I do the same, but try to ignore the 1-stars. They're often as brain-dead as the 5-star ones, and I'm sure at least a few give bad reviews from service/quality that is the result of their own ignorance, rather than a problem with the product or maker.

I've always wondered why sites like Amazon and NewEgg haven't adopted some sort of "Adjusted Score", which discards the 1s and 5s and scores only on a three-star scale. This means that those who try to game the system will do 4s and 2s, but that's why you allow the user to decide which score to search/match on (or just show both.)

"Weighted" scores would also be nice, measuring from a rep system (based on visitor feedback of previous reviews for someone, plus the time they've been on the site, plus if they purchased the product from the site and how long they've had it when the review was made) and the amount of words in the review (with a ceiling; grammar/punctuation would be a better measure of clarity, though much harder to score). So a score of 3 from a long time user with a history of good reviews and the review has 200 words would be considered a much better recommendation than a score of 5 from a newish user with 10 words.

None of this stops gamed reviews, of course, but it does change the rules of the game in favor of Amazon and regular customers since those who want to put up fake reviews will have to work harder for it.

Huh, a very interesting thought. Since you wouldn't break even on the deductions (to my knowledge), I never thought that they would be something that could increase spending.

If the tax rate for companies did go to 0%, though, it would have to be balanced in some way by increasing taxes on citizens. Ideally this means much higher taxes for much higher brackets, and raising the taxes on dividends etc.; for all this, how the companies pay people would change, so that larger pot of money might have to be put towards the employees rather than being some new surplus to hoard. That pot might not grow too large in the end, but you do give something more to think about in any case.

Which is all well and good, but you and I are not taxed on our "net income". It doesn't matter how many bills we have to pay or how large our debt is, we are taxed based on the amount that our employer pays us. In general, I can't deduct food, electricity, or car payments. (The super rich can hire accountants to skirt around a lot of stuff and senators to make laws exempting them from the rest, sure.)

So, if we are going to tax corporations (and I'm not convinced we should, but that comes with other caveats), why should they get to play the net income game when the citizen (whom the government should primarily be working at the behest of) can't?

Agreed in full. I've been thinking more about this lately, and I don't know why we tax corporations, outside of double-dipping. The government is supposed to be by/for the people, and so paying for the government should be the onus of the people; similarly, the government should listen to the people and not the corporations, so taking away taxes for corps can undo that stupid Citizens United ruling (I think.)

But, while a lot of people will support removing taxes for corporations, many will fight tooth and nail to keep from raising taxes on the rich, namely the dividends/gains you mention but also very high brackets. Unless you want the deficit to expand faster, you have to do the latter at the same time as you do the former.

But we already knew they were selling data to the government.

*badum tish*

But having multiple trucks maneuver through off ramps, through pumps to an available one, and back on seems more complicated to me than having a few trucks just drive back and forth on the highway.

If 3.0 quakes are increasing, I would assume that higher rated ones are also increasing, or the amount of quakes might cause enough build up in certain areas for devastating quakes.

Regardless, her particular warning is just a CYA. "What, you didn't get earthquake insurance? Well, don't come crying to the government for help, we told you to!"

In 200 years, history classes in the Middle East and Africa will discuss the 16-Year Federal Furlough, when America split into a large number of tribes/clans along ideological lines after the federal government failed to pass a spending budget for two years and the effects started taking their toll on every-day citizens...

(However, many earthquake-insurance policies in the state exclude coverage for induced earthquakes.)

So, if the insurance company can prove the quakes were man-made, they don't have to pay out. But if they can prove it, that goes against claims by many in the state and oil industry. The oil industry would likely try to hound/silence/sue the insurance company.

If they deny a claim with loose evidence that it's man-made, the claimant could (theoretically) prove it was a natural occurrence. Because proving such is to the benefit of the oil industry, they would jump at the chance to "help", and perhaps have the state "investigate" the insurance company for fraud or questionable practices or something.

It seems to me that, despite whatever exclusions the insurance company has, they will likely pay out for any and all earthquake claims with the oil industry helping them cover that pay out behind the scenes in order to keep any proof or claims of "induced" earthquakes out of the public eye.

began to take the form of whatever our politicians fever-dreamed the nature of crime to be.

I agree with most of what you said except this. I don't believe that most our politicians give a rat's patoot one way or the other about crime, except whatever crime happens to them. Instead, they fever-dreamed whatever stats would convince voters that there are massive crime epidemics everywhere, created policies would be easy to play to the voters, and then appear "tough on crime" (as you mentioned) and use that as a stick to beat down any opponent who dare mumbled "well, wait, this isn't actually helping us, and we have huge recidivism, and it's costing us a lot of mon-*THWACK*".

Most of these politicians are at least moderately smart, in the same way that an actor is smart: They are able to play whatever part they feel they need to play to maintain their power and prestige.

For instance, we currently lack a nationwide network of stations that offer full-service for your trucks. It's certainly doable, but so far as I know it's not currently in place, and that's one of the simpler problems to address.

As I've thought about the problem of fuel for automated trucks, my mind turns to mid-air refueling: A plane stays aloft while another plane hooks up to it and adds more fuel. The other plane can go back to the ground and load up again, keeping the desired plane in flight for as long as refueling planes get to it.

Could the same thing be possible for trucks? Have a tanker (also automated) come in behind a truck, have a nozzle hooked up, and fuel it while driving. The tanker can then drive back to a refuel area specifically set up for them to reload. You could even have fuel lanes added to long, mostly-empty stretches of highway, where the truck being fueled can slow down without bothering traffic and the tankers can easily enter/exit to loop around.

Another possibility is that, without the need of a driver, the entire cab can be turned into a giant fuel tank. Not without its own problems, but something to consider.

the only things stopping me from stealing them being a trucker and my sense of what's right.

If someone is a thief, their sense of what is right is already out, so that just leaves the trucker as the only problem. A gun or a steel pipe can take care of that. Perhaps the thought of (potentially) hurting a human is a deterrent, but there non-violent ways to get the driver out of the picture. I imagine insurance for drivers is quite a bit, so companies will be happy to be rid of that cost as well. Various deterrents and anti-theft devices can be put in place, and without a proper cab (see above) the content would have to be unloaded on the spot, making it easy for a company that gets an alarm to call the local PD.

The weigh station one is easy, the trucks just have RFID tags that give the information as it passes through a weigh station or will automatically connect the officer at the station with whoever is monitoring the trucks through the cab. It can even have a basic LCD screen on either side to allow 'face to face' communication. The remote monitor can then instruct the cab to move into a designated space; if no one can be contacted, the cab can automatically go into a space until contact can be established or a representative can physically arrive.

There might be a standard (or five) created to allow the station to direct the cab itself, given proper credentials, without interaction from the trucking company. (This goes into things like encryption etc., but doable.)

A similar motorcycle acts as a delivery van. covered with drawers, each of which can lock or unlock independently. It goes to a destination, sends a message to the people inside the building and waits ten minutes. after the person inside authenticates with their cell phone (maybe by taking a picture of the drone) the drone unlocks the one drawer, and waits for the person to remove or add a package.

Groceries and package delivery (UPS/Fedex/etc.) These will be the biggest things affect by self-driving vehicles. Groceries: it's far more efficient (and green) for someone to pick out your groceries, put them in a truck with other orders from nearby people, and drive to you, rather than having each person drive to the grocery. Packages: While they wouldn't be able to hold as many, they also wouldn't be beholden to the shipping company's schedule. So if you have a package you don't want left on your doorstep, you can pay a bit extra and have it stored in a self-delivery vehicle and "call" it when you are at home. Doesn't matter what time, you just call and it works its way towards you.

There will be some problems with theft of/from the self-delivery vehicles, but I imagine that will be taken care of quickly with cameras added (that can also be used for identification of customers and the self-driving.)

the driver-less stuff will be relegated to delivery vehicles and DUI offenders

Also buses (unless you were counting those as part of delivery vehicles; in which case, sorry.)

But the thing is that the auto-driving car that becomes ubiquitous will not show up fully formed. Over the years new vehicles will add more and more features that lower the burden of the driver; between adaptive cruise control and lane keeping assist, cars can already handle 80% of distance highway driving by themselves. We also have various forms of automatic parking already. A ton of different collision avoidance options.

We'll slowly get new features like signal-change monitoring that will stop for red and go for green, stop sign recognition, merge assistance, etc. The tech will eventually cover 95% of use cases, and the remaining 5% will be edge cases that get worked out slower (the "long tail", so to speak). I think it will take 10, maybe 20 years to get to that 95%, and at that point the new vehicles will likely have everything they need for full self-driving, only downloading firmware updates for the remaining 5% as it gets tackled.

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