They're working on it.

No. No, I'm not.

My bad, but I think it was a reasonable assumption.

If you don't mind me asking, how many cells were in the flashlight?

I assume two, but there I go jumping to conclusions again.

Electronics? Really? Those are just things. They can be replaced.

There's electronics and there's electronics.

Sure you don't care about your computer, TV, DVD player, etc, etc, but you might want to add a crank/solar AM/FM radio, flashlight, spare cell phone and maybe even a battery-operated TV to your stash.

Extra points for a CB or Ham radio.

Depends on whether your flashlights are compatible with lithiums. For example, they will cook a maglight with incandescent bulbs. The bulbs burn out within 10 minutes.

You're thinking of Lithium-Ion batteries which are nominally 3.6V.

Energizer Lithium batteries are 1.5V and are compatible with most electronics that take AA or AAA Alkaline batteries.

this kind of ruling encourages multinationals to never set up business in the USA.

I'm not sure it's quite that bad.

IANAL, but I can imagine a foreign corporation setting up a wholly-owned subsidiary in the USA.

Of course US operations would be subject to legal warrants and subpoenas, but all foreign operations should be outside the reach of US legal authority.

If a warrant is served for data from the foreign operations... sorry, the US subsidiary doesn't have access to it. It doesn't matter how many people they throw in jail for contempt.

But what do I know.

What IS going on:

we are spying on all members of Congress and everyone else.

And it's all legal, according to their interpretation of the law.

You forgot that part.

it makes me more than a little curious what Google plans to do with their new toys.

Well, they already have autonomous vehicles and if they can add autonomy to "Atlas", then they can replace FedEx and UPS package delivery.

Although that's something I'd expect Amazon to experiment with.

Why not produce a liquid electrolyte (charged) and sell it as we do today with gasoline?

If I understand your question correctly, the answer is a fuel-cell.

And yes, they're working on it.

That is, if you're going to send a remotely guided robot to the moon, is a bipedal walker the best choice?

As opposed to a conventional wheeled or even a quadrupedal rover.

I assume a bipedal walker is going to need sophisticated stability control (computational and mechanical) for every step it takes over rough terrain that a simple wheeled vehicle can just roll over.

I'm looking forward to the remake of "Christine" with a truck the size of a house in the title role.

More like a remake of Killdozer.

There's also the PowerPot.

If I were Snowden, I think I'd prefer to have a guarantee of sanctuary somewhere in Europe than a piece of paper.

But that's just me.

Does it have built in storage? If so, how much?

No, but it does have one USB port so you can plug in a USB harddrive or thumbdrive. I understand that some people have connected up to 1TB drives to their S3100.

I have the BDP-S390, which is the previous model, and usually copy videos to a thumbdrive for viewing.

It's also DLNA compatible so you can use any DLNA server on your network to stream pictures, music or videos. Sony has a free DLNA server called HomeStream, which is based on the popular Serviio DLNA server.

One problem is that Sony players are not compatible with all combinations of video file and codec formats. Most of my videos play fine on my S390, a few don't. I don't care enough to figure out why.

I think a PS3 slim is a better console alternative if you want Netflix.

Sony also makes some Blu-Ray players like the BDP-S3100 which is cheaper than a used PS3, but plays Blu-Ray discs (obviously) and streams Netflix (along with all the other on-line streaming services that PS3 handles).

Let's not "dumb down" the issue by making analogies that don't really apply.

Analogies are like scabs. If you pick at them, they bleed.