Self-driving cars  Tags: randomthought, other, real life.
How much would you pay for a self-driving car? I'll let you think about that for a minute. Myself, I'd pay about all the money I could spend on it. The idea fascinates me and it really seems like an awesome future.

Not only will self-driving cars get you from A to B without having to drive, it will also prevent about a million deaths every year due to car crashes. It will likely solve all our traffic jam problems. It will make traveling by car faster because we no longer need speed limits for our slow human reflexes.

Copyright  Tags: real life, writing, other.
Copyright is a funny thing. You have it, without asking for it or telling anyone about it. You can even have it on pseudonyms. And if someone copies your work, well good luck making the distribution undone. Last year the Dutch copyright law became 100 years old, but we're still living by its rules.

What I wonder is why people still put ©<?=current_year;> below their work. It's not legally binding for anyone in any way, it doesn't help protect your content, and it's often very inaccurate.

Bitcoin  Tags: privacy, security, other.
You know laws and banks right? Financial constructions, interest rates (the magic multiplication of your money), inflation (the magic disappearing of your money), etc. Transferring money across borders is subject to taxes that I don't even know of (why do they mention donations are tax-deducible on Wikipedia and The Internet Archive?), and your bank usually makes you pay a fee.

Paypal partially fixes this, but they are blocked in over 60 countries. Why? Not because of Paypal's own interest surely; the more users they have, the more money they can make.

Why didn't they tell me this during driving lessons?  Tags: real life, other.
There is a "too long; didn't read" at the bottom of this post. In the first paragraph I already get to one of the two points I want to make, but they're both summed up at the end.
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In the category 'good to know': Don't start a car, drive 10 meters, and switch off the engine again (for example to get it out of the way for something). If you do, you might have some trouble starting it next time. It's especially annoying when you want to rob a bank, but on the other hand it can be advantageous against car thieves.

Movies  Tags: real life, other.
Half something I want to share with you, half a note to self if I want to watch a good movie but don't know which. Hereby I proudly *cough* present: A list of great movies!

Note that this is a list-in-progress. It will get updated as I watch more movies or remember other movies I don't remember right now. Also it's a highly subjective list I may put some movies in the wrong order and decide to change it later.