people with prolonged lifespans would probably concern themselves with decisions that currently would have no consequence within their lifetimes. Don't care about (fill in your thing here) because it won't hurt anybody for 150 years? You might think differently if the average lifespan were 450 years. A longer perspective wouldn't hurt us at all.

Probably within the realm of affordable engineering. Fragile, easily wrecked with lots of knock-on economic damage like 9/11. Doubt there's enough adventurous investment capital to get it going within the next couple of decades.

In part, perhaps because 30 years ago the advantages of/needs for large scale efficiency and coordination weren't so great as today? Isolated systems may have higher operations costs and may not efficiently integrate into big systems, but they tend to have few or no remote attack vulnerabilities. Bottom line: economics favor connected systems, and anything on the net can be pwned.

This.

The NSA's activities are not reviewed by publicly accountable parties who do not share the NSA's incentives. There's no review the public can trust.

To pick another important accountability issue, would you deposit your savings in a bank that wasn't independently audited? Would you take that bank's management's word that everything was ok with your money?

Can't see any persuasive argument for trusting the NSA's unaudited self-report.

It isn't that he sees "no harm whatsoever", it's that he sees a worthwhile benefit for the price paid.

For example, our American predecessors decided that the benefit of requiring the state to prove guilt outweighed the detriment of actual criminals' escaping punishment. Doubtless if we reversed the burden of proof and put it on the defendant to prove innocence, we'd jail more criminals. I'm willing to pay the price of doing as we do. Our nation is better for it. Ditto regarding teh terr'ists and panopticon surveillance.

Quite right. Wish I had mod points for you. This is another instance of "follow the money".

Wake me when somebody develops a rechargeable battery with an energy density within spitting distance of gasoline and that's cheap, which I think will not include using lithium, for which we would have to strip-mine Bolivia to serve a fraction of the potential demand for EVs. That will have to be a battery that uses the oxygen in air as half of its electrochemistry.

Basically, we're spoiled by fossil fuels like gasoline, which have the singular advantage that the oxidizer is available everywhere, for free. If my 2006 Rav4 had to carry the oxygen (in non-cryo form) to burn its ~12 gallons of gasoline, I'd probably have payload space for me alone.

A calcium-air battery that could survive a few thousand deep discharge cycles could fill the bill. Maybe another common metal like magnesium, but I'm too lazy to consult the electromotive series right now. Very tough materials science challenge.

Until somebody develops such a battery, I expect electric vehicles to retain their bimodal distribution - either they have a uselessly low range, or they're lifestyle playthings.

Wish I had mod points. Thanks for posting this. Useful.

I have not read TFA yet, will do so later, so my apology if I'm in error, but....

Why the hell are engineers designing, or being allowed to design, a life-critical system like brakes on a car so that the system lacks a direct, non interruptible physical connection between the driver and the brakes? Any mechanism can fail. Putting electronics between the driver and the brakes increases the number of failure modes as well as the probability of failure. State monitoring, fine. Computed intervention that applies the brakes when the car's AI thinks it's necessary, OK. But selling a car that cannot be stopped when the driver mashes the brake pedal? NFW.

This is simply incompetent engineering. Product liability will attach, as it should.

Meanwhile, I know what to investigate and what not to buy for my next car.

General Ripper, is that you?

I agree. If all those who have received National Security Letters had published them and sought legal counsel to respond, it's likely that those letters would have been ruled unconstitutional by now. And maybe that's just my wishful thinking, but it's certain that continued lack of disclosure about these lunatic procedures will foster their wider use.

like the kind that is used sometimes for detecting leaks in glass vacuum systems. Handheld, 50+KV, nice fat 1" air spark discharges to those low voltage chips with their atoms-thick insulating gates. Poof!

Sorry...that should have been "...poorly educated...".

Maybe not hard if one is educated, with a measure of economic security, perhaps belonging to the ethnic group that holds local community power, or simply among those who are good at keeping their heads in stressful situations. Maybe more difficult if one is poorly uneducated, perhaps somebody who both respects and fears authority, who doesn't have much economic cushion that might embolden them to assert their rights because they actually *could* call a lawyer, who has skin color different from the interrogating officers, or is just plain scared of police for whatever reason at the time.

The law has to work even for (and especially for) those who don't know their rights, or who can't for whatever reason of circumstance assert them. Regardless of whether you're scared, intimidated, stupid, ignorant, or disenfranchised, you've got rights under the law. It's better for all of us when that's how our justice system operates.

If authorities can make it sufficiently complicated to assert your rights effectively, then effectively you don't have them.