I wish I was! Years in I know better than to hope it'll change :(

Obvious retard troll is obvious and retarded.

It can be for some items and some buyers. I don't see why people who can't immediately see a use for something are so quick to jump to the conclusion that their isn't one. One random example might be someone working at home who needs to do a disproportionate amount of printing and runs out of ink. $8 to have it solved in an hour or less might be a bargain for them. I can think of a few dozen more, although they aren't likely to be reasons why I'd pay to upgrade personally. But then, I don't know if I've ever paid for next day, and that service seems to be pretty useful and popular.

All these people using the moon landing as an example of why FAIL FAST isn't needed are making me chuckle. You're absolutely right about the very high risk of the mission. Arguably NASA took some huge risks purely because speed was seen as critical; they could have done dozens more missions with smaller evolutionary steps and/or waited for technologies to be better tested or refined.

There's a certain demographic that hear "Fail Fast, Fail Often" and create the most absurd straw-men. Fail Fast doesn't mean try to fail, it means try to do the riskiest stuff first so that you know if you have issues quickly. Fail Often doesn't mean try to fail, it means don't be afraid of trying to do something just because their is a good chance of failure. It's been pointed out enough times before, but sadly it's like trying to explain the wonders of beverages to a block of sodium.

Google glass isn't a spice rack, moonshots aren't equivalent to fudging together a basic circuit. Those analogies make it appear that you think developing new high-tech products for categories that don't is equivalent to building a basic wooden item that millions have done before; it obviously isn't and it undermines any credibility the rest of your post may have had.

Further, there are many scenarios where failing is not an option (e.g., medical, military, and space ventures).

Of course it is. It makes clear in the summary they are talking about failure during the experimental stage, not in production products. You think Lockhead, Pfizer, SpaceX never, ever, have a failure during the design or testing phases? Hell, military history is littered with thousands of weapons, planes, other tech, that never made it to production.

The article never suggested that they should fail for the fuck of it. The argument was that if you're pushing forward quickly on with something bleeding edge then sometimes things will break, and safety concerns aside that's not an issue for Google.

Do you really think so little of thought that it never occurs to you that it's important?

I'd follow your own advice, and I'm be more courteous as well but that's mainly because I don't like looking like a keyboard warrior.

Nothing you said in any way highlighted a short coming of a automated car. You made a few unsubstantiated remarks about machines being 'moronic' etc. Personally when I look at the behaviour of many road users, and too many internet posters, it certainly seems like flesh-bag morons are pretty common already!

It's not unreliability...

I think it is. When I am choosing a service one important consideration is how much effort getting onto that solution is, and how likely it is it will last. Even if Google provides a better service, I reconsider using it over a slightly inferior alternative because they're track record is terrible on this front.

I understand completely why they want to kill of unpopular projects, but from a user perspective it sucks that they launch a service, try and persuade people to put the non-negligible effort in to learn it, then kill it because they screwed up and couldn't make it worthwhile maintaining.

Just remember this the next time you see a post claiming that we should be doing things the way they do in Europe.

Yeah, look at us with people suggesting we do something. It's practically Orwellian... I'm sure that totally outweighs anything worthwhile they do in an entire continent.

Personally, I'd have thought that for anyone willing to pay for a home security system this would be a no brainer today. There's countless wireless enabled camera systems that are obviously going to be useful in the event of a burglary.

Why? By the time someone has broken into your house the only benefit of security systems for the owner (deterrence) is gone. Sure I could get loads of head-height cameras set up in my house, maybe even get the burglar caught (not that the police in the UK give a fuck about catching burglars) but my shit is long gone.

The solution to burglary is for the police to move a fucking finger to try and do something about it, which they clearly don't in the UK.

All the reasons you give for why buses apply to subway systems, trams, trains, and planes. Often they are even stronger reasons to automate those tasks but yet most aren't yet... A bus has to be able to handle interactions with lots of passengers which adds considerable complexity. I'd expect trucks will be some of the first automated vehicles. They get loaded up at one depot, drive to another depot without needing to stop or enter dense urban areas, then stop at another depot. Bus drivers also tend to be paid notably less than lorry drivers (no idea why given the similar/identical license requirements). If a lorry full of goods is at risk of crashing it can make selfless decisions because their is no risk to life, which is a considerably easier legal situation than a bus that has to decide between killing a pedestrian vs risking the lives of dozens of passengers.

What does the quality of budgets etc have to do with Kickstarter not being a zero risk pre-order store... please try and keep up.

I think this is an oversimplification, but one that suits some government so they act like it works. If I haven't entered the country when I'm speaking to the border guards then they have no jurisdiction under which to compel me to do anything; clearly they feel they do...

Some eastern european country could declare cybercrime completely legal, and now those criminals are not criminals in that country.

Yes; and when they do it would quickly lead to some very painful international sanctions, followed by the outlawing it again. Additionally, if your cybercrime includes doing something illegal by US law on a server based in the US you can bet the US has jurisdiction. You're inventing an unlikely scenario, and it doesn't in anyway impact on his point.

Sounds like a good idea, but how does that work when the internet is involved? Does Facebook count as everywhere? What about phone calls? Mail?

That's already an issue, which is why clear jurisdiction is important. If I (Britain) write something in a Facebook (American) private message about liking the Dali Lama to another individual (German), but that message was forwarded to someone Chinese without me knowing and the content breached Chinese law (made up example), I then travel to HK for a holiday 5 years later and get arrested for it, would the answer be only travel to countries you know all laws about and whether you've ever done anything that might breach any of them anywhere?

Should it be ok for the German government to arrest American tourists for remarks covered by their anti-nazism laws made in the US? Can an Italian business owner be arrested when he arrives in France for not paying his workers the French minimum wage?

Yes, there are some complex scenarios that the internet has made more common; however, that doesn't mean that we need to agree a solution so that we can have clear jurisdictional boundaries.