If it's sentient, it will be a "life form". The tricky part is devising a scientific test for sentience - that's beyond our current level of knowledge - however, it might not be in future.

No, the man who owns the bot wont let that happen

But, anyone will be able to build a robot (unless they are bogged down with bullshit patents or something). You won't need the "man who own's the robots" robot, if you simply have your own robot too. Every local community, every individual, every farm, every school, every business, they could all have robots. The robots could help build more robots - you'd only need enough access to another man's robot, to build your own (plus a little raw material). There is no *natural* scarcity on robots. We could even open source the damn plans, like Arduino designs are.

I like the idea of a basic income (funded on the back of robot-based production), and I think it will become increasingly necessary in order to evolve toward our post-scarcity star-trek-like "utopia" peacefully.

You got -1 trolled, but alas, I don't think you were trolling - the opinions you post are commonly held by many, and it's important to counter them with valid arguments. It's silly to refer to "surplus labor" in a world where there is literally still a virtually infinite amount of things to accomplish that require such labor - from solar system exploration and colonization to helping cure human disease - there is NO shortage of things that we could be doing with so-called "surplus" labor - what we should be doing is structuring society in an ethical way that brings those "surplus" laborers on board in a positive way, allowing them to nonetheless contribute.

Alongside that interest were the usual peddlers of hype and hysteria ...But never mind, soon we would have video cameras on every street corner, matching every passing face to enforcers' databases of millions of criminals ... Despite the noise, which might lead a cynic to think that it's all hype, facial recognition has improved over the years

Did it even occur to you the "hype and hysteria" was from those who actually realized the technology would improve? We are actually much, MUCH closer now than we were 5 or 10 years ago to video cameras on street corners being able to automatically identify most passersby, and in another 5 or 10 years, it will be straightforward. You even admit yourself the technology has 'improved over the years', and yet you call it 'hype and hysteria' from those who (effectively just) predicted it would improve.

Facebook does a near-perfect job of identifying just about everybody I know in every photo I see posted. Of course, they are helped along with contextual information provided by social networking (e.g. no doubt how closely connected you are to someone factors into the weighting algorithms) - however, it won't be long before governments too have databases like that.

Dismissing the "paranoid fearmongers" is stupid and unproductive - rather, one should listen to their genuine concerns, and then ensure measures are in place that these technologies are used to improve our lives in ethical ways.

What is a "Space Nutter"? Is that supposed to like insult and silence fans of space-related research and exploration? It just sounds like an ad-hominem troll post, and not even relevant to the topic.

Bingo. In spite of it being trendy to criticize them, NASA are actually doing some pretty impressive science in spite of their limited budgets, if anyone cares to look.

Just as expected. The rocket program it was designed for had been canceled in 2010.

I'd like to know how it can be "just as expected" when NASA do not have a crystal ball telling them by what random amount their budget will get cut each following year .. in all likelihood, they didn't *want* to cancel that project in the first place.

It's simply not realistically possible to always perfectly plan multiple complex multi-year projects, when every your budget gets cut a little further, and you never know -- it's a roll of the dice -- if or how much it's going to get cut by -- then there is the secondary knock-on effect that of the small budget that remains*, the managers need to very carefully decide where to constantly try shift things around to try keep remaining projects going. The rocket program canceled in 2010 was probably canceled due to budget cuts. NASA's budget has consistently been cut, what, every year for the past 15 years? You can't entirely blame NASA - nobody can plan properly under those circumstances. Nobody, not you, or me, could end up not wasting any of it as a result of the constant shunting around.

Also, *all* large organizations have at least some expenditure that in hindsight was wasted. Hindsight is always 20/20. Look at the R&D allocations for any large organization, public or private, and you'll always find plenty of projects that went nowhere - whether it's an IT company or a mining operation or a shipyard or energy utility etc.

* NASA budget is less than 0.5% of the total federal budget. We're really going to nitpick over this while literally trillions get regularly poured into completely wasteful military destruction? We're being played and manipulated by articles like this - look carefully who *benefits* from articles like this that attempt to portray the real bad guys (spending-wise) as those who take less than 0.5% of the budget.

Not only that, but hiring an H1B involves large delays in when they can start, and it's far from a given that the visa will even be granted at all (I think fewer than 50% are granted each year). Americans have a huge 'home ground' advantage over H1B applicants - you have to be seriously "uncompetitive" if you can't compete with all the extra costs and extra delays and extra risks involved in hiring an H1B. The H1B's I know are extremely hard-working (and all earn well over 100k/year).

Actually, Google are decidedly fearful of DNT being on by default, because unlike muggers, they have to obey the law - they can't actually willfully violate expressed user preference without risking a major class action of sorts. That's why they fought so hard to effectively kill any hope of DNT being useful (remember, they were part of the standards committee for standardizing it - the wolf guarding the henhouse).

Because the info sent is used by some sites to determine how to deliver content to you ... and when several websites stop working in the latest browser, the users will be the first to say 'what a crappy browser, I'm going to use a different browser'.

You have to click 'Details'.

Google pays Android OEMs a percentage of the huge 30% cut it takes from their app store for apps. So by generating intense competition amongst app developers, what Google and the mobile companies (and their OEM partners) are effectively doing is forcing app developers to subsidize the operating system and mobile phone development - most app developers have been driven to such low margins that many are losing money (Google and the OEMs etc. get the lion's share of profits that used to go to software developers, by establishing app stores as effectively a software distribution (middleman) cartel based business model). Sheng Fu seems proud of the fact they've done this - actually it's nothing to be proud of, as it's doing a lot of harm to software developers.

Humorless mods

"With every new piece of news I am further dismayed with our failure as a species. I can't shake the nagging sensation that we deserve to become extinct."

Says the guy who runs an online drinking games database. Maybe if you actually chipped in and helped with something constructive?