It seems pretty obvious that people carrying small, expensive gadgets around with them are a prime target for thieves, that this is a legitimate, pervasive problem, and that this solution is effective in combating this crime.

Plenty of things can seem pretty obvious, it doesn't make them true by definition. Having said that, the figures look like a good enough reason for other manufacturers to follow suit. If it turns out it's a statistical blip then thieves are still left with less viable phones (proceeds from crime) and if it is working then great. Having said that, I do wonder what proportion of phone thefts are by people who don't make a living out of crime and so aren't being displaced into another form of crime? If we're getting less iPhones nicked but the criminals are just stealing wallets, house breaking or whatever instead it's hardly a step forwards...

Because under the socialist Obama administration

Thank god that free market, not socialist at all Germany is interested then *rolls eyes* Fuck me some of you Obama haters are retarded.

Wouldn't you rather look up recipes on a pad so

Yes I would, but maybe I'd like my fridge to do it so that it can see if I have the ingredients I need.

I'm using a 10 year old 2nd hand fridge that won't break so and is efficient enough that I can't really justify replacing it so I'm hardly the target market for IoT fridges; that doesn't mean I'm woefully short on imagination and can't think of dozens of useful things it could enable, or need to dismiss them out of hand because of some superficial assumptions about them being unusuable.

If I can get one with Ethernet instead of WiFi, I'll be a happier camper.

Because if it's wireless it's going to brute force your key, or because you lack the self-control not to fill it in even though you claim not to want the functionality? Damn smart TVs, how horrible of them to give you something that will allow you to watch Netflix (just like you want to) directly on the device.

Not that there will be commonplace autonomous cars in the next 20 years, they will remain as common as the flying cars hypothesized in the 1960s ... and the reason is simple:

Flying cars actually offered very little. Flying is comparatively hard even in vehicles made for it, especially in what would be an inherently high traffic environment. Something that works well on land has compromised quality in the air and vice versa. There are a multitude of reasons why combining a car and plane was unlikely to be a worthwhile endeavour, even if the technical issues were minimal.

I don't expect to be driving an autonomous car in the next 5 years, but given the HUGE benefits they would provide a huge amount of money and effort is gong to keep being thrown at the considerable issues. There will be self-driving vehicles within a decade, not because it'll be easy but because the money waiting for the people who crack it is huge.

How would you feel if someone passed a law forcing you to do your job for less money than you are willing to do it for?

Strawman. No one driving a taxi in California today started doing it before they needed a permit and to follow the rules. They make a choice to work in a regulated environment. Requiring cabbies to accept all fares at a fixed rate made a lot of sense years ago because it made visiting other cities far easier without being ripped off or stranded. You could fly into London and know you'd be able to get a black cab to your hotel at the designated rate.

There will still be a 'shrinking' place for this kind of operation in future, but it seems that the more free market approach of Uber will become the normal way to get a ride.

Or are you trying to say obesity in the US had some effect on the European decision? Either way, it's not relevant.

It does. Europe considers obesity in the US as a warning of likely consequences of inaction. Obesity levels in much of Europe followed a similar pattern to to the US but delayed by a few years. Thus the continuing increase in levels in the US is a worry to Europe because we see it as a likely indicator that we can expect the same unless we put more effort into controlling it.

Governments shouldn't tell people how to eat, especially when the specifics of what's healthy aren't exactly understood.

Something I'd agree with in most cases. However in the UK we have public healthcare and social benefits. If someone is dangerously obese is becomes the whole countries business because of those institutions and some intervention is justified in my opinion. The biggest threat to public healthcare in the UK is obesity and type 2 diabetes, both of which are caused by over-eating or a poor diet. Diabetes alone accounts for 10% of the spending by the NHS and is expected to double in less than 25 years, and obesity itself costs the NHS £4.2 billion a year.

Where I expect we would agree is that advice should be limited to very clearly supported general points like drinking 2 litres of sugary soft drinks a day is bad, rather than trying to micromanage every food type.

Alcoholism is considered a disability in many countries already.

Could you give some examples? I'm not aware of any, although I know of multiple, including the UK, that treat it as a medical condition. The difference is quite pronounced. An employer has a legal obligation to accommodate disabilities (for example moving files to be accessible to a wheelchair bound accountant) if practical, they aren't for medical conditions. An employer could send someone home for turning up at work drunk but not for turning up without legs ;)

OBESITY is not a simple problem, it is a complex one.

Obesity is an exceedingly simple problem. In a few/some/many cases the various influencing factors can be extremely complex but that isn't the norm.

50 years ago obesity rates in the US were 1/3rd what they are now. Colorado, Connecticut and Hawaii have the lowest obesity levels of US states and there's nothing that makes them unique as a group genetically or environmentally from the rest of the US. People are getting fatter because it is becoming more normal to be fat (less social stigma), unhealthy food is widespread and heavily advertised, and average activity levels have fallen sharply. In short: It's harder to be a healthy weight today than it was in the past, but it's due to the need for more self-control rather than medical or genetic changes.

I don't think that in most cases being obese should be a protected category in the sense that an employer should be forced to purchase special furniture or to assign special parking.

Exactly. Fundamentally what is the difference between someone (without a medical condition that makes it harder to control their weight) who wants the company to tolerate their poor performance caused by this and someone who (without a medical condition) who constantly turns up late expecting an employer to ignore it? How about someone who isn't careful about the accuracy of their work? Someone who is rude?

Why would it be ok to discriminate against someone who is rude but not someone who is incapable of doing the job due to eating too much? It's not necessarily easier for someone who has been brought up and learned to be rude to change than it is for someone who eats too much after all.

Seriously. How do you think plants grow? They aren't eating anything! It's super-anorexic! And yet they gain mass. Sure, they don't do a lot of exercise, but the vast majority of plants *do not eat*, yet they gain non-water mass.

That sounds incredibly stupid. Plants take in, amongst other things, nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus with water. They won't grow without it. They also take in the water itself and carbon dioxide from the environment which they can turn into sugars via photosynthesis. Just because we can't use sunlight to produce energy from it doesn't mean it isn't "food" for plants. I would take exception to someone claiming that many things eaten by animals are "food" in the context of humans, but it doesn't stop it being appropriate food for them.

I don't know why you put scare quotes around the thyroid anyway. Do you not believe in the existence of thyroids or something?

Or perhaps they're taking exception to the nonsensical idea that the thyroid is an exception to conservation of energy.

If that's the case then I have no understanding of the situation.

You must be new to discussing on the internet. You're supposed to claim I'm lying and insult me ;)