So do trucks blithely crash into your car every time you slow down, or did you slam on the breaks exactly as you were instructed not to do?

That's one magic cable you have if it has a mark that identifies the up position for both my current phone as well as my previous phone who's usb port has the opposite orientation.

Many more people than just developers deal with both a phone and tablet every day.

Google is working on a font family which supports every Unicode character, it's a big job though.

http://www.google.com/get/noto...

It's "an app store for the physical world"? Or in other words, it's a store.

True, but macroscopic species can survive on their own. Viruses need to infect hosts to spread, and many viruses don't remain viable for long outside of a host. From what I can find, it seems like smallpox is such a virus.

Google has killed services before that cost them money to continue operating, that's not the same thing as an open source codec at all.

None at all, that's my only point. I'm extremely optimistic that automated cars will be safer than human drivers within the decade if they aren't already. It's not a very high bar to attain, really.

Their record so far is excellent, but the tests are still being done with professional drivers behind the wheel. We don't know what sort of weather conditions the cars have had to deal with, or how much the drivers have needed to intervene. Have they gone out in thunderstorms and blizzards and still have never needed driver intervention? It's possible, I don't know.

You can't drive on the road now without having a drivers license and insurance. You may call that a bubblewrap mentality that curtains your freedom and volition. You're free to have that opinion, I just want to be able to get from point a to point b without some idiot slamming into me. Reasonable restrictions to that end are fine by me.

We don't know how many times the driver in the cars have had to intervene to prevent an accident, do we?

And... so? None of this will happen until self-driving cars are in fact the safer alternative. At which point, great. Since when do you get to endanger others because you think it's fun?

It's their parents cable subscription, obviously. They watch it on the extra TV in the basement.

First of all, I didn't say anything about shiny objects so I'm not sure what that's about. Second of all, I'm pretty sure that shiny objects in your periphery attracting your attention is basic human nature. Being aware of your surroundings has always been an important survival skill. It still is, especially when driving.

Why would those everyday situations be something that the car can't handle?

Education and critical thinking skills have nothing to do with it. How would that prevent humans from getting distracted, or fatigued, or from missing something that is outside their field of vision?