How the **** am I supposed to look into the details of how the contract will be enforced?? I can look an see prior contracts that were evaded by one means or another, several involving nuclear power plants, but that doesn't say about this one. But I would STRONGLY prefer supporting something with a lower down-side, like solar + wind plus some storage mechanism.

The one proposal I saw that I though looked interesting involved closed cycle in a deep well...about as deep as an oil well. Just about anywhere has hot rocks if you go that deep. The question is "Is there a good enough flow of heat for this to continue being useful?". I didn't see an answer to that, so that may still be site specific. Iceland has proven that can make it work when an active volcano is available, and it should work in Yellowstone. But that's shallow depth-site-specific. Can they get it deep enough to work most places? That, IIUC, is currently unknown. Will it be cheap enough to be worthwhile? I think that's also unknown.

So every kid needs to have a brokerage account now?

No, each kid needs to get an X ("The Everything App") account.

The more reasonable reaction is to doubt that he will do as he says. I doubt that he'll do it, even with strings attached. If he actually does it (or legally commits to doing it), that's the time to start looking for the trap.

Not to worry, recall that Musk *also* has ambitions of X being a finance company, so voila, every child can have an 'X brokerage account' waiting for them with a share in it. Now he gets every child defaulting to his network, no problem.

I don't think a grant of one share of a specific stock will be a particularly educational event. I think generally in school a teach will, at some point, do a more educational exercise where students are actually doing mock trading and, critically, trying to evaluate different companies and make predictions on where things will go.

Do you believe he will? Perhaps in his will...which would, of course, be contested.

That's is you think the load will really be repaid. Past history does not cause me to be optimistic about this, though I haven't looked into the details or how the contract will be enforced. What happens if the company (which?) declares bankruptcy? What if it spins the asset/obligation off into a separate company that declares bankruptcy? It's happened before.

Also the batteries (or other storage). Solar isn't a good source for a large constant load without a LOT of storage. (It *might* still be a better choice, though. But I'd want a mix of solar and wind, and LOTS of storage.)
Too bad geothermal hasn't been well enough developed, but I don't believe it has been.

I'm not sure about the last couple of decades, but prior to that geothermal was usually really a research project. Yeah, it was expensive, but boondoggle is the wrong framing.

OTOH, some of the recent proposals look serious. I'm not in a position to judge them, but maybe they're good. However they are still limited in the sites where they can operate. I'm not sure the ones that involve fracking are both safe and reasonable. And the closed circulation one that I've seen described is really still experimental. Once they get the bugs worked out of it, it may be a really good system, usable in a lot of places. My guess, though, is give it another 20 years before major investment.

Normally, you don't license media (whether it's digital or analog is irrelevant). That CD or tape or vinyl record is sold, such that you own that copy. Title is transferred just exactly the same as how title is transferred when you buy (not license) a loaf of bread, or a screwdriver, or a book. (WARNING: Though I say "normally," what's normal does change. I'm aware that a lot of people use proprietary streaming to consume media now, instead of playing locally-stored purchased copies, and those people likely did agree to a licensing contract rather than purchasing anything.)

But with software, they've been claiming that a piece of paper that they inserted into the box, retroactively causes the sale to not have really happened, even though the information that the sale was a fraud, is hidden inside the box until after the fraud has been perpetrated. The customer thinks they bought the box rather than licensed it.

There was some monumental decision reinforcing this a while back. I'm not sure this is the best example, but it's well-illustrated in this decision in favor of Blizzard against a cheatbot named Glide, where the judge supports the outrageous assertion that WoW purchasers actually did not purchase what they thought they purchased. And then instead of throwing Blizzard's executives into prison for a decade to deter future fraud, he found in their favor instead. Dirty judge. He actually fucking says this:

section 3 of the EULA provides that Blizzard explicitly retains title to “all copies” of the game client software

[emphasis mine]

For whatever reason, nobody's tried that outside of software (that I know of). I still haven't seen a EULA packed in a loaf of bread or a music CD case. But maybe some day....?

You wouldn't necessarily be wrong to expect this form of fraud to happen some day, so perhaps you're right that Congress should nip it in the bud ASAP. Sure, ok. But Congress is normally reactive so it also makes sense they're seeing it just as software problem. None of their constituents are complaining about media companies defrauding them, just software companies.

Assuming all goes well, I agree. OTOH, returning old equipment back into service after it had been written off is a little risky, don't you think?

A fork truck moves predictably and has weak points, so yes you probably could beat it. Equally it could easily kill you if it was able to spear you with its forks.
If you were able to get around the forks, or even in between them you could start ripping out the hydraulic lines.

A "contest" requires more than 1 human participant... When those laws were written they likely never considered someone fighting a robot.
Until recently any human fighting a "non human" would have meant fighting an animal, and there are separate animal cruelty laws to cover such scenarios. But there are no laws that forbid cruelty to machines.

A fight against a robot could be considered use of training equipment rather than a contest, although it might fall foul of other laws relating to dangerous equipment in the workplace etc.

Precisely this... In those videos he's fighting the robot as if it was a human opponent, trying to hit it in places like the head where a human would be vulnerable.
The robot looked to have some exposed wiring around the back of the head, in a real fight you'd go for the wiring or joints in order to incapacitate the robot, not repeatedly punch it in the face.

Also a robot designed to kill wouldn't be humanoid or try to fight with punches and kicks, it's more likely to come on wheels, tracks or rotors and be armed with guns or explosives. See the combat drones in Ukraine for example.