What's wrong with living in a small town? The inevitable vicious tyranny of at least one of the majority/plutocracy/theocracy/whatever, small towns are not healthy places for people who don't match the middle of the local bell curve and (at least in the US) are usually rigidly stratified

I remember helping put this on-line the first time in '97. At that time the unclassified version was a subset of the much larger classified version

Google became the Ruler of Search back in the day because it had two big things making it distinct from the many other search engines of the times:

1. Small clean text ads that were separate from the search results
2. PageRank -> how trusted and valid a page's data was in relation to a search term

PageRank was multiple algorithms rolled up together and it evolved over time to combat SEO and keep data results honest.

Google has of course ditched these two things completely

AI has a proven track record of making shit up. Medical AI could be possible IF and ONLY if they restrict the training data to trusted and verified medical sources. Otherwise you'll get medical "opinions" from some rando on reddit or tumblr mixed into the underlying model

I'm fairly certain that at my reading speed I'd get RSI from clicking "next paragraph" so often. I dislike the kindle already for forcing me to "next page" so much because the displayed page size is so small and this looks to be a 1/4 of that at best.

The article mentions "business fund the acquisition of PCs that their staff use", nah that's not how this will work. Simply pass the cost onto the worker as a new "employee tax", with minimum specs and upgrades no longer coming out of the company's pockets. MBAs will love this idea, IT will cry in a dark corner

I don't know about that. I decided to be a computer programmer (AKA software developer) when I was in 8th grade in 1980. Enlisted in the Air Force as a computer programmer in 85 and I've been developing software ever since.
TBF I did start out on mainframes, but haven't touched one since 88-89 timeframe. Of course I started doing web based stuff around 1992 ...

Various studies have shown that tailgaters and aggressive drivers CAUSE accidents and traffic jams, even (or possibly especially) if they don't get in accidents themselves. If the default device behavior here causes drivers to tailgate less to keep the device from showing them warning lights all of the time, that's an even better effect!
 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Force_Technical_Applications_Center knows how to get a LOT of data out of seismometer ...

I worked at AFTAC in the 80's, and they've been able monitor this stuff since the 70's.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Force_Technical_Applications_Center

*laugh* Austin is just as ageist. Couldn't get a job last go round till I dyed the gray, then I got two offers.

This! So very much this!