Which is itself something of a straw-man argument, since the Federal Reserve System is something of a hybrid- created by Congress, its direct administrators appointed by the President, and with mandatory participation by the biggest banks, and with a return on profit provided back to the US Government. If anything it's a bit like another branch of government.

It's probably good that the executive and legislative branches do not have direct control of monetary policy as it reduces the chances of fads from disrupting the economy. As for problems with the banks that plug-in to the Federal Reserve System, those have jumped the shark because conventional commercial banks are allowed to commingle too many of their risky business ventures and are allowed to overleverage against their deposits, so of course they end up begging for more money when they inevitably screw up. Laws that have changed over the last 30-40 years have given the banks too much freedom, that's not a function of the Fed but of Congress and of the Presidency. Restrict banks into having be banks first and foremost again and my guess is that a lot of these problems would be reduced.

Definitely not a Fiat then... *grin*

If you're going to play on stereotypes, so will I...

In married couples it's almost always the man that configures the technology in the house, unless there's technology-oriented male offspring available to do it instead, and there will be a fairly large number of them that are already used to blocking ads in their browsers; a large chunk of them will look for how to block other ads now that they know such a thing can be done, and they will turn to their broadband routers and prewritten lists to do so even if that requires periodic manual updating.

Now to get off of stereotypes, anyone annoyed with ads that has access to their broadband router and is willing to read the documentation could blacklist ad websites. It doesn't require more than the ability to log-in to the web interface on the router and copy-and-paste a prewritten list. A housewife, if she knows that it's that easy, could do it as long as she has the credentials to log-in and can find that list.

Some people don't maintain their own technology because they're afraid of breaking things or because they don't understand enough to know how the discrete parts and the big-picture tie together, and because vendors have done a fairly decent job of making things integrate to at least function without tweaking. Throwing something else to change the status quo (ie, the ads) may be enough to motivate a fairly large number of people to make a change.

The bitcoin attitude has amused me. Sure, I get that some people don't believe in, don't trust, or don't like their government and as such want to avoid using fiat currency issued by their government, but since the use of third-party intermediaries seems to have become the de-facto standard for using Bitcoin, one has all of the downsides of a fiat currency (ie, no natural value of its own) without any of the normal advantages associated with a government interested in the security of a currency or the ability of a government to correct issues associated with that currency. It's also possible to lose or destroy wealth simply through the loss of information due to the specific nature of Bitcoin, so wealth lost cannot be regained.

Most likely, retrofits to existing trailers will require some form of fresh certification and documentation describing the new characteristics of the trailer. I don't know the industry terminology for heavy trucks, but for light vehicles that are modified from the original manufacturer specifications there are usually added door-jamb tags that indicate that it's a modified vehicle, when it was modified, and the new characteristics of the vehicle post-modification. Roadtrek and other Class-B RV conversion companies that retrofit RV chassis into full-sized cargo vans come to mind.

Just a guess, but retrofits will probably only be made as kits for extremely common trailer lines too, so that a given popular trailer from Hyundai or another manufacturer that exists in the tens of thousands can be easily retrofitted to a common standard, as opposed to random or haphazard retrofits each with its own characteristics. It'll obviously depend on what the shippers are using and how willing they'd be to buy electric trucks and how readily their trailers could be adapted, plus the lifespan of truck and trailer.

One thing that humans have been very good at over the last 200 years has been finding new sources of energy. At times this quest has meant gross pollution, but there have been developments, that when not let to get out of control, have produced vast amounts of energy without much more pollution than waste-heat.

If further energy production technologies are developed that continue to produce less and less pollution, and if humanity eventually concludes that it wants to stop mining Earth for whatever reason, there may come a tipping point where it makes sense to start mining extraterrestrial sources for our raw materials, especially if normally-polluting means to refine those materials into products en-route from the source to delivery.

I do not expect this to happen quickly, it'll be on a hundreds-of-years timescale. We will have to continue to pollute, then continue to engage in destructive forms of mining, and continue to grow as a population all while continuing to develop new space technology and new means of energy production, such that the population gets fed-up and either governments or companies decide to try it. It might also have to wait for space-based outposts to exist and for those outposts to work toward self-sufficiency and away from being entirely dependent on Earth-based supply, such that material refining tech that works off-Earth is developed. Regardless it won't happen in our lifetimes, our childrens' lifetimes, and probably not their childrens' lifetimes, so long as it's still not cost-effective and there's not enough will to do it.

I hope they find significant pieces that don't lend themselves to being easily transported. Unfortunately a single relatively small piece of plane is not enough evidence to prove that the plane went down in the ocean, only to prove that a single, relatively small piece of plane was found in/near the ocean.

To quote myself:

Does this not address your circumstances?

I drive a '95 Impala SS. I love my car. I crossed 30,000 (thirty thousand, not a typo) miles this weekend. I'll probably drive it for another twenty years. We're strongly considering replacing my wife's car with an all-wheel-drive Chrysler 300. She's kept her current car for fifteen years, we expect that she'll keep this one for the same amount of time. I'm not trying to force anyone into a mold, I'm simply expecting everyone to acknowledge that their way, whatever their way happens to be, is not going to fit everyone else's circumstances.

If you're in a high-density city the grocery store is probably on your block. If you only go once every couple of weeks, you can hire a ride for those trips for less than the cost of subscribing on a regular basis.

There's also this mythical device called a bicycle, that can be equipped with these high-tech things called folding baskets, that can be used to move groceries from one place to another from time to time. Even here in suburbia we've bicycled for our groceries, three baskets per bicycle, allowing for at least six bags, possibly more depending on how we pack the bikes, to be transported the less-than-a-mile home.

Perhaps they didn't think about the fact that the userbase actually liked things the way they were, didn't really care about a mobile version, and were more upset by the under-the-hood deficiencies than by the UI...

I may be projecting, but I've been using Slashdot for the better part of two decades, lurking since almost the beginning. Cleanup, evolutionary changes, mild tweaking all work fine, but revolutionary changes like a complete UI shift just piss people off. Killed Fark, killed Digg, and probably a bunch of other sites.

It seems like when a website's users start leaving it's usually disproportionately the positive contributors more than the run-of-the-mill or the trolls that go. That lowers the quality overall, which further drives away more positive contributors, turning the place into a cesspool that almost mocks what it was intended to be. I've seen it happen probably a dozen times over the years on various forums. Unfortunately management isn't usually smart enough to cater toward their power users even though those people drive the reasons for everyone else to come to the forum. Lose the power users and you have no focus as a draw anymore.

Slashdot is on the tipping point of that. Consider how long it takes for long-running, obvious troll posts to get modded down after a new article and discussion is posted. Used to be almost instatneous, now the Golden Girls and the G** N****r posts are seen for some time before being modded down.

There are apartments in a shady part of town that replaced their decrepit metal carport canopies with new solar panels. So long as they included one additional conduit pathway per half-dozen cars when they trenched for the panels they could easily run power to all of the parking spots. They could even meter the electricity by requiring the tenant to enter a code corresponding to a parking spot at a control point similar to how many parking lots have drivers pay for their space. If there's communication between the car and the charging station, the station could stop charging if the charger cable is unhooked from the car and not plugged back into the same car within say, five minutes. Could even alert the apartment if their car is prematurely unhooked if that kind of problem is present.

Consider this- gas stations associated with grocery stores are already starting to place merchandise shelves around the gas pumps to make it even more likely to tempt customers into buying soda and snacks. Electric cars remove one of the biggest hurdles to bringing a car indoors, the fumes. A convenience store of the future might have open doors on the ends, such that the driver literally pulls into the building among the merchandise to charge, making it even more tempting to buy stuff.

Obviously there will be theft issues, but there are theft issues already so I doubt that it would get worse.

I expect a standard for big-rigs to be developed where there are modular battery compartments on the underside of the trailer for conventional van trailers, such that the truck pulls up, the batteries under the trailer and under the tractor are swapped, and they're on their way again.

Depending on how they're designed they might also make for good under-ride protection, so cars can't drive under the trailers and get trapped or crushed.

I expect a hybrid sort, which is more like a Flying-J travel center. Restaurant(s), convenience store, a couple of service bays, and the refuelling stations. Sometimes there are some stores like a small shopping mall, usually with supplies that someone might have neglected to remember to bring, like beach supplies if on the way to California, or heavier jackets and boots if on the way North.

The restaurants are acceptable even if not great. The convenience stores and retailers are overpriced but can be useful in a pinch. The service area can deal with tires and other things that need to be fixed quickly.

Heh.

Hiring a car makes sense when one does not use cars very often.

Subscribing to a car service without personal ownership makes sense in some conditions, like high-density urban areas combined with relatively open travel requirements and for those that do not want to keep a given car for a long time.

We own. We keep cars for a long time, are particular about our cars, and it's less costly for us to own than it is for us to lease. We live in a single-family house on a plot of land, so we have room to park. Our jobs both have room to park. There are no toll roads around here either. Most of these things would not change even if we had autonomous vehicles. It also doesn't snow/rust here, so cars can reach 20 years without needing any body/chassis service if the suspensions are not abused.

I could see someone living in urban New York or Chicago or Boston or San Francisco subscribing to some kind of car service; if their work hours are stable and if the service can always have a nice clean sedan ready for them when they leave for work in the morning and can get a sedan to them in the afternoon or evening quickly after being summoned then it would work.

One model isn't going to work for everyone. Stop trying to assume that just because something works for you, that it would work for everyone else, or because something doesn't work for you, that it wouldn't work for any large portion of the population.