Well then all we have to do is wrap the earth in a sheath of exotic matter that warps space-time to the point that a single second in the sheath on earth is 1000 years outside of it. Then just send out swarms of self replicating robots programmed to track down habitable planets and encase them in similar sheaths. After that build worm holes between the habitable worlds, easy-peasy!

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_(novel) (it's a great book)

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/03/nobody-cares-what-you-think-about-their-phone/

Actually all the ad money comes from Google. Turn off adblock, hover over an ad, right click, hit "inspect element".

MS, Apple, etc might pay Google for advertising, but I don't think I've ever seen an Apple or MS banner ad on Google (probably because as a general rule businesses don't pay for their rival's services if the don't have to).

I've never seen the word "penurious" before:

penurious
adjective formal
1 extremely poor; poverty-stricken: a penurious old tramp.
characterized by poverty or need: penurious years.
2 parsimonious; mean: he was generous and hospitable in contrast to his stingy and penurious wife.

--New Oxford American Dictionary

The US allows a margin of inaccuracy of 10%, plus or minus. That only applies to factory cars. Once someone has made a DIY modification (for instance changing the rim size) all bets are off.

"Let your viewers make the content and make money" was Web 2.0.

Web 3.0 is "Don't make money no matter who builds the content."

No need to Godwin yourself. Checkout what the Canadians were up to (with a little funding from the CIA): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Ewen_Cameron#Project_MKULTRA

It sounds to me like he might just be getting blocked due to not having SPF records set up properly for all his domains that he's mailing on behalf of. Many mail servers block email from domains that don't bother with SPF.

Green lasers are the most expensive, not the least. Compare: http://www.wickedlasers.com/arctic $400 for 1.25 W vs http://www.wickedlasers.com/krypton $1000 for 750mW.

I don't think most Mac users are too aware of it either. I've used it twice, for the last two OSX upgrades, but that's it. I suppose it's fine for Apple software, but it wouldn't occur to me to go there instead of the internet for 3rd party software. The App store seems to me just a half-hearted attempt to try to recreate the formula that made them so much money with iTunes and iOS.

The alarmist predictions that OSX will go the way of iOS are off base. iOS is consumption oriented, whereas OSX is production oriented. The bottom line is that they simply don't have the leverage to turn OSX into a walled garden. They tried that back in the 80s and nearly went out of business. If Apple loses sight of that the Mac will die, and Apple will effectively be withdrawing from the PC market. I wouldn't put it past them to one day kill the Mac, their consumer electronics division is way more profitable than their computer division, but I don't see that day coming soon. A powerful development platform is still a key to their brand.

I imagine that in urban areas nothing will change. Highways on the other hand, the speed limit will probably go up.

That is one of the major selling points of autonomous cars, they can respond way faster than a human driver ever could. Back in the 80s when science magazines predicted autonomous cars, they were always predicted to be going 200 mph, bumper to bumper. I don't think 200 mph is really feasible, even race cars require minute to minute maintenance at that speed, but 90-100 mph is probably doable.

Though there will need to be advances as far as power sources. Gas would be too expensive at that speed and modern batteries wouldn't be able to cut it for more than an hour or two.

Well she was the bisexual type of gay not the homosexual type of gay, so your fan fiction avatar could still have a shot.

Sunlight didn't hurt Dracula in the book, he's just not as powerful by day. It's also unclear if Dracula is truly undead in the sense that he died and was resurrected as a vampire. It's suggested that he transformed himself into a vampire using sorcery.

I'm not sure why US commentators can't see this.

Commentators are propaganda, they are paid to justify those actions.

Many people in the US do see this, but we can't effectively intervene (due to a lot of things, the discussion of which would get off-topic).

Speaking of robotic doctors, I've always predicted that AI and robotics would eventually specifically replace surgeons. Well, replace might not the right word, maybe: augment to the point that the human surgeon's job would just consist of monitoring the AI driven robotics in case it does something catastrophically wrong.

A robot or team of robots driven by an AI (one advanced enough to react to unexpected circumstances) could be better in the operating room than humans. They're easy to sterilize, they can make more precise movements and manipulate smaller tools, they don't get stressed, they don't get fatigued, they could more accurately calculate probable outcomes, they could be faster, etc.

How far off an AI that is reliable and capable enough for that is another story, but I think it will happen somewhere down the road.