Something dealing with snowballs, hell, and a whole lot of pigs.

This is already happening in some jurisdictions. Still some issues to work out, but there is definitely movement in the right direction.

I am suspicious of this number too. There were a lot of facts and figures in the article, but I am not sure I found the direct link between vacation, sleep and the overall health of the economy. By some measures the European economies are still struggling, while the US has mostly recovered (technically speaking). I too want to see the US population get more rest, but if vacation and sleep are such a big benefit, why does Europe still lag?

Second this. There are a lot of state and federal laws to navigate here. It may not be necessary or appropriate for someone to use your passwords to access your financial information. You could land yourself in a heap of trouble if you access someones account after they die, even if you are entitled to the money.

Safe deposit boxes can get funny depending on state law. First don't ever put the will in the box. The executor will need that access the box later. Furthermore, it could take several day or weeks to get the authority to open the box after the person has died, so don't put anything in there that is time critical.

You have a good point about trusting strangers (I did not mean to imply danger on every corner), however I believe that the whole point of the article is whether we/society should permit children under the legal driving age to ride alone in one of these vehicles? It is fine to say "trust the parents judgement" to a point, but there will be stupid parents, and we need rules that permit us to hold them accountable. Think of the parents who wants some time to relax, and rather than hire a babysitter, puts the child in the car and programs it for a three hour tour of the area. This would be OK for a child at 16, dubious (at best) at 8, and criminal at 4. I suspect that there are laws are already in place. In my state, you are not permitted to leave a child under the age of 10 unsupervised for any length of time, and then only for a few hours until 12.

I think there is a difference between letting a 6yo walk to school, and take a long trip alone in an autonomous car. In one case there are familiar sights and people all around. The child likely knows where to go for help, and whom to trust. In the other case they possibly don't, and trusting strangers for help becomes more dangerous.

Not all doctors actually practice medicine and may not be licensed by a governing body. Since most states seem to keep the names of the individuals who participate in the process a secret, we cannot state with certainty that ALL those with a Doctor of Medicine degree (or equivalent) refuse to support the application of the death penalty.

This has become a problem because doctors are generally refusing to involve themselves in the process. From what I have heard from professionals, it can be difficult to properly insert a needle into a person. It becomes easier with practice, but the people administering this are only doing this a few times per year so there is little experience with the technique. Plus some drug companies are refusing to provide the tried and true cocktails, so states are having to find different drugs, again with little or no help from medical professionals.

I thought the same thing. I would love to see more analysis on that $300k figure of annual revenue per officer. Is that uniform across the country, or are there a small number of communities with aggressive enforcement? How many police hours are dedicated to ticket enforcement vs. other duties, and how does that change in urban, suburban, and rural areas of the country? My guess is that urban police don't spend as much time enforcing speeding laws as their suburban and rural counterparts. However something else to consider is parking tickets, which do generate a lot of revenue for many urban areas. Since my driver-less car can drop me off at the curb, and find parking anywhere, or just drive around until needed, there will far fewer tickets written here too.

I am going to guess that the workstations that allow sailors to use email are difficult to remove and carry off the ship. I believe that the intent of these e-readers is for them to be mobile, possibly allowing them to go ashore. Since they are read only, their value if stolen is low. They contain no information about the ship/sailor, and have little resale value since they have limited capabilities.

I don't know much about this subject, but why does the FAA need dominion over all thing above the ground? If I am flying a device under a certain altitude (250 ft?) under a certain mass, at less than a certain speed, more than a certain distance from an airport, why does the FAA care? Are they worried that there will be too many drones in the air? Seems a bit far fetched for the near future, and you can begin to regulate when there is a problem. Are they worried that my toy drone will fail, and fall on a house? I would be just as liable if I threw a rock at the same house, and as long as the drone is not too massive, the potential for serious harm is not all that great.

I agree that they have become that over time, but that is not how they started out. The first mobile phones were dumb and were tightly linked to the network technology. So it made sense for the network operator to provide the phone. Then an arms race to pack features into those phones started among the network operators. Now they are mostly interoperable among the networks, and can even operate independent of them, however the network operators are entrenched, and rely on the revenue the phones produce for the company. It is a hard model to break.

The Internet and the laptop were developed separately, and one does not require the other to function. The same thing for the automobile, early autos could use one of a few sources of fuel, and the fuel was useful, even if you didn't own an auto. When the first telephone lines were installed you needed a phone/handset to be able to make use of them, and you had to rent/buy your phone from the phone company.

We need to bring back those days of long compile times: xkcd - Compiling