You can use this wrapper to use the chrome flash plugin with Firefox. It will not speed up flash, though.

A Google service can be killed without Google going out of business. History has shown this many times.

This is sad times when you get hundreds of clueless users spouting nonsense about labor laws they do not know or understand, while almost no people are discussing about the Mandriva linux distribution itself.

You know, that was a joke.

Do not forget to also check their zodiac sign.

I think you got your ordering wrong. From your source:
The overall energy intensity of the intercity bus mode, which is measured in BTUs (British thermal units) per passenger-mile, is 713, compared with 2,441 for intercity passenger rail (Amtrak); 3,999 for certified air carriers; and 4,238 for public transit buses. Automobiles experience 3,671 BTUs per passenger-mile.

Remember there's been at least one point in history where the human population was on the scale of 1,000.

As pretty much every new species that grew up and thrived. That did not prevent the extinct species to become extinct.

For a smartphones, I'd rather expect so-called "time of flight" cameras to catch-up before LIDARs. Basically, you have an array of LEDs which illuminate the scene using sine or square wave intensity modulation. The imager works at a high framerate (or uses other windowing techniques) to extract the phase shift in each pixel, which gives you 2D ranging information. Of course, there is still the problem of phase unwrapping.
So in this kind of system, you trade off dynamic range for accuracy and cost. As most measurements with smartphones will probably be performed at short distance, this system seems more suitable than regular LIDARs.

AirBNB also abides by the law (collecting occupancy tax for instance...)

Have you played Samurai Gunn ?

For that AF447 flight, I should have written: crashed in the middle of the atlantic. Sorry for the mistake.

Tell me what the plane that went down in the Hudson did? Communicate, aviate, navigate. At least until the decision to go in the Hudson was made, after which there was no need to communicate, and it because Aviate-only. But while crashing (after engine failure), he had a conversation with ATC. That's more important than anything else, despite being last on the list.

Indeed. Now compare this to other recent high profile crashes: AF447 (Rio-Paris, crashed in the middle of the pacific) - no mayday. QZ8501 (Surabaya - Singapore, crashed in the java sea) - no mayday. From these recent events, I wouldn't say that not communicating before regaining control of the aircraft is unusual.

That list is for the Cessna fliers who never have, and never will fly anything else.

I am far for being an aviator. However I got this information from people who do fly airliners. Maybe they are not real pilots, maybe they have been badly trained... but in this case, they are far from being the only ones.

He added that "the first thing you're going to do" as a pilot during an emergency is "don the oxygen mask" and "confess to ATC [air traffic control], 'We've got an issue, we need to return.'"

This is quite a surprising statement. In an emergency, the pilot priorities are:
1 - Aviate -- Maintain control of the aircraft
2 - Navigate -- Know where you are and where you intend to go
3 - Communicate -- Let someone know your plans and needs
in that precise order, and not in any other order. They are trained to proceed like this.

The story of the AF447 crash is precisely that: the human took over, and crashed.
What I wanted to show by bringing up this example is that in current airplane design, there are circumstances in which automation is known to fail (in this case, unreliable/defective sensors). In these circumstances, the systems are designed to give control back to the pilot. The rationale for this is quite clear. It could be argued that fully working automated systems are safer and more reliable than humans. However, automated systems with detected failures are not.
So the pilot is not there to make passengers feel better: he is a part of the automation backup system. Of course, sometimes this backup does not work: no system is perfect.
For automated cars, the situation is a bit different. As you pointed out, drivers are not trained for such contingencies. And if a problem happens, the car can just stop on the side of the road, while the plane does not have this option.

There is something particular with the EPR and Olkiluoto 3 that is worth pointing out.
For the building of a french nuclear plant, the usual workshare is the following: Areva delivers the reactor equipment, while the EDF utility acts as the prime contractor for the construction of the plant.
For Olkiluoto 3, Areva took the lead, and operated as a turnkey plant manufacturer. This was actually part of a power struggle between Areva and EDF. You can see it did not turn out well.
Newer EPR plants (Flamanville, Taishan) reverted to a more traditional workshare.