But will it run Linux?

(Imagine a beowulf cluster of them!)

And if you don't want to support them, then you can listen to your dad's favorite music, for all they care.

Maybe the problem isn't that the music costs these distributors too much, but that the customers aren't paying the distributors enough?

Back in the last half of the 20th century, the music industry had a pretty viable business model, in which people who wanted to listen to music bought copies of it, and got to listen to those whenever they wanted. This model worked so well that it supported retail stores, distributors, recording companies, and musicians. It produced most of the music you listen to today. Of course then the music went digital, the internet arrived everywhere, and a whole generation got hooked on the myth that creative work like music doesn't need money to support it. So of course your favorite give-me-all-I-want-for-pocket-change distribution channels are failing, and everything "new" sounds like a bland imitation of stuff from 20 to 50 years ago.

Econ 101: you get what you pay for.

Have you considered that these measures aren't about retroactively preventing the last shooting, but are rather about possibly preventing the next? These are long-standing, long-stifled proposals. The Orlando incident merely served to give a bunch of Senators the kick in the ass to push for some of them again.

But the "good news" is that no one they are spying on will be restricted from buying whatever firearms they want.

...the one news source that's worse than television news. Even Fox News usually refrains from making shit up (i.e. they take real events but report them incorrectly), but Facebook is littered with outright hoaxes.

The key phrase there being "status symbol". There was a short-lived fad in which Puch mopeds and Honda Spree scooters were popular among upper-class 15-year-olds without proper driver licenses, but they never became a mainstream form of transportation. They started to make a comeback about eight years ago, thanks to skyrocketing gas prices, but as soon as Wall Street tanked the economy and drove gas prices down, the idea of investing a couple grand into another vehicle made people nervous.

I'm skeptical that electric-powered bikes will become very popular in the US. They're fairly similar in riding qualities (lightweight, easy to handle) and licensing requirements (pretty much none) to a 50cc motorscooter, and those have failed to take off, despite being widely available in the same price range for years. I've been a day-to-day scooterist for seven years, but I don't have a lot of company out there. Especially in the north, where they're a three-season vehicle (or one-season, for the less dedicated), they aren't seen as a viable substitute for a car. Even with 100mpg engines that cost almost nothing to fuel, the ability to park them almost anywhere, and a lot of other appealing features, most consumers just don't seem interested (which is too bad for them, because unless the roads are wet or icy, I'd much rather ride than sit in a car).

An e-bike also suffers from being neither fish nor fowl. A 20mph bike is too slow to keep up with traffic in a motor-vehicle lane, but too fast to fit in with any human-powered traffic in a bicycle lane. I've ridden a 50cc scooter (mine was capable of 40mph) in 45mph zones, and believe me: motorists don't like you when you go under the speed limit in a motorized-vehicle lane. They'll eat a 20mph e-bike alive, even in a 25mph zone. But if that e-bike takes the bike lane (which isn't legal in many places), it will quickly overtake regular bicyclists, whom it won't be able to safely pass because bike lanes aren't designed for that. Dedicated lanes for motor-powered two-wheelers might help as an option for e-bikes and scooters (and motorcyclists who aren't in a hurry), but I don't see that happening until they become popular... ye olde Catch 22.

It's around 10 quadrillion kilobytes!

"OK, Google, how do I get to the airport from here?"

"Throw yourself shamelessly onto Maple Drive. Proceed down in your loins to Lake Avenue, and turn hard on Washington. When you get to glistening I-69, take it take it all the way to my exit tunnel, where you should cum breathlessly to a quivering finish."

Do you think that wages will stay the same if everyone gets X per month from the government? I can imagine that every employee who doesn't have a contract with a dollar amount spelled out in it, would immediately get a letter from the CEO explaining why their pay will be cut the week UBI goes into effect. Lower private wages are one of the assumptions that the universal-basic-income model is based on.

"Good luck convincing many citizens to do actual work."

It wouldn't be that difficult, given how little "basic income" would pay. Adjusting for the cost of living difference between Switzerland and the US (rent, groceries, etc), their proposal would work out to about US$1500/month, or $18K/year. (This is in the range of what people who are judged too disabled to work get from Social Security.) Yes, there are people who are content to live on that. But not most people. Would you?

Anyone who aspires to a middle-class lifestyle would at least get a part-time job to supplement basic income (maybe regular freelance work, a half-time office job, gig-economy stuff as needed, a creative project that they never had time for, that business they were otherwise afraid to take a risk on, etc) or a full-time job that they might not otherwise be able to afford to take (e.g. teaching, social work, performing arts). And the kinds of people who are used to taking home $1500 or more every week would undoubtedly stick with the jobs they have already, and treat the basic-income grant as "mad money" to spend on something fun.

The idea needs to be tested thoroughly, before being tried on the scale of, say, the US, or even the UK. It may not work as projected based on how it's worked in a few small-population experiments so far. The amount definitely needs to be evaluated. But if you're ridiculing the idea based on the assumption that a just-above-poverty-level income is going to be really attractive to the masses... I'm pretty sure you're mistaken.

Between TiVo and now Netflix and Hulu, I haven't watched live TV on a regular basis since around the time Google was founded.

Shut up, you fucking off-topic troll.

Everyone knows that the US penny is no longer worth anything. There's no national shame in it, it's simply a byproduct of macroeconomics over time, just like the equivalent of every other major currency is longer worth anything. Let it die. The penny dish on store cashier counters can go away. The clerks at a lot of places I buy things already ignore pennies when making change: if they owe me $.73 in change they give me three quarters.

And while we're at it, the US nickel isn't worth much of anything either. Let it die too.

Getting rid of both of them at the same time would solve the math-is-hard problem involved in rounding to nearest five-cents: rounding everything to the nearest tenth of a dollar is much easier for people to do in their base-10 heads: less than .05 = .00, .05 or more = .10.

And also while we're at it, every other major currency on the planet has already discontinued their equivalent of the $1 bill, replacing then with a coin. It's time.