Does anyone know the efficiency of this battery (the percent retained when going to and from the battery)?

Chip-makers are some of the brightest people in the world. They have to be. They are not going to listen to a bafoon like Trump. What is needed is incentive to build chips in the U.S., rather than elsewhere. I'll leave it to the government folks to figure out how. It usually involves money, not BS or bullying.

At the risk of deviating too far from topic, how about replacing politicians with AI's in the not-too-distant future? Not a new idea, though. I recall an Isaac Azimov short story that implied that an automation could be a more fair judge than a human judge. And, I believe a human/AI combo could do much greater justice than the current norm. Certainly, an AI politician could be designed to be more honest, and in many situations, more rational. In these times of perpetual political lies and stupid impulse decisions at the top, the AI concept is starting to look more reasonable, and safer, to me.

As Asimov suggested in his short scifi stories, isn't it likely that we will eventually have AIs that are more fair, wiser, and better decision-makers than humans? Certainly (as in an Asimov story) AI's can do better than a human judge. And, what about the current President?

Well duh, by far, most of the news relating to Trump and his appointees *IS* bad. So, it doesn't surprise me that most hits are related to bad news about Trump and crew. (Just my opinion. The narcissist in question and followers may perceive it differently.)

I wonder about the cost of this process, and how much more expensive it is than moving to renewable energy and not burning fossil fuels in the first place. (Of course, transitioning to renewable energy is hardly an option when the most powerful person in the world either doesn't believe in the science or wants to enrich his friends in the fossil fuel business.)

None of those bad things you mention (cancer, etc.) will ever happen to me. And without empathy (which seems to be missing in almost half the voters today), I'm not going to give a crap about those who are damaged from the chemicals or global warming.

I use Thunderbird and like it except for one quirk (on the Mac version) that never gets fixed: When composing a new message it uses a format that doesn't work correctly. I need to switch the blank space between beginning and signature text from Paragraph format to Body Text format, and then delete (cmnd X) the "Dear John" and paste (cmnd V) the "Dear John". After that curious procedure, it accepts text as any well-behaved text editor should.

Another important question regarding gmail is: Do you want Google reading your mail? I am slowly migrating to ProtonMail (protonmail.com) because I find Google's reading and archiving my email to be disturbing, perhaps in response to the recent Facebook revelations. Regarding email clients, I am quite happy with Thunderbird because it just makes sense for me and I don't have much use for bells and whistles.

I have seen some speedy international coverage with Project Fi, but in my small town of La Veta, CO, it doesn't work! This, even though I have fast T-Mobile coverage (on which Fi rides). And sadly, Project Fi Support did not seem to be interested in finding out why no Fi functionality.

The ostensible reason for the scans is " to undergo facial recognition scans to ensure they haven't overstayed visas." Really, if a person is leaving, who cares at that point if they over-stayed. The good news is that they are leaving! Therefore, since they are scanning everyone, could it be that the real reason is something that they do not wish to admit.

I believe there are inaccuracies in the above post.

Why? Because We the People vote the psychopaths, liars, and greedy rich into office. The peoples's vote could, in theory, (except for the gerrymandering, phony news, and other big-dollar manipulation schemes) put descent people into office if the voters cared enough to keep themselves educated and aware. So, who is ultimately at fault for us ending up with mentally unstable, greedy, sociopathic leaders?

Perhaps the NSA (and others paying for information) need better photos. Facebook has gone way to far for this old paranoid geek.

I got *a lot* of productivity out of perl when it was popular. It's true that a programmer can write horribly obscure perl code. But, a good, clean, considerate programmer who comments well can write very maintainable and understandable code. Also perl itself, in spite of its complexity under the hood, is amazingly bug-free.