Sure, machine logic has strange seemingly obvious gaps. The pedestrian trying to cross though was spot on, and half of humans would just pull out without seeing him at all.

I don't know about the oatmeal, but you're probably spot on for the car.

Toll roads already use surge pricing in some places, to keep the toll lanes uncongested during times of high demand. Uber's patent is so similar as to be obvious.

The Oatmeal review I linked (looks like as first post) includes a discussion of a similar scenario, which the car handled better than many people would.

Let's assume he earns 3% interest on his money. That's in the ballpark of realistic. Let's also assume (for the sake of argument) that he took out a 30 year mortgage on that $70M mansion, like those people you have a nickname for. That means he'll pay maybe $150M total for it over 30 years, or $417k per month.

He earns $6.25M per month on interest alone, so his house payment would be less than 7% of his income. (Let's say less than 15% taking into account electricity, cleaning, taxes, etc.) That doesn't make him anywhere close to the 50% rate you cite for "poor people living in a big house". And that makes him pretty smart - not and idiot.

Your logic is... flawed. Well fed, educated children have fewer children than those that live in poverty. And the mentally ill account for a full third of the homeless. Add in those genuinely down on their luck and in need of a better safety net, and we'd be over half the homeless through no fault of their own.

At a measly 1% rate of return, he'll make 25 million a year for life on the interest from that one-time paycheck. If he'd gotten $100M for Minecraft and just spent $70M of it on the mansion, I'd agree with you. But he got $2.5 billion. If he doesn't want to maintain the mansion, he can just give it away and buy another one every other year for the rest of his life and he'll be okay.*

I'm ignoring taxes and stuff. I have a headache.

The Oatmeal posted a review of the car and state of Google's technology in general:
http://theoatmeal.com/blog/goo...

...and then his plans to live to 120 are spoiled when he's mugged by a starving beggar with an assault rifle, or is attacked by pirates or the warships of a rogue nation, or maybe just when his house falls down on his head.

Err, you know you are not only allowed to lock luggage containing a gun, but you are required to do so? It's spelled out explicitly in the rules.*

While it was a few years ago and the laws may have changed, I read somewhere that you should travel with a starter pistol. The TSA considers them guns, which means you are allowed (required) to securely lock your checked baggage, but (most) states don't consider them weapons, so you can travel with them to different states without multiple concealed carry permits.

* this is with a real lock, not a TSA lock

I'm likely not that much younger than you are. We're both six digit UIDs. And you're term limit yabber has been around just as long and is just as hopeless as campaign finance reform. Ultimately we're all screwed either way, but your proposal to fix things would make stuff worse; I note that you have no actual rebuttal to the quality of my position, just that it's unlikely to happen.

...and I didn't miss CNN at all. At work they moved the cafeteria TVs to CNBC. At home if I watched the news at all I switched to Al Jazeera America to check them out. When CNN came back work switched em back.

All of these news channels are replaceable. If Dishes loses they'll pass the rate increase on to me, and I'd rather lose one or two of them. Losing Fox is just a bonus.

Because you never tried to gift it?

You can. Money markets are available for you to invest in.

Maybe the law in Russia that says you can't sell things in US Dollars? Otherwise Steam could just set a US Dollar price and let the exchanges sort it out.

... for completely different reasons, which are now irrelevant. And today's government could recognize that these laws are outdated and irrelevant, and eliminate them. The fact that they aren't is the problem right now, not the history of when things happened before.