Ad-supported free dial-up internet. Started with great fanfare, but soon enough there were so many ads it became completely unusable. You just can't put in enough ads to generate enough revenue to make it worthwhile. And you can't run the whole economy on ads, eventually people have to buy something and pay for it.

The control of most HVAC systems is still pretty crude. A thermostat turns the heating or cooling on or off. There might be two stages to the compressor, but that's it. With electronically commutated motors on all the compressors, fans and pumps, huge gains in efficiency are theoretically possible if you optimized the speed of and power going to each and also optimized cooling vs. dehumidification, etc. You could integrate HVAC with hot water and perhaps even refrigeration for additional energy savings. Tesla already does this in their cars, integrating cabin climate control with motor and battery heating and cooling in one HVAC system, and I believe they are the only automaker doing this. So they should be really good at this stuff, certainly in the very complex business of optimizing power usage in their vehicles, they are miles ahead of the competition.

Ads, GIFs, videos, scrolling text, cycling photos, everything. Then I'll pay to use your browser.

It's pathetic than you even need an OBD scanner. Modern cars have touchscreens that convey all sorts of trivial and useless information all the time. Why can't it indicate detailed diagnostic information on the engine and drivetrain by default, beyond the dreaded "check engine" warning? It can, of course, the car's computer(s) have that information, the manufacturers just don't want to tell you.

While useless to the average person due to the incalculable possibility that it will be stolen, cryptocurrency solves a critical problem: how to extract ransom from a powerful, deep-pocketed corporation (like a hospital) and not get caught. Without it, ransomware just wouldn't be worth it. And in the longer term, it could displace national currencies as the wealth depository of choice for billionaires, thereby reducing the ability of national governments to monetize their debts and short-circuiting their already feeble efforts at moderating inequality. Meanwhile, its creation consumes so much energy, it offsets the hard-won CO2 reduction efforts of whole countries. What's not to like?

Offer me a million dollars, I still couldn't sleep 8 hours a night. For me 5-6 hours has always been the max, try for more and I'll simply lie there awake, it doesn't matter how dark and quiet the room or how calm the mood. I have about zero trouble falling asleep, even after staring at a supposedly blue-light computer screen for hours beforehand, I'm out like a light in 5 minutes, as long as I don't try to sleep more than comes naturally, i.e 5-6 hours.

Reluctantly got a Samsung flip phone for $15 in 2012 when I had to go on a trip and all pay phones had disappeared. Still working when it became unusable in 2016 because it was 2G. Tracfone replaced it with a free LG Treasure smart phone to keep me as a customer, it is still working and still using original battery. Broke the screen once, replacement was $22 and took 20 minutes to replace. If it lasts another 4 years I'll be satisfied.

LFP (lithium iron phosphate / LiFePO4) cells are the ones that have been used by US hobbyists for years for electric conversion vehicles. They are safer and generally don't catch fire even under extreme conditions. But they aren't cheap, and what is most remarkable, they haven't come down AT ALL in price, they cost the same today as they did 10 years ago: about $1.30 per Ah (ampere-hour), which at 3.2 volts works out to about $400 per kWh. Of course, I'm sure Tesla can get them cheaper, but at 1/4 the price? They also don't have the performance (ultra-rapid discharge rates) of the cobalt-based cells, so won't give you that ludicrous instant acceleration that is one of Tesla's main selling points.

End the living hell of yearly renewals with Verizon and Comcast: "Any advertised rate for any broadband service must be guaranteed for a period of at least 5 years." Maybe ban bundling of broadband service and content while you're at it.

We haven't been into a store of any kind since March 8. We order all groceries including plenty of produce online (Kroger) and pick it up. It's loaded in back of the car by the attendant with the receipt in the bag, same prices as if you shopped yourself and no special charges and no human contact. Of course we'd rather select our own, but usually the shoppers do a pretty good job. Major shortages like toilet paper, flour and dry milk are now easing. We'll keep doing this as long as the epidemic persists, for years if necessary.

Already, Google, Amazon and Facebook know us intimately, better than we know ourselves. They know our deepest desires and make no secret of using that knowledge to manipulate us, and to influence how we spend our time and our money. We've given up privacy largely for the sake of convenience, in order to not worry about purchasing online services but instead to simply use them for free. Is it so much worse for the government to simply know our location, and is that information so much more sensitive that we would not give it out in order to save our lives and the lives of others? Of course, we should try to do everything possible to ensure location data are only used for contact tracing and only for health purposes, but to me, to decline to participate for the sake of privacy is not a serious or rational option.

In the days of single-screen cinemas and 525-line black and white TV, there was justification for physical theaters, but that time is long past. Then, to see a movie in high-resolution on the big screen was an entirely different experience. The arrival of a major new release was an event, a shared experience among all who came. In the modern cinemaplex, you sit in one of many small rooms with perhaps a few dozen people, and watch a movie on a screen not that much larger than some big-screen TVs, preceded by commercials just to make you feel at-home and remind you that it's all about profits, not art. It has the feel of a service, not an event. There's just no point to it anymore, you might as well just watch it in hi-def at home.

A decade or two ago it seemed essential to perfect and implement large-scale CCS, but at this point it's hard to see how it will ever make economic sense again. Even without the expense of carbon capture, coal is uneconomic compared to natural gas and surely in the near future will be uncompetitive with wind or solar with battery storage, the cost of which just keeps falling. So why pursue CCS at all? Merely to perpetuate at great cost a handful of coal mining jobs?

Will they be portrait or landscape mode?

To paraphrase Abe Lincoln: If the internet is not a utility, nothing is a utility. My electricity provider is a regulated utility, and compared to my internet, it is heaven on earth. The power is unbelievably cheap: $8 a month plus 12 cents per kilowatt-hour. The bill states clearly what I am paying for, and with no intervention from me, the rate has actually been steadily falling in recent years. Unlike my internet, I don't have to switch to a new power company and get rewired every 2 years in order to maintain a reasonable rate, nor does the company try to force me to also sign up for a natural gas hookup. And most astonishingly, even though I am still in the first year of my contract and taking advantage of the introductory rate, my simple, basic broadband connection atill costs more than my power bill.