"Actually, I find most flamebaits to be insightful. I will always mod them insightful because they provoke heated discussions which I enjoy reading. "

You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.

"I predict within 24 months this plant will be shut down. Write it down. This is just more bullshit left wing crap that someone somehow got funded. "

I get my electrical power since a dozen years from such a waste to power plant and I'm not even in Canada.

Hell, lots of European countries can't get enough waste from their own population and have to _buy_ it from other countries to generate power.
Landfills are only used for the unrecyclable stuff from demolished buildings, concrete, bricks etc.

"The only dynamic I can think of to counter that is the mobile side of things, where the ability to block ads is almost nonexistent (unless you can jailbreak the thing, or find an add-on browser that supports it, etc.)"

I use Weblock on iOS, which works quite nicely for the general stuff, like those awful spy buttons.

I entered all the blocked links from my usual dozen news sites, copied manually from my Adblock settings on my desktop.
You can't read a news site nowadays without that, those guys are desperate.

"do you think your average cell phone company will give you a list of geo-located towers they operate? ."

Just google "cellphone towers in the US"

No need to bother the phone companies.

"A net?"

Yep, a Nautical Environment Transformer.

"Scientists Accidentally Grow Full Head of Hair On Bald Man"

"The result was unintended, though interesting."

I guess millions of bald men will complain of arthritis pain to their doctor real soon now.

"The NASA guy CBS interviewed had a vision of miniature space stations orbiting asteroids that would serve as the space equivalent of gas stations..."

Sure, but will they have an Astro Chicken Game Console?

"So decentralisation of commenting, with a unified account?"

Never. People want their 8 dozen sockpuppets.

Why on earth would you want to tell anybody the passwords for your financial stuff? Just to save them some bad traffic?

If you die and they access it after the fact, they'll go to jail.

They'll just have to go to the normal system, walking to the bank with a court order respecting your will from your lawyer or whatever else to prove that they inherited your money legally.

Unless it's just to change your social networking status to 'deceased' they won't need any of those.

Now if you had a 1 -3 figure slashdot account, that would be another thing, they could sell that for 20 bucks to a newbie.

If you have illegal funds hidden from the IRS stashed in the Caimans or Switzerland, it's just gone.
Bury your stuff in the backyard, like normal people.

"There is nothing that can make a nerd "better". A nerd cannot be anything but a nerd. The only improvement would be feeding it to a woodchipper."

The Billy-Bob Fargo version is without the woodchipper and way more fun.

"Sad, but he was 86. I am just not sure of the "News for Nerds" angle here..."

It means we're still waiting for the Immortality 0.86 Beta version.

"Why would there be any size limitations to laser sintering? "

Exactly. And the 'small' ones to print guns, cost less than 2D Laser Printers 30 years ago, dollar for dollar, even without considering inflation.

"1) Want to be increase the chance it gets read, as opposed to thrown away."

I get all my monthly invoices per email, I throw out everything I get via snailmail, but I don't live in the US, so YMMV.

"2) Want to send something physical, such as a key."

Really? Envelopes containing such hard things get shredded regularly in the scanning equipment and lost.
Also, it's not secure, nobody sane does that.

" This also includes any letter you think your great grandchildren might want to read some day."

Only you think that, your grandchildren (great or not) don't and won't, unless it's your will and even that will get read to them by somebody else.

"3) Want to send something that you don't want copied/replied/forwarded/subpoenaed in a law suit (A lot more important than you might think)."

Cut-out newspaper words with ransom demands perhaps, for the rest you use a courier service.

"4) You don't know the recipient's email address."

And the living address you get from where? The landline phonebook? You really DO have great grandchildren.

"There will always be a need for car dealerships,..."

Yes, because we just love to give cuts to as many people as possible for our purchases.

I remember fondly the days when we couldn't buy computers, hairdryers, video recorders and even luggage containers in a supermarket, because those needed 'special' vendors with 'secret' knowledge.

They have patented the one-click photo taking with that button and everybody else now has to use at least 2 clicks to take a picture.