I never said I was not a freeloader on those sites. They are few and far between and I do at least give them a chance.

The Jeep CJ/Wrangler has amazing aftermarket support. You can build a CJ from aftermarket parts with no real problem. The old Cherokee is in the same level of support. The old First Gen 1960s Camaro and the Corvette line is the same way. You can build a 64-68 Stingray from parts you order online if you want to.
For a modern car Subarus, Jeeps, and so one are high on the list.
What kind of car do you want? A people mover, Jeep, or a sporty car? US or japanese? Are you in the States?

So how does this not make you a worthless freeloader?
You get content that costs someone resources to create and give them nothing not even the ad revenue.
I use adblock but I only use it on sites that have way too much advertising. The ads on most sites tend to be well targeted to me so I am fine with them.
If they play video or sound they get blocked but most ads I see.

Thanks that was more or less my goal.
I think we should also make the standard for CO2 be the amount of CO2 used by protestors traveling to a G10 conference.

I was born in Vero Beach Florida and have lived in Florida my entire life. What you do not understand is just because you have enough light to read does not mean you are getting anywhere close to peak output. Solar noon and 3 to four hours on each side of peak is when solar makes a good amount of power.

" Do they generate enough to satisfy year-round demand? Of course not. Neither do coal plants, and neither do nuclear plants, and neither do natural gas plants (by themselves)"
Yes they can. Together or in a mix. Natural gas plants can without any doubt since be used easily for both peaking loads and in base loads.

Location does have an impact but you can look at peak usage data.
For example in Florida peak usage in summer is from noon to 9PM so yes a good bit of the usage is at night.
In the winter it is 6am to 10am in the morning and 6pm to 10pm at night.

Most power is used in the evening and the morning because that is when people are doing things like cook, laundry and are frankly home.
Your argument about anecdotal evidence is correct but the real usage data does show that peak power usage is in the evenings and not during the day or overnight. BTW Florida is an example of a location where peak load is greatly influenced by ac bills in the summer.

"Guess when the maximum power drain from air conditioning will be? Exactly during mid day when the solar cells are at maximum efficiency. "
Actually no.
Peak temperatures are after solar noon and do not really cool off until well into the evening.
So in Florida in the summer the peak energy use is from 1 to 8 PM
Solar noon in the summer is at 11 am because of daylight savings time. So if peak production is 3 hours of solar noon in the summer in FL then your off peak production at 2pm so your production curve starts to drop only on hour into a 7 hour peak demand. If the afternoon peak demand is a standard curve which it probably pretty close to the truth then peak use should be around 4:30 which is around 5:30 none DST which is well past peak solar output.

Because I said something that they do not like to hear and have response but to call me a troll.
Solar will always have a problem with the production vs demand curves and no smart grids will not fix it only storage will.
Wind is actually a better bet but still needs backing plants using natural gas.

The simple truth is that we are already using and have been using for a long time the only cheap, reliable, and renewable power source, hydroelectric.
But yes slashdot does seem to be less and less full of really knowledgeable people and more and more true believers. Of course I could be wrong but back in the day when people got into wars over vi vs emacs or Linux vs FreeBSD, NetBSD, or OpenBSD it didn't really matter as much as energy policy and they were based on opinion which was ok but energy policy should be based on facts.

So show me a system that can produce 10 Gw 24/7 365 days a year using Wind and Solar and give me a price to build it and I will say it can be done.

And the fullest will be to supplement other power sources.

"Solar is being improved on all the time, and it's getting to the point where solar can compete with the grid at consumer price levels."
The problem is that is only true for a few hours around solar noon.
Peak use is in the early morning and evening when solar produces very little power.
Wind is much better but people always seem to ignore they production vs consumption cycle problem with solar.

I see your point the problem imho is the assumption that solar and wind can be made cheap and reliable. The one cheap, reliable, renewable energy source has been working well for centuries which is hydro.
Wind and solar have a future but they will be supplements to other energy systems and not the main source.
Well unless we have super leaps battery/storage and possibly room temperature superconductors.

"What did it mean that one of the world's most ambitious and capable innovation companies couldn't invent a cheap renewable energy tech?"
Simple, solar and wind are not the way to go to make cheap, reliable, clean energy today.
It is an answer that a lot of people will not like but that is the simple truth.

Actually it might be the case in the EU driving Google to not be the default engine on Firefox.
Before Google was the default on Chrome and Firefox while Bing was the default on IE.
Now Google is the default on Chrome, Yahoo on Firefox, and Bing on IE. It weakens the idea that Google has "locked" people in.
I believe that Bing is the default for IOS now while Google is the default for Android on Mobile.
So by reducing the number of places Google is the default it makes it less likely to be seen as an anti-trust issue.

"The first is that if something goes wrong on takeoff you risk what is effectively a 'dirty bomb' going off somewhere in the Earth's atmosphere which is not good. "
No you are wrong. RTGs are built to survive any type of booster failure. The RTG on Apollo 13 survived a very high speed reentry. They are constructed of layers of graphite, ceramics, and often refractory metals. The only danger an RTG offers from a booster failure is if it lands on you.
"The second, which does not apply in this case, is that if you make it into space safely you had better make sure that the craft does not return for Earth for a few billion years otherwise, again, it is like a dirty bomb going off in the atmosphere. "
No you are wrong again.
The half life is not all that long on the isotopes used in RTGs and even if one did completely burn up on reentry it would cause less ecological harm than the average European music festival.
Also material that is used is only a few kgs and frankly you can stand right next it unshielded and it would not harm you. Frankly you could put it in your pocket and not be harmed since it an alpha emitter and not gamma emitter like Cobalt 60.
Someone has done a good job of indoctrinating in the proper use of fear words like "dirty" bomb.
Here is a helpful bit of logic about dirty bombs. No military has ever put dirty bombs in to inventory. The reason is that they are really not effective weapons. They just do not do enough damage to be worth the trouble. Also you would never use something like Pu for a dirty bomb because it just is not deadly enough.