wbrinkley

Reminds me of a story a contractor told me: he was building a multi-million dollar house in Hawaii as a second home for a very wealthy California couple. He said they made the kitchen exactly the same as their other house. Same appliances, same cabinets, all the exact same dishes and silverware, all in the same drawers. People like what they like, and when you're hung over and reaching for the coffee cups in the morning, you know exactly where to find them.

Xenses Park near Cancun, Mexico, also has a great illusion with water appearing to flow uphill - it's very disorienting: https://youtu.be/c8v_CJtYjCI (Water mentioned around 2:10)

Nothing to do with the Leidenfrost effect, just interesting!

Tesla frequently talks about platooning when touting their Semi. "Self-driving" by almost blindly following a human-driven lead vehicle doesn't seem that far off. But I'm not looking forward to the day when I see a "train" of semi trucks speeding down the interstate only a foot or two apart from each other!

This. An unoccupied car should be able to find a parking spot at the mall or in a parking garage, or go from the airport terminal to the "economy" or "cell phone" lot by itself. And come back and pick me up. If it gets stuck, the app on my phone should alert me to come to the rescue.

The plane didn't leave the ground - the engine blew up as we were accelerating for takeoff. That's now something I now find reassuring: takeoff seems to be a time of maximum stress on the engines - if they're going to break (or explode), hopefully it will be before the plane leaves the ground!

This was 20+ years ago now, but I remember being awed by the performance of the pilots and flight attendants. The plane braked hard right after the explosion, so the pilots clearly noticed it and took immediate action, even though I heard later that people in first class were so far away they didn't initially know why takeoff was aborted. In the moments that followed, one pilot was giving first aid and I saw him run down the aisle - blood on his hands and shirt - to get more help and medical supplies. Yet he was calm and professional throughout.

Some people yelled to "stay calm" or "don't panic", and people listened. Announcements were clear when there was no further danger and how we were to exit.

We were kind of dumped in the terminal at the end of it all, though. I remember an announcement that there were no additional flights that day, so we couldn't get rescheduled until tomorrow. Seriously? There were ambulances, news vans, and Red Cross vans at the terminal almost immediately. The airport was clearly completely closed down - I don't know for how long. And no baggage claim, of course: it took about a week to get our luggage back.

In the weeks that followed, the FAA sent a questionnaire that was extremely detailed. They wanted essays about every aspect of the flight and it took a long time to complete.

A couple of years later, I was on a cruise and met a young pilot who'd just got his first job with an airline. I mentioned this experience, and he said, "No kidding! We totally studied that accident in school!" I find that very reassuring... aviation seems to learn from mistakes and experience better than any industry I've worked in.

There's better advice here than thinking about the odds of a crash, but if that helps, you could also factor in the odds of actually dying in a crash - not just being in one - because that's even rarer.

I was on a plane that experienced an "uncontained, catastrophic turbine engine failure" (Delta 1288) that killed two people a few rows behind me. It was traumatic, and I rented a car and drove home instead of flying, but it wasn't long before I was regularly flying again. Physically, I was completely unharmed, and I got to experience safely leaving a plane through an over-the-wing exit. I learned that even in a worst-case scenario, people can and do survive.

Flew it once myself, must have 1986 or 1987. Some of the same memories:

- Not just tiny, but claustrophobic: seemed like it had about 30 or 35 rows, so if you were in the back it was like looking down a long too-narrow tunnel.

- The force, and the speed, of takeoff and landing. Ridiculously fast compared to today.

Plus:

- The view out of the too-small window: it was late morning, but the sky was a dark blue and you could see a couple stars. Also, I thought I could see a slight curve of the earth. As close to space as I'll ever come, I suppose!

- Steve Martin and at least four other people I vaguely recognized were on my flight.

- They offered (I think for free) transfers to LaGuardia or the World Trade Center by helicopter. I really regret not doing that!

- And I remember being underwhelmed by the "Mach 2" speed: other than the flight being only a little over three hours, it didn't "feel" fast in the air at all.

I forget how it much cost, but I remember using frequent flier miles to upgrade to Concorde from a paid first class ticket.

They do: see http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/creating-world%E2%80%99s-bes...

"Tesla is building a fleet of top of the line Model S loaners. These will not be our basic model – they will be state of the art with all the best features and options." And it's available for immediate purchase, of course.

And, "customers in most markets will have the choice of taking home one of our Tesla Roadster sports cars when their car is in for service."

Perhaps the future lies more with the "something you have" form of authentication than the "something you know", like passwords, that this article complains about.

For example, Google's two-factor authentication seems very secure, even with a weak password. To log in, I need to enter the ever-changing six-digit number off my iPhone as well as my regular password. Similar to this are other schemes which use any SMS-capable phone: enter your username and password on the web site, then enter the word the system just texted to me. Some banks use this to secure the addition of a new electronic bill payee, for example.

If you think about it, password safes, client-side SSL certificates, SSH private keys, etc., are really all just "things you have."

Computers aren't getting any slower; the gap between what you can remember and what they can guess is only getting smaller.