This is like saying "Why would you pay for [$NICE DINING ESTABLISHMENT] when you can get a hobo to feed you poop for free?" (Or, for those who require car analogies, "Why would you purchase a vehicle when you can jump on the back of a bus for free?")

I suppose if you're the type who likes having a selection of ~40 songs 90% of the time, separated by annoying commercials and whatever the "DJ" spews forth, then radio is fine. Personally, when I want to listen to music, I want to listen to just music. Preferably of a wide variety and stuff I know I'll like, so all my devices that can have music on them do, from my personal collection (bought-and-paid), including my car. Sure, I might miss out on some new music I would enjoy while driving, but I will happily do so over having to deal with the crap surrounding it. I listen to Pandora One while at work or home, which I pay for to also get rid of the commercials, so I'll hear the new music anyway.

I did so in response to FireFox's default being changed to Yahoo!; I knew I didn't want Y!, but I didn't really want to go back to Google for the same reasons as you. DuckDuckGo was one of the other options immediately available (dunno if it came with it or I had installed that as an option years ago) and now I use that for my default.

I miss some stuff about Google search--like the "instant facts" that often told me what I wanted to know, directly on the search results page--but I also find DDG to be competent enough to turn to Google very little.

When I realized the difference after I upgraded, I actually changed my search engine to DuckDuckGo because I wanted to give that a shot rather than defaulting back to Google. So even if people didn't stick with Yahoo, the change may have helped other search providers.

The world needs ditch diggers too.

And it would do even better with educated ditch diggers.

Plus, with buses, they can make smaller buses that have more routes and can also respond to demand to better stick to schedules. (If 13 people "check in" at Bus Stop B but no one at Bus Stop A, then the bus can take a shortcut that avoids A and goes to B sooner, to better handle the larger amount of people waiting to get on.)

1) convince the unions to let us

Even if the tech is viewed as very mature by every automotive professional, Average Joe will still view it with heavy skepticism. Having a human who could take control in the event of a bad situation will alleviate a lot of concern, regardless if the human could not realistically do anything useful even with very early warnings and a sharp eye. Public trust will probably grow at the same rate as bus drivers quit/retire, which brings us to the union solution: Attrition. Everyone keeps their job and rate but does less. Make them drive the bus in and out of the storage facility to keep their driving skills up and give them busy-work. No new blood, raises are probably capped off, but the drivers can keep working until they quit/retire or a specific amount of time (like 5-10 years) has passed.

While I've not dealt with a union directly (only felt some indirect effects, like not being able to move my own desk), I think that would be acceptable. As an added (evil) bonus, the driver can be a scapegoat if a bad accident occurs.

(I wonder if buggy whip makers had a union that had to deal with this...)

Interesting, thanks for the reply!

A vehicle may decide that a pothole is actually an obstruction, or that the railroad track is the end of a road.

Very nice post. This particular line made a question pop into my head: Do we have any human-driven cars that have a companion AI "driving" a virtual car, where the AI is doing risk aversion and noting where the human differs from the AI for later review and/or machine learning?

Using your example, the vehicle "sees" a railroad track but, because of the sudden shift in terrain, thinks it's an end of the road. The AI, in its virtual car, starts applying the brakes, but the human maintains speed and keeps on going. The AI notices that the terrain has resumed expected road conditions, that they haven't crashed or fallen off a cliff, and marks that point as an event to review.

The *actual problem* with nuclear is that practically every other option is cheaper and lower risk.

My (admittedly limited) understanding is that one of the major problems with both solar and wind power is the fluctuation. Yeah, solar is great for running A/Cs on hot summer days when the sun is shining bright, but not as useful for heaters at night in the winter.

So unless power transmission tech improves that you can run cables thousands of miles with minimal loss, or battery tech improves that extra power stored during the day is enough for night, you need something else to generate the power that can cover non-productive times for the other sources. If our goal is to get rid of our reliance on coal and fossil fuels, what other option is there but nuclear? If you're lucky you live close to a hydroelectric source, but not everyone is.

(I also understand there are problems with standard power plants not being able to spin up quickly to meet demand, and assume nuclear would have the same.)

I prefer ever-increasing copyright maintenance fees. If Disney is willing to pay a billion dollars a year to keep Mickey, fine. But for most works, the copyright owners will eventually decide that it's better to release it into the public domain.

You and I are of the same mind. This does away with the whole problem of corporations owning copyright, as well.

My thoughts specifically are about doubling/halving price/time, respectively. You start with a regular fee and a regular term (I think the original term was 14 years? Sounds good to me.) After 14 years they can apply for a renewal, which will cost them twice as much and last only 7 years. The chart would be:

Renewal...Cost...Length
0..........X........14
1..........X*2......7
2..........X*4......4 (we'll be nice and round up)
3..........X*8......2
4..........X*16.....1
[...]
N..........X*2^N....1

Mickey is 85, so under this system Disney would have had to pay X*4.61*10^18 to renew this year (even with X=1, this is far larger than the entire world's Gross Product, so Disney would have had to give up decades prior.) As an added bonus, the increasing renewal fees can be used to subsidize initial applications, making it easier for smaller companies and individuals to copyright.

The recent run of Cosmos (with Neil deGrasse Tyson) has the episode The Clean Room which is mostly about figuring out the age of the Earth, but also spends some time discussing Clair Patterson (by way of his ultra cleanroom) and his battle against oil companies.

Corporate coverups are not a new thing, and yet people continue to give companies and company-funded studies the benefit of the doubt despite what history teaches us.

Would a NBC or a CNN publish it?

Pffft, hahahaha. You're better off with The Enquirer than those two. They're more likely to report you to the FBI than report on the NSL.

If you actually want to get coverage, try the likes of The Guardian. I recommend a massive shotgun approach instead if you want more protection; scan the letter, send a copy to as many "news" organizations as possible, and post it everywhere you can on the internet. WikiLeaks, 4chan, reddit, Fark, FurAffinity, Youtube, Redtube, Daily Kos, HuffPo, make your own website, create an entry on Wikipedia, put a torrent/magnet on as many of those sites as possible, etc. Make it so easy to get that no amount of takedown orders can scrub it from the internet. Put copies in every mailbox in the neighborhood, collect those return envelopes from credit card offers and send them copies, leave copies on the seats of buses, movie theaters, libraries, hand copies to the FBI agents/police who show up to arrest you. Encourage others on the internet to do the same. Attach as much information about yourself and the event surrounding the NSL as possible. If the NSL doesn't include your physical address, put that up there as well; the FBI will be more hesitant to act if they think a bunch of local dissatisfied citizens might be hanging around your place with cell cams.

Before you pull the trigger give the original NSL to someone you trust and have them keep it somewhere safe, to be offered up if any of those news places actually want to verify it.

This won't keep you from getting arrested, but it will make a lot of people inquire as to your well-being and where you are in the justice system; depending on the reasons for the NSL, various groups might take up the cause to get you your freedom.

What about sharing the car or renting it out? A driverless car could make me money while I am at work.

I believe the end result of driverless cars (which, I agree, would have a large amount of demand from the general public) is the advent of "auto clubs". Most people would just belong to one of these clubs in lieu of owning their own vehicle and be able to order up a car on demand or reserve ahead of time, and it would drive itself to the person. Garages and apartment parking spaces would become extravagances (how many more apartments could you build in the same area if you didn't have to consider parking?). The rider just pays a fuel cost based on the trip.

I don't see Auto Clubs as springing forth from the ground, either; they seem like the natural evolution of companies like Enterprise Rental, or even insurance companies who want to keep people on their plans but have more control over the car. Heck, the insurance companies could offer smaller programs like this if people agree to drive their (manual) car less--thus reducing the risk of an accident--and will help convert society to mostly self-driving cars.

The obvious problem with this is the daily commute. This would be worked out before such clubs became ubiquitous through two mechanisms:
1) Auto clubs would offer "pool" cars; it doesn't matter if your drive takes that much longer if you can work or sleep during it[1]
2) Self-driving buses, half the size and twice the routes. They can be "called", so if no one is at a stop waiting it will keep on going (cutting down travel time at the expense of a regular schedule). You may even be able to have them come right to your door.

I think 2 will happen first: buses offer greater savings in fuel and tend to have very strict routes so there's less concern about "unknown" streets. Google already has a bus fleet (or they contract one), so doing this makes sense for them to do a proof of concept especially as people complain about the problems of their buses using normal stops. It would also be easier for smallish cities to implement these than take on a fleet of normal buses. Once self-driving buses prove themselves, self-driving cars will be accepted much faster.

[1] This also offers a meet-and-greet kind of system for potential carpoolers; if everyone in your pool likes sports, or likes Metallica, or likes basketweaving, it could make carpooling far more interesting. (There would, of course, be the "I want to be left the fuck alone" car pools.)

The list that was posted has apparently been removed (if you can get to the site, which seems to be under heavy traffic with people looking for it). Furthermore:

While it's difficult at this point to definitively know how the hackers acquired the material, Chris Davis, a cybersecurity researcher and fellow at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs, hypothesized that one likely possibility, based on the information contained in the leak, is that the hackers made use of a botnet. "The list of credentials [in the published list] fits that bill pretty well," he explained.

Malware explains the odd collection of websites, relatively small number of accounts, and supposedly-plaintext passwords. So anyone affected who changes their password will just have that new password picked up unless they've exorcised their computer.

I spend 5 seconds plugging in at night and 5 seconds unplugging in the morning.

And even that tiny amount of time might go away if induction charging technology becomes viable for electric vehicles. No need to plug in, you just have to worry about being over the pad properly (an issue I think would be trivial to solve if induction does become viable.) Also gives local stores something they can install and promote.

If the goal is improving grades (which it seems to be from TFA), then you have to get the kids interested; they'll learn far more if they aren't just being lectured at. The best way to get them interested is to let them direct at least some of their own education. It's been shown that kids (or people in general, for that matter) take a larger interest/initiative when given freedom and personal control. Let them define something they want to learn about in an applied way, then connect it to regular core classes, and use the extra time for that. Assign a teacher to be an "adviser" (or make positions that are only advisers) to define explicit goals, track overall progress, and put them in touch with the specific teachers for education when needed.

Maybe they want to learn about becoming a race car driver, so you have: automotive, business management (for sponsoring and finances), physics (aerodynamics, G-forces), materials (composition of the tires, body, etc.), and phys ed (reaction time and physical fitness are important in drivers). End goal: design a race car, perhaps some job shadowing of an actual driver.

Maybe they want to make video games, so you get: applied math (vectors, other calculations), physics (gravity and object interaction) computer science (programming), art (character and world design), psychology (play testing and feedback), business management (marketing and selling the game, if desired), and liberal arts (plot creation). End goal: create a simple-but-complete game.

(Of course, all of this is more important in High School, and this extended day won't affect high schools in the area.)