Many people don't use mods and never play on servers. Of course, you don't meet them online, so it's not strange you'd get the impression they aren't out there.

To me the fun is designing and building stuff. Having other people around is mostly a distraction. If there's anything I'd like it's a more consistent challenge; better zombie and villager AI, for instance, to make larger structures meaningful.

Living longer won't mean you have more kids. So far the trend has if anything been the reverse.

And "reverse aging" != "live forever". There's still plenty of non-age-related things that can, and eventually will, kill you. In fact, if "reversing aging" does not include "cure cancer" the overall effect on average lifespans will not be particularly large at all.

I suspect this is a complete non-problem.

I'm building a different system (which will be a lot cheaper, and is not a milling machine).

Any link or way to keep informed about this? I really want to use surface-mount components, but making the PCBs are a major obstacle.

That looks really interesting! Can you cut thin copper, for doing your own PCBs? Or is any kind of metal impossible?

So, you were offered to go to a restaurant that offers whale meat. And as it's against your principles, you declined. Just as the woman simply should have declined the sauna.

You follow the local accepted customs, whether you think they are ridiculous or not.

Let's take a parallel situation: In some countries, such as Australia I believe, you wear your shoes indoor. In some countries, such as Japan or my native Sweden, you always take them off.

If you come to either country, would you find it acceptable to basically say "In Australia we always wear our shoes indoor. If you want to take them off, no issue. Why should I be forced to take them off?". Then proceed to try to walk in wearing your outdoor shoes? Would you be surprised if you were (politely in Japan, not so politely in Sweden) thrown out as a result?

You don't bring swimwear into a sauna. If she isn't comfortable being nude there are multiple other ways to refresh yourself, in the pool, showers or wherever. Nobody forced her into the sauna in the first place.

As a male, white middle-aged STEM researcher: Yes, there is pervasive, often painfully (and legally prosecutable) obvious sexism in science. And while I can imagine that many fields are even worse, that doesn't put science off the hook.

I suspect they could have saved themselves a lot of coding by simply randomly linking to real startup web sites. It'd look no less ridiculous.

For the Osaka-Tokyo route, the Shinkansen made the difference between an overnight business trip or return the same day. That made it insanely popular. With the new train, you can not just make a set of meetings; you can do a full days work and still get back the same day (even more so for Nagoya of course).

Many people here get stationed at offices in other cities for months or years, and leave their families behind. They effectively do a weekly commute, and come home only on weekends. For a lot of people this would let them get home more often or even stay home and make this a daily commute. Expensive, but on the other hand the company doesn't have to pay for a second short-term apartment and the other costs of two households.

I appreciate your idea, but I don't think it's that good a fit for the Segway.

People that can't walk a mile most likely needs their own assistance tech - a walker, a wheelchair - on the bus or train as well. And people that don't have time to walk a mile or two won't be helped by a thing that barely moves above walking speed. A bicycle rental spot (or free city bikes) would be more helpful and less costly.

"Not tonight dear, I don't have a headache"?

Firefox works just fine. Better than Chrome for me, actually; it uses less memory and less CPU, and when I stopped allowing Flash I rarely or never see any crashes either.

I solder SMT components by hand as well. Don't even need a microscope; just head-mounted magnifier glasses is plenty. Make sure you have good light and plenty of flux and you're good to go.

But the problem is the board. Sure, if you have a finished design already, and you intend to actually use it in the future, then sending off for a finished PCB is good. But if it's just a hobby, and you're prototyping or just playing around to better understand a particular circuit, then spending a good chunk of money and weeks of time for a board is simply not feasible. You really want to set something up, try it, then tear it down and try the next idea.

With that said, I don't know that this is the answer either. Hand-drawn does not sound precise enough to handle SMT, and a whole separate device just making prototype boards sounds like too much money and space for a hobbyist. Perhaps the answer is desktop mills that become cheap and precise enough that you can use them to cut out boards from copper blanks along with other building tasks. At least that would not be a single-purpose gadget.

Electric heaters are 100% efficient.

Heat pumps give you around 300-500% of the input electrical energy.