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.

Sort of: it's a Dicevertisement. Nerval's Lobster is the sockpuppet that Dice uses to post its own stories to Slashdot (without any disclaimer that Slashdot is owned by Dice.)

shared between a number of individuals (like one car per family, once the father has reached work he sends the car back home so that the mother can take the kid to kindergarden, etc).

My personal prediction is that, once self-driving cars become a majority, the desire to own a car will be reduced drastically (especially in urban areas.) Instead, people will belong to "auto clubs", which will maintain a fleet of the vehicles. With a monthly membership fee you get X rides/miles; the fee includes insurance, and since insurance rates will drop drastically for those who allow their car to primarily auto-drive, I think that some auto insurance companies will actually be the ones to start these auto clubs (perhaps partnering with a car rental company, maybe even some of the mechanic chains will join in, like Big O Tires or Jiffy Lube, since electric vehicles will eventually be the majority as well and they'll start to lose a lot of business in regular maintenance visits.)

You can pay an extra amount to reserve a particular car and/or pickup time. Otherwise, you use your phone app to order a car to your current or a nearby location, and the car sends you a text when it's outside.

There will also be non-auto cars, and there will be people who own cars (both auto and non), but these will become collectors/upper class things. I can see a larger family, like a generational household where you have kids, parents, grandparents, maybe an aunt or uncle, with their own, personal auto or two.

Perhaps we should consider changing the university system so that when someone goes in, they choose a "focus" and a "study". The "focus" is the normal degree, something that has fairly direct application to jobs, like Mechanical Engineer, and guides their "technical" classes. The "study" is something that interests them, like your Medieval French Lit, and guides their non-technical classes.

Unlike a Major and a Minor, this system wouldn't require more classes for the Minor/"study", and the ratio would be 60/40 between them.

Welcome to April Fools Day. I regret to inform you that not all attempts at humor are successful, and even those that are never succeed at humoring every single individual. From your low-digit ID I assume you've been around a while; that Slashdot does something on April Fools should not be a surprise to you, so you should know to either avoid Slashdot (since no real news will be posted today) or just deal with the jokes they put in place.

Okay, I admit it, this one made me laugh (mainly because I expected a different direction when reading the headline.)

I mean what's the chance he's going to be productive those two weeks anyway?

This is actually a great way to test how an employee's absence will change things. Ask him (or her) to spend a day or two cleaning up their own stuff both physical and digital, then being "on call" the remaining time, checking his corporate e-mail once or twice a day. Have the remaining employees go ahead and start dividing up his work and see where things come to a screeching halt, and sending him questions via e-mail. This way, he's still on payroll if they realize that they need his help, and you can slowly remove his account's access to see if any process somehow got tied to it. Once he's formally gone, it will be a lot harder (and likely more expensive) to get his help.

Seems like a win-win-win to me. Sure, you can have him write up how-tos and manuals for stuff he thinks others will need to do that he once did, but trial by fire would be much better at identifying gaps while you still have a proverbial fire department sitting right outside.

As a youngin' in the early-mid 90s, we would watch these slide shows *BEEP*
These had corresponding audio tapes, that would tell to change the slide with a *BEEP*
Can't remember what topics, and they were always boring as *BEEP*
Only useful for taking a quick nap or being amused when the teacher didn't change the slide *BEEP*
Just changing to video over slides doesn't fix the underlying lack of interactivity or entertainment to keep the students stimulated. *BEEP BEEP*

Of course, terrorists are well known as the most law abiding citizens on the planet.

To play devil's advocate: By outlawing encryption, the amount of "law-abiding citizens" that use it will drop precipitously. Then, when the NSA intercepts an encrypted signal, it becomes far more likely that both ends are $BOOGEYMAN, and their resources won't be spread as thin. Even if both ends are decidedly not $BOOGEYMAN, they are either foreigners, citizens with little regard for the law, or a combination of the two, and so need to go on one of the myriad of watchlists anyway.

So even though outlawing encryption won't end encryption, it will make the NSA/FBI/Europol/etc.'s job of getting leads much easier.