I gotten a Windows 95 machine up to the 49.7 day limit. The key was the machine was hooked up to some special scanner that didn't get used that much, so the computer spent 99% of its time idling at the desktop. Once I realized it was getting close I figured out when exactly it was going to hit the limit so I could witness what would happen. Which turned out to be nothing, until I clicked the mouse and it BSOD'd.

I've also managed to get a Vista machine up to the 497 day limit. In that case the computer was still running okay other than the networking being hosed.

You might throw them off-guard, but ultimately it won't work because they'll just come up with some other reason to reject you.

Actually, it's pretty damn simple to embed an MSHTML control into a Windows application, which you can use to make your own IE-based browser. Almost certainly easier than trying to start with Webkit/Chromium. However, said browser will only run on Windows.

The idea is that you charge this thing at night using cheap off-peak electricity, and then during the day you draw power from your battery instead of paying peak rates. If you already pay for power this way and you're smart about it, you're already not doing laundry or running the oven at peak usage times if at all possible. And you're still connected to the grid, so if you need to run a high-power appliance it's not like you can't if you don't mind paying peak rates to do it.

The battery would run the lights about 8 hours. Then what?

Sure they can't. I've seen car batteries run completely dead. Charge them back up, and they work fine.

Maybe Elon's plan is to sell batteries to people who aren't stupid enough to try and run an electric oven off of them?

The reason why you can more easily get away without is that 1) you're in desert where the humidity is lower, which means that your body can more easily cool itself by sweating and 2) you're in a desert where it gets down to the 20's at night so it's not miserably hot when you're trying to sleep. I don't mind the heat so much during the day, but to sleep when it's 30C+ and 70% humidity and you'd want air conditioning too.

It'll last 10 hours if you draw 1kw from it the whole time. Maybe running the air conditioner off of it is a bad idea, but it'll easily run a modern fridge (about 1kwh/day) for 8 days, with enough power left over for a few lights and some occasional TV.

So you're saying I can remodel my bathroom for $30k(!), and increase the value of my home by $90k? Uhhh.... I don't think so. Your first number is about an order of magnitude too high, and your second and third numbers are flipped.

No kidding. If you're demanding that kind of speed at home, there's very few places in the US that you're going to be able to live. Even 50/5 is going to be somewhat limiting.

Self driving cars will make commutes much more tolerable, and make them faster by reducing traffic jams. Though ultimately the best thing would be to allow more telecommuting for those that have jobs that could allow it.

Well, that's how the 80% thing factored in. They had a pretty good idea what they were building, so they could start on the foundation while things like the placement of the the windows was still being worked out. As opposed to diving right and and starting to build something and then deciding later whether you're building a storage shed, an oil rig, a shopping mall, or a skyscraper.

Assuming a corporate Windows PC on a domain, he probably has no control over that. Even if he's a local admin the domain will still overwrite those settings. So he's stuck, other than going to IT and begging for an exception to the policy.

Or you could just hibernate the machine and the end of the day and resume at the start of the next day.