You do realize that virtually all consumer thermostats use a fairly standard interface, and they can be swapped with one another, right? This includes the Nest/Ecobee, etc. If someone threatened me like that, I'd laugh at them, disconnect the thermostat from the wall, and attach a cheap replacement.

For a tech website, Slashdot has a lot of luddites, but we already knew that. My smart meter saves me money, and the privacy consequences aren't really that dire. Definitely far less than what your credit card bills reveal.

Oh really? Broken-window fallacy much? Think of what our economy could do if these people spent that laptop cash on something better...

Sound quality is great these days... They've replaced the telephone wire systems with low power FM transmitters with a range of about a mile or so., so the sound is as good as your car or boom box can produce, and there's a fringe benefit if you live locally of being able to listen to the movie.

The only time my wife and I go to the movies anymore is to the drive-in. Seven bucks a head, and we get to see two or even three movies (usually one new release, and one that is between one and three weeks old). Bring your own snacks, and the movie theater snack bar is cheap as well (I think the highest priced item on the menu is a patty melt (hamburger with cheese and onions) which is like $4.50.

The downside is they're only open in the summer.

There's enough uranium to last a very, very long time--effectively forever, if we manage it properly. The problem is that we throw away something like 99% of it (referring to it as "waste") using the current fuel cycle.

It's particularly lovely in this case because you need to record not just the customer's location and the tax rate there, but also some corroborating evidence that the customer is in fact in that location, then register with the appropriate authority in that location. The reporting burden is going to mean fewer small sites capable of doing their own checkout process.

If %G is good enough for Twitter, it's good enough for me!

It's Capitalism 101.

While the general snark in this comment is evident, I have to protest about conflating private ownership of the means of production with government agencies wasting money doing useless tasks (to say nothing of the risks associated with it).

Perhaps the inability to differentiate these two is actually something that's common these days, though, which would explain a lot about modern discourse on the topic -- likewise the conflation of "jobs" and "wealth" (the former being a means to an end).

Heat problem must be already solved, see the battlemaster ppc example. Also, while I can't imagine mounting an avenger cannon in a vehicle other than a warthog, I also can't imagine turning it into a giant pistol, either. I imagine that if I could do one, the other would be, if not easily achievable, at least something a good engineer skilled in the art could accomplish.

You know, I haven't had a conversation like this since rec.games.mecha died off. .. Brings back memories.

Yeah, I get the in universe explanation, what I question is why this was an issue in the first place. A mech carrying around a giant pistol should be all the inspiration you need to get from point a to point b , and it's not like it's a big engineering challenge given that you already managed to modularize the thing into a pistol form factor to begin with (especially when you civilization is keeping FTL travel going with spot and balling wire... You've got to have some seriously talented engineers).

Maybe they just had really aggressive patent attorneys in the star league era? Like "on the internet" patents turned into "on a battlemech" patents and ComStar held the IP with multi century terms, while the clans were the actual successor (no pun intended) in interest... The whole battle of Tukayyid thing was actually over who owned the omnimech rights, which is why they called it a trial. Make about as much sense as the actual storyline, I guess.

I have switched from air to train travel in Europe because flying has become too uncomfortable for tall people.

From my preliminary understanding of things, you wouldn't be using Qatar Airways for flights within Europe anyway. They're more of a long-haul hub-and-spoke model airline that could take you from Europe to Africa or east Asia with a one-stop trip. For intra-European air travel you'd use a different airline, and probably a different model of airplane, optimized for fuel efficiency on shorter-haul trips (and possibly a narrowbody plane, if the airports in question aren't so busy that they're trying to max out every landing slot).

Open up a map and check out where Qatar is. It's kind of smack dab in the middle of the Eastern Hemisphere's inhabited landmasses. This makes for a really nice hub-and-spoke model air service.