I have to agree, the fact that this is a WSJ article makes me curious about the possibility that this is a Toyota-paid-for damage control article. Especially due to the FRBNY/WSJ editing scandal exposed by ZeroHedge last week. I expect this is a PR attempt by Toyota to discredit the lawsuits in the eyes of the general public and counter their dropping sales figures.
Unless this diagnostic system is completely separate from the drive-by-wire system, this isn't pertinent information.
I have heard another option for the origin of consciousness. True or false, the theory goes that every neuron has a micro-consciousness when it is not busy and the more neurons a thing has that are not busy with things like heartbeat and breathing the more conscious that thing is.
There are a few systemic issues preventing this from happening, but otherwise it would be a great idea for apple.
1) The Chinese people are impoverished by the Chinese government and kept that way by the dollar peg.
2) People in China would kill to be paid what we call minimum wage here in the USA... that is, if they were allowed to have guns.
3) The main expense in a modern manufacturing operation is not manpower but rather the automation in the manufacturing facility itself.
4) Most of the know-how to build these factories and the companies that manufacture automation equipment are located in China.
5) Making iphones in the USA would probably cost 5x as much as making them in China, and at most Americans would pay 20% more to have a "Made in USA" stamped on the iphone.
I would like to respectfully say that this article is only superficially appealing and therefore not proper for HN. This is just a hypothesis without mathematical basis. All you really need to read is the last few paragraphs to see that there isn't any mathematical rigor to it. This is a whole article about speculation about gravity, and it wastes a lot of time trying to hype up a physicist that won't flush out his math.
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/new-york-feds-editorial-inf...