I'd say the lack of touchscreen is a positive feature =)

He's not talking about distribution inside your house from a central heating point, but for distribution to your house from a central heating point in the city. Like here in Gothenburg(pop ~0,75 million). Total heating capacity for the central system here is a bit over 2000MW, our (clean*)garbage power plant provides 28% of the city's heating & hot water, and 5% of electricity needs. Among other providers is a biogas furnace from the sewage treatment plant, waste heat from industries like refineries, and Volvo, also about 150MW is recovered with heat exchange from the sewage. About 80% of the heat provided used to be waste in some form. *meets future EU-demands on cleaning. First electro filter, then wet cleaning which removes particles and condenses acid gases, then a textile filter which removes almost all dioxin and most of the sulfur.

You could put the label on the boxes, or on a sign in the store.. come to think of it, they already do, so why the hell do you need stickers on each individual piece of fruit?

Area of Sweden: 450 000 km^2
Population of Sweden: 9 000 000 inhabitants

20 inhabitants per km^2

Area of US: 9 100 000 km^2
Population of US: 300 000 000 inhabitants

32 inhabitants per km^2

The united states has roughly 1.5 times the population density of Sweden and far worse internet connectivity. It has nothing to do with the United States being so large and everything to do with politics.

At least here in Sweden, the issuing bank transmits data on if the card has a chip or not, and the ATM or terminal requires chip usage if the card is supposed to have a chip. On older store terminals without a chip reader, the mag stripe works, but those are getting replaced as time goes by, and yeah, just using the card in another country is still the safest bet. Though I have noticed being required to use the chip in some other countries now as well.