Because we don't expect to be lonely. We expect our friends and families to survive along with us. I live in California, so I am more concerned with a major earthquake than zombies. I am also concerned about a major contagious disease outbreak, or a weather anomaly that causes major crop failures (this happened in 535-536, 1315-1317, and in 1815). So I have about a year's worth of food for my family, basic tools and survival equipment, and (since I am an American) an assault rifle. Even if a crisis never comes, I am still saving money by buying food in bulk, and growing most of my own vegetables. I also have a some chickens for eggs. You may think that being prepared is kooky, but if you look back through history, there is at least a 30% chance of a major calamity occurring during your lifetime. By the time you see it coming, the store shelves will be bare, and it will be too late. So I think it is foolish to not be prepared. Some of my neighbors also have a stash of supplies, and we are prepared to work together to fight off the zombies.

No. Unless you don't include Apple in "everybody".

Why? Individuals should engage in debate about issues. Why should restaurants? When I go out to eat, I should be able to choose the best food, without trying to remember their political orientation. Is it really a good thing to have "liberal" restaurants, "conservative" restaurants, "libertarian" restaurants, etc?

The mere threat of a boycott caused the CEO to publicly apologize. How was that "ineffective"?

Chic-fil-a did not close, but they got a lot of negative publicity, and now other restaurant chains will be reluctant to take sides on divisive social issues. When I drive past a Chic-fil-a, I have a mental image of two ugly guys having sex, and I lose my appetite.

Yes it can. A OTP can protect the content of your communication, but it does not protect the meta-data. "They" can still see who you are talking to. Once they know who is involved, they can use the proverbial $5 wrench to retrieve the content.

If the car drives itself, then you can relax and enjoy the scenery even more.

No I didn't. I admitted that it would know that one sensor (out of dozens) had failed.

Correct. So it would use the other sensors.

Why would it "forget" where it was? It could just read the inertial sensors to detect any acceleration, read the rotary sensors in the wheels to determine its velocity, and calculate where it is from its last known position. It could also continue to use cameras for lane detection, cameras for landmark recognition, and a combination of cameras and radar for collision avoidance.

It may have confused you the first time, but it would not confuse a self driving car. The SDC would already have the rules for that intersection in its knowledge base. There are about six million intersections in America's road system, so a kilobyte or so of info on each will easily fit on a thumb drive.

Protip: If a problem is obvious to you after five seconds of thought, then it is likely that it is also obvious to a team of professionals working on the system for years.

There is no way in hell that this system will "suddenly stop" just because a sensor malfunctions. It will just use the other available sensors to determine the safest course of action to follow. That may mean continuing to drive, or it may mean pulling off the road as soon as it is safe to do so. But it certainly isn't going to just shut down.

No it doesn't. Only a complete moron would design it that way. And everyone else on the team, and the full management chain would need to be morons as well. The system will prompt the driver to take over, and if the driver does not respond, it will follow the safest course of action, which may be to continue in autonomous mode, or may be to pull over and stop. There is no way in hell that a self driving car sold to the public is going to just turn itself off while flying down the freeway.

A computer would be less likely to get this wrong than a human. Especially since the "weird intersection" is probably already in its knowledge base.

Self driving cars have multiple sensors: GPS, cameras, radar, inertial sensors, rotation sensors, compasses. The readings from these sensors are continuously crossed checked. If the GPS suddenly reports that the car has instantaneously transported itself to a new location, I don't think it will be blindly trusted.

Of course it is not true, because the entire premise of the GGPP's objection is false. Self driving cars do not expect the human driver to "randomly" jump in. If the SDC calculates that it cannot make the best decision, it will prompt the human to take over. If the human does not respond, the SDC will either continue if it is reasonably safe to do so, or pull over and stop. The people designing these systems are not morons.

Not with a single print head. But you can print the metal latch with a sintering printer, print the plastic with an extruding printer, and then have a robot retrieve and assemble the parts. In the near future, multi-process printing will be more common: you will be able to print the metal latch with one print head, and then switch print heads and print plastic into and around the metal part.

Nonsense. Stock exchanges always require a middleman. Do you really think that individual investors can log onto the NYSE computers and search for another individual to buy from? It has never worked that way. In the old days, the middlemen were guys in the pit passing paper back and forth. Today they are HFTs. The difference is that the HFTs are far more efficient, resulting in far lower transaction costs for everyone. Anyone that wants to go back to the "good old days" never lived in them.

This makes no sense. The brokerage already has the information. They are the insider.