I think suckage is a matter of perspective. The larger a company is, and the farther one is from the top, the more specific and limited any given worker's job duties are. In the five person software company I worked for, the owner washed the dishes in the break room. In the Fortune 1000 company I worked for, we had one employee who just sorted printouts coming from a bank of printers. Some personality types like having a very defined role and set of responsibilities and want their job to be set hours, responsibilities and compensation. I suspect that the set of people who want that has very little overlap with the average /. user.

IIRC, the force of gravitational attraction is proportional to the product of the masses. Given the magnitude of the masses of the Earth and the Moon, moving mass from one to the other in the amounts of which we are capable will result in a delta of the before and after products barely indistinguishable from zero.

There is no physics based reason for a car to weigh as much as it does. Take off the body and replace with folding chairs and a flat board and the vehicle will weigh substantially less and mpg will probably quadruple. Of course, when that car moving 40+ mph hits another car, or an inanimate object like a tree, the occupants will all be killed or seriously injured, but that is okay, because we've improved fuel efficiency.</sarcasm>

In all seriousness, if the NHTSA is going to mandate minimum standards for collisions then the car has to be heavy. You can have lightweight, or safe in a high speed collision, but not both.

Bitcoin has a legitimate purpose; a truly portable store of value not needing physical storage that is also not under the control of any government entity has a fundamental value. The true mark of the legitimacy of any currency is the existence of as-of-yet unknown 3rd parties willing to accept said currency. Shells, salt & grain have all been used in the past because a person accepting said currency trusted that somebody else would take that same currency in return for goods or services at some future date. Bitcoin is going to swing between overvalued and undervalued for a while, but eventually a critical mass of parties willing to trade in Bitcoin alone will exist. Someday a farmer will accept Bitcoin for his wheat, and then use those Bitcoins to pay for his diesel and tractors and not once will any party have to convert Bitcoins to <insert fiat currency here.>

It make take a while, but so long as Bitcoin remains uncorrupted by counterfeiting it will stabilize because it will remain out of the sphere of government influence.

I don't know where everyone else lives, but I have yet to find a free wireless or wired streaming video capable Internet connection anywhere in the place I live. I use Netflix and Hulu but I still pay a communication utility for Internet access, so while I am not paying that same provider for cable content, it still is not free. All I have done is separate the data access utility from the content provider. Cord cutting is really a misnomer, few (if any) are truly cutting the cord, they just choose to consume content as Internet data rather than TV signal.

Satellite radios already know if they are allowed to decode the signal for a listener and EZ-Pass RFID works for toll roads. I am pretty sure the "is this car allowed to charge here" problems has already been solved.

Given that an "efficient" diesel internal combustion engine is only about 40% efficient, if electricity can be generated by non-fossil fuel sources like wind or solar it doesn't have to be efficient, especially since most driving takes place in daylight hours when potential wind and solar energy are at their peaks. All we have to do is get the Green supporters to kick some NIMBY butts and this has promise.

The Republicans in Congress had exactly ZERO involvement with the implementation of the website. Once approved by Congress, and then upheld by the SCOTUS, it was on the Executive branch to hire the firms to build the website. This is 110% on the Executive Branch of the government.

Friction does have a part, but not as much. Think about a car traveling at very high speed. While drag on the car of the air going past is non-zero, it is much less a factor than the energy required to push through the air ahead of the car.

The problem with "a new car" is that some of the functionality has been taken away from the driver. In a classic car, if I put it in neutral, the gears disengage, especially if it is a stick. I may blow the engine if I push on the clutch and the throttle is stuck but power will be disconnected from the drive wheels. If I turn the key counter clockwise, the car WILL shut off. In a push button start, drive by wire car the driver uses physical inputs to tell the computer to do something and then the computer does it. If due to a software glitch it suddenly decides to max the throttle there isn't much I can do as the driver to stop it, at least not in the very limited time I have before I collide with another car or a wall. It isn't the probability of collision with which I have a problem, but the fact that significant parts of the control of a two ton machine powered by incendiary fuel are put under the control of a computer program.

Your analogy is incorrect. In this situation, the proper comparison is ownership of a computer. Merely owning a computer will not get the pre-notification waved, only self identifying with hackers does so. As a person with some level of computer skills, this bothers me, but the comparison between computers and guns should be parallel in reference to the objects versus what one does with said objects and what one claims knowledge of ability to do with those objects.

Oregon set this up. The fact that its own retailers have exploited a situation, and will be hurt by the fixing of said distortion, is its own fault. The way to deal with that is to implement it over time, e.g. add 0.5% per year until it is at a level commensurate with its neighbors.

Free = embedded in the cost of the Tesla vehicle. Air, wind and sunlight are free. Everything else has a cost built in someplace.

If at first you don't succeed, redefine the standard for success!