They don't need a thermostat for most of this. They know when I wake up, because that's when I pick up my phone and check my gmail. And I go to bed when I turn off my GoogleTV and set my phone on the charger.
What's wrong with getting cold medicine ads when you may have a cold? It's beats the heck out getting flooded with ads that provide nothing useful to me. When my furnace is running non-stop, I want to see ads with great deals on flights to Miami.
Now, as for selling that info to health and life insurance companies- sure. But please point me to ANYTHING that indicates that Google has done something along those lines.

Ever hear of credit cards? Swipe your credit card, then recharge your car at a 20% premium over standard electric rates. The land owner can either get a cut of that, or can lease out the spaces to companies that install the charging stations and take the premium. One of the benefits to EV is that the fueling infrastructure can be very easy to build compared to what it took for gasoline. The electric grid is everywhere, and it's relatively trivial to turn parking spaces into refueling stations, compared to what it takes to build a gas station.

Actually, Sandy was technically not tropical, and therefore not a hurricane or a tropical storm when it made landfall. It was "Post-tropical cyclone Sandy". The "Superstorm" designation was more catchy, but also attributed to the fact that Sandy had merged with another low pressure system (which is what caused it to make the very unusual sharp turn West).

Well, most people are idiots. There are PLENTY of two-car households that could replace one of their 'commuter' cars with an all-electric car that has 100-200 mile range. Most people drive 50 miles, round-trip, for work. They plug in nightly, and are fine for their commute. Their other car can either be a regular ICE, or a hybrid, or a range-extended hybrid (if it would be justified), and would serve as the car to use when they have a long family road-trip.

People who think that electric cars are useless unless they can meet the needs of every car (300+ mile range and 5 minute recharge) are being silly. I need a car big enough to carry suitcases and seat my 6 person family, but only one of my cars has to meet this need. The other car only needs to be big enough and efficient to take me to work and back.

I bought one right after the initial announcement, as soon as they went on sale. I bought it for the only two announced features- direct streaming from the cloud for Netflix, Play, and Youtube, as well as the ability to Tab-cast other things like HBO-Go. The 'Allcast' features that Koush demonstrated only made it better. So, I ordered another for my main room, where I currently have a Logitech Revue GoogleTV. The Revue falls short in local video playback, so I was hoping to replace it with the Chromecast. With the removal of local video playback capability, I've cancelled my order, and will once again look for a solution from other platforms.

Every supermarket, drug store, most modern gas station pumps, etc, all use NFC readers on their credit card machines, and I use them all the time with Google wallet on my GS3. You see, unlike Apple which requires merchants to adopt something special to work with their walled garden, Google wallet with NFC works with the eco system that's already out there.

They aren't saying that they don't expect a storm as damaging, or as strong, to occur every 700 years. They are saying that they don't expect a storm to approach with this type of path, at this time of lunar cycle, at this time of day more than once in 700 years. That doesn't mean that we can't or won't get Nor'easter, blizzard, or hurricane with an equally high level of destruction- it's a different type of storm.

Not only this, but the high cost of repair for crashes in a modern car arises from the cost to replace things like 18 air bags, seatbelt tensioners, etc. The cost to repair the body/frame damage plus replace all the deployed safety devices, plus the bump in depreciation is almost as much or higher than the cost to replace the whole car. The old car isn't simply thrown in the trash. All of the salvageable parts are resold. Very little goes to waste.

The area that they are talking about is very much a seasonal residence. Most people I know in those areas don't have landline service anyway. They cut the cord on that years ago. It's not worth the investment if only 30% of the residences will take up the service anyway.

I think you underestimate the desires of manufacturers to get rid of the first sale doctrine. They have pushed the courts to restrict FSD whenever possible, including potentially eliminating FSD for 'imported' goods. Considering most things we buy are made abroad, if they are successful, FSD could be all but eliminated. Omega vs. Costco

Depreciation on a car is a lot different than a video game. A car has a usable life of 10-15 years/150k miles before it becomes more expensive to maintain than replacing. If I'm buying a 5 year old car, then the price reflects that half of its life has been consumed. In buying a used game, once I've confirmed that it isn't scratched, its usable life is hardly affected from when new. That being said, I am often willing to pay $50 for a new game, knowing I can sell it for $25+ on eBay later on. When I buy downloadable games, I am generally paying a LOT less.

I guess this is why every time I pass an Apple store, it's wall-to-wall with people waiting for a genius to give them 'hip' support. It's not tech support.

Exactly this. There is a cost to handling cash. If everyone paid cash, that slows down transactions, lengthens the time required to close out a register at the end of the shift/day, and then if you are handling large amounts of it (which would happen if they start penalizing their cash customers) you have high expense for transporting/insuring. Also, credit card users usually spend more. JCR Even at a gas station- I pull up, hand my credit card, and say 'fill it up'. Cash users generally pull up, and say "Give me $40 of...." If a retailer wants to encourage cash, it's a short-term gain, long-term bad idea.

The fact that there are +/- 1 billion users would say that maybe, as a web designer, you are wrong in your assessment about what makes for a good UI.