Most of the rest of us enjoy doing things in groups

If by "groups" you mean a number of friends/relatives, you would still have a far superior experience at home if everyone pooled the money they would spend on tickets and instead bought a large and very nice TV(+sound system.) Can't find hard data on a quick search, but this suggests that even the lowest per-team ticket average is $106; so amongst 5 friends you can get a 50" TV, or a 40" and decent sound system, according to a quick check from Amazon. You don't have to compete with surrounding noise to talk, snacks/drinks are all to your liking (with the only limit being supply), people aren't in a single line and have to shift around to talk to someone else, and you save money on gas. Added bonus: Nice TV afterward (you could raffle it off amongst those who paid, or sell it and split the proceeds amongst those who chipped in; it's not like you can take the stadium seats home with you after the game, so you're not out anything more.)

I can understand a sense of camaraderie with fellow fans might enhance the enjoyment, but I don't consider merely being around people of like mind "socializing", and from my (admittedly limited; 2 or 3 games in my life) experience attending people don't really strike up a conversation with someone next to them.

buy an automated car

I agree with you except this (extremely minor) point. When we get to the point where automated cars are simply another part of life, I believe that car ownership will stop being a normal part of life. Instead, most people will belong to auto clubs or co-ops and pay a nominal monthly fee (likely tiered for miles/month + other perks) and call for a vehicle from their club ahead of time that will be sent to their location to pick them up and drop them off. Only gearheads, rural folk, and the rich will actually own cars--and then rarely automated cars, outside of collectors of early models--because it will be far cheaper to belong to one of these than pay insurance+gas/electricity+loan payment+maintenance while living in the city or even suburbs.

Sure, it might mean you wait, but if these clubs are run properly then unused vehicles will be parked in a distributed manner so you're only waiting 2-3 minutes. Need to go somewhere right fucking now? The clubs would have allowances for X priority calls/month, with high charges if you go over without setting up something ahead of time. The clubs could even have agreements with local city that their cars can have an "emergency" mode (enabled by club dispatch), where it gets priority in traffic for, say, getting a woman in labor to the hospital or to a dying relative.

This also helps with suburban sprawl and city traffic, because now most people don't need a garage, drive way, or parking spot. Bus terminals could be expanded for pick up and drop off of passengers of these cars (and perhaps even storing them), with most streets having a "quick stop" lane that can be used during lighter traffic.

We're probably 20-30 years out from this being standard, but when it is the whole auto-buyer thing is going to have a huge upset (if dealerships are only concerned about Tesla's direct sales now, they haven't seen anything yet...)

Might wanna watch out on the snow days though, in case you get dumped on when the snow falls off

This sounds like an amazing beginning for a Rube Goldberg machine.

Looks like Japan has considered that angle. I don't know about naming something from Japan "S.T.A.R.S.", though...

It's more like Amazon Video, but "Amazon Video for games" doesn't get as many clicks.

Perhaps it's time to have editors share a byline on the books. "Written by X, Edited/Proofed by Y" The second line can be in smaller print, but it would still have the same effect: If someone is a new author and they pay an established, individual editor/proofreader, more people will be interested in their work because the editor was interested in taking on the job. Sure, there will be ones who take any job and churn out material, which can make this second "by" a good negative indicator as well as a positive. The ones that are known to be picky and have a good track record of picking can help authors get started without having to involve an entire publisher.

It will be a weird symbiosis, as accomplished authors will move to unknown editors in order to pay less, but then those editors become known and in turn find unknown authors they can make more lucrative contracts with... It's not a huge divorce from the current publishing industry, but there will be far more choice and it will be far more decentralized, so it's still a vast improvement without the entire industry becoming print-outs of FanFiction.net.

Likely the "proofing" is more important, because basic editing (typeface, spacing, etc.) can be done by computers.

Aye. Nintendo not only lost a ton of the "casual" market with the confusing name and GamePad (everyone had tablets, it wasn't novel nor interactive; IMHO they should have doubled-down on the Wiimote and made it even more accurate with some sort of haptic feedback), but they couldn't make up sales with their core market because they had nothing in their core franchises. Pikmin 3 and Wind Waker HD can only do so much, and NSMBU was just more of the same.

However, that's starting to turn around with a lot of their core (and some not) franchises on the horizon. The biggest is Super Smash Brothers (with the boring titles of "SSB for Wii U" and "SSB for 3DS".) The 3DS version comes out first, but WiiU looks to be early 2015 ("Q4 2014", currently). Super Mario 3D World and Mario Kart 8 both saw a surge in numbers, especially with the MK8 numbers posted for the past month. They've shown a new Zelda and have Hyrule Warriors coming out to tie over fans in the meantime. No Metroid or Star Fox, sadly, but those aren't nearly as big as Mario or Zelda. (And I'll take "no Metroid" over "Team Ninja Metroid" any day.) There are also some cult-classic sequels, Bayonetta 2 and Xenoblade Chronicles X, that will move less units but still create some fervor. (I'm holding off on buying a Wii U until Xenoblade Chronicles X, personally.)

Once the core franchises get core hits, sales will jump, and with those expanded sales might come more (competent) third party games, creating a positive feedback cycle. It won't be as big as when developers went "Oh shit!" when the Wii unexpectedly sold like hotcakes and started trying to pump out titles (leading to a glut of shovelware), but there is potential life in the Wii U yet.

I just hope Nintendo learns from their mistakes this gen (poor name, poor control setup, poor hardware) when the next rolls around.

Ooh, Comcast collection stories. I might have you beat:

I went to university at an interesting place that did three months internship, three months classes, repeat until you graduate or declare bankruptcy. During the work term I had my own place instead of my campus place, so I had to get my own services. Not knowing better at the time (mid 2004) I got Comcast. All was well and good, actually, and I realized that I had paid for one month too many and called them about it. I recall the lady being nice and saying they would happily refund a pro-rated amount and I gave them my forwarding address.

I quickly forgot about it. Then, in Oct 2005, I got a collections notice (I didn't actually receive it until Christmas 2006 because they sent it to my school address while I was on work term) that stated I owed Comcast that exact same amount they actually owed me (about $35.) To Comcast's credit, I was able to get someone on the phone on Christmas Day who saw the error and cleared the collection amount. (I didn't dare try to actually get the money owed me, as that would risk repeating the whole thing. )

Never again will I give Comcast a red cent. I will invent a way to do TCP/IP over two cans and a string before I get any of their services. If anyone asks me I will yell at them until I am blue in the face for them to avoid Comcast. I haven't dealt with the company personally since that holiday phone call, but I haven't seen a single good thing about them in the news since then; this could be selection bias, but I'm not worried about being wrong in this case.

Why even bother spoofing the IP? Hack the account of the bot, or set up your own for potential future targets, and inject apparent changes. While this will eventually be found out (far easier than to figure out IP spoofing), if done with a trusted account in the right circumstances I could see an immediate backlash being disproportionate and causing things to escalate quickly.

Basically, wait for the hay pile to build up on the camel, and play that final straw at the right moment...

I didn't mean that my description was the entirety of legalization, just that it was a part of it why I believe that use would drop after legalization (as others have pointed out, Portugal (I think) has shown this as realistic.) Sorry for the confusion.

I never really had the answer for how to counter that.

I don't think you have to. Legalization means you can walk into a hospital/pharmacy/police station and ask where a good place for addiction assistance is without worrying that they'll call the cops or arrest you on the spot. We should be promoting that kind of behavior anyway ("Get yourself some help and we will help you get that help without arresting you"), but legalization will make that a far more reliable scenario.

While I've no numbers to back up my speculation, I would think that many users/addicts consider getting clean at some point but decide against it due to the threat of, at best, an arrest record and so are driven back to the drugs.

I thought of the keystroke listening, too, when I read the summary, but something just struck me: Couldn't you ruin that listening by having a duplicate typewriter set up right next to the one someone is working on, hooked to a machine that will randomly press keys? It would be annoying as hell for the actual typist, but if it can somehow match the typing rate of the human, wouldn't that destroy the ability to analyze the sound?

Both of those people are dead, their legacies set. You are correct that Musk doesn't have as vast a philanthropic footprint as either of those two at the moment, but he's also very much alive (43 yo, no serious health issues I am aware of) and has plenty of time to make billions of dollars and then donate that to whatever.

For reference, both Carnegie and Franklin were approx 84 when they died. Assuming we don't go all Mad Max, 40 years is a lot of time for Musk to play catch up.

PayPal, rockets, electric cars, solar panels, paying $1 million for oatmeal or something in the name of a Tesla museum. While he doesn't have absolute control of any one of those industries, he's sounding more and more like a modern Andrew Carnegie, maybe with some Benjamin Franklin mixed in.

Absolutely nothing bad will be done to them; if anything, they'll get commendation medals for bravely charging at a potential terrorist machine. If they were in California, they'd probably be hailed as heroes and had a statue put up in their honor, compared to six cops beating a guy to death, on tape, with audio of them saying things like "Now see these fists? They're going to (expletive) you up" with the two actually brought to trial being acquitted by a jury. (A third was scheduled, but after this trial his charges were dropped.)

The jury part is what sickens me the most; there are all sorts of examples of police abuse, but rarely do the police in question actually get taken to court over it. It finally happens, and 6-12 of my "peers" think they were just doing their damn job. People will rationalize their stances, often going into convoluted and twisted reasoning; I have no hope for humanity, but it doesn't seem I have to make such leaps to maintain that stance...

(And in case anyone was wondering, the Fox News link is intentional; it's basically the AP article, and if Fox News isn't willing/able to put a spin to make the cops seem like heroes then any cop supporters should have a hard time as well.)