Go one step further and suggest that there might be a big pay day if it turns out they were exposed to something dangerous. Nothing like a little greed to get thing moving...

So instead of buying a ticket and at least getting something for my money, I'm forced to pay into the system via tax dollars when the airlines get bailed out?

You wouldn't replace your diesel car with a gas or diesel SUV, either, would you (unless you need the space)?

This is a soccer mom vehicle. They don't drive 70mph for 300 miles. They drive 30-50 mph for lots of small trips, which is what an electric is really good for. Think of this as an electric replacement for gas-hog SUVs, and it makes more sense.

Who cares what kind of doors it has? The important thing is that it's electric and has the seating of a large SUV.

The soccer mom crowd doesn't need long range for ferrying family around, so this would be a great market, and would get a lot of gas guzzlers off the street if they can shave another 20-30k off of the price. The current tiny all-electrics would be terrible for lots of kids, multiple car seats, etc.

Also, the fall from the UPS delivery drone to my front yard would probably be more gentle than the current treatment...

Police radios are intended for tactical communication & coordination. There's normally little on there that would require covering up.

As a volunteer with my local PD, we were trained on the radios, and golden rule was, "Assume anything you say on the radio today will be on YouTube or the national news tomorrow." They already will use the issued cell phones or the chat/IM on their computers for anything sensitive or potentially embarrassing unless it's time critical.

So they sort of have to worry about what they say, but not enough to really matter. At least the radio traffic is recorded, unlike the cell phones.

In my city, most of that sensitive stuff isn't put on the radio in the first place. It all goes encrypted to the computers in their cars.

I have in the past heard police radio traffic that broadcast people's name, DOB, SSN, and all sorts of other identifying information (trying to verify a warrant) in the clear, so encryption wouldn't necessarily only benefit the police.

Can't you trace radioactive residue somehow (ratios of isotopes, or something like that) after the fact? That might make that scheme difficult unless we can get some of their own nuclear material to build the bomb out of.

Bullet trains just don't make sense in the US. In, for example, Japan, there are fewer metropolitan areas, so transportation that's limited to a few high-traffic routes makes sense. There are too many combinations of origins and destinations here for anything but an insanely expensive and huge train network to be useful.

We'd be better off with a network of short-haul auto-trains built in the interstate highway right-of-way. Hop on just south of Dallas, for example, and get off at Waco, get back on the next section if you're going all the way to Austin. (basically a commuter train for cars) Bonus if you can charge electric cars on the train (suddenly that 100mi range doesn't seem so bad). This gets existing gasoline-powered cars off the road, and means that it's still useful even if it doesn't go exactly where you're coming from or going to.

What they should be doing is putting a chip on the card that contains a private key (which you can't read from the card). Plug the card into the POS system, and the POS system uploads the transaction information, the card attaches your account number and signs it, then returns it to the POS system which can then forward it to the bank.

Doesn't help if someone physically steals the card, but any sort of "skimming" would be impossible. (unless it's using a gimmicked point-of-sale system that's fiddling with the transaction information before it's signed, but if the card could display merchant name & amount, that would take care of that, too)