Suddenly they are becoming popular - Icelandair are selling one on the inflight goodies list, as are various designer shops in Reykjavik.

They are only bad news if the benefits of automation are not distributed in a way people see as fair. The unfairness of distribution is the cause of unrest, not the unemployment as such. Most people would welcome being unemployed from time to time if they can still live comfortably, and why not?

Isn't this good news? Back in the 1970s we were all promised that increased automation would lead to us all needing to do less work, and having increased leisure time. It all seemed like a rosy future at the time. The only problem seems to be that the owners of the robots don't want to share the benefits. If they don't share then they deserve the unrest they get.

40 million rows is what we used to manage in Oracle tables in the late 80s. Jeez, did this guy have no clue how to build a database?

It depends on what you think the purpose of a police weapon is. If you think the duty of police is to kill suspects, then guns are more effective weapons. If you think the purpose of police is to arrest suspects alive, and gather evidence leading to their conviction in a court of law, then you might consider the argument that tazers are more effective weapons.

This. And tazers.

tazers?

tazers

No need for anything fancy like that. I thought police carried tazers to disable suspects they actually want to take alive.

The link with MIT speaks to why this is news for nerds. Nerds/engineers are probably the most likely suspects in any bombing, being both disenfranchised from the mainstream and having the intelligence to know how to accomplish the engineering required to blow something up.

I'm guessing Google could use AI to generate automated email responses to users' queries.

The conspiracy theory on false flag I've seen is that the pressure cookers were loaded with black powder, so the move was to get black powder outlawed so people can't make their own ammunition legally. Just sayin...

Next year will be year of teh dumbphones.

Google Earth will go realtime with drones cited above everyone's house. Please pass relevant legislation kbyethx

This. I had an agent since more than 10 years ago, and she did a very good job finding me well-paying clients, and getting the money out of them (minus her 10%).