Smartphones have actual microphones. Why use the gyro as a crude microphone when you have a perfectly functioning microphone built into the device already?

No. Fusion power is roughly $80bn of research away. The problem is the funding has been so meagre that we will never actually reach the goal at current rates of funding. If $80bn sounds a lot, it's not - it's only 0.11 Iraq Wars. We saw fit to spend around $750bn (at a highly conservative estimate - that's the US DOD's own estimate) on bombing Iraq, but we don't see fit to spend just more than 1/10th of that amount on freeing ourselves from dependence on that entire region forever.

$22bn is only 0.03 Iraq Wars, so it's really not that much money in the grand scheme of things.

Probably not. Most normal cars don't accelerate that quickly but have extremely effective brakes. If you're driving properly and at least taking a quick glance at crossing traffic when approaching a traffic light, you'll probably see the red light jumper before he's jumped the light. At that point you can slow down *far more rapidly* than you can speed up.

About the only vehicles where acceleration may change the outcome are supercars and motorcycles.

Fuel prices have a lot to do with it. I only drive in the UK once a year or so (due to living in an adjacent island) but in 2008 there was a step change in the way people drove. Before 2008 if I was doing 70 on the motorway, I was the slow poke. After 2008, I seem to be doing all the overtaking when doing 70. (This on a section of the M6 with no enforcement cameras).

No it's not. There is still a speed delta of just 1mph so the impact between the cars is the same and NOT 2.01 times as hard. The bumpers of the colliding cars know nothing of their speed relative to the surface of the Earth, they only know their speed relative to each other.

(Of course the *wheels* of the car are still doing 89 mph, so if the slow impact causes one of the cars to diverge from its path, it's more likely to result in an accident than if the two colliding cars were doing 44/45. But that has nothing to do with the impact relative velocity, which is still only 1mph).

That's just not true. In the UK they've started using variable speed limits on very congested sections of motorway - lowering the speed limit and strictly enforcing it - when there is congestion. Traffic flows much better now on such sections since the speed of the traffic remains constant through these sections. Before, the traffic would slow down and speed up dramatically during periods of congestion until inevitably the "self sustaining stoppage" would form and not clear until the small hours.

Pity this didn't exist during the days of atmospheric nuclear testing.

Why not instead of baffles construct an array of wind turbines to take the energy out the wind? Fix the deadly gales problem and power the building at the same time.

Don't invest in UX. Invest in UI (user interface). The rot really started when this whole "user experience" fad began. If a user interface is giving me an experience, it is a bad user interface. User interface should melt into the background and explicitly be designed to NOT give the user "an experience".

Please don't continue with the "user experience" bullshit.

C# is a fine language but it pioneered nothing at all. Especially not lambda expressions.

I'm in my 40s and I've never been paid by cheque, always been direct deposit (well, with the exception of cash in hand jobs done as a teenager, but they will always be cash in hand).

The safest approach is to not fscking do this kind of insanity in the first place.

Not executing Javascript. Vanishingly few people disable Javascript, but no one probably includes a Javascript interpreter in a bot.

The ex-polytechnic degrees are just as reputable as "red brick" university ones. Most polytechnics aren't like US community colleges, but more like the minor US universities.