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While nothing has come from many (probably most) ICOs, there are certainly some great examples of "cool business ideas" which are being realised thanks to the ICO.
I appreciate your analogies but there is not evidence in the article to suggests that police and investigators are being replaced by automated systems.
Data such as this can be used to eliminate a lot of the investigative work which usually goes into law enforcement.
Are you familiar with a police lineup? Police detain a selection of suspects based on various characteristics and ask witnesses to select the perpetrator, who may or may not be present at the lineup.
Neither a police lineup nor facial recognition are accurate or reliable when used alone, but when used in combination with other facts, tools, and resources an arrest can be made with increased speed and confidence.
I disagree. There are some ways in which GET can be non-idempotent, such as pageview counters and endpoints with a vast amount of constantly-changing content, for instance. One may argue that the first example may be possible with a GET followed by a POST, but any subsequent GET response (assuming it contains the counter) would still be different to its prior.
Thailand does not require registration, but authorities prevent travelers from re-entering shortly after their stay (cracking down on "visa runs") which has caught some tourists/nomads off guard. The strictest punishment is banishment for a maximum of 10 (IIRC) years.
Like China, Japan requires registration with the local city office if you are staying with a long-term visa. Although it should be noted that China applies this to all visa types whereas Japan allows tourists to stay without registration. Failing to register with the local Japanese city office can result in banishment.
As with registration in China, you are not told this information upon entry of these countries. If you blindly travel you will be caught out (and usually punished). However, asking around and doing the research before you travel can prevent that from happening.
When you break the rules (intentionally or not), you're taking a risk. Some people get off unnoticed whereas others learn the hard way. Ask people familiar with the country and its laws before arrival and plan your trip properly.
It is entirely the traveler's responsibility to understand the requirements for stay and local laws of a foreign country. Ignorance can only get you so far.
The immigration officer – who has absolute power over entry – neither asked anything unreasonable of him nor made any false accusations. This is despite the reporter technically having broken the law. He got off lightly, since the fine for not registering within 24 hours after arrival can be up to $300.
Personally, I was held overnight in a cell in KIX (Osaka International Airport) because after 6 hours of back and forth interviews, I couldn't provide a convincing enough reason for working for a Japanese company (my own company) without the correct visa. This was entirely due to miscommunication but something that would have been obvious – and easily remedied – had I consulted the right people. Fortunately, I was granted conditional entry the following morning. Though despite the inconvenience, the officers and warden were extremely pleasant and very accommodating.
This is probably the most textbook spin I've ever seen. It's as if their PR firm didn't even try.
These robots are obviously being deployed to increase margins.
Personally I would have went for the "adding more value" angle, either by suggesting to the customer that "Your favourite product is more likely to be on shelves", or positioning these robots as "helpers" to shelf-stackers.
I develop a subscription service which launched in January and now has ~9,000 MAUs. This above metric accounts for ~10% of "new" subscribers each month, despite not yet making an effort (such as by sending reminder or "sorry" emails) to re-capture them.
The post does make a good point about retaining existing users, though.
I would like to add that we saw MAUs spike when redesigning the cancellation process to be more thankful and apologetic than spiteful. (Being a service for Japanese users, we included a little "thank you bow" animated character at the end of the process.)
One more point – our cancellations for the first days of the month often come close to outnumbering new users. We have concluded that the reason for this is that users 1. perform their financial housekeeping around this time, and 2. find a low-numbered charge date easier to remember.
Second of all, correct me if I am wrong, but you do not seem to be factoring in your time (16 working days) or any kind of opportunity cost required to produce the content?