Yes, I have been there. I was there last year on honeymoon, Rome, Venice and Florence, all three of which are now among my favorite cities I've been. I didn't feel even remotely threatened a single time by anyone in any of those places. Well, except by drivers; drivers in Rome have zero concern for pedestrians (and vice versa). But I didn't feel *intentionally* threatened by anyone, anyway (did run into several tourist scammers, but they were easy enough to ignore). Didn't feel like prices of anything were unreasonable, either (except hotels in Rome, but I think we just got unlucky, picked a weekend without realizing it until too late that everyone had hiked up prices of hotels because something big was going on that weekend in the Vatican.) And if you don't want it to be stupid hot, just don't go in the summer. May, when we were there, was perfect.

That said, your description, minus the completely unnecessary racial epithets that mark you as an obvious troll, do sound quite a bit more like parts of the the Greece component of that vacation. So much poorer, dirtier, the tourist parts were way touristier, a lot (though by no means everything, you just had to know how to avoid the touristy crap) was overpriced, and we did actually feel a bit unsafe once, but it wasn't from a black person. Much the opposite, in fact: was from someone we were about 90% sure was a neonazi.

Only if cars have any way of accepting remote override requests, in which case cops would be the least of my worries.

What I love so much about the series Extant is, other than obviously the aliens and the one plot-necessary true AI, the technology in the show feels like an amazingly real near-future extrapolation of current technology. This includes a proper self-driving car... which just killed a guy by parking on a train track and locking all the doors "for his safety", after being presumably tampered with by someone that wanted to murder him and make it look like an accident.

I absolutely am looking forward to self-driving cars, but I will insist that they not auto-update, and certainly not allow remote override while the car is driving - preferably not even have any potential *mechanism* for that even being a possibility.

What was the Space Junk doing with the shelter in the first place? And what forced the astronauts to take it away?

I'm with Jick on this one:

        It's "artisanal," which means it's more expensive than things that aren't "artisanal." Actually, that's a lie. "Artisanal" doesn't mean anything. Seriously. Look it up.

(Incidentally, they later reused the same joke, with the random monster modifier effect "artisanal", which as you might guess, does nothing.)

And we'll be paying for it in bitcoins, don't forget.

It'd probably make me use public transportation somewhat more frequently for the sorts of trips I already use public transportation for sometimes. There are costs associated with a particular mode of transportation that aren't always monetary - for instance, time. The trip I most frequently use public transportation for, for instance, to get from my house to downtown LA, I have to factor in:
* Time to get there: for the train, first I have to walk to the train (~10 minutes), then I have to wait for the train (anywhere from 0-15 minutes), then I have to actually take the train there (~1hr). Then the same amount of time to get back. By car, I can just get in my car and drive there, but the amount of time it takes is widely dependent on traffic, which impacts the decision greatly. (Also when I get there, I have to find parking, which is a consideration as well, and how hard that is depends somewhat on where in LA I'm trying to end up.)
* Actual monetary cost: by train it's a few dollars each way for a ticket, per person. By car, it's pocket change in gas, but then you have to factor in parking, which is more per car but less per person depending how many people are going, so you have to factor that in, too.
* Might I be buying large, fragile or perishable things home? Obviously if so, a car is better.

So for that trip, there are a bunch of factors - sometimes it's better to go by car, sometimes by train. I've done both. Reducing the monetary cost of the train would just change the parameter values slightly in favor of the train, other than then the train would be even more totally jam packed with poor people who can't afford cars, as it goes through some rather less savory parts of LA in between (not saying that's bad that it goes through those parts, just that it would be bad taking a train that's jammed to capacity).

My 10 minute car commute to work, though, those same parameters are far more heavily skewed towards driving - the "walking" and "waiting for a train" times would heavily outweigh the "actually on the train" time (which would already be slower than driving, as there isn't particularly measurable traffic on that commute). Gas is tiny, parking is free, so it doesn't cost me much to drive, and would cost *loads* in time to take the train or bus. So no thanks.

Well yeah, I'm assuming ideal conditions as well. Obviously if it's pouring rain or super-foggy I'm not going to be going 75, either. All I'm saying is, under ideal conditions, the "you can go about 10 miles above the speed limit safely" rule of thumb is almost universally true (again, not including some residential neighborhoods, where you really do want to stick to 25; also obviously not including parking lots, etc.), to the extent that going the speed limit might well get you honked at, and will certainly annoy people. If it's *actually* unsafe to drive that speed due to road and/or weather conditions, that's a completely different thing.

Yes we are. We all are. Who drives the speed limit all the time? Nobody who doesn't want to get honked at, because with the exception of some purely residential neighborhoods where the speed limits are that low to protect pedestrians (legitimate), speed limits are almost *always* way lower than the speed it's actually safe to drive. That's not me saying I'm an amazing driver, it's me saying that most highways, if the speed limit is 65, *everyone* will be driving 75, because it's completely safe to drive 75 there (safe except in terms of getting a ticket if there's a cop there and just happens to pick you, instead of one of the other thousands of people in front or behind you driving the same speed, to ticket.)

Now, that guy going 90 in a 65 zone? Absolutely deserves the ticket, and a worse insurance rate. But you *know* if insurance companies had their way, they would force everyone to install GPS, then tell *everyone* they were dangerous drivers because they're going 70 in a 65 zone (seriously, if you're going 65 in a 65 zone around here, you're doing it wrong and will irritate everyone behind you), and use it as excuse to hike their rates up.

public bool DoesSide1Win(Side side1, Side side2)
{
        int totalCashSide1 = side1.GetTotalAvailableCash();
        int totalCashSide2 = side2.GetTotalAvailableCash();
        return totalCashSide1 > totalCashSide2;
}

Ah, that makes sense. Amusingly, you posted one this morning that at first I thought was mine, but nope, same type of site, but not the same site. (Makes me want to check all the *other* similar sites I have accounts with now. >.>)

It is indeed super-helpful to be able to link people to it, thanks for running it! :) (That said, I swear I submitted something a couple weeks ago and haven't seen it yet - how long does it take, generally? :p)

Apps can never background update if you have your 3g radio off except when you're using it. As an extra bonus, it also saves you tons of battery (I turn off wifi and gps when I'm not using them, too, even though they don't cost any money to leave on). If I turn my 3g on and immediately notice it start flashing like something is using data, that's a big red flag, then I investigate what's doing it.

I'm a huge fan of Ting - when it was just me using it by myself (now we've merged several accounts, so bookkeeping would be more complicated), my phone bill was usually an amazingly low ~16 bucks after taxes and fees. I got that because I rarely went above the lowest data bracket of only 100 MB. I used data as much as I needed to - I was just mindful of it. Occasionally I'd go above 100 MB and have to pay an extra ~10 bucks that month for the 500 MB bucket, which I was alright with. I can't even imagine needing 2 GB, though. (Now me and my wife have a combined 500 MB bucket for a couple dollars more each, which is even nicer. We *never* go above that.)

It's straight from all sorts of sci-fi - my first thought was Vernor Vinge's Tines from A Fire Upon the Deep (a single Tine has the intelligence of a dog, a half-dozen working together have human-level intelligence, with a spectrum in between), but you could probably find tons of other similar-acting alien life forms in other media, too.

Down to the minute - I find I'm most rested if I sleep *exactly* 8 hours. I can go a long time on 7 before it starts catching up to me (which is good, because that's how much I often get these days, because my brain has now decided that I really want to get up when the sun comes out even though no I totally don't), but I'm happiest if I can consistently get 8, exactly.

I don't even care that much about privacy most of the time.

I do care a great deal about being able to access my data when I'm not connected to the internet, which if I'm traveling - being, you'll note, the *reason* for using a laptop - is reasonably likely.