GreyEyedGhost

I have just enough skill with hardware to get away with it with some swearing.

I don't disagree, but I think automation is cool, especially if you can keep it local (or have the tools to secure it on the internet). Valetudo can help make that possible. My current robot vacuum is pretty crappy, but it doesn't have cameras or mapping. My next will be one that has mapping and can be easily flashed with local hosting.

We had a stallion that could jump the 6-foot fences of his corral. My dad would yell at him and he would jump back in. He was a bit of a jerk (stallion), but he definitely wasn't stupid.

We had a Shetland mare, and she wasn't stupid, either. Pure evil, as is the Shetland way, but not stupid.

Our Welsh was neither stupid nor evil.

Our thoroughbred might have been stupid, or could have come from an environment as unstimulating as a rat cage with nothing but food and a single wheel.

This is related to the prosperity gospel, which Puritans were fully on board with. If God blessed you, you would prosper. Ergo, if you were prosperous it was because God had blessed you. Likewise, if you weren't prosperous, it was because God was punishing you. And if God is punishing you, who am I to stop it? So not only is helping your fellow man who is struggling more than you not really what God wants you to do, you're actually interfering in God's punishment of this person.

Or it could just be an excuse to be shitty to people who weren't as fortunate as you.

They apparently sold 4 million units of the pico family. Given the product, I'd say that isn't amazing, but not a failure, either.

...Superstore/Loblaws.

Mini splits come in air source systems, and can be quite efficient.

Cancer treatments, longevity treatments, regrowing teeth, every fucking mouse trial that has been talked about for the last 20 years, CRISPR saving the world.

And then you hear about immune therapy cancer treatments, using CRISPR and our extensive knowledge of cancer from decades of research. Or our better diagnostics for cancer leading to better cancer treatment outcomes due to early detection. Or regrowing teeth! (In certain circumstances.) Or, yes, new solar panels with 34% efficiency...for 3 months, at which time they're only slightly better than existing panels. Or two new ways to make blue pigment in the last two DECADES.

Science is hard, and all of it is standing on the shoulders of giants. And when getting money to do that research, which is another way of saying "trying things you think might work in the hopes of something new", relies on convincing people that this one idea could be the next big thing, hype is built into the system. So, again, if you don't want hype, look at new products. If you want to hear about what researchers are working on, don't expect that everything is going to come to fruition. Even the failed ideas help build the foundation that future researchers will be working from.

In the last 30 years, batteries have gotten about 10 times more powerful at a tenth the size for about 1% of the cost. Every advance that got us to this point was just "stuck in the lab" prior to its release. And if you don't think incremental change can be significant, after hearing those numbers I provided above, perhaps you should read about compound interest.

Also, if you don't want to be let down by news of developments at the lab stage, which certainly don't always become viable, why are you reading posts in a technology community? That seems self-destructive.

I can't be bothered because laymen don't generally know the difference, and it's the least important detail about this conversation. Granted, unimportant details seem to be your forte.

Fossil fuels do not store "power" at all.

Now, if you're quibbling about the term power vs. energy, I can't really be bothered with it. If you aren't, what exactly do you think is the reason we use gasoline in vehicles than because it's a highly portable source of energy?

As I mentioned in my other response, our battery capacity and longevity has increased by a factor of 10 in the last 30 years. Charging capacity has increased significantly, as well. And the only reason we don't have more powerful chargers is because we haven't needed them. It will certainly require a different configuration to charge twice as fast, probably with local power storage to reduce the burden on the electrical grid, but the only technical challenge is the power draw, and there are a number of ways to avoid that.