It would be easy to get that fire started if you poured on a little diesel gas first

A browser fingerprint is not that perfect. I've done an in-depth analysis looking at 4.4 billion hits and user agents are not that unique. From that I found 4.3 million unique user agents. About 9% of the overall daily traffic contained user agents that were only seen from a unique IP address. So, there is less than a 1 in 10 chance you can be fingerprinted. And, if/when you ever update your OS or browser there is a good chance you will be lost in the crowd again.

" cars are often too cheap for the service to be sustainable, in the sense that the money does not even cover the running costs of the cars when considering wear and loss of value on purchase price"

This could be true if you purchased a car just to be an Uber "taxi". If you already owned a car though, and want to make a few extra bucks a few nights a week, then you may be able to come ahead. Especially with gas being $1.50/gallon now.

Sure, we've all heard of googol, but you're spelling it wrong. We all know its 1.0 × 10^100. What does that have to do with anything?

How about a system that safely works in fair weather and then shuts down for manual driving when it can't cope like in the brutal conditions you described. For many of us, that will cover 98+% of the driving. I can suck it up for the 1-2% if needed. And really, no one should be on the road if the conditions are near what you described.

I'd like to see someone set one of these up outside the FBI's office somewhere and stream the data to the web. Since there are no expectations of privacy, all should be ok.

I only travel a couple of times a year, and its happened 3 times in the last 5 years. Twice was my luggage lost. Once was traveling to Rome. I got it back 2 days later The other time was returning home so it wasn't a big deal because I got it a few days later also. Then, once traveling to London my bag was eaten by the airport belt system and 3/4 of my clothes were destroyed. I had a shoe literally ripped in half. Also, several other items were melted due to heat buildup. I'm surprised it never caught fire. All that said, I'd never check a laptop, medicine, or anything of value I couldn't replace easily.

From the original Klingon

"Your food needs to be checked by the FDA"

That's just wrong. The local health inspector may need to inspect your kitchen or wherever you prepare your food for sale, but you don't need to involve the FDA to sell most foods.

First they came for the couches, and I said nothing...

That's how AOL and other ISPs did it 15-20 years ago.

Can you show evidence of this beyond some random wordpress blog?

"No one believes ethics are "the values you aspire to, completely uncoupled from morality". "

You are mistaken. he seems to believe that.

No silly rabbit. Kix are for kids.

This is like a real estate agent getting a % of the sale. Sure they do better it the house sells for another $10k, but if the house is already $300k and they are getting 3%, that turns their $9000 commission into $9300. It isn't likely in their best interest to risk a sale for an extra $300 when they could move the property and start working on getting the next one sold.