Without oil, we lack lubrication for mechanical things, plastic for wire covers, and many other things besides energy. Why, Red Dye 5 is petroleum based, and I don't see that getting banned anytime soo... oh. There may be (more recent) plant-based options for the dye, but plastics and lubricants made from petroleum usually have a much longer lifespan.

Nostalgic

Government sponsored lotteries are worse than a tax. There are whole departments set up using most of the lottery income to pay staff and advertising budgets. How much of the lottery profit goes to pay for things the community needs, like say... help for gambling addiction?
You could add a line on your state's tax form saying "donate a dollar to X fund" and net more money, even if only 5% checked the box, but i suppose someone's friend would lose their job in the lottery commission.

How will we know it's fake if it doesn't make us pause to consider our life choices?

Instead, hire a post-AGI ethicist, post-AGI epistemologist, and other philosophers. What is a research scientist going to do without empirical data except spew forth untestable hypotheses? And once you can test the societal effects of post-AGI, the cat's out of the bag. Science isn't always the peak of useful discourse. Sometimes philosophy gets to rear its ugly head (even the best physicists are doctors of philosophy).

We've moved on VMWare. It wasn't us. It was you. We won't even short your stocks. Goodbye.

Consulting gigs can largely be replaced by AI and that would be an incredible cost savings.

Are there any AI logicians with anything to say about that?

How many of those million users are AI training programs?

Photo radars are a reactive measure. If the goal is safety, and also eliminating carelessness and inattentiveness which we've ALL done, governors make the best sense as a proactive safety measure to save lives.

As far as cops, you have it backwards: Th static limits on any given road by our infallible authoritative experts following "The Science" in government have decided is SAFE, of all people involved, those in public SAFETY, who ENFORCE these perfect limits, should have these devices before anyone else does because they are sworn to uphold the law. For good reason, police chases are becoming less rare because its much harder to hide. The more we leave it up to machines to set the boundaries than a Barnie Fife with an attitude selectively enforcing the law, I'm actually for speed governors.

Manual driving is going to become very expensive soon because of the liability involved. I'd gladly give up driving if fleets of cars were autonomous. It allows much higher safer top speeds.

Filing a patent does not require a lawyer. I am not a lawyer or patent agent and have written patents for my own inventions. But I'm not a typical inventor. I've worked with lawyers to review thousands of patents and have worked with them to write dozens, including doing the drawings and drafting claims.

But with that said, it's incredibly difficult and time consuming, so usually wise to use a lawyer. Which costs anywhere from $5000 to $20,000. So saving a couple hundred dollars in filing fees doesn't mean much.

Especially if you start dealing with responses, international filings, maintenance fees, etc. Then you better budget $10,000 to $250,000 or more.

As someone who has filed with large corporations, small, and micro, it's kinda hard to miss. It's a box you can check on the payment options.

You don't have to defend a patent against infringement to keep it. That may be sorta true for trademark, but is not true for patents. "Defend against infringement" isn't even a thing. A patent holder can chose to enforce or not enforce their rights as the patent holder as they see fit, They can enforce absolutely, selectively, or not at all. Immediately, or delayed.

Pong introduced the very concept of video games to the masses.
You'd be hard pressed to find someone who didn't know what Pong was. Even youngsters today are familiar with it as a historical curiosity.

If this were universally true, we'd never watch Firefly.