Well, it's hard to make a 3D analog requiring gravity without causing some other issues, so a pool table is probably the best way to explain it.

It's a freakin' black hole ... to say it's nothing like we know is a bit of an understatement.

By your body going into starvation mode. C'mon, it's not that hard to look up how to lose weight sensibly, it's all over the web. Some of those tips are even good. Hint: It's the ones that don't want to sell you their miracle cure crap.

Bar? If your chocolate is solid enough not to require a spoon because that's how it crumbles, it's not pure enough!

Mostly it exposes that people love to believe stories they like. And of course journalists love to publish stories that their readers like.

I just don't think that qualifies as news, though.

All I can see is that I should expand my business to include pitchforks and rope.

Here's the trick: You and I know this, but the average schlub out there does not.

That distinction is kinda vital, and it's what I think GP was driving at.

But isn't that their argument? That they will have to die if they cannot force their junk on us.

True, though it sadly proves P.T. Barnum's maxim, and says more about a gullible public, the lack of peer review in the field of nutrition (and worse, the sheer incompetence of so-called 'nutrition journalists' and 'specialists'), than it does about a science journal's shady/sloppy practices.

Long story short, it exposes a hell of a lot more than just what the scientist initially wanted exposed.

Maybe someone could do and publish a sociology study from it?
(/me ducks and runs like hell...)

Often is a bit of a stretch, less than 1% of all high voltage distribution lines are DC.

HVDC works well for long trunk lines between a distant large power source and a population center, but it much less useful for a grid system with many interconnect points. That's why the primary usage has been between hydro plants and distant cities and for international interconnects (especially where the local grids of the two sides do not share a common standard).

WTF do they have to do with this case? This isn't a criminal proceeding, it's a civil matter.

You have already answered your own question:

Unfortunately... the Justice Department, likely at the behest of the White House, is intervening to influence copyright law and give corporations even more power.

The US government has more or less become the enforcement arm for the copyright lobby.

Which means they are now advancing copyright/corporate interests.

People who understand APIs understand it's a published contract about what your thing does ... and interfaces to APIs have been interoperable and open for a long time ... you can have your own implementation, but once you publish the API, it's possible for someone to implement it.

Ugh. It's like our government is pushing to see how far it can go to enslave citizens

As long as the corporations call the shots, and have "free speech", and apparently freedom of religion, and money is speech ... what you will find is government being completely beholden to industry. And an fair bit of people who think they know how to run a government saying this is a good idea.

Face it, the world is being coopted by corporate interests, and the laws are being increasingly written to benefit them.

The rest of us? Well, apparently we can't afford enough "speech" to actually get representation from government.

Democracy, but sold to the highest bidder. Which is usually a multinational corporation who is also avoiding taxes to the government who is handing them the keys to the kingdom.

With homes having high load devices with large motors(washing machines, compressors in heat pumps, etc) and the large resistive loads like electric heaters, stoves, etc DC just is not the answer. Even with DC there would be a need for DC-DC converters which work by converting to AC... So given how easy it is to move AC voltages around and up/down I would think the question would be how do we optimize the losses in conversions. Maybe we need 5KHz instead of 50/60Hz.

Well, Edison did have a point that AC is more dangerous. There is a dead elephant to prove it.

...albeit this has already happened on a smaller scale before. All you need to do is ask anyone who owns or has owned an RV or Camping trailer.

I dealt with it myself when I had an RV: a bank of huge batteries, an inverter, and a generator. In Tesla's instance, you replace "generator" with "local power grid", but otherwise it's the same routine: Your lights and similar are low-voltage (just like most RVs), but you use an inverter for any general consumer item (TV, computer/laptop, hair dryer, whatever).

I think the only diff would be in the appliances... most RV appliances (e.g. the refrigerator, furnace blower, AC units) are made to run off of 12v DC, but most RV appliances are pretty small when compared to their house-made counterparts.

Maybe ask folks who do the hardcore solar/wind thing?

I agree with your post mostly, but what exactly constitutes a "power user"?

Yeah, I root my phone, parked Cyanogen on it, and spent time modding my UI to fit my needs and tastes, but I consider myself to be someone who tinkers with the thing (as part of an old sysadmin's habit), and not a 'power user'. I fully understand what goes on with the OS, and have tinkered with mobile OSes before even Familiar Linux came out, and even wrote (okay, adapted) a quickie printer driver once, long, long ago... but I'm not a 'power user'.

IMO (and little more), I've always considered a 'power user' to be someone who has an above-average grasp of the item (phone, application, etc), and has very successfully integrated it into their life's workflow, and in turn the item has boosted their productivity, entertainment, etc. in very apparent ways. However, on a technical level such folks only know enough at best to be *very* dangerous - they can follow directions on a website to root their phone w/o blowing it up, but they don't understand *how* it works.

Dunno... what do you think? I just seem slightly fuzzed when it comes to assuming what a 'power user' actually is in the mobile realm.