That and the fact that each car model has a different type of battery pack with different geometry and capacity. Sounds like more trouble than it is worth.

You'll note that the reason they're losing money is not because the water is more expensive but because people's voluntary conservation efforts have reduced the amount of water being purchased.

Water bills typically don't go up a lot in droughts. That may change, but the way they've been managed in California in the past, they don't raise the rates because of a shortage.

You can also refer to the water table as being an "aquifer" and if you read my post you'll see that I explicitly called that out as finite.

Are you talking about California? Drought doesn't hit poor people any harder than rich in California. Other areas, especially where subsistence farming is practiced, yes.

First, people like to talk about "consuming" water. Water isn't consumed because it isn't turned into something else permanently, unlike say, oil or coal, which do not replenish in a reasonable amount of time. The only time the amount of water being used is actually relevant is when it's being pulled from a finite source for irrigation, like an underground aquifer or a river. A large portion of the planet gets sufficient rainfall to support all manner of agriculture. Raising alfalfa in California is dumb. Raising rice in Japan is not.

Feeding cattle on grassland that is not irrigated is not "consuming" water. As long as the land is not over-grazed it's not really an issue. In fact, the grass needs to be eaten and fertilized to thrive - it's co-evolved with large ruminants like cattle or horses.

So, these statistics are meaningless because it depends on where you're growing the crops as to whether or not you're consuming a finite resource. They're only useful in a local context. There are other side effects of raising cattle, such as deforestation, that are relevant.

Just because it's done doesn't make it a good idea.

But it's so much more fun to rewrite from scratch!

It's snowing in Tokyo right now so I'm curious if he's camped out. I'd like a picture of "sad iPhone in snow"

Kids these days.

Customer and Border Patrol should stick to enforcing customs laws AT THE BORDER. Once it's entered the country they should have no authority. We've also seen them trying to enforce copyright, as in the recent Google Glass case. They're already out of control at the borders with their warrantless searches, their authority should be rolled back, not expanded.

That would be kind of nice, but will it make "Linux" (i.e. Ubuntu, Fedora, etc.) into a major gaming platform? There are people who run Linux as their major desktop and keep a Windows partition around for gaming but is that a large market?

I think Steam OS has a decent shot at being successful, but is it fair to call a machine running Steam OS a Linux machine? I don't think so (unless you want to call Android a Linux machine as well) and if that's the case, then no, I don't think Linux will become the #2 gaming platform.

It's a variant of Linux but it's not for use with a general purpose computer. By that standard, BSD (iOS sorta kinda) and Linux (Android) are already major game platforms.

As far as functions, I'd say bcopy().

Well, to modulate an electric current you need an electric current (that's how a transistor works). Amplification isn't done by increasing the voltage/current of the reference signal. You use the reference signal to modulate a higher voltage/current. Once you have a transistor-equivalent we know how to use that to do all kinds of interesting things.