That's rather pessimistic. Just because an environment is harsh we don't give up, we overcome the problems.

You wouldn't need anything like a 1TWh. All you need is enough to smooth output of an intermittent source a bit and give you s little longer to ramp up other energy sources. On Japan a 250MW wind farm gets a 40MWh battery for smoothing.

iOS makes you work harder than necessary to get things done. For example, there is no app tray. All apps just get dumped on the home screen after installation and you have to organise them yourself. There isn't even an alphabetical list unless you spend time making it yourself.

It seems really odd given how they try to make other stuff low effort. Finding apps is pretty fundamental.

Swipe keyboards take a little getting used to but it's worth spending a few days forcing yourself to use one because in the end they are so much faster. The stock Android keyboard actually has a really good implementation.

The Google Japanese keyboard is excellent too. Like the English keyboard it mines the interwebs for data, so knows a lot of acronyms and slang that I had to teach other keyboards.

Tesla give you a long warranty and tested their battery pack up to 750,000 miles. It seems pretty reliable. Worrying about battery replacement costs is like worrying about engine replacement costs in an ICE car. At worst used ones are already available for a few thousand, similar to a high end engine.

EBay filters the HTML you can use in a listing. The idea is to prevent people doing exactly this, or say using JavaScript to change the description from "working" to "spares and repairs" after it finishes. The hack was finding a way to get around the filter and put this code on the page.

Get a Chromebook. Gmail integration, virus proof, cheap and low maintenance.

You are forgetting about the international rules governing these things. The WTO and IMF have both regulated currency issues when counties split before. The general principal is that if both countries have a stake they have to share fairly, or one can choose to walk away at its own expense.

The BoE belongs to Scotland too. If England wants it then it may be possible to negotiate that, but it would have to take on the debts owed as well. The rest of the UK can't just grab something that is jointly owned with Scotland.

The Poll Tax? That alone shows just how little the Tory party thinks of Scotland.

I'm not saying that there were not problems, but there was more than one solution. She decided to smash it all. Look at Germany now. Strong manufacturing and industrial base. Recovered from the financial crisis a lot faster than we did, with real jobs and real wage rises. The average UK citizen is still poorer than they were in 2008.

Also, some things don't have to be profitable. The NHS, basic utility services etc.

Agreed on the ChromeBook.

I'm not sure about making a ChromeBook use dial-up, so the solution is to somehow get a WiFi router on dialup.

I think there used to be WiFi routers that could manage a modem directly, but there isn't much call for them these days so I doubt you can find one.

You could set up a computer with Linux just to manage the dialup, and plug that into the router's WAN port. But maybe you can just customize a router to do what you need:

Buy a router that is well supported by open firmware and has USB ports. Install the open firmware, login as root, then customize the router to do the dialup with a USB modem.

In the past, I have used TomatoUSB with an Asus RT-N16 router (costs about $80 new). It was a pleasure to work with. The router gives you about 24 MB of usable storage using onboard flash memory, but you can trivially plug in a USB flash drive and have gigabytes of storage if you need it. But you can probably set up the needed scripts to manage the modem in the 24 MB space.

There are newer routers with bigger onboard flash if you prefer. I only mention the Asus RT-N16 because I have actually worked with one, and it's very inexpensive. And it has plenty of CPU speed and RAM for this application.

The above solution is cheaper than using a computer to manage the dialup, and should be bulletproof. Also your relatives are unlikely to mess with it.

P.S. Hmm, I did a quick Google search and there are still routers with dialup support. Here's one for about $150... I've never used one so I don't know how well it works.
http://www.greatarbor.com/products.html#GAC-252

There is plenty of room, especially in the north. The problem is no-one wants to live there, and houses in the south cost too much. Immigration might make it a little worse but the basic problem has nothing to do with it.

I addessed this issue in this post. Short answer: even if the electricity is produced by coal, the large efficiency of electric motors, thermal power plants, and the electricity transmission system will ensure less emissions caused by an electric car than from a gasoline powered car. And my calculations didn't even take into account the emissions from processing oil into gasoline, which are especially high if the source is from tar sands. My calculations are referenced and I believe them to be reasonable.

That'd be a much better rant if Netflix actually, y'know, HAD a dedicated Tivo-like box to store things in. They don't.

I can't figure out if you totally missed my point, or totally got it.

Me: "This dog smells awful!" You: "Your rant would be better, if the dog weren't covered in shit."