with lust, and I don't even give a shit about cars. I just /want/ one.

The best way to use these committees would be to have them shut down the stupid situation that allows them to exist in the first place.

Like Lessig is doing with Mayday PAC.

How is this not a thing with a reality TV show already?!?

Great stuff. This news seems great and look forward to seeing where it goes, particularly around the open sourcing of some new tools.

We've just launched a new virtual server hosting service in .au which uses Ceph for the storage system (blatant plug: https://binarylane.com.au/ coming to the US soon!) We chose it after a lot of evaluation of various other systems and so far it seems to be performing really well.

The stuff on the roadmap you mentioned sounds awesome as well.