VLC on Mac + Apple TV let my wife and I stream DVDs during our honeymoon without any issue. AirPlay Mirroring sends an on-the-fly re-encoded stream to the TV, so it generally doesn't matter what format your content was in originally: if it can show up on your monitor, it can show up on your TV (with a few exceptions).

That said, for the purposes of this summary's question, he'd likely be better served by something like a Steam Link, since it has wired connections for his keyboard and mouse (it can also work with Bluetooth peripherals), can operate wired or wirelessly on the network, is built on top of Valve's In-Home Streaming functionality that is already proven, and has confirmation from Valve (check near the end of the article) to be able to stream any content, not just content from within Steam. Plus, it's just $50. Chief downside: it doesn't launch until November.

Related products or ideas:
- Razer Forge TV/Android TV (seems to be limited in terms of what it can stream, may not have ports for peripherals)
- Wireless HDMI (can be expensive to get low latency, doesn't do anything for peripherals)
- Wireless USB hub (can be expensive last I checked, no clue how good it actually is)
- HDMI over Ethernet ($20ish, but doesn't help with peripherals and requires your home is wired up)

I had been planning to put my next gaming rig in my media room, but at this point I'll wait for a Steam Link and will tuck the gaming rig somewhere out of sight in a distant room (sadly, no server closet or a convenient place to put one).

I wouldn't be surprised if they could get some more specific clues on what water it's been in - for example, marine growth species types or isotopic ratios - to help pin it down better than just general drift calculations (lots of places could dump debris on Réunion). There are could also be potential clues on how much sun or what temperatures it's been exposed to, such as rates of plastic degradation, and perhaps that might also help give them better ideas of what areas it's been in based on weather patterns since the flight was lost.

There are so many potential clues... each one rather vague on its own, but all together, I imagine they'll get pointed in the right direction.

If it were 4 hours, twice, you might have a point.

But again, the Tesla is 30 minutes every 3 hours.

Is it 5 minutes? No, but it's a lot closer to 5 minutes than it is to 4 hours.
Your fears are unfounded. And parking lots can be wired pretty easily.

Not only that, but if we introduce the idea of eliminating mass ownership, it also has the potential to mitigate some of the concerns regarding the range of EVs. Namely, if you don't own the EV, then "recharging" it is as simple as swapping the entire car out for a fresh one. A fresh, driverless car could even meet you en route to your destination to make things even simpler.

Granted, it doesn't cover every use case (e.g. family road trips with lots of luggage would be a hassle still, since you'd be transferring that luggage as well), but it would cover a number of them, such as overnight trips to places that are cheaper to drive to than fly to.

"implying plugging it in while you're at work I guess"

Old news for folks used to plugging in block heaters.

They do still have moving parts, and therefore mechanics and lube will still be needed.

FTFY.

And you're conflating range and convenience. that's a no-no.

So while it takes several hours for a model S to get 100% charge, it reaches 80% charge (and therefore range) in only 30 minutes at station with a Supercharger station. And I don't know about you, but I need to stretch my legs and rest a bit after driving 180ish miles. so stopping every 3 hours is still roughly in line with typical driving practices, especially if you have the family (and kids!!) along.

The breakeven point for that 12k price difference between you and the GP (assuming for a rate of 10k miles/year and fuel economy of 30mpg) from the cost of gas is between 8 and 14 years (includes the cost of electricity to charge the car).

The average ownership length across all cars is 10.5 years, and creeping up.
The average ownership length of new cars is 6 years, and increasing even faster.

Costs of EVs are coming down, rebates and tax credits increasing, range increasing.

The economics of it just keep getting better and better every year.
I expect parity within 5 more years, and an EV surge following that.

**Only if you only compare upfront costs and ignorecosts over the life of the vehicle.

(stupid lack of an edit button)

Only if you only compare upfront costs and costs over the life of the vehicle.

Depends on model, but as a blanket statement it's patently false.

Depends on your complex, but as demand increases it's not at all unreasonable to think that charging hookups will become more common in parking areas, particularly of residences like apartment complexes.

theres a flexibility and freedom of movement that renting also grants.

once you have a house, relocating becomes a good deal more difficult.

normally I dismiss this "internet of things" as silliness. but here is an exception, where our autonomous cars can communicate to the road and the low power high efficiency streetlights can turn on as required (predictively, from knowing our destination) as we travel, and shut off again once we pass by.

as for retrofitting existing sockets with sensors, yes. home depot, lowes, grainger, and other building supplies stores sell them in various capacities (higher ones need more specialized suppliers like Grainger or WESCO).

I hate being only able to see a few dozen stars at night, and I'm live in a fairly rural area, and out "city" isn't all that big.

Travel a couple hours any direction, and it gets better, enough that it literally dropped my wife's jaw (she'd never seen it before), but it's still not like I used to get see in the middle of the Nevada desert or from the top of a ridge in the Northern Sierras at night.

I'm sure the hardware itself will be cheap. Oracle's hardware is like IBM's mainframes -- they'll practically give away the hardware if you'll burn up MIPS on a regular basis. Even if "give away" is thousands per socket, it's a drop in the bucket compared to the fees for support and any OS licensing. Our relatively large company is a decent sized Oracle DB customer (lots and lots of hosted J2EE enterprisey applications) and the maintenance fees alone, just to be able to run the software, are eye watering.

The problem is that licensing like that keeps all but the most well heeled customers off SPARC, and hence the popularity will never get much higher than it is. Ever since Linux on x86 became a viable alternative, companies without a real need to run SPARC and by extension Solaris on SPARC are migrating away. Even Debian dropped support for its SPARC port.

Whether it's the high cost keeping people off SPARC, or the niche nature of Itanium keeping people off Itanium, a system architecture needs a critical mass of customers with a continued need to run on it to be successful.

When you say "1024-bit encryption" you're talking about RSA, which is a completely different problem. 1024-bit RSA are too small to be used today and should be replaced.

2048-bit RSA keys, however, are roughly equivalent in security against brute force to a 112-bit symmetric key, and will be secure against anyone for quite some time. 3072-bit RSA keys are equivalent to a 128-bit symmetric key. Excascale, even yottascale, computers won't touch them.

But everyone really should be moving away from RSA anyway. ECC is better in virtually every respect. To get 128-bit security (meaning equivalency to 128-bit symmetric key), you only need a 256-bit EC key.