"You use batteries and capacitors (or even just other elevators descending at the same time as another is ascending) as your 'counterweight'."

For that to work you need to link them... with a cable. So back to square one.

"It's mostly the counterweight issue, which you can resolve by using electric motors in the cars and large battery banks."

Cuonterweight is there to avoid the need of hugh power-hungry engines, since they only need to lift the load. Take out the counterweight and you will need to lift the whole load requiring a much bigger engine. Put the engine on the car and then you'll need an even biigger engine (much bigger) to lift its own weight too.

"Add in a battery or a flywheel and recover the energy on the way down."

Batteries and engines weight. A lot. You don't want them atop a high building.

"I disagree. I've watched a Blu Ray played on a 50" HDTV at 1920x1080 resolution, and next to it a 50" 4K (3880xwhatever) television was playing some UHD content. The difference in definition was very easy to see from even ten feet away."

On a mall, I bet.

Maybe you are an expert and I'm wrong, but you probably were fooled to think the UHD was better by gaming the controls of both screens.

"the insurer absolutely will think you committed fraud"

Absolutly yes, of course. Heck! they probably default to think there's a fraud even if lacking any evidence.

A very different thing is for them to *demonstrate* there's a fraud or, at least, being a civil case, that it heavily smells like fraud.

"The police will then report that the skid marks indicate that the car must have been travelling at at least 50mph, not the 20mph indicated by the dongle."

And the insured will claim that his coverage is bound to the dongle as per the contract since his anual bill is also bound to it. So, on one hand, the insured will claim the real-time measures from the dongle are correct and, on the other, that even if they are wrong, his coverage and liabilities are bound to the dongle as per contract.

"Sadly diverse fields, but not much diversity in hiring. "

And so, here comes the troll of the week.

"And the excess damage?"

What excess damage? You (the insurance company) have the data, and here is my car. There's no "excess damage", just "damage".

Do you think (the insurance company) that my accident should render less damage? That's not my problem, I'm neither a materials engineer, nor I designed my car.

Do you think I commited fraud? Why do you think so? Maybe because you know your devices are easily hackable? Maybe I should sue you (the insurance company) for puting me at risk for your lack of due diligence.

"So, how can you tell by simply looking whether the catalytic converter is working properly?"

A "mechanic to look" is not just "simply looking". By measuring gases at the exhaust pipe you can know about the catalytic converter's health.

"While "nice guys finish last" is often extrapolated (dubiously) to areas like dating"

There's another adage that outdates this one: "all's fair in love and war" and, in Cervantes' words "Love and war are all one . . . It is lawful to use sleights and stratagems to . . . attain the wished end."

"Some bosses - like Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, or pre-mellowing Bill Gates were legendary assholes and still got great results out of their employees. There are other people who manage their employees with a gentler hand and play to their strengths, and get good results too."

You see how you had no problem to name some sucessful assholes but still didn't provide any name in the "sucessful but very nice" side?

"just remember that - to fight adage with adage - "you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.""

Right. But then, be it either using honey or vinegar, catching all those flies doesn't look like being so nice, once you kill them, don't you think so?

"If you can get an advantage by screwing over someone else, it's not really a fair contest."

Why not? It would unfair if only part of the contenders can screw up the others, but as long as everybody can screw the rest, it's fair. Maybe unethical, but certainly fair.

"A bad deficiency we still are having is that the mail traffic between mail exchange servers is typically unencrypted."

No, it is not a deficiency but a feature as it highlights that anything but end-to-end encryption is pure rubish (and end-to-end encryption is not so perfect considering that at least one of the two ends can be already pwned).

"The thing that you're forgetting is that you could run for office if you think you're so much better?"

Yes, someone could run for office. But would stand a chance without public visibility and media campaign funded by the powers-that-be?

"It didn't lobby the Spanish government to actually do anything"

Well, you are wrong. USA *do* lobby Spanish government: at the very least, the Monsanto, copyright, "free" commerce... cases are fully documented.

"Socialism isn't bad per se, but it has inefficiencies that reduce total wealth creation [...] Think of it as being a pie {...] In most scenarios the average person ends up with more pie"

Let's say I accept all you say. That, in fact, the ability to "produce pies" of northern-europe style socialdemocracies is in fact shorter than that of "free hands" capitalism and that in most scenarios that ends up with "less pie" for the average person.

It seems that current globablized world (and the one in the years to come) is one of those scenarios that make the exception: the average citizen ends up with less pie now, even if the pie is bigger.

"Perhaps the placement of the antenna was a design flaw?"

It doesn't look like. The antenna needs energy to work and the energy comes from the solar panels. Given such a dependency it doesn't seem wrong to make the antenna serviceable dependendant on the solar panels being deployed -with the nice side effect that the panels will somehow protect the antenna at landing.