> If you want a "reliable" smart phone that doesn't need reset or suffer stupid ass software failures, get one of those $50 Samsung android smart phones.

Some of them don't have a forward-facing camera, but generally speaking they have the same OS as the lastest and greatest from Samsung, and can do *everything* that any other Android phone can do.

If you go back to white it never feels tight.

Umm, so I heard.

When I was growing up, Mobile was the brand name of a gas station.

Shit, you must be ancient. The terminal "e" had already fallen off when my dad was a kid.

To be honest, you're not missing much.

you mean they get to quit at 4pm every day?

pommie slackers!

Li-ion is just too expensive and maintenance-intensive to use grid scale.

"Grid scale" simply can not be more expensive than single-house scale.

It is called "Economy of scale" and although some of such may have limits, beyond which cost of additional units begins to increase, none of the conditions for that would apply in this case.

we know who the bad guys are

Well, we know, the victim really was a drug-dealer too now.

because we know who the bad guys are

We — the readers and viewers — know (sort of). The policeman doing the illegal deed in fiction knows just as much as the real cops in TFA knew.

There should be no difference in our condemnation (or lack of it) of their actions. And yet, the difference is vast, proving most of the society as either hypocrites or tools of the manipulators ready to whip-up public outrage for their own purposes.

Your plan would cost more than what the utilities are already doing. Doing it your way would mean they would have to charge more at night and during the day.

Whoever is doing it, if it makes sense for anybody to store power generated at off-peak times for usage at peak times, it makes more sense for the generating companies to do it: because they can afford bigger storage with dedicated personnel and manage the generation-storage combination finer.

But, of course, this begs the question of whether it makes sense to do it for anyone at all — though TFA seems to suggest, it does...

look, how many times do we have to go over this?

the 'sky ruler' is a false god.

this really pisses off the real god, the sky protractor. if you piss him off, he'll send all kinds of scary angles you way.

Some of us visit other places and try to learn something from the peoples and cultures we encounter there. Some of us spend their days in their mothers' basements cursing those who aren't afraid to emerge.

Missed a few:

1) This is the US's fault! Even left-wing politicians would be right-wingers in Western Europe.
2) This is the US's fault! Broadband adoption areas in rural areas are not nearly as good as those in Western Europe.
3) This is the US's fault! Copyrights go on for WAY too long.
4) This is the US's fault! Yada Yada Yada

Few people have the space for so many panels to run their house on them — even if the problem of storing it were solved. From MIT:

Imagine that your house uses 48 kWh of electricity per day (about average). If you live in Arizona, where the average solar insolation per year is around 6 kWh/meters squared/day, you’ll need 53 square meters (574 sq ft) of 15% efficient solar panels. If you spend the extra money for 21% efficient solar panels, then you’ll only need 38 square meters (409 sq ft) of solar panels. But if you try to power the same sized house in Vermont, where the average solar insolation per year is around 4 kWh/meters squared/day, you’ll need 80 square meters (861 sq ft) of 15% efficient solar panels and 57 square meters (615 sq ft) of the 21% efficient ones.

And 48kWh, which is cited above as "about average", means, no home-servers running 24x7 (about 200Watts*24h=4.8kWh — or 10% more than the estimate — per server), no super-duper Christmas lights, and other limitations...

No, electricity companies are better positioned to produce electricity. And, truth be told, they should be using these wonder-batteries to store electricity during the night so they wouldn't have to charge more during the day. If only we had them properly competing with each other...