And yet when Sony removed Linux support for the PS3, a change that affects 'virtually zero of their customers,' Slashdot was calling for lawsuits.

My advice: don't lament Raspberry Pi RAM upgrades, especially given they're only slightly harder to perform now. Very few hackers ever performed them, the main audience for them turned out to be dodgy hardware resellers online, and in most cases, repair doesn't seem to be impeded at all, either. Think of the users that will no longer be fooled by a shady seller on Amazon, especially now that the perverse incentives for board mods and reusing harvested RAM chips are at their highest.

This doesn't pass the 'would you say the same thing if it wasn't your baby' test.

You're right, they could have made that choice. However, they would have priced themselves out of the market, as while they would have gained a small uptick in 'I want a cool Linux computer' sales, they would have faced a massive loss in 'I want a game console' and 'I want a Blu-Ray player' sales, which were the two primary drivers of PS3 sales.

Console price is king. There's a reason Sony's entire console launch presentation for the original PlayStation at E3 in 1995 was, and I quote, '$299.'

You can find it on YouTube, if you're interested.

Unless the watch can initiate chest compressions and AED functions, simply calling emergency services when you lose your pulse isn't going to accomplish anything.

And then they pulled the Linux support when they realized how many people were buying PS2s for Linux, and not buying games, thus costing Sony money under the 'razors and blades' paradigm.

My late wife did undergraduate research in photosystem II where there was quantum effects back in 2002. She did her PhD thesis on proton coupled electron transfer (PCET) in soybean lipoxogenase, then had a long career developing models for Fortran code that did quantum simulation of proteins (she was behind Tagdock in Amber MD). This is nothing new; several biological systems have quantum effects that are central to their mechanism.

But the purpose of the stop was not enforcement of the vehicle code.

"When there is not probable cause to believe that a driver is violating any one of the multitude of applicable traffic and equipment regulations 24 -- or other articulable basis amounting to reasonable suspicion that the driver is unlicensed or his vehicle unregistered -- we cannot conceive of any legitimate basis upon which a patrolman could decide that stopping a particular driver for a spot check would be more productive than stopping any other driver." Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648, 661, 99 S. Ct. 1391, 1400 (1979)

In California, as I suspect in most states, the driver is required to produce a license and registration when being pulled over for a traffic stop.

California Vehicle Code 12951(b) states: "The driver of a motor vehicle shall present his or her license for examination upon demand of a peace officer enforcing the provisions of this code."

Since the vehicle was not involved, the stop would not require a license to of produced. Of course, the cop would lie and make up a reason.

You are conflating a consensual encounter with a detention.

No, when they decide not to show up or release someone that they should have detained.

Read Terry v. Ohio | 392 U.S. 1 (1968) and Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of Nevada (2004) 542 U.S. 177

I have reported crimes, but LAPD refused to make arrests.
I had a cop argue with me and tell me that I was not authorized to have an arrest made because I was a building manager. I had to explain real property law to him.

In many states, there is no requirement to show ID unless arrested. In other cases, there still has to be reasonable suspicion (the Terry standard).

Detaining someone for 1 second without reasonable suspicion violates the 4th amendment. Pulling someone over is not a consentual encounter, but the officer is probably trained to turn it into one. Extending the stop is unconstitutional. See Rodriguez v. United States, 575 U.S. 348, 135 S. Ct. 1609, 191 L. Ed. 2d 492 (2015),. I suspect that even a diminimus extension would be unconstitutional. So, a false report could be argued a civil wrong, even when causing a deminimus delay.

The "might be armed?" might not be a crime. The defense would argue that there is a possibility and argue that it might not meet the standard of reasonable doubt. But in a civil case, it could meet the preponderance of the evidence.

How much would you like to bet that Flock's lawyers told them what exactly to say when calling the police?

The problem here is that when you turned on the TV for the first time and clicked the 'I accept' button, you agreed to the recording, and probably agreed that you'd be responsible for letting anybody else who might be in range of the TV know that they're subject to recording.

Is that going to hold up in court? Who knows, but can you afford to spend the money to find out? Somebody eventually will, and you'll get a coupon for twenty bucks off of a new TV as the settlement.

Yeah, my bad, I just automatically assumed this would involve a transfer switch to avoid backfeeding.