Agreed. And any possible jobs created by this technology won't be lateral-shifts for the folks whos resumes are highlighted with "5 years - sanded pants."

There is a Constitutional component. $State-A cannot inflict tax-collection responsibilities on a business outside of its borders. Your NJ/VA/TX scenarion makes sense because the first business has a footprint in NJ, and therefore the State has authority to impose a tax burden on it. However, NJ cannot mandate that the business in VA do squat regardless of where an item is ultimately shipped to. (NJ *can* impose a "use" tax on the recipient, as an equivalent to a "sales" tax, and many States do ... but often compliance is not rigidly enforced, and I would be surprised if most folks even knew a use-tax existed or that they had a legal obligation to report and pay it.)

Argh.

250 years? Puh-leese. Racial slurs and epithets have been around since tribal times, and probably pre-date language.

The story is at such a low point that it will take a truly amazing plan to have the Rebellion come roaring back and defeat the bad guys.

Perhaps the remaining Rebels could hole-up on a small planet or moon ... yes, a moon ... preferably covered in dense foliage. They could embrace the local population of cute-but-intelligent bipedal mammals (call them The Ursidae ...) Then with primitive local resources they could defeat a vastly superior Imperial force to expose a weakness in the Empire's latest doomsday weapon - the Death MacGuffin. Once exposed, a single small fighter craft, piloted by the charismatic-but-flawed lead character, could fly through a long, narrow aperture and fire a single lethal blow to the Death MacGuffin.

My disk is encrypted, but all it takes to bypass this protection is for an attacker — a malicious hotel housekeeper, or “evil maid”, for example — to spend a few minutes physically tampering with it without my knowledge.

If that's the case, you're not doing "encrypted" properly.

We had a point-to-point free-space optical link for networks in two 14-storey buildings ... back in the late 1980s. On a good day, it was awesome. But just about *everything* degraded it - rain, fog, sunlight glare off the neighboring chrome/glass buildings, etc. Even wind was an issue - you'd be surprised at how much a modern building moves around in the wind (and it's exacerbated by the effective moment-arm of the optical leg length.) You can defocus the optics to create a larger "spot" at the receiver, but power goes down by R^2, and any optical power that doesn't hit the receiver is "wasted."

Oh, and "birds." The stooopid pigeons would seek shelter under the sun/rain shield on the enclosure, then see their reflections in the lenses. Damned things would sit there and peck at themselves. I was a tech at the time, and was dispatched to the roof on more than one occasion on Pigeon Patrol. (A properly placed pigeon, blocking the receive aperture, is equivalent to 10-30dB of path loss ... since I know you were wondering.)

That's my situation. There is no "no cable" option on the plans from the sole vendor in my area. (I live in a rural area, so there's zero competition.)

Just because you can't, doesn't mean Bengie is full of crap.

Talk to a professional musician ... they "see" sound.

And it's hardly a millenial-thing ...

I would expect the AI to become suicidal having been forced to wade through umpteen million posts about "what I'm currently eating," regurgitated cute-cat videos, and various flavors of tween- and teen-drama.

AI: "Oh god, not ANOTHER bathroom selfie ..."

Just put the desal plant on one of Arizona's coastal regions, then use the abundant solar power to run the pumps. Distance problem solved!

Really? Fair?

Please explain how the US having the lion's share of a $100 BILLION per year financial obligation is fair. The Paris Accord is all about transferring wealth from the US to [elsewhere]. It's global Socialism covered in a thin veneer of "omg save the planet!"

There's an old adage - "Facts are reported; news is produced." You might want to try to comprehend the subtle difference between the two.

Can we complain that it's just "not good" on is own merits?

You could augment with a "kibble dispenser" that's triggered at the same time you send the delivery person a message that "the dog will be distracted for the next 7 minutes or so ... please don't dawdle."