How'bout we do the 3/4 that's doable first, instead of, you know... not doing it because the last 1/4 is hard.

Aviation is already looking at creating electric motor planes that run on batteries.
I go one further and suggest using microwaves emitted from high locations (above most birds) that top off the batteries periodically, maybe even making the batteries essentially a backup for emergency landings (huge weight and efficiency savings).
That of course is just one idea as opposed to "We Still Have No Idea"

As someone with a 60 year view on things I can say excitement about technology wanes and waxes with time, but currently we are in a waxing phase. Voice activated AI is starting to permeate our lives, self driving cars will be arriving soon, space has become exiting again with SpaceX.

Here are the main upticks in general interest in technology as I see them, starting before I was born.

1920s Travel by Car
1930s Electricity delivered to the home (wide adoption).
1940s True air travel and widespread radio use.
1950s Atomic Age, Automation, TV
1960s Space Age, Mainframe Computers
1970s First Lull, we did get VCR's and time shifting
1980s Video Games, Personal Computer (OK both arrived in late 70’s, but this is wide adoption)
Early 1990s Another Lull, Personal Computing great for business – home use doesn’t live up to promise, Video Games cool a bit.
Late 1990s, Cell Phones, and the Internet (again wide adoption)
Early 2000s, Another Lull, though the Internet was continuing to pick up steam, computers are truly useful at home now.
Late 2000s, HDTV wide adoption (finally TV is improving at a rapid pace)
Early 2010s, Smart Phones wide adoption
Late 2010s, Voice recognition AI, AI in general is rapidly improving and being used widely in business, cusp of self-driving cars, Virtual Reality is now out of the lab, SpaceX has given us back the space-age.

Compared to previous decades I think this one is only getting hotter and hotter – Not quite yet at 1960’s Space Age general interest in technology, but a close second (and the decade isn't over yet).

My first job was at Burger King in 1974, and we had the conveyor belt broiler. Plop patties on the belt, they slid into a bin a few minutes later.

Your post suggests that all productivity improvements go only into corporate coffers and no real price decreases. However here is how it works in the real world. There is still inflation, the costs of making jeans will rise due to other factors and, yes, for a short time the company may reap increased profits, in the long run it will be forced to keep its prices lower than it would have otherwise or lose market share. Also it could be that buying the lasers and developing the tech will mean that it may be some years before it realizes all those said profits, by which time inflation or competition from someone else who has had productivity gains as well and has been able to lower costs (or keep them the same) will force them to keep prices lower than they otherwise would have been.

This isn’t to say there isn’t corporate greed, but lets not act like every productivity gain is an evil thing of no benefit to consumers.

As to displaced workers hopefully Levi is large enough to shuffle most to other activities. If not and they are treated very unfairly during termination, then Levi can feel the rightfully backlash of public scorn at that time.

Do Teslas have this problem now? I remember when you use to have to put down your exterior antenna before going into a car wash. Yes, many of the current under-development cars have this problem. Once self driving cars really arrive there maybe a short period where you have to cover some special equipment in some cases for some brands -- but quite quickly the cars will evolve to not need this or car washes will evolve to accommodate. To propose this is the thing that will prevent adoption is foolish (or wishful thinking) which I think is part of the suggestion behind this posting.

So I said I fear. You have now shown I should fear. Way to vividly validate my points. BTW by going down I meant impeachment, at some point even Republicans won't be able to stomach this administration.

Listening to CPAC on CSPAN today I couldn’t believe how deranged these people all seem. I really feel like the NRA was threatening armed insurrection if Donald Trump is removed from office. Core beliefs: there is no Global Warming (or doesn’t matter much); Democrats and liberals are part of a Socialist plot to take all our rights away; immigrants are destroying our culture; everyone who needs (deserves) healthcare will have it (only lucky well-paid working people deserve it); luck and privilege are not factors in obtaining wealth, only hard work is.

When Trump goes down (and he will) I fear what these groups will do. They’ve made it clear what their guns are for when push comes to shove.

I guess I’m part of the great unwashed masses, because I enjoyed Bright quite a bit. Perhaps because I didn’t view it as a standalone movie, but the introduction of a fantasy series.

Not sure what critics where expecting. The race and inequality allegories are not subtle, but they touch on a lot of issues. You could read too much into the privileged class of elves. Do they represent Jews? More likely they are intended to represent white privilege and/or the one-percent’ers. Do some races have innate advantages (brightness) that drive inequality? This is a harder question to answer. Very few humans or orcs have the Bright (magic) ability in the movie. In some ways the movie is very predictable, as a plus or minus it raises uncomfortable social questions (without resolution). Perhaps some of its low score is because it fails to give the perhaps mandatory expected PC answers that Hollywood’s seems to demand.

I found the obvious racial stereotypes the second Star Wars trilogy harder to overlook because they weren’t trying to make any comment about racial inequality, but just playing to stereotypes out of laziness and/or carelessness (hopefully not malice).

In general I find I usually agree with the critics scores more so than the audience scores, so this one surprised me. I suspect this is a movie that for whatever reason is liked or hated by many with little in between. Since critics have to watch all movies it gets a low score. People inclined to like fantasy and action movies self select in going to and giving a rating to this movie. Largely I think if you raise social issues, critics expect some kind suggested social change, whether realized by the protagonists or not.

Multiple thoughts on how this is being presented. To me 1.4 million seems WAY on the low side with things like automated driving, delivery, order fullfillment likely arriving before that. McDonald’s new order Kiosks are horrible, but likely they will have voice input on the next go round. Why the emphasis of the likely impact on women? Likely minorities by race will be affected much more.

Let’s not be Pollyannaish about this. The only way this doesn’t get dark and ugly is with universal basic income. It should be phased in slowly, and the rich only get richer if they continue to provide more for the masses as well. Just because technology created new kinds of labor faster than job loss in the past, doesn’t mean it will this time round. In the past we moved from physical labor to mental labor. I don’t buy the we will all move to “creative” labor. Mental labor will likely only pay well for those way up the skill ladder, especially as more people try to enter the mental labor force and drive wages down.

You can now install Firefox on Fire Stick and Fire TV and it is suppose to work with YouTube including fullscreen mode.

I installed it last week in anticipation. I will try it out when I get home.

Nice to have a browser on the Fire Stick anyway

From TFA, the computer is already better than the experts. It will only improve from this point forward. Does it matter if it 10% better or 10 times better. Lives will be saved. The 9 out of 10 was merely illustrative. If only 10% better now it will likely be 10 or even 100 times better ten years from now. We are at what is known as a tipping point. You're attitude seems to suggest computers will never be as good as humans at this activity, can't be trusted, and you would prefer humans to do this kind of screening task. I for one (having already suffered from a misdiagnosis) will chose the AI.

END-OF-LINE

Sooooo...... apparently better that 9 people undergo unnecessary surgery, because the computer would make a mistake on the 10th also. If it's not perfect, then we'd better rely on the humans.

Remember, do not let the Perfect be the enemy of the Good
Same comment would apply to Self Driving Cars, which I'd bet you are also against.

I had unnecessary lung surgery 12 years ago because I was misdiagnosed with lung-cancer when all I had a mild fungal infection common in my area at the time called histoplasmosis. I’ve no doubt AI’s would prevent these kinds of mistakes. I also remember being told my chance of having lung cancer was 97% by the radiologist. I’m pretty sure as a young non-smoker he didn’t factor in any kind of bayesian statistics to arrive at this answer, but just looked a chart based on signal return from a PET scan. Hopefully these days at a minimum there would be some app that has them plug in relevant variables and does the bayesian analysis for them.

Trust me, recovery from invasive lung surgery is no picnic.

We don't get bent out of shape when machines read bar codes to price our grocery items instead of a human reading the price sticker. The machine is doing essentially the same thing, but far more accurately. The only difference is we take the price and refactor into a visual form easier for the machine to read. Imagine the accuracy if the Human had to read the bar code instead and remember the item associated with it.

Shouldn't it be Building not Builds. It won't be completed until 2020.