The problem is, when you improve the torque of an electric motor, you can easily end up needing new mounting, a new battery to keep up, new wires to carry more power, maybe a new power converter, and if you don’t the result may not be less than peak performance but smoke and busted parts. And just like with an ICE,…

Exactly. My phone and laptop battery aren’t swappable with other phones or laptops (okay, my laptop has a removable battery, but that’s 1) pretty rare and 2) still not compatible with another brand) and car batteries, that are substantially heavier and more dangerous, are not going to be less tied to manufacturer.

I agree that it probably will take enthusiast to mechanics to make modifications, but it doesn’t have to because “voltage matching is hard”. Even the 8086 had a more complicated standard than voltage matching, which by the way is also part of pretty much any digital I/O standard (aka parallel, usb, sata, 10 base T).…

I think the computer industry is already an excellent argument against exactly what you are saying. First, standards can be updated. You may still be using serial cables, and a CGA monitor, but the rest of us are in a world of HDMI 2.0, USB 4.0 (aka firewire) and PCI express. Standards needed updating, but all along…

Ah, you mean like the guy who felt the need to tell the world that he wants to like something but doesn’t as a response to an article sort of but not really about that thing? QF deserved the snark. He should have just taken it at face value instead of deciding it was some deeply personal jab and getting out his…

You could get an Android TV (and use chrome remote desktop). It’s maybe not ideal but might help.

Heh, I also think it's funny to complain about how corporate this holiday has become. Right, as opposed to the ones that require the purchase of gifts or candy? 

Nope. Sounds like an elite sex club.#

As to your first point, our 5 yo i3 has noticable capacity loss. It’s no big deal, but the range was smaller to start with and it’s smaller still with a few years on it, and it might not fit a new battery anyway.

This! I wish I could give it more stars!

So basically we would be killing off batteries about twice as often, on average, to make sure new purchasers weren’t dissatisfied? Nah. Also, every car would have to use the same size batteries and have substantial space devoted to the mechanics of exchanging batteries?

I have seen deer, foxes, turkeys and coyotes in pretty much every urban area I have lived in. In Boulder they were so bad people had to put fencing up if they wanted to grow anything.

Hate speech is very much banned in the USA and the state of Washington. Valve probably opens themselves up to more liability for failing to act than for acting.

No, see, there's this thing called judges. This. Would. Not. Make. It. To. Court. There is no standing. No lawer would take this case. No judge would allow it to be heard. Valve clearly already pays lawers, the worst this gets is that they send a clerk to court for one day, present clearly what the person was banned…

They absolutely can, and any judge would throw any resulting litigation out of court, and call police to indict the person filing the suit as breaking hate crime laws.

Heh. Imagine this guy at an art auction!

And seriously, $60 is what, a midrange Lego kit? Fancy desert for 4 people twice? Two 3D movie dates? 3 hours of childcare at a reasonable rate? One increadibly buggy AAA game? Two decks of cards for a CCG? This isn't 1970. $60 may still be a lot for some (I'm not going to dig into income inequality here...) but for a…

Well, I guess you better not play anything made by any consul game company or its affiliates. Pure apache and silicon for you.

The sarcasm runs deep with this one. 

I always assumed this was part of "reuse", in that I believe reuse means doing reasonable work to give an item a longer life even if that second life is not what the item was intended for. Aka, welding metal scraps into sculpture is "reuse".