Why on earth wouldn't you just consider it your own money that you gave the government in the past? You have to be pretty obtuse to turn down your own money in order to make a point about the evils of market incentives.

I have similar issues:
  - Towing several tons (travel trailer or 23 foot trailerable-with-extreme-trailer deep-keel coastal-water-ocean-capable sailboat) up and down mountains and cross-country.
  - Going to/from the ranch - over 250 miles one way (over the Altamont grade, across the central valley, and through a pass in the Sierras) - with the last 0.7 miles sometimes hubcap-deep mud.
  - Carrying ranch groceries for several months and/or other supplies or equipment from the nearest supermarket etc. - 27 miles away.
and so on.
  - Off-roading to visit ghost towns and other historic sites in the Nevada Desert - where "running out of gas" - in the absence of cell phone service - might mean your skeletons are discovered in a couple years.

On the other hand, for trips about 3/4 of the year and NOT towing, a plug-in hybrid or an all-electric vehicle with sufficient range, serious regenerative braking, and adequate cargo capacity for two week's groceries and luggage for two, would be ideal. Charge it up at each end (off a windmill/solar at the Nevada end) to start full, use regenerative braking on the downslopes to power across the valley or up the next up slope. For a hybrid: Top off the batteries while cruising the central valley and use batteries plus engine to avoid being a creeping traffic hazard on the mountain roads.

My cycle would be almost identical to a Silicon Valley worker who mostly commutes 25 miles each way and occasionally vacations at the Lake Tahoe ski resorts or Reno or camps in the Sierras. A single vehicle that could do both - rather than needing two vehicles to accommodate the use pattern - would be ideal.

Basically an loading tool with a bug I knew from testing, you could set it correctly once in production but if you set it twice every user was f*cked up and could only be fixed from the web interface by about 5 clicks per user, no programmatic solution. And of course we had an error in the production setup, I altered that part - which I could - but forgot to take out the "you can run this only once" settings. Hundreds of users borked and the vendor support would take forever or claim there's no other way, what do?

This was a consulting company, trying to bill this would look bad on both our vendor and ourselves and it pretty much broke everything so we gave a benched consultant the assignment from hell. Click here, here, browse, pick, save in this somewhat less than instant web interface. Now do that all day, every day for all users until you're done. Personally I'd be ready to jump off the roof after an hour, but apparently she stuck to it for three days and finished. I don't think we won any popularity points with her though.

Since this was a server unless he was at the console copying it off to a USB stick he'd probably hook the server back up to the network so he could copy it to his client.

He's got so many problems in that video that it's probably staged for click bait, so it can be linked to by EV opponents. Like the cable, that's staged. Every charger map has a filter and you only need to set it right once. I don't know anyone else who hasn't been able to pay for power, usually they have all the ordinary credit/debit/cell phone payment options in addition to the EV-specific cards. With broken chargers and drive problems, well that's bad luck on top of everything else. Not to mention he's trying for something the car's not planned for at all.

First of all, it has a 74 mile range and he's planning a 350 mile drive. The last 20% is really slow, so in practice the fill-ups will be 60 miles max so he'll need at least five full recharges even assuming they're perfectly spaced and he'll run close to zero range. If you want a 5 mile margin and estimating that the chargers are 5 miles from where you'd like them to be 50 miles is more realistic. That's six 80% recharges in a day, at least half an hour each so three hours total. Any sane person would say let's not do that, just rent a Tesla/ICE or take the plane or whatever.

He's abusing the range extender to carry on, but I like the basic idea that if there's a screw-up you can solve it with a little gas instead of being stranded or stuck on a slow charger. Like big boats also have small rescue boats, you know in case of emergency. Hopefully more EVs will come with that option.

If your defense lawyer won't offer competent counsel it won't ever be a fair trial. Everybody speculates, even defense lawyers. The prosecutor, the judge, the jury members, the journalists, everyone on the peanut gallery got a personal opinion. You can pick one from the lynch mob as judge, jury and executioner and you got the court of personal opinion instead of the court of public opinion, it's still a shitty system.

That's why we have a system built on evidence. The prosecutor lays out the evidence in favor, the defense lawyer the evidence against, the judge is the referee and the jury decides if it's proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Now certainly there's a lot of subjective evaluation on what testimony is credible, evidence is reliable, theories are plausible and so on.

It's not supposed to be gut feel speculation based on superficial appearance and behavior, maybe you get an impression he's creepy and sleazy "hood rat" but that doesn't make him more guilty.than a slick smooth talker in a suit. At least it's not supposed to, but that's what personal opinion often is - how well the person in front of us matches the mental image we have of "that kind" of person.

I should add that a judge can extend the length someone can be held without charge and they almost always do. All together, you can be held in isolation for up to 23 days without being charged.

There's also a history of the police coercing confessions. They can also keep people locked up for quite a while (10 days) with no contact with family and without charges.

I am mystified how people can read this and not realize it was just a little fun thing to do in his spare time. Or do you spend every waking minute of your life doing serious things with your knowledge and skills?

"Slashvertisement - a fiction spawned in the brains of basement-dwellers who think that anyone who says anything nice about anything or anyone is getting paid to be positive."

Nope. All ads or "sponsored content" pieces on Slashdot are clearly identified. This piece is legit, and I clearly stated that this is just one of many companies in the energy-saving businesses. Clouden's company is close to me and I first heard about it from a satisfied customer, but at no point did I (or he) say his company was better than others in the same business. In fact, let me repeat: If you're going to buy any kind of energy-saving services, you'd better shop around -- just like Smokey Robinson's momma told him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
 

Yep. You'd better shop around.

Alice posts a video using music that Bob owns the copyright to. Carol posts a video that uses music Bob falsely claims to also hold the copyright for. Unfortunately Bob's false claim against Carol doesn't change the fact that he actually does have a legitimate legal claim against Alice's video. So kicking him off the system means he's going to issue a takedown against Alice. The whole point of bringing him into the system was to give him an incentive to leave Alice alone.

The problem here isn't Bob and Alice -- that part of the scenario is working fine. The problem is Bob and Carol. There's no incentive for Bob not to make false claims against Carol. That's the bit that has to be fixed.

I believe Pat's company does lease to own deals. A lot of them do. That should be a big factor in selecting a vendor for that kind of lease program.

Well, it may interest you to know that courts judging "emotional distress" is not some new Internet fad. In the year 1348 an innkeeper brought suit against a man who had been banging on his tavern door demanding wine. When the innkeeper stuck his head out the doorway to tell the man to stop, the man buried the hatchet he was carrying into the door by the innkeeper's head. The defendant argued that since there was no physical harm inflicted no assault had taken place, but the judged ruled against him [ de S et Ux. v. W de S (1348)]. Ever since then non-physical, non-financial harm has been considered both an essential element of a number of of crimes, a potential aggravating factor in others, and an element weighed in establishing civil damages.

This does *not*, however, mean that hurt feelings in themselves constitute a crime. It's a difficult and sometimes ambiguous area of the law, but the law doesn't have the luxury of addressing easy and clear-cut cases only.

As to why a new law is need now, when the infliction of emotional distress has been something the law has been working on for 667 years, I'd say that the power of technology to uncouple interactions from space and time has to be addressed. Hundreds of years ago if someone was obnoxious to you at your favorite coffeehouse, you could go at a different time or choose a different coffeehouse. Now someone intent on spoiling your interactions with other people doesn't have to coordinate physical location and schedule with you to be a persistent, practically inescapable nuisance.

Does this mean every interaction that hurts your feelings on the Internet is a crime? No, no more than everything that happens in your physical presence you take offense at is a crime.