...in fact, there are some pretty clear indicators they already are (see: Netflix). They're playing shell games and trying to obfuscate it, but it's happening. I have no idea how enforceable this will be-- my gut tells me not very.

Interesting aside, I have a Windows 8.1 box at home for gaming-- in the 'news' tile of that start menu (which I left as default), I shit you not, I have seen Trump's face *every single day* for weeks now. Admittedly, I don't use the start menu much, but checking it for this reason has become a curiosity for me. Lately it's become rare for me to see anything *other* than him.

Whoever you endorse for US Prez (if anyone), something is very wrong with any application purporting to tell you what's happening with the human race when it keeps showing you only one of us out of seven goddamn billion.

Yeah, there are zero good or serious options in this poll. Every last one is completely ludicrous...

...which is why I went with 'ban figurative speech and nicknames', because it's unenforceable and least likely to have any real effect.

...not to mention how they still haven't found a good solution for hydrogen tanks becoming brittle over time and requiring replacement.

Such an excellent description of how pragmatism wins out over abstraction purity throughout human history. There is still plenty of value to this.

I would argue, however, that if our species ever reaches anything resembling a 'post-singularity' state (and quite possibly well before then), the value of pragmatism will decline in all but the most esoteric matters.

> If you give addicts enough drugs to OD on, then eventually they will either do that or find a level of addiction which they can manage, or even improve their lives and eventually kick the habit.

That's the whole issue in a nutshell.

Ethanol has already taught us nearly everything we need to know about this. If we are legal adults not under some kind of competency-related guardianship, and we are living in a supposedly free country, there are absolutely no good reasons why we should be punished for altering our consciousnesses as we see fit. Aside from basic safety concerns (i.e. if you have electricity, building codes dictate parameters of its installation, should be the same if you have a laboratory, etc.), it's nobody's business what you do to change your brain waves in the privacy of your own home.

Sometimes I think the conspiracy theorists are right, and our options for exploring our own minds are being limited in order to preserve the power of the elite. Honestly, though, I'm increasingly convinced it's simply yet another clusterfunk of basic human ignorance interwoven with our social structures. With time, I guess we seem to gradually smooth these things out... too much time, it sometimes seems, but oh well.

Yep, a dollar a month for 50 gb, or so I've heard. I can't imagine another contender for their #1 reason to do this.

It's also still a terrible idea, imho.

Having grown up at a time when buy & own was the norm (aside from subscriptions to printed media), I avoid recurring billing like the plague. The world has reminded me of the wisdom in this on a regular basis.

Ditto with anything requiring an internet connection that doesn't *really* need it.

> progress needs to be made in natural language processing, machine vision, and human-computer interaction

Natural language processing on my phone is getting pretty damn good.

I've seen machine vision used on security systems that you might find interesting. The object recognition is quite something-- it catalogs every new thing it sees, tracks it while visible, and is pretty successful at remembering things. Even the ol' Xbone is pretty decent; paired with some Roomba features I would think it could mostly suffice for your basic home robot.

Human-computer interaction is also fairly advanced now. Again, my phone does pretty well with this (and is getting better). Then you have something like Watson, which can actually compete on a game show randomly exploring a huge array of general trivia... yes, it had specialized software written for this purpose, but it shows how a simple, formalized style of language can facilitate a wide range of inquiries.

- - -

The big problem is that all these technologies are proprietary, and the rights to their use are divided among a sea of entities who seem to be addicted to squabbling with each other over short-term monetary anxieties rather than cooperating (must... preserve... teh profitz!!).
Ferengis, the lot of them.

One day, someone will transcend all this, get these existing solutions working together, and build a proper robot.
Until then, every other attempt will seem like a turd in comparison with the features we already know exist *right now* but are locked away in war chests behind medieval fortress walls.

I honestly think we'll see habitable spaces being set up far more affordably and efficiently than ever before in arctic & desert climates within the next 20 years, easily-- and I'd expect a number of them to be self sufficient, at least beyond their initial setup (and some occasional long term maintenance). With all the money and research across numerous fronts being firehosed into energy storage, we'll have the power to get it done. I certainly agree that this is a necessary development before we can think about getting offworld, and I hope to live to see it happen.

If I had been able to obtain a gun a number of years ago when I hit rock bottom, I would no longer be here. I'm still not certain if that's a net positive yet (or even how to define such), but I can tell you that I'm deeply glad for all the great experiences I've had in the time since. I expect this approach will help some people. People like me.

Overpopulation is less of a concern now than it was a few decades ago. For starters, research has shown that people on both ends of the spectrum - the affluent and the abysmally poor - tend to have fewer children. This alone makes the situation somewhat self-correcting.

Beyond that, with advances in technology which make more and more previously inhospitable environments habitable with fewer resources (a necessary development if we're going to spread beyond this planet anyway, an ultimate answer to overpopulation), the issue disappears entirely. I expect that cheaper ways to store energy from already-cheap-and-getting-cheaper solar panels will pretty much put an end to the threat-- indoor temperature & humidity control, lighting (for growing food), water extraction from the air, refrigeration and robotics all get much more affordable under a 'better battery' scenario, something I now see as inevitable given the number of fronts on which that problem is being worked.

Most of the top comments I'm seeing are pointing out the clearly false statement that farming hasn't changed much.

The more interesting thing to me here is the obvious potential for smaller groups of people with smaller amounts of land and money to run much more sophisticated food-growing operations than would otherwise be possible.

If you read the TFA, you might realize that the application of CNC-type tech to maintaining a complex mixed garden and maximizing its output is actually a pretty damn interesting and potentially very useful idea. Decentralizing more of our food production is absolutely essential to increasing our chances of long term survival as a species-- the more time goes on, the greater the likelihood is that a central point of failure (especially in a giant swath of identical plants) will be compromised.

> Nor is it likely to ever happen.

I appreciate the general sense of disgust at humankind's continuous and pathetically predictable foibles from which this remark emanates, but come on now. We have no way of knowing this. 'Ever' is a pretty damn long time.

There are a lot of very intelligent and insightful people who've been saying for a long time that a society without a powerful, centralized authority is the only kind ultimately worth striving for. Personally, I doubt we'll survive as a species unless we accomplish some form of this.

From what I understand, Chic-Fil-A financially supported groups in Uganda that were literally seeking to pass laws allowing for the *execution* of homosexuals solely because of their orientation. So yes, at least indirectly, I equate that with an attack on gay people.

Seriously, TFS could have been taken 60+ years ago, word for word, right out of some pulpy newsstand rag with respectability in the middling range. I mean, it's great stuff, and I'm glad we're adding to the conversation... it's just that the essence of the conversation doesn't seem to have changed much.