And yet newer cars with all their complexity are both more powerful and more efficient. The 1960's Mustangs had a base 3.3L engine that put out 120HP. The 2013 Corolla has a 1.8L engine that puts out 132HP. Or if you talk upgrades, the 4.7L big-ass engine put out 271HP. The current 5.0L Mustang engine can put out 435HP. And all of the new engines get better mileage.

True. But then again, my car will kill me if it malfunctions, whereas my phone or computer will merely inconvenience me in general.

I'm a fan of tight regulations on devices that are one of the leading causes of death and injury in this country, if not the leading cause.

Your Arduino isn't keeping tabs on battery condition and charge, road conditions, climate control, entertainment system, etc. Even a non-electric vehicle has hundreds of thousands of lines of code with all the ECU's and such that communicate error conditions in various components.

You can't do that already? I mean, it may take some knowledge and elbow grease, or paying someone else to do it, but it's very easy to replace most vehicle's infotainment systems, and even preserve the existing capabilities while extending them. $400 or so later and my 2005 Yukon now has a touch-screen with a backup camera, and it still uses the steering wheel controls that were stock with the car.

Smaller families, more invested in each child, less social interaction because of the child-abducting boogeymen (even though they are statistically insignificant and getting more so with each year). We've got a generation of kids that are growing up inside and not learning how to interact with people in non-sterile environments. When forced to deal with people that they can't just hit block on or ignore, they freeze up. Socialization is very much downplayed in our current culture, and it's apparently sorely needed by many.

Don't take this as me saying they have to like everyone they meet. But you do have to learn some basic "get along with each other" skills that I'm finding many kids lack any more.

The problem is the "could". We have a system that's set up to railroad people into the system with those "coulds". "You COULD get 7 years, or plead guilty and get off after 3 months, but it's an adult charge", but then you've got a jail and your strikes started. For what is generally just a stupid juvenile mistake.

Prosecutorial discretion is not often used in a very discretionary manner.

I don't think anyone was trying to get him out of punishment. I think the chorus here is calling to not treat him as an adult, as our system is wont to do. The "years in prison" line in the news blurb is what set all this off, and that is completely inappropriate given his age and his crime. It shouldn't even be an option to an overzealous prosecutor.

Even if you didn't get through to him specifically, there are quite possibly other people more on the fence that don't use stupid acronyms like "SJW" as if it's somehow a pejorative, and they may be influenced by your comments to look deeper into it. We don't need everyone to admit that we've got a problem to start solving it, just enough people to achieve critical mass.

That's one of the reasons that I like T-Mobile. I can go over my data allotment, and all they do is throttle me.

So you prefer PVC for your water pipes? That tends to grow nasty stuff in it, and not be great at dealing with temperature shifts. Or cast iron, which rusts? Steel?

Copper is used in MANY systems, and almost universally in plumbing, the world over. US, UK, Mexico and Canada all use it as their primary potable water piping solution, and even the EU uses it commonly: https://books.google.com/books... water pipe european union&f=false

Really? I had to get a new battery for it, but my 2010 HP Envy 15 Macbook competitor is still running fine, and has a faster GPU than they ever had. And I've even been able to upgrade the RAM and replace the hard drive in it, hauled it with me on an airplane twice a week for over a year, and generally used the hell out of it.

Pipes have gotten bigger. It's harder to unintentionally DDoS a site any more, unless it's running out of someone's basement. And even then, I've got like 5Mbps upload on DSL... that's enough for a decent load. The market and commodity hardware wasn't that way when I first joined and sites got slashdotted semi-regularly.

Sometimes. Confidence combined with deference and recognition of that which you don't know is a different sort of confidence than brazen overconfidence like this "Scorpion" guy. If you can admit what you don't know easily, I'm more likely to believe you when you say you actually do know something. But it takes confidence to know the difference.

There's a 5th Amendment in France? Who knew.

It'll last longer than 88 years. The half life is 88 years... that means it's only halfway done after 88 years. All it's going to do is lose efficiency over the next thousand years or so.