NO! This ruling is not limited to only American companies. It also applies to anyone doing business in America. So if America wants banking records of a German citizen, living in Germany, they could compel Deutschbank to provide them. Likewise, if the Chinese government wants records for an American citizen's account at Bank of America, then America will have no reason to protest since BofA has offices in China, and the principle of extra-territorial subpoenas has been established. If Microsoft loses this case, it will be a terrible precedent, and a victory for oppressive governments all around the world.

Maybe not. If the Irish government caves in to American pressure, then data centers will start leaving Ireland, taking money and jobs with them, just like they are already leaving America. If Microsoft loses this case, and the extra-territorial reach of American Law is upheld, then, if you want privacy, you will need to not only store your data outside America, but not even with a company that does business there. The American government cares more about reading our mail than about keeping our jobs.

They don't have to determine exactly how much safer they are. They just have to determine that they are safer. Also, safety is just one of the benefits of SDCs. Other benefits include better road utilization, since they can drive much closer together. So highways won't need as many lanes. There will be economic benefits as fewer people need to own a car, since driverless taxis will be much cheaper, resulting in fewer cars but also fewer and smaller parking lots.

The lowered lethality is actually a bad thing. It means people aren't getting as sick, are staying ambulatory longer, and are spreading the disease to more additional people. With a lethality rate of 90% a disease will likely burn out fast. At 40%, it has more time to spread, and can kill far more people in total. Despite the lower lethality, this outbreak has killed more than any other. If the virus continues to adapt to human hosts, and the lethality falls to 10 or 20%, we are in big trouble.

This is the exact opposite of what the researchers concluded: That people are adversely affected by seeing other people that are angry and hateful.

Yes. An individual author can promote their book on social media. It is unlikely to become an instant bestseller, but if it is good, word will spread. This is especially true if the author is writing for a niche market that can be targeted in specific online forums.

First Sale Doctrine is American law, not Japanese. Book publishing in Japan is a cozy protected racket. Even magazines can cost the equivalent of $10-15 per issue. Amazon is going against deeply entrenched special interests. I wish them luck, but it will not be easy.

It is probably less. Of all the planets and spherical moons is our solar system, no other has a density as high as Earth. Earth's density is 5.5 gm/cc. The moon is 3.3. Mars is 3.9. If this planet has a density similar to the moon, its surface gravity would be about the same as Earth's.

Indeed. Nobody does busywork as well as the US military. When I was a private, I was once give the task of straightening out staples so they could be reused.

No way. The corporate lawyers will never let that happen. Neither will the regulators. It is very hard to certify a SDC for public roads. Reams of test data are required. It is even more difficult to get a medical device approved by the FDA. Therac-25 happened almost 30 years ago, a lot of lessons were learned, and it hasn't happened again.

I have never designed a bridge or pacemaker, but I have designed computer chips. I sit at a workstation, and I type Verilog code into Emacs. It is the same process as writing software, which is mostly trial and error. I write unit tests, do regression testing, etc. I watch it fail, I fix the bugs, and I iterate. Once I get all the bugs fixed, I load it into an FPGA, and watch it fail with some signal skew that I didn't think of. So I write more tests, and repeat. When it runs flawlessly on the FPGA, I ask a co-worker to test it some more, and review my code. Eventually we go to silicon, where a bug costs a million bucks. Usually everything is fine, but that isn't because it is "different" than doing software. It is basically the same process. It is more reliable because most ICs are far less complicated than even a typical iPhone app. They tend to have lots of the same cells repeat over and over. So an IC with a million gates isn't like a million lines of code. It is more like a few dozen 50 line subroutines, that are called a million times.

Your fears are not rational. Self driving cars and robotic surgeons are tested for thousands of hours, under live conditions. SDCs are not perfect, but they already have a far better safety record than the average human driver. I had LASIK eye surgery done by a robot. I trusted it far more than I would a human surgeon. Getting rocket software right is difficult precisely because there is no way to do a live test. It has to work perfectly on the very first attempt. Very few other applications have such a severe constraint.

A lot fewer than would have died without it.

I don't think this poll was really measuring anything. Asking people if they believe in the statement "We depend too much on science and not enough on faith" is not measuring their knowledge of science at all. Someone that has no scientific education could disagree, while a PhD in astrophysics may think otherwise. It is also implying a conflict between faith and knowledge. Through history, most scientists have also held religious beliefs. Isaac Newton was a devout Christian. Does that mean he was "scientifically illiterate"?

How deep did you have to drill for the holes in the control group?

The low areas of Ireland get more than 40 inches of rain a year, and the mountains get as much as 80 inches. I would be much more surprised if he found an area without ground water.

I agree completely. If this is an academic debate about legality, you win. But there are satellite photos of columns of Russian tanks crossing the border, along with batteries of self propelled artillery. So the real debate is: What are we going to do about it? A copy of the Ukrainian Constitution is not going to stop the depleted uranium penetrator of a Russian 120mm FSAPDS. So far the West hasn't even had the stomach for meaningful sanctions, much less military action, and that is unlikely to change. Military confrontation is not a viable option. So we have a choice of negotiating a compromise, or just letting the Russians take what they want. A compromise would be better for everyone, even for the Russians if sanctions are on the table.