"Fusion isn't some magic free energy source" - true, but that's like saying that fire isn't some magic heat source... it may as well be for a caveman. Of course fuel is the major cost of energy, see for example coal, gas, nuclear. Renewables are a different case, but the amount of energy is typically orders of magnitude less, so the "fuel" cost (not sure how that would be defined) is negligible compared to the equipment, but there is going to be a maximum amount of energy to be extracted that doesn't scale up - i.e. you can't just throw more coal onto the fire, you're stuck with the amount of sunlight, wind, wave energy, etc. that you have. Vertical gardens would cause more damage than mega-farms? why? Energy has a lot to do with dumping their garbage, although I do think it might have an opposite effect to the GPs suggestion (more energy, more waste produced)

It feels like I just read your post the other day.
Really, contrast? I think there is an element of advertisers wanting their ads to look legitimate - there are many competing interests. I can still tell the ads on google, maybe because I'm young enough. That is not quite enough for me to consider google evil.
DRM - drm still sucks, will continue to suck, and I don't see the end any time soon. I don't blame Chrome from DRM, I don't get why you do, other than saying that chrome is going to make sure that netflix works?
agreed that the web is owned by the corporates, and pretty much everything else is owned by the corporates...
It's simpler than people 'believing in "open" and "do no evil"' - people use whatever is available and good enough for what they need. You don't have to believe in Google to benefit from gmail.

I'd say that this is well underway. Our wealthiest and most popular people are far removed from the people that perform the most "work", especially in a more conventional use of the word work.

I'd pay $10 a month - the problem is this: I know that if they charged $10 a month, most people would leave, and the email service would stagnate. The whole reason gmail is the best is because they have so much continual improvement. As soon as that stops, I'm going to move on to the new best thing. I did that when MS stopped being the best, and I will when google does as well. At the moment, I think the best thing going is Google Apps, running in Chrome, on a Macbook Pro. I'm not religious about it, I just haven't found anything I like better. I'm open to change though.

While we're sharing, the part that annoys me is:

No it isn't... acclimation is when something settles in to new surroundings, it has nothing to do with ability to notice changes.

This is wrong - there will be new jobs. Think of it like any other advancement - increases in efficiency will make new possibilities and we will have even more to do. The jobs that can be automated can go away, and there will still be plenty to do. When was the last time some time saving advancement gave you more free time? Examples that come to mind are interstate highways, air travel, telecommunications, copy machines, printing presses, etc. These big advancements all disrupted what was there before, but it is never like "Hey, now that we can print these books on this press, we don't need monks to transcribe books anymore, we can just wake up, live with family, go to bed, repeat"

I'm with you on every point except J.J. Abrams - I think he is great. Granted, I was a fan of Lost.

First off, I admire this effort and the choice of MIT license, but I am also wondering whether the source is already available to anyone who plays the games, since they are run on the client? Am I missing something?

what about generators that run off of cigarette lighters? Here's my attempt at a calculation:
Butane lighter ~ 70kJ (http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100426110511AAIvSgM)
hmm... I also see 600J, here (http://cadlab6.mit.edu/2.009.wiki/anchor/index.php?title=Butane_cigarette_lighter)
which is it???
assuming 50% efficiency, that leaves 35 kilojoules = 9.7 Wh
or from the second reference 300J = 0.083 Wh
the iPhone 5 has 5.45 Wh battery...

I never am able to get a straight answer - if you put out a popular indie game, for example, and you decided to make it free and ad supported, for example, let's say you get 100k people to download it, and 10k people are playing it regularly what kind of money do you make? $100/month, $1000/month, $10k/month? anybody know?

I completely agree about the speaker cables - and while I don't have enough money to spend $1000 on a bottle of wine to know for sure, I do think that there is a psychological phenomenon similar to a placebo effect that actually makes drinking the expensive wine more pleasurable. Here's some cool research: http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/research/baba_wine.html
You're still probably right about stroking ego, but if I had billions of dollars, I might try the $1000 bottle. :)

don't judge people by their titles, judge by behavior, if you must judge. It doesn't sound to me like he/she has anything to be ashamed of.

It's nice to see checks and balances. I wondered what happened to those.

You don't sound like you were trying to be malicious, but didn't you consider not snooping on other peoples machines? I still like the idea of having unlocked doors and not needing security systems on houses, etc. I expect other people to have a moral compass and not walk in and go through my stuff. I get your point, but I wish you would elevate your mentality to where you aren't violating peoples privacy and feeling justified because they didn't actively prevent you from doing it.

Which programming languages will be the most influential for progress towards the singularity? Will there be particularly important methodologies? (i.e. object-oriented, functional, asynchronous, whatever you call Lisp, strongly (or not) typed, etc. )