This would definitely be mine too. Particularly if it was still jailbroken, as in the book.

In story, it could even cope with a lot of future sight powers. It was only the apex level ones that were on an even field with it.

The only downside is the erosion of your free will. It’s hard to make your own choices when this power is available to make them all for you.

The tags don’t have GPS. They are basically a Bluetooth beacon. If a compatible phone is within range, it notes it’s existence and reports back to a central server.

Basically, if you took one out into the middle of nowhere, without a phone nearby it would be completely useless. They are only useful when in a crowded place.

No problem at all!

I know several people who wouldn’t still be around without the NHS. A diamond is understating it!

There are some limits to it, and ways around it for the rich (as per usual ☹️).

The cost still mostly scales with your income, rather than how much care you need.

UK.

There were complications when my wife gave birth. 2 weeks in hospital, some surgery, and nurses and midwives on call 24/7. The biggest cost was me stress buying snacks for my wife (until she told me to stop!). Even parking was reduced to £11/week, since she was in for multiple nights.

Another occasion. I had a benign lump in an annoying place. It took 14 months to get through to get it removed. It’s only when I went in I realised it was not a 5 minute snip. Around an hour for a plastic surgeon to properly remove and stitch it up.

The NHS has its problems. Mostly caused by previous governments trying to starve it (to let their mates sell us for profit healthcare). The system and staff are absolutely awesome.

If I’m asked to point out what makes me proud to be British, the NHS is the prize jewel in that particular crown.

Cost wise, we pay national insurance, a fixed percentage of income. (“Payment by ability, treatment by requirement.”) Prescriptions are £9.90 each, or £120/year. They also wave the fee for a lot of groups who might have problems with it. It’s massively more cost effective than the American system.

I’ve also got a steam deck. Unfortunately it just doesn’t cut it for games like satisfactory or factorio.

Luggables are quite common for gamers who travel a lot. I can’t take a tower into hotels easily, but most of my free gaming time is on the road. I know quite a few people with portable gaming systems.

My current laptop is rocking a 4080, with a water cooling loop. It has to fall back to internal graphics when on battery. The batteries just can’t provide the current required.

I live in the UK. At this point, most of the polite smokers have moved over to vapes. Those left are almost entirely rude wankers who don’t care where their smoke goes and who it affects. The smoking ban came in because 1 smoker can affect dozens of unwilling people.

I have zero issues with vapes. The effect on others is quite minor, outside a few fog machines disguised as vapes.

He just really likes pressure.

Imagine you have a paper balloon setup. It randomly takes hits from a high powered rifle. In theory, you could harvest the energy. However, it’s delivered in such powerful, random bursts that capturing it is difficult.

Gamma rays punch straight through the structure of the craft. The actual energy is small (around 1/1,000,000 of a joule), but it’s so focused that it damages anything it hits. If it hits the atoms in a transistor, that transistor gets ripped up at an atomic level.

Plenty. Unfortunately it’s mostly the nasty damaging kind, rather than the sort that can be turned into power. It also doesn’t take much damage to add up, when you’re dealing with large millennia time scales.

The UK is still a lot more multi party at the lower levels of government, compared to the US. Unfortunately it’s erring towards the US system, rather than away from it.

We are in a media bubble. Basically all our media is owned by a few rich arseholes and they bury a lot of anti right messages.

The BBC used to be remarkably honest and independent from government. The conservatives getting their claws into it was the beginning of the real problems. Even worse, the BBC’s impartiality has been so sacrosanct that a lot of older people just believe it.

A mild bit of light. The green party seems to also be making significant advances. Labour have often played the “don’t split the left vote” card on them. Now it looks like green is overtaking them in some areas. It just doesn’t show up well in a FPTP voting system.

The Brexit crowd have gone conspicuously silent about it. Their lack of crowing says a lot about it.

Even before Brexit, the tide had turned, and that’s only gotten stronger. Unfortunately, the government had their vote and hammered it through. (The fact there was an EU rule change, on tax transparency, the next day, and would have embarrassed a lot of rich UK toffs had NOTHING to do with the timing)

Unfortunately, the reform party is far too strong, and trying to drag us to the extreme right. Our “left wing” primary party (Labour) is now further right than the conservatives (center right party) traditionally sit.

It’s… frustrating.

My childhood cat used to catch and eat mice. Unfortunately, it would leave their entrails on the kitchen floor. Listening to my mother curse, when she discovered them with her bare feet, was an interesting way to be woken up.

I think you got off lightly with the stuffed toy. 🤷‍♂️😅

A bit of a guess, but it might be related to software cafés. They are a lot more common in the east.

Since multiple people can log into the same computer, it might over count them. They are also likely exclusively windows machines.

I believe that was a strike at their centrifuges. They are needed to enrich uranium to powerplant grade or weapons grade.

Iran had agreed to stop using them, as part of the treaty trump tore up. Afterwards, the lack of any detectable fallout indicated that they were not in use, since no uranium was present.

Basically they lost their ability to produce more weapons grade material. It is unknown how much (if any) was previously made, and might be stockpiled elsewhere.

It also shows that Iran seems to have remained in compliance, despite trump pulling out of the deal.

It’s on steam. The challenge levels are great for learning about weird moves and tactics.

A lot of vehicles have a beam dip adjuster in the cab. Mine pops out when I press the center of the light control selector.

Officially, they are to correct for a heavy load in the back. Unofficially, if you tweak them, you can flip between longer range, and polite as required.

If you watch your lights, there should be a fairly sharp cut-off at the top of their coverage. If that line ever hits a window or mirror, it will look like you are flashing them. If it’s too high, either fix it yourself (generally quite easy) or get it fixed.