Yes and no. It's true that "we" are burning all of the oil and gas, and are responsible for the demand. But oil companies themselves emit around 15% of all greenhouse gases in the process of producing, transporting and refining oil, before they sell it to us. That's not an insignificant amount, and perhaps there's a lot of room for further improvement. They already stopped practices like flaring off that pesky natural gas that is produced along with oil.

The same goes for the manufacturers of concrete: they emit a lot of CO2 in the process... but only do so to satisfy our need for the stuff.

I've dealt with call center agents from the USA, China, India, down to local ones. And all of the agents that take the call pretty much only run a script to cover the most common cases. But all of them can and will kick the call up to people who can actually help. The one thing I hate (and call centers from all parts of the world still do this) is when they make you walk through all the pointless troubleshooting steps in the script before they escalate your call.

Be careful what you wish for. This is something that Canada and the EU might want to return in kind, because the massive untaxed trade imbalance between us and the US regarding digital goods and services has been a thorn in our governments' side for a good while now.

They buy other companies, then jack up fees and mercilessly cut costs and corners, for a nice short term increase in profit. Then they sell it. If that fails, they strip it, load it with debt, and let it go bust.

They used to innovate. Not always being first with a particular feature, but being first to execute it well. And every year there'd be at least one enticing reason to upgrade, even if it was just a better screen or whatever. But lately, the incremental improvements are small, and mostly restricted to the processor (which was already plenty good) or the camera (which for many people does not have to be best in class). I'm still on an iPhone 12 and not planning on replacing it any time soon. Especially since they start at around €1000 now.

The one feature that would have me upgrade is Touch ID. Face ID eats in certain situations, and there were rumours that the iPhone 17 would have a fingerprint scanner in the power button but I guess they dropped that feature or were never planning to include it.

I always hopes that streaming would be perfect to serve the "long tail": content that is not much in demand but not expensive to serve either. Having a massive library of classics and hard-to-find lesser known works would make me reconsider re-subscribing. But I guess the demand simply isn't there.

Roomba and his friends won't make your bed, put the trash out, open the windows to air the place out, cook your steak, get the mail, put the groceries away, repaint your room, repair your deck, or load the dishwasher. But Rosie will. Eventually. I hope.

A dumb question perhaps but... is the river temperature rising because of all the heat being dumped into it? This certainly is an issue around many of France's nuclear power plants, who rely on rivers for cooling, and adding significantly to the water temperature.

Let's also work out the number of years added to everyone's life by oil & gas, giving us access to cheap energy and a range of products that improve the quality of our lives. Sure, we have better alternatives now and we should move on, but if we "just stop oil" as some people are suggesting, we'll see premature deaths on a biblical scale.

Also FTFY: "with disproportionately high impacts on low income communities". The original phrase sounds like a dog whistle.

IIRC our postal service in the Netherlands had something like this: you could digitally compose a letter or even a postcard, and have it sent to someone in physical form. The service was wildly unpopular... I think a service that has the receiver pay for such mail would be even less popular.

Snail mail is more or less as good as it's going to get, the problem is that it's expensive to keep it that way. Especially if they have to earn on one letter what they used to earn on 10.

Steerable beams of concentrated sunlight... wouldn't that make a terrific weapon as well?

For Tesla's FSD, it kinda makes sense. Tesla saves a lot of money by putting the required sensor package and processor in every car instead of doing it to order, but they may not want to make everyone pay for it if they are not using it. Conversely, consumers might not all want to pay for the substantial cost in software development. And they may change their mind later. So: your can can already do it but you only pay the (hefty) fee if you want the service.

But what BWM and VW are doing is scummy. There are few or no extra costs associated with offering the full available HP to everyone, or the heated seats. There is no significant R&D cost to spread over those who actually want the service vs. charging everyone for it. It's an extra revenue stream for them by holding parts of your own vehicle to ransom.

My wife got a call from a guy claiming he was with Social Security, and asked for her date of birth and SS number to verify her identity. She replied "You called me so it's YOU who has to show proof of identity". After some back & forth with the guy, she hung up exasperated. And, as it turns out, the guy was legit.

There are still many organisations who do not understand this basic fact: if you call someone's private number, chances are good that you get the person you're after on the phone. But if someone calls you, that could be anybody... even with caller ID (which can be spoofed). Some organisations turn it around and will call you with: "Am I speaking with mister xxx, last 4 digits of SS number 9999?". Still not to be trusted, info like SS number, date of birth or client number are all too easy to get hold of.

How is it that companies even have access to their employees' pension funds? Why isn't the fund a separately managed entity that the company (more accurately: the employee) pays into?