These products are patented. If you so wanted, you could look up the patents and provided the ~20 years are up start up a factory and start producing them. The trick isn't the IP, it's the fact that no one in their right mind would build an entire factory to produce a product with such a limited market.

It's not an IP issue, it's a tooling issue.

A recessed bulb in the ceiling can cover a wide area of a room with direct LOS. It doesn't necessarily have to be a desk lamp as the light source.

Space opera = future fantasy. Space magic.

There is no reason someone can't enjoy futuristic fantasy stories.

See you space cowboy.

(If being a simpleton gets me more space cowboy, I'm all for it)

I agree, I was puzzling for a bit trying to figure out if it were some local acronym. Seattle's Agriculture Task Force or something which would be justified in trying to catch grease dumpers. Knowing it was the federal Bureau is important.

Technically you can't know if that's what the magician did. You can only rule out what he could not have done.

I'm not so sure I'm comfortable with a precision modernization program for a nuclear arsenal. For better or worse, our MAD deterrent seems to have worked. No country has used nuclear weapons since WWII. They are doomsday weapons and any use of them would escalate a conflict well into a total-warfare situation regardless of their precision. A nuclear weapon applied even on the most restricted and limited of targets is the most destabilizing thing you can probably do. Worse yet, it encourages other countries to consider 'usable' nuclear weapons of their own. As much as I hate our current situation I would hope we would work towards disarmament rather than finding more palatable means to deploy nuclear weapons.

Honestly? End the drug war on all drugs and repurpose that money into non-discriminatory mental health services. Currently our civilians are being consumed in a proxy war between the police and the cartels.

After that? I'd start with a massive effort to reform our police forces. Currently there is a massive divide (real or perceived) between our police and the people. We have given a great deal of discretion to police officers but the oversight that should accompany that discretion is practically non-existent. Until we can get our urban areas behaving more like communities rather than a bunch of people living in close proximity I don't see us making any headway. Eliminate the profit motives from our governments who use the police forces as a tax collection service and revenue generation tool (fines, asset forfeiture, etc create perverse incentives)

So in short: End the drug war, reform our police force into a community force.

You forgot the most important part: Putting a battery into a gun. The magnetic one might get around this, but the RFID and Fingerprint options would have you relying on a small battery. Even if you don't need to shoot, how many of you have opened up a battery case to discover that one has corroded and damaged your device? How great would that be to discover that your firearm now has a corrosive item included in it?

If that private plane or jet is on final near my house and that low it's already going to be crashing in my fields.

That's what I'm trying to figure out here. What exactly were they expecting. This is like buying a scooter and complaining that it fits fewer people than a bus.

I don't know, how much excess radiation was absorbed by those bodies?

The supply of the taxi medallions has been restricted by regulation... regulations specifically lobbied for by the taxi companies. This is their own mess that they created, and a disrupting technology is ruining the business model they turned into law.

With regard to calling Uber parasitic rent seekers... Isn't that exactly what this medallion system created? A bunch of rent seeking?

They are building a large apt building near Conshohocken. The thing must be 5 stories tall but the whole damned thing went up with wood framing (at least it looked like it from I-76). I'd imagine that there are quite a few buildings like that which would have model like collapses if subjected to typical movie building trauma.