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.

How my grandparents' home connection got 100x faster than my server's  Tags: computers, real life.
Reggefiber is putting down FTTH connections to most people around here. Much of the network up to the local exchange points is already optic fiber, only now it goes from the local exchange point to your home over fiber. This is quite a massive operation to connect thousands of homes, and at least 30% of the people have to do it to make it worthwhile. Most cities reach 30% and can then choose which ISP they want. Reggefiber just puts down the connection, they don't provide the internet service itself; nevermind that they're 51% owned by one of the ISPs, namely KPN, but on paper they're unbiased.

So my grandparents are almost 80 years old.

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.

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.

Argument against teachers refusing to give you a 100% score  Tags: real life, school.
You certainly know or have heard of this kind of teacher who never gives anyone a 100% score (called A+ I think in America, or a 10 here, or a 20 in France..). It makes no sense you think, you earned that score didn't you?