That was kind of my point. "Gaslight" still assumes some kind of working energy infrastructure.

I'm somewhat of a prepper, I have a year's worth of food, medical supplies, suitable arms. I have a friend who has only stockpiled arms and ammo. He says he has neighbors who stockpile food but are vehemently anti-gun, and he figures he'll just take what he needs from them. I don't happen to agree with this philosophy, but I'm aware that it exists.

I'm reminded of one of the interviews during Occupy Wall Street, where some young lady said that we should all be forced to go back to an agrarian society.

The reporter pointed out "but millions would die".

Her response was "Well, people die."

Well, ok then.

My question would have been "So... let's say you're one of the people who are lucky enough to belong to a successful agrarian society, and you have a good supply of crops. What are you going to do when the first horde of armed, half-starved marauders finds your settlement?"

Solar, short wave radio, lots of firewood, wood stove, all gas appliances on the off chance that the natural gas infrastructure remains intact, about a year's worth of canned goods, and a seed cache. But I don't consider putting society back to steam and gaslight a good thing. Just a remote possibility that should be prepared for.

> And for heaven’s sake, don’t consent to a search if you are carrying a big roll of legitimate cash.

Well, of course, but I'd say "don't consent to a search, ever. At all."

"To serve mankind"...

So.... how are you fixed for firewood and natural gas?

But y'see, the reason I stopped wearing a watch is that I have to carry a phone (on-call) and the phone tells me the time. Why should I wear a watch again? Especially as whatever it does will necessarily be a subset of what the phone already does?

I want a smart watch a smart pen and smart glasses and a smartphone and a smart earpiece and a smart pager and a smart mini fax machine that are all networked together. Arranged around my body like Classic Batman. In bright yellow so people can see from a distance how smart and trendy I am.

No, really, what I most want in a smart watch is to be able to leave my phone at home. I grew tired of carrying multiple devices long ago. Sadly, smart watches tend to be merely extensions to the phone you're already carrying. Ok for hipsters but no thanks.

Having the watch sync with the phone when in range would be fine. But having the watch only function as an extension of the phone? Fail.

I seem to remember (I used to be involved with the local CIC many years ago) that all public transportation including buses collectively account for percentage of commuters, in the US, down in the single digits. (Less than 10%.) This is from memory, but I think the highest usage of mass transit (which again lumped all forms into one statistic, not just buses) was in Massachusetts, and even there it was in the low tens. (Maybe 12 - 15%.)

Comparing the pollution of individual buses directly to individual cars is disingenuous because buses typically carry more passengers per mile. (Although the big articulated bus I follow home at night with typically six or seven passengers seems to be the exception...)

Conclusion being, converting to electric buses won't make an appreciable impact on the air pollution level. They're not collectively a significant source of pollution, compared to other major sources.

Moreover, it is my understanding that the black smoke seen in bus diesel exhaust is mostly particulate matter which eventually settles out of the air. It makes storefronts and sidewalks dirty, and tends to stick to your clothes and skin, but doesn't contribute to global warming in a meaningful way.

But it would make people feel good, I guess, to not see a big gout of black smoke out of the bus they're following, and I suppose that has marketing value. But I don't see how the electric part could work without overhead power lines.

Incidentally, our commuter buses all have the "powered by Biodiesel" stickers on them, but a local article revealed that the requirement to be able to wear the sticker was that some very tiny percentage of your total fuel (less than 20%) be biodiesel. That was disappointing.

I think the difference is that as a government it's a lot easier to bully consumers than it is to bully large corporations.

I breezed through TFA, and it wasn't clear to me whether it's truly a price cut or that they're merely rolling more of the cost of the phone into the monthly payments. Assuming a $450 price tag, $200 with contract tells me they probably get another $250 over the life of the contract. So, at $1, does that mean they still get $250 over the life of the contract, or $449? If the latter, it's not a deal, it's just different bookkeeping.

I don't know if this could be practical, but I bet it'd be fun to watch.

Hey ma! Here comes another one!

This might help explain all the "your cv is being attractive to us" spam I've been bombarded with recently. Maybe they're recruiting (perhaps unknowing) accomplices.

I remember a job where I had to take acid suppressors (the kind you take for acid reflux) during the workday just to get through the day. I'm really glad I don't work there anymore. Some places are just poison. The only solution is to be somewhere else.

But in that case, the user community had built up a remarkable hostility towards IT (somewhat deserved) over a number of years. Not something you could easily solve in a few months.

> It was never supposed to be connected to the Internet — but someone had accidentally connected it anyway.

This is where "we don't need security because the machines will never be connected to the internet" falls apart.