How many people have died playing Pokemon Go with their nose in their phone instead of their eyes on the world around them? http://pokemongodeathtracker.c... And that's DIRECTLY app related, unlike these vaping related incidents. Oh, wait... maybe it's really not about the deaths but about virtue signaling. That makes more sense.

Had he done all of this without the explicit intent to document and expose his own actions, then yes, you might be able to argue that, however, that isn't the case. Less shocking attempts at demonstrating the absurdity of these journals and the reporting on the studies within them have been tried with very little effect. This was one of the only avenues left for, hopefully, making some progress on this problem.

I'm not sure how government sponsered monopolies = capitalism, but ok...

I know it's a little off topic, but this statement sums up so much of what is wrong with complicated tax laws and our massive regulatory state. If you ever wonder why the big corps seem to stay silent when it comes to hundreds of thousands of lines of tax code and new regulations that would seem to be massively expensive to them, it's because they know those same regulations and laws that are an inconvenience to them are a death sentence to smaller competitors (who might be innovators that our society as a whole need to advance). The small fries then have no choice but to sell out to the larger companies or just shut their doors. It's unfortunate how so many the same people railing against large corporations also support more intrusive government regulations. We certainly need some regulation, but the complexity of running a business these days sets a bar so high that there's no real alternative to larger and larger entities, and that's bad for us all.

I love it when people don't want their devices to connect back to the mothership.. and yet want the ultimate mothership (the federal government) to be in charge of that.

"...it will remain insecure unless government steps in to fix the problem. This is a market failure that can't get fixed on its own."

Are you kidding me? I work for a company that is betting it's future on IoT in the manufacturing and heavy equipment area. I promise you, it's the evil 'ole "market" that is causing us to focus a HUGE portion of our resources on security. How do you figure it isn't in every IoT makers best interest to deliver secure products? They may be failing right now but those that do it right will win in the market. This isn't 2002 when security was an afterthought. Even tech novices are aware of security issues these days and demand it from the companies that supply them.

Show me one time where the government has gotten something like this right! They can't even handle their own security and you want them crafting regulation to manage the security of everyone else? The mind boggles.

Incorrect. The damages to the business of allowing something like that to happen would be a strong and compelling incentive to perform self regulation, which is exactly what Uber was already doing.

Seriously. It would take 10 seconds of research to know that Uber ALREADY does exactly the kind of background check yo complain about them them not doing; and they do this without the government forcing them to do so. Why? Because previous attempts by others in this market failed to take the necessary precautions and for that, and other reasons, are no longer around.

Free and open markets aren't perfect, but they are so much better than the government controlled alternative that I'm constantly stunned with people failing to see the difference, especially with an example like Uber right there in front of them.

KDE has always been my favorite environment. The consistency of things like hotkeys across apps and the ease with which they are changed is awesome. Dolphin and Konsole meet my file manager and terminal needs absolutely dead on and Linux Mint has been simplest to setup KDE distro for years. It's the only linux distro I can install and be 95% productive with after only about 10 minutes of customization - about 10 hotkey changes, and 5 app installations and I'm good to go.

The ability to sell a game back affects not only the willingness to buy more games, but the express ability to do so. Publishers are losing far less to used game sales than they claim. It's the piracy argument all over again. They intentionally only look at the bare surface of a situation.

"mandates a bunch of things that xxxx must do" Ummm.... I'm not sure about you, but when one entity mandates what another can do, that's running it. All regulation of any kind is "running" the thing that is being regulated. Not fully, of course, but the original poster's position about nothing the govt runs functioning correctly or efficiently is completely appropriate. Those entities that lend money aren't fully government run (well most of them; those that are fully govt run are an even better example), but govt mandates regarding loose monetary policy and regulation encouraging lending to unqualified consumers played a big role in the economic crisis we're still facing. Bottom line: that vast majority of the time when the govt sticks it's fingers in something, it's not a good thing. There are some places where a fiscally inefficient govt is still warranted (national defense, possibly education), but those are the exception, not the rule.

but one can see that the potential is there to exploit an eager fan.

That's called a free market. The only time "exploit" can be used to describe letting free markets work is in situations like price gouging during a hurricane something like that. Good grief, folks. If they think it's an unfair price, then by golly, take the 'drastic' step of not buying it. If enough folks buy it at the price offered, then I guess it wasn't too high after all.