The civil rights movement was incendiary... and surprising for most segregated white Americans to find out that their neighbors a few miles away were being harmed by that segregation. Separate was not equal. It took acts of mass protest over years and years to get enough attention to that issue to make a difference. Millions of Americans were harmed in the years and years that it took trying to get the word out.

All meaningful political speech falls under the category of "incendiary and surprising". Politics and political speech is literally war by other means.

As long as we are trying to avoid real war and real civil war then we should be trying to allow as much speech, even incendiary speech, as possible.

People can choose their filters, the problem in society is when the filters choose the people.

We are already there. We are outnumbered 6 to 1 by our largest competitor (China). Much more than that if we consider an in-theater scenario. And China has reached near parity in terms of field-able technology... (yes, they have stolen a lot of that to get started, but they also have an advantage in R&D moving forward) only lagging in actually fielded and deploy-able technology.

A good size of our defense budget is eaten up by increasingly vulnerable high tech. All the while our fail-safe of having an armed populace with a hundred million armed citizens ready to repel invaders is being killed by the Democratic Party policies of systematically disarming the populace.

The US is hollowing its capabilities out at home and reliant on a false sense of technical superiority abroad.

I disagree that medicine "will never be automated". Much of what doctors do is to take in a bunch of symptoms and come up with a diagnosis. I would much prefer that could be done in an automated and reproducible way without relying on faulty humans. I know of too many horror stories of people getting sent home from the ER because whichever doctor got 2 hours sleep in the last 48 hours decided their magnificent sleep deprived brain was capable of making a 5 second diagnosis without additional tests.

Facebook can't do anything like that unless the government let's them. Current laws would allow a person to go to court and get damages if a company violates the law and causes harm.

There is a big difference. A government has the authority to use force against people that don't conform to the law. A company can micro target you to know exactly how to sell you cars, pancakes or mobile apps.

However, you are right. If private companies are collecting surveillance data and especially if they are selling that data to third parties then the government doesn't even need a law to allow them to force it from companies. They do enough business with these companies that getting all our information is just a drop in the bucket on a government contract.

Are you watching the same video I am... The problem was that the Tesla did stop for one car backing out and then the other car backed up and hit it from the side. I've seen human drivers do this dozens of times in parking lots over the years.

Stopping and then getting hit by someone backing out of the parking space... clearly the other drivers fault.

Heck, by that definition all cars should be taken off the road, I have witnessed a non-Tesla crash in the last week and I have seen dozens of non-Tesla crashes over my lifetime due to driver's mistakes and/or inclement weather... heck last time I rode a horse it ran me into a tree limb.

Trains and planes are relatively safe, but still have their share of deaths.

We need a better threshold or criteria than 100% safe, especially when we are talking about collision avoidance technology that has the potential to avoid all those crashes, injuries and deaths that people have been made responsible for because of previous technology limitations

Heck more people (and children) are killed or seriously hurt by furniture and TVs falling over in a few weeks than all the accidents with semi-autonomous cars in the last ten years.

Tesla runs into a wall is a man bites dog story. The exception that gets the news because it is the exception... and because people would rather rage against the machine than figure out how to make it safer.

Trying to solve climate change with just solar panels and wind would be an ecological disaster. The mining, refining, materials and transport for supplying enough energy for billions of people is all glossed over by some factions. Nuclear is far far less environmentally destructive, but the same factions speaking most loudly against climate change are many of the same people against nuclear.

We have people calling other people deniers and then themselves denying society the one technology that could actually work to save us from climate change.

We need government to clear the path for a fourfold increase in nuclear in the next ten years. And we need to shift the entire NASA budget (or equivalent) all towards fusion reactor development.

What we don't need is a big government job program for more solar panel sales people going door to door.

Big downside risk to delaying a deal. Scripts being rewritten, characters being left out of movies. Marvel has a good thing going and so far they have done real well with minimal recasts of characters. Keeping the story arcs as entertaining and interesting as possible without the downside distractions.

It makes the absolute most sense from a storytelling perspective to keep Spider-Man going in the Marvel universe at least as long as Tom Holland is in the role.

Unfortunately there is a age component of the character where he is usually in his teens or 20s so if they stick with that then that puts a recasting in the future. And even then they have plenty of opportunity for recasting spider-man within the Marvel Universe with alternative universe versions of the character or successor characters.

Good to see they can keep the collaboration going longer. I think it benefits movie goers, the narrative, the actors and crews and the bottom line for these companies.

Yes, people should have spaces for focus and attention to detail that correspond to their role. If you are 80% coding, spread sheeting, ERP systeming, then give them an office and then enough conference rooms, common rooms and collaborative workspaces for the other 20% time. If they are 20% heads down on the computer then let them work from home one day a week and any old bench will do to park their stuff as they flit between meetings and collaboration spaces the other 80% of the time or they can grab a conference room to make a call or get an hour of heads down in the weeds work.

No. The Constitution is written in the blood and charred flesh of my father. And in the futures of possibility denied the many many sons, daughters and parents of generations of Americans who fought for Liberty.

It is written and rewritten every time someone doesn't remember that Liberty is our birthright and someone has to remind us.

Give Snowden the trial under the conditions he is asking for. Let a jury of peers hear everything he has to say, let America hear what he has to say and then see if there is a unanimous jury to convict.

This is the real issue. Regulatory capture is a big step on the path to monopoly.

What regulation is needed is clear and simple regulations about what data is allowed to be collected without people's explicit knowledge and consent. With an emphasis on pretty much no data, so that it is clear that anyone spying on you without a warrant or an explicit time limited and narrowly scoped agreement from you is committing a punishable crime.

Not seven layers of corporate bureaucracy and reporting without meaningful restriction so that only a company with 50 lawyers and a 30 million dollar legal compliance department can exist and compete.

Microsoft certainly has been tracking users of most of their products and online services, but they have been a heck of a lot less transparent about their practices than Google or even Facebook.

Google is evil and let's you know they are evil... which is what sorta make them good relatively speaking. Even Facebook is on the honest side, but they lost me on that experiment where they were actually trying to see if they could harm their users mental state in a measurable way. I mean pretty much the definition of evil.

Microsoft on the other hand has bought up a good chunk of the Internet's big service providers who are certainly collecting and using user data for a variety of undisclosed business purposes that don't necessarily align with the best interests of their users.

I might agree Microsoft has come a long way since they tried to use their monopoly to completely control or kill the Internet in the 1990s (which stands in my mind as Bill Gates unforgivable offense), but still they are pretty far from being as open about how their business practices might effect their customers as Google (or Apple).

Federal Regulation supersedes state and local laws and regulations. An official Federal app that gives you a 'Good to Fly' might have the effect of Federal regulation and give the user in effect a Federal license to fly that supersedes state and local regulation. Giving the user a literal get out of jail/fine free card if you can convince the judge.

A bit if disservice to drone users to point out the fine print and try and get the FAA to ditch the app.

Federal, state and local laws (not to mention case law) are often a mishmash of conflicting nonsensical hobgoblin which is how lawyers make a living. Very occasionally a catch 22 can create just enough confusion to allow you to slip out the side door.

A quick Internet search: "The elevation of the Fukushima site is approximately 20 feet above sea level, while Diablo Canyon sits on a bluff 85 feet above sea level."

I was about to say this would be dramatically higher than what was seen in Japan, but some areas did see the water run up to a height of over a hundred feet so this is a valid concern. Still, even Fukushima power station could have been fine (and most of their reactors survived) with a more resilient design.