There's a product that's a wet installed cellulose or cotton fiber, I don't remember which. It applies like the spray foam, but has better insulation properties. A friend of my dad was using it as a way to cut heating costs in low income housing, where he had the opportunity to explore multiple options. That was the one that was giving the best results. I also don't know if it was a commercial success, so it might not be available any more.

That's a cool material, but it looks like there might not be a great financial incentive to use it. It takes five years to recoup the cost at German energy prices. With American prices, which are quite low in most places, it will take significantly longer. I'd probably get a better payoff from my insulation. It's cool technology though, and I hope the prices drop to the point where it makes sense here.

Fiberglass windows, geothermal heat, a good in home battery like the new Tesla product, wind and solar power generation, and wicked good insulation. Ideally something like the blow cellulose or cotton fiber, but even just a thicker layer of fiberglass, so that my heating and cooling needs are few. LED lighting throughout. Tankless water heaters. Natural gas for heating, cooking, water heater and dryer.

Drought tolerant landscaping. Because even though I live in a water rich region, I hate having to pay to water my lawn (city water, no options) just for the priviledge of cutting it later. Nuts to that deal.

Conspiracy to distribute narcotics is generally a crime. In a lot of places they execute you for that, so he got off pretty light. Had U.S. prosecutors wanted to, they could have pursued charges of conspiracy to commit murder. That does potentially carry the death penalty.

He was stupid. He very publicly and blatantly demonstrated his disrespect for the police by operating so openly. He foolishly assumed that his very public network couldn't be infiltrated by professional infiltrators. He should be grateful that it was the U.S. Justice Department who decided he had to go. A lot of the other people who could have taken exception to his actions play by a very different set of rules. Most of them are uninterested in trials.

DC has very rapid power loss over any kind of distance. DC in the home is based on the premise that the home will be powered off the local battery.

Worth noting that this is still forced to work within the Edison system's restrictions: the power source encouraging DC must be local. Which is cool when we all have our own power storage and generation capabilities.

Conversely, she met a horse. They're pretty cool animals. If I could make a decent living with a horse, I'd probably do that instead of programming.

The Tata Nano is a fine car for someplace where life is cheap. You'd die if you tried to drive that car on an American highway. It's got no good crash resistance and not enough horsepower to operate safely in highway traffic.

For western markets, Tata offers the Jaguar product line. Considerably more expensive, but also less likely to get you killed.

My truck was actually new from the dealership. It's pretty feature-free, mostly because I really wanted a manual transmission, and they don't include features and manual transmissions in the same truck at the same time.

I've spoken with automotive engineers about the problems with the built in equipment. They pointed out that their updating and data mechanisms need to work in places that aren't well connected. Because while most tech people live in places with good over the air data accessibility, most car owners don't. Large portions of the population live in rural areas where there is no good mobile data coverage, and the cars still need to work well there.

So we'll always be better off using our smart phones, which update regularly, as opposed to depending on a built in system, which has to work well even when it can't count on regularly getting data and updates.

The thing that's important about a car isn't the in car entertainment system. It's the wheels and the engine and the bits in between that let me get to where I need to go. I need that to last a decade or more. I need it to be a good match for the way I drive. The in car computer system? Don't care. My current ride doesn't even have much of a driver facing interface, other than some indicator lights. My in car entertainment system consists of a radio and whoever is in the passenger seat. Navigation comes from my smart phone. I upgrade the smart phone every couple of years, which expands capacity.

Have you seen most engineers? I mean, the odds are good, but the goods are odd.

This feature has existed for a very long time now. Microsoft Access has done exactly what you're looking for since the 90s. If you're happy just using Access apps, this should be fine for you. The flip side is that GUI designers are slower than writing code for most experienced developers. While you're wrestling Qt Designer, I'll be in the code editor manipulating the screen much more quickly.

Also, most non trivial apps will require specialized behavior at various points. That means writing code. Visual models don't work well for that. The code is easier to modify and to maintain, because it allows direct manipulation of the logic symbols, rather than manipulating an abstraction of the logic.

Seriously, we covered all of this ground in the 90s. A lot of money and programmer time was put into trying to make your vision a reality. We gave it up as a bad idea.

Learn to ride a horse? Stop trying to date her, since she's clearly not interested?

My money is on learning to ride a horse. Not to date her, she's in the past. But you might wind up a lot happier with the bond you form with your horse. And the happier you might meet a nice woman who also likes horses.

And yet, here I am in a building full of engineers, most of whom are married. Possibly your theory has holes.