Besides, isn't it ultimately the Judge who determines the sentence, not the jury? Maybe it varies on the type of case and such but my point is the same.

Many places in the US require a jury to affirm a capital sentence.

I don't know what the deal is in full with that -- whether that's because it's considered Constitutionally-mandated, whether you need unanimous agreement, how common that is, etc. -- but the death penalty is a special case (and it's also the only case discussed here).

Well, on the plus side, 90% of them are already dead...

There are schemes like ZipCar that give you access to one of a fleet of cars for short periods. It wouldn't be much of a stretch to extend this to self-driving vehicles. I don't see taxi companies that have human drivers competing with ones that don't - the driver is a significant part of the total cost.

Yes, I too find it difficult to believe that a vehicle using sensors with centimetre precision on nearby obstacles and penetration through rain and fog, direct feedback from the wheels as to current grip levels, the ability to control the angle of the wheels to a single degree or better, and sub-millisecond response controller times, could possibly be better than a human.

Every morning, I turn on my shower and let potable water run down the drain while I wait for the it to heat up. The fact that I have hot running water, and can afford to let potable water go to waste like that without much thought places me not just in the wealthiest 10% of people currently alive, but in the wealthiest 1% of people who have ever lived. Spending a moment pondering that in the morning makes you feel very lucky to be born into a society that can take such things for granted.

Microsoft's ad business is a tiny fraction of their total income though. They could easily afford to lose it. Google couldn't.

Most pizza delivery motorcycles have a large enclosed box on the back that can hold a stack of pizzas. It's thick, insulated, plastic and so keeps them warm. You seem to be missing the grandparent's 'like the rest of the world' comment when you say that motorcycles 'just wouldn't work'. They do in a lot of places...

Given the amount of effort that Microsoft puts into killing competitors, and the hostility between Apple and Google, I'm surprised that IE and Safari don't come with ad blocking out of the box. Making sure IE users never saw Google ads would would hurt Google's revenues a lot more than anything else Microsoft has done.

As I recall, the FDIC limit protects individuals, not accounts. You are insured up to that limit as the total of all of your accounts, not per account. You'd need to split your money between different banks. Even then, the FDIC payout isn't immediate, so you still have the problem of companies losing liquidity.

Most people don't, but most companies do. The FDIC limits are pretty low and it's quite easy for a month's payroll for a medium-sized company to be over it. How many people would have suffered if their employers had suddenly not had enough liquid capital to cover their salary? How many businesses would have closed if they'd been unable to purchase anything for a few months?

Most cybersecurity jobs are in the private sector and don't require security clearance. They're related to ensuring that commercially sensitive information stays private (employees don't wander off with copies, competitors don't hack in, and so on). A lot of it is the same sort of task as the non-cyber variant: checking that the systems you think are secure really are, investigating when they're not, designing policies to make sure that they remain so if they are.

Thanks, I got these titles from thomas.loc.gov and it didn't occur to me that they wouldn't be the official titles.

If you're asking an art professor about HCI, then you're doing it wrong. Try looking over in cognitive psychology for people who can give useful input.

The models were randomly arranged and it was like "if you want the sunroof, you have to get the leather seats" with cars

Wat? To my "PC"- and desktop-byased eyes, Apple has those kinds of things all over the place:

1. Want a big monitor for your iMac? You need a more powerful processor too. Want a more powerful GPU? You need a bigger screen.
2. Want a 7200 RPM or >1TB hard drive or 1TB SSD in your iMac instead of 5400? You need a 27" screen instead of 21.5"
3. Want a 1TB HDD or an SSD instead of a 500MB HDD in your Mini? You need a Core i7 instead of Core i5
4. Want a quad-core CPU in your Macbook Pro instead of dual-core? You need a 15" screen instead of 13".
5. Want >256GB SSD in your Macbook Pro? You need a faster CPU too

I love how people don't price in size, weight, or battery life. Those things are free, right?

They aren't free, but for lots of people they're less expensive than money.