You are seriously implying that living in a house sharing walls with another house is equivalent to serfdom?

This subthread has outlived its usefulness.

Which part of human nature is incompatible with having someone sitting in a separate cabin nearby?

In England, detached houses are comparatively rare. Human nature seems to cope.

I will be surprised if most people manage to spend $1k yearly on car service after the switch. Except possibly if you include fuel costs in that amount.

A 10-year-old car is often expensive to keep running if you drive it a lot, and if you do not drive a lot, autonomous cabs will be a very cheap option.

Busses are more expensive per seat than cars. They are somewhat more fuel-efficient when full compared to cars, but the difference compared with a full car is rather small. The major reason why busses exist is that one person can drive 40+ people instead of 3.

Oh dear, we have found the counterexample! All research into autonomous cars is invalid. We certainly cannot allow the 90% to enjoy the future while a single person keeps the old technology.

Why would any of those be a problem with a shared autonomous car? That is the whole point, there will always be a car ready, arriving within the 10 minutes it would likely have taken to walk to your car anyway. Zero minutes if you schedule ahead.

I have experienced great public transport. At least as good as what you describe. But try working on the subway. Good luck.

You cannot really compare the experience with public transport. With public transport you need to get to the first stop and from the last stop to your destination, and you likely need to change train/bus/whatever at least once in the middle. Working on a bus is most often impossible, so only the train part of the journey is useful. Subtract the time that you use to unpack/repack, and you are likely down to less than half of your commute being spent usefully.

Properly designed cars would be able to take you from your doorstep to your destination, have proper room for working, and noise isolation so you can use your phone. You only have to unpack/repack once per journey.

Correct. But you also don't have to walk to where you walked the car or spend time finding a parking spot. If you live in a rural area you probably still want your own car, because you likely have a garage and your job likely has enough dedicated parking. Not all are so lucky.

The waiting disappears if you schedule your journeys in advance of course, and in either case it will be much better than waiting for public transport. Millions of people use public transport daily.

Mass transit will only have a chance when it is faster than driving. Busses are likely to suffer a lot, but many trains can still do well -- possibly even better than today, because the last mile problem of train journeys disappears.

Planes should do great, except on the shortest routes. Saving most of the cab fare or the airport parking would make the effective ticket price a lot lower. I have had journeys where airport parking was almost as expensive as the flights.

So far, increases in the efficiency of commutes have led directly to longer commutes. I would be surprised if actual traffic density decreases, but it will be interesting to see.

Carpooling is a pain because you don't have the car with you during the day. If something unexpected happens and it isn't you driving that day, you are in trouble. With driverless cabs this problem disappears -- you will most likely have to accept a delay when you request an unscheduled cab and possibly a higher price, but you are not stuck.

I doubt the parking bit. Many people will choose to use a driverless cab instead of their own car for the commute (to save money). For the average commute, rush hour is spread out enough to allow the cab to do perhaps 3 journeys, saving 2 parking spots, and it can even park away from town during the day.

Even more parking can be saved if you seat more than one person in the cab of course. I bet we will see cabs with multiple entirely separated passenger cabins so the only inconvenience from sharing them is the possible detour for the other person.

First they invented SecureBoot, but that was OK, because you could turn it off.

Then they prevented disabling it, but that was OK, because several non-Windows bootloaders are signed.

Next up will be refusing to sign the boot loaders which simply disable SecureBoot and load Linux/*BSD. That will be OK, because Ubuntu is properly signed including the kernel (I think).

After that it will only be certain commercial vendors who can get a certificate, but that will be OK, because Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 will run, only allowing signed kernel modules.

Yes I hate slippery slope arguments too.

In Denmark, several muxes are run pretty much the same way any cable TV operator would, except the build-out costs per subscriber are obviously lower because no cables need to go into the ground. Broadcasts are encrypted and people buy cards which unlock the channel packages they decide to pay for. Just like cable, but with somewhat fewer channels.

It seems like you would be able to cover the majority of the residents of Saskatoon with a single antenna mast. That should be plenty to make it economically viable. Particularly if the mast is already there with power and everything available, just waiting for equipment.