There are an aweful lot of people in power who would lose that power if "civilization" were to "implode" and powerful people don't like to lose that power. That pretty much sums up why "civilization" won't "implode". Imagine the oligarchs losing their control of the global wheat or rice supply. Those companies have written procedures in place for ways to avoid losing their power over those industries. For example, the CIA even has a Zombie Apocalypse Plan.

I didn't even see a computer until I was 12, and then at like 13 we got to do a little Logo programming, like one day worth in class. At that point it was more about learning to operate a computer rather than actually code for it. Same thing in high school, we got a computer operations class to learn word processing, spreadsheets, and databases on an Apple IIgs. I did take the optional class after that one to do some BASIC programming, but that would've been when I was 16. When the jocks were getting their cars, I was getting a computer. An now I'm a professional programmer.

Heart rate monitor usable by Strava and I'd love it. Then I can ditch my chest strap, bleh.

RabidReindeer, while that was an excellent technical description of the difference between GPS location and cell tower location, but I'm not sure you noticed your comment didn't actually have anything to do with jareth's comment about the relevance of a smart watch entirely lacking GPS and cellular communications and your smart phone having both active GPS and passive cell tracking while being on a dedicated data network, thereby making the idea of calling them "tracking bracelets" one of the more irrelevant comments in Slashdot history. If you don't want to be tracked as ragoshen has stated, your smart watch would be irrelevant, while your smartphone has the key to your current location as well as your historical location. The fact that your smart watch requires a smartphone doesn't make a smart watch any more capable of tracking you on it's own, regardless of it's actual usefulness on it's own.

Electricity is a bit easier to transport than hydrogen, and we already have the infrastructure to do that in place, reliably. Generating electricity is SO much easier to do than hydrogen, and it's potentially a lot cleaner as well. And for the most part we have that figured out reliably as well. Taking your electricity around with you is a little harder, but there are coming innovations in materials and geometries for anodes and cathodes that in the next 5 years are going to make batteries staggeringly better not only in storage, but also in their ability to be recharged. In the end battery electric will win out over fuel-cell electric, not just because of it's early to market advantage, but also to it's cleanliness, infrastructure, and reliability. The Japanese automakers are as much in the pockets of their American competitors, and Elon nailed it when he went in for some massive industry disruption.

There's no mention of how they managed to store the hydrogen safely. It's a small and spacious gas, so trying to contain it in a high enough pressure safely to give a car powered by it enough range has been the historical biggest challenge. I want to know what guarantee there is that the hydrogen tank won't spontaneously burst, or what happens after I leave the car parked for a few weeks.

I'm wondering what your teenage daughter posting naked pictures costs over a lifetime of missed job opportunities costs in comparison to a one time failure to gain US$80,000. Surely being a child porn star is pricier in the long run, not just financially, but emotionally as well?

Last time I tried to use Visual Studio, the startup time was taking longer than it did to install, so I dumped it in favor of anything else.

The other part of the story is that one is fuck ugly, the other is super high tech and elegant. Don't get me wrong, there's things I'd do differently on the Model S, but there's not much I could do worse on the Leaf.

"Drill baby drill."

In one case you're in another person's head in another person's world. In the other case you're in another person's world, but still in your own head and in control of your own actions. I promise being in your head and making your own decisions is better.

You're assuming that humanity is the only intelligent life in this simulation. For all we know we could be the newbs, and The Programmer could be just watching macro-statistics of all "life" across the entire simulation.

Unless such occurrences are all retroactively changed when the law is changed, which would include changing how we remember perceiving said prior law. A good programmer won't copy a function, they'll link to it, and when that function changes, no other code referencing that function will have an idea that it was ever different than as they currently perceive it. That's what they call retroactive continuity.

As an athiest, I think what you're referring to is "agnostic". I'll believe in the "programmer from the future" or "God" or "Q" when I meet him/her, the latter being preferable.

And that leads to the idea of alternate universes, where the address of your memory allocation gets corrupted and you end up in an alternate simulation where some small thing has changed, but your recollection of that thing is otherwise.