Nah, we're still not as bad as killer asteroids or continent sized volcanoes.

Just give us a little time....

Wow. The perfect tax. You pay the state and you get absolutely nothing in return. I hope other states don't pick up on this.

This is going to play out over decades. It's not like we will wake up one day and find autonomous cars everywhere. The first vehicles will be hybrids - not always or fully autonomous. The liability for these cars MIGHT be different, but at first there won't be many of them. Insurance companies might not notice for a while.

Over the years, there likely will be a big transition but the insurance companies, the DMVs and 16 year old boys will have some time to get over the twilight of the American Dream.

No, no. Foam insulation from a can, applied in the tail pipe judiciously to leave enough exhaust flow to sort of let the truck running. If you use the extension nozzle, he won't see this until he has disassembled the rest of the engine.

Subtlety is important. Even if he doesn't get it. And of course, there is always the concentrated sugar gas treatment. It's got electrolytes!

You don't use tin hats in biology. You need to keep in tune with Gai's resonances. Tin foil hats are strictly for computer types.

Look, why does everyone think China is involved? Just because the IP addresses point in that direction? Weak sauce. Here is a much more nuanced way to look at things. Yeah, they use China IP addresses. But much of the high tech part of China is on the eastern coast. This is part of the Pacific Ring of Fire, a whole bunch of active and extinct volcanoes ringing the Pacific Ocean.

Now, there aren't a whole lot of fiber optic cables that run directly to volcanoes. The business case really isn't there. So, if you are an evil villain bent on world domination, holed up in said geologic structure, where would you get Internet access from? AT&T? Comcast? Nope. You're neighbors in friendly, capitalistic China. You can even pull some plausible deniability out of it.

Come on guys, think harder. What kind of world do you want to see? Millions of plastic knick knacks at Wal-Mart.

Or sharks with lasers.

Just tattoo that requisition on to your chest along with the relevant link for inputting your clinical parameters to determine the likelihood of resuscitation and we'll be happy to oblige.

Signed, your local EMS team.

And get an all expense paid cruise!

What's not to like? Besides the food, the entertainment, the rather spartan accommodations, the saluting ....

Look, here are some pictures of an older carrier's machine shop. No, you won't find this on a small cruiser - but you also don't find the poor little cruiser out in the middle of the ocean by itself. So if gizmo A breaks on the little boat, the big boat's machine shop can likely fix it.

Having some 3D printers isn't going to materially change things. It will change things a little - those pictures are from a post WW 2 carrier, I imagine newer boats have full on CNC machines. And I imagine that, sooner or later, there will be 3D printers. But they won't be game changers, they will simply be evolutionary changes.

3D printers are NOT generic replacement devices. They can only make a narrow range of 'things'. A decent CNC mill is quite a bit more versatile, even if you have to go to school to learn how to use it.

There is lots of money to be made in building (and supporting) mil-spec printers. And mil-spec plastic. And mil-spec designs.

Because when you have the preformed parts, you just go over and snap them together. When you have to print the parts, you warm up the printer, download the files, print the parts, fiddle with the printer, print the parts again and snap them together.

Perhaps as an R&D setup, this makes sense - if you are trying to develop different frames / gizmos / attachments to the UAVs to fit various mission requirements. In a shooting war, not so much.

"Sailor, we want an attack drone."
"But sir, if I just adjust this part some more we can make it go faster"
"Sailor, print out the goddamned drone."
"But sir, I can make it so it has LED lights!"

Wait until you're 75. Or have a stroke. Or lose your peripheral vision. Or something.

Yes, 18 year olds should be able to parallel park despite an enormous amount of practical information to the contrary, but the real promise of automated vehicles is that it will allow people that cannot (or should not, a much large category) drive 'manually' have access to individual transportation.

That said, I think the premise of TFA is ridiculous. Most people are not going to be sharing vehicles nearly as much as he thinks. Even if they do, fleet vehicles tend to need more maintenance than driveway queens.

Of course not, but they are Doing Something. That counts for quite a bit in our strobed-goldfish attention span media. If they waited six months to fix it, they would just have a bunch of bad publicity. They would look like bad guys. Hopefully, they realize this is a stopgap and will actually go through the motions to fix the the problem.

Hopefully.

Not a bad business plan. Offer Drone Tours of New Zealand - precepted tours in places selected for appropriateness and beauty. Either BYO Drone or rent one. Maybe even learn some things.

The analogy would be photographic tours where you go with a guide that knows the area, knows what to view and when, has access to places you would not normally be allowed to go. A bit of a niche, but an idea...

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