If youtube were launched a few years later, it would likely have been forced to shut down by the cost of legal action.

A little more work and we might not even need the torrent sites. Magnet links can be copied and pasted with ease, including into facebook posts.

Usually by bringing in some files obtained elsewhere.

I did a bit of research.
http://www.otherpower.com/imag...
A lead-acid being used only near top-up charge level can reach 50% efficiency - but that's only if you maintain it near full charge, and only dip into it a little bit, as they are least-efficient at charging when almost full. If you're using it in a deeper cycle the efficiency is much better, easily reaching 90%. You have to really abuse it to hit 50% efficiency, but it is concievably possible for a poorly-designed system, perhaps one that performs only light load-redistribution as a secondry function while intended for long-term backup power with corresponding capacity.

Not just fashion. Solar cells improved a lot - those you can get now are a lot more efficient than they were back then, which means home solar power... still isn't economical. But it's within sight of economical. It's just expensive, not ridiculous like it used to be.

Small wind generators produce very little power. They have to get too big for home use before they become viable. Remember that power output increases with the square of the radius.

Power generation from solar falls in the winter. A lot.

It's not the loss of sunlight intensity that does it. It's the daylight hours. Your panels operate for a smaller fraction of the day.

The appeal is obvious: No pilot and no instruments means a lot of weight saving, and frees up precious passenger space.

Which is why China may well become a future leading nation in manned space research. When America loses a few astronauts, they shut down the program for the best part of a decade and spend hundreds of millions in investigation and refinement. When China loses someone, they'll carry on with the next launch while investigating quietly, then hold a ceremony to remember the patriotic sacrifice and remind the people what those lives were risked for.

It's also a bad choice of phrase, as currently 'VR legs' only work if you have either a lot of space or a very elaborate omnidirectional treadmill. Bit of a difficult problem that.

Though I suppose it might bring back the arcade? If you need a suspended harness or a sizeable warehouse for full-immersion runarounds, it's going to mean people traveling to places. Pressing a 'walk forward' button isn't going to be the same.

It causes illness for good reason. A mismatch between visual field angle and vestibular angle doesn't occur very often in a natural environment - the only place you'll find it is on a boat and when wearing head-mounted displays. Before those, it always indicated something impairing the vestibular system, which likely implied a poison. There's evolved response based on this: 'Visual/vestibular mismatch, probable poison detected, initiate purge of stomach contents before any more is absorbed and make a note not to eat the green berries.'

"general user ignorance"

It's worked for the last ten thousand years. No reason to expect it to change any time soon. Target enough people, you'll find someone who falls for it. Computers just take the leg-work out.

This is something that smart grid management should be able to help with. There are some energy-intensive industrial processes that can be turned on and off in seconds (Desalination, for example), and many domestic uses that can be delayed in time easily enough (The AC motor can wait a few minutes). If there's a way for the grid to signal in real time the available generating capacity, devices could adapt accordingly.

Supercaps have far, far too low an energy density.

I read China is experimenting with ultracap vehicles. They can run for minutes between charges. The vehicles are buses, with a pantograph wire at each stop: They recharge in an even shorter time, while passengers are boarding.

Most oil deposits are pre-dino. There's a little dino in some fields, but most are rather less exciting.