I was told at the very beginning that I get X GB data at max speed and then unlimited data at a reduced speed after my cap had been exceeded.

People like to have sex. Having a robot baby isn't going to deter people from having sex... but it may make some people desensitized to the downsides of being an ill-prepared parent.

What a stupid story. So Nest wants to reduce demand artificially and take credit (carbon credit... financial credit) for doing so. The "power plant" concept comes in their spin saying, "Removing demand is just like increasing supply. Effectively."

Agreed! I can see the name and the icon is immediately relatable to the name!

1. First, they've had test vehicles. Test vehicles that aren't good enough to launch as fully "self-driving" yet or else they'd be knee-deep in the legal questions already. I can say that I'm developing a rocket booster in my backyard, but until I can approach its intended function to the point where I feel comfortable selling it, the product doesn't exist. It's all concept and research with no real deadline. So, as I said, without more tech and legal solutions, it's still speculation.

2. Yes, very expensive. Some panels are cheap, but panels cleanly sourced are expensive and it doesn't matter how efficient future panels cost if you sink the cost today. Moreover, most people that invest in rooftop solar end up doing it through a leasing process which means selling the home becomes more complicated. Batteries are still a **very** dirty storage method (dirty to make, dirty to recycle/dispose) that adds to the cost of the energy ecologically and financially. There's a reason there hasn't been a boom in full-sized solar and wind plants/farms -- they don't make fiscal sense. The power companies would be all over them if there was a method to make it work with current infrastructure.

3. It's all prediction based on precedence.

11. No, SpaceX has *said* they *plan* on sending a manned mission to Mars within a decade. There's no reason (at all) to believe the plan will come to fruition. Elon has said he'll build an EV for the masses, send people to Mars, send people at hundreds of MPH down a pressurized tube, make automated vehicles that would make obsolete transit, etc.

For the record, I know that I sound like an absolute humbug. It's not my goal to be a humbug, but I feel that it's necessary to nip some of the hyperbolic enthusiasm in the bud. Tech hype, in my experience, only serves to help people stuff their heads in the sand and ignore existing problems that could be eased or even solved today with existing technology. Instead, people like to ignore it all and say, "Technology will save us." So, I'll go down the list again and point out what we could do TODAY to achieve similar results...

1. Self-Driving Cars: The goal is to ease traffic and reduce traffic collisions. We can do this by better facilitating transit and increasing the minimum driving age to 21. We should require automatic braking (a today tech!) in every vehicle where airbags are required.

2. Clean Energy: The goal is to ease global climate change. To do that, we can use nuclear power with breeder reactors and keeping building rooftop solar and windfarms where they make sense.

3. Virtual and Augmented Reality: The goal is to have an immersive experience where one isn't. Embrace the porn/games market. Hopefully someone will make something more useful out of it, but don't shy from the true buyers-in.

4. Drones and Flying Cars: The purpose is to reduce delivery and surveillance expenses (drones) and travel more quickly on demand (flying cars). There's not much you can do to further reduce delivery expenses, honestly. That's commerce. I don't think any private person wants to be watched more. And quick, on-demand travel should be the alternative transportation to transit being the standard option.

5. Artificial Intelligence: The goal is to think less for ourselves because we're wrong about things. This is a bad goal. Drop this goal.

6. Pocket Supercomputers for Everyone: There is no goal here. It's just a pat on the back.

7. Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains: The goal here is to avoid surveillance and, if that's the case, then why support drones?

8. High-Quality Online Education: The goal here is to make education easier for the entity responsible for providing education. However, education is hard because people are complex and the job of an educator is more complex than people realize. We can improve everyone's quality of life if we focused more on educating the underperformers and less on those who perform well regardless. It's called improving from the roots up instead of the leaves down.

9. Better Food through Science: The goal here is to make more food in less space. We're already doing this.

10. Computerized Medicine: The goal here is to end medical pain and suffering. We can do that today in MANY WAYS if we actually valued people in other countries. Instead, the goal may actually be to reverse the effects of luxurious living (obesity, gout, colon cancer, etc.). The real solution is prevention.

11. A New Space Age: The goal here is righteous-- to learn more. But it will be a slow go for the next 50 years if we don't sort out other issues first.

LOL. We are of a similar mind:

"The Eye" - This is creepy and much too reminiscent of Big Brother. And the color scheme screams of Norton AntiVirus.
"The Connector" - This looks like the very long history of very bad Olympics logos. Bad shapes, confusing, weird colors. It would not be immediately associated with a "web browser".
"Open Button" - This is better, but reminds me of the many audio/media players with last track, pause, and next track button. This would be a great logo if Firefox were WinAmp.
"Protocol" - This is cool, but confusing to the uninitiated. It's kind of like the inside joke of "Slashdot.org"-- when someone would ask you the website address, you would say "H-T-T-P-Colon-Slash-Slash-Slashdot-Dot-Org".
"Wireframe World" - Nope. Too much empty space for too little communication.
"The Impossible M" - Maybe if the patterns weren't so late 90's computing retro and the M wasn't so wide. It has to be an icon, right?
"Flik Flak" - This looks like a marketing logo for an architecture firm using a default color scheme from the Microsoft Office suite.

1. Self-Driving Cars: If the tech and legal issues ever get sorted, it can be great. But that's nowhere near happening, so the hype machine needs to continue to roll to continue bringing in new investors.

2. Clean Energy: Very expensive and requiring massive diversity of investment. Wind and solar (the big "new" players) are not for every environment. Moreover, there has only been minimal gains in the grid balancing act required to make use of these intermittent energy sources.

3. Virtual and Augmented Reality: Porn and games. For all other applications, it would just be too much of a distraction.

4. Drones and Flying Cars: Drones come with MASSIVE safety and privacy risks. Flying cars are and always will be BS.

5. Artificial Intelligence: Always just around the corner.

6. Pocket Supercomputers for Everyone: If we can designate smartphones supercomputers because they're as powerful as supercomputers once were, then I am the smartest man on Earth (by comparison to pre-Enlightenment Europe).

7. Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains: Until there's a means of securing cryptocurrencies in peoples' hands, they will never gain sufficient faith for widespread usage. Until then, they're just volatile niche currencies.

8. High-Quality Online Education: Online Education will be crap until you can figure out a way to use it to consistently educate the lower socio-economic ranks. Until then, we're going to continue to NEED to require them to physically show up to a classroom with humans adjusting to the needs of the students.

9. Better Food through Science: This is the past. We've been doing this for hundreds of years.

10. Computerized Medicine: Which will be useless unless our social policies surrounding the relationships between medical costs and medical profits aren't addressed.

11. A New Space Age: This is where the drones comes in. Today's governments are spending more money on keeping their populations healthier and prolonging lives. As they invest more, there will be less money for exploration (and 99% of exploration is funded by governments). It is, and will continue to be for a long time, to just send drones to do our exploration for us.

Elon has lots of goals. Lots and lots of goals. Eventually, he'll accomplish one of them. Hopefully. Because a lot of tax money has been invested in his goals and that'd be really disappointing if nothing permanent came of it.

But in this case, not only is the customer paying, but other people are as well. A single Level 2 charging station with two ports costs $5,000-$7,000. Add to that the cost installation (variable depending on the amount of trenching) and the cost of electricity and you get actual cost. That either comes from somewhere. And if the customer's not paying anything, then everyone is paying something.

I read the title as saying, "... Faster Processor and Better Waterboarding" and didn't blink an eye. I thought to myself, "Well, at least it's getting better."

We'll probably see these stories highlighted non-stop until some sort of legal decision is made on the liability of the actions genuinely autonomous vehicles. Google, Tesla, and everyone else working on the tech will need constant need investor support and public reaction to happy stories otherwise they'll have to face the real question of liability.

The problem at hand: It doesn't matter how many people a car's autonomous driving doesn't kill, what matters is the number of people it fails to save. The same rule applies to humans: People cannot defend negligent or murderous actions by a listing of all the people that they didn't kill. What matters is harm committed, not harm evaded.

Moreover, can any company survive the of full liability of the loss of more than a few lives? Over 30,000 people per year are killed on American roads. Even if autonomous vehicles reduced that to 10,000 people per year (a 66% reduction!), their manufacturers/programmers would still be responsible for the death of 10,000 people! What industry could survive that liability? That many civil law suits?

The driver of an automobile has a responsibility of care on the road. This is why ALL pedestrians must be yielded to in the road regardless of clothing, time of day, type of vehicle being driven, or if the pedestrian is jaywalking or crossing legally at an intersection. "Did you see the pedestrian before you struck him and thus maliciously assault him with your motor vehicle or were you negligent of your duty of care?" These automated braking systems are there to make up for when negligence would have resulted in damage to person or property.

Actually, many states do require this. It's called an "audible warning" and can be a bell, horn, or voice saying, "Passing on your left." It's up to the bicyclist to use the warning. If collision results from the lack of warning, the bicyclist can be held liable for negligence.

Very much this. I'm actually in the market for replacing a large number of small (Ford Ranger) and medium (Ford F-150) pickups with trucks using more sustainable fuel tech. I'll take a simple hybrid, but would prefer a plug-in hybrid or pure electric if possible. And you're right. They don't exist yet. Drinkypoo is talking out his arse. Similarly, I think Musk is talking out his arse and creating hype to bolster stock prices.

Not 100% true. John Zimmer, founder of Lyft, actually have a real rideshare platform before selling it to Enterprise (car rental, vanpool, etc.) to focus on Lyft. Zimride, as it was called, was widely adopted by a number of cities and university campuses to facilitate carpool matching with the option of reimbursement. Lyft was founded to make money.