The cost of attendants/clerks/etc (who don't go away when credit is used) is not the only factor. Getting enough denominations for each day (small coins/bills from the bank are only fee-free when you ask for small quantities), reconciling the drawers, counting the cash, cash theft and counterfeit bills, etc all add up quick. Merchant fees and fraud chargebacks are certainly non-negligible but cash is not the silver bullet. That would be using silver (or gold). What could possibly go wrong with having an ultra-high precision scale at each register?

You will find one other exciting feature on that old film camera that is lacking on most smartphones: a flat edge to allow it to sit steadily pointed at the subject. Try doing that with a new iPhone 6 and you are gonna have a bad time. So it's either haul around an awkward tiny tripod that clamps on to the phone, or use the aforementioned "Selfie stick". Why is that so hard to cope with for so many slashdotters?

Consequence is not usually front of mind for offenders like that, since there are already huge penalties for being caught driving drunk even just once (although the penalty for killing someone while doing the same is oddly light compared to, say, killing someone while robbing a bank) and would-be offenders rationalize it by telling themselves that almost everyone who does it does not get caught (which is true.) Ultimately, the tweets serve more as a constant reminder that people DO get caught regularly and so, hopefully a few who read the tweets will skew their cost/benefit judgement since the perceived risk is higher, and opt to not drive drunk or not drink in the first place.

He never mentioned he was in a hurry. My bet is, they have a few ceremonial migrations per FY to justify the project cost, and in just 20 or 30 years their old ineffective legacy systems will be replaced by a single new ineffective legacy system.

In the US the opposite was true, many 3G plans were unlimited because it was hard for a small number of users to saturate the inter-tower connectivity. Now with 4G, the intertower bandwidth is not where it needs to be and the top-tier providers are running scared from truly unlimited data offerings since they know their network will get crushed. All we can hope for is that competition will push the cost per GB down (in the last 6 months this has started to come true, with ATT and Verizon offering 2 year data deals for half of what the price was 12 months ago.)

Aside from the comfort of knowing your input/output power is ~120v, the fancy readouts mean nothing. The key features are surge protection capability (determined by the MOVs in use) power factor tolerance (to allow you to run a 200w power supply that is actually drawing 300va), and inverter waveform (if it uses a clumsy stepper, or can make a true low-noise sine wave). If your old UPSes score well in those 3 areas, just buy new batteries.

Remember when your network admin couldn't figure out how to segregate the wifi network, or set up mobile device policies in exchange? Well here you go.

That's funny, half the people I mentioned mayo to (admittedly, mostly young) said "its made from eggs? *uncooked* eggs?? how weird" I think that once this whole naming thing is settled with the FDA, whatever they end up calling it, no one will bat an eye that it's egg free as long as it tastes good.

To get the same amount of food (mayo in this case) you have to put 20x more energy into the process to get it from a chicken egg, vs getting it from a pea plant. So at scale, it would be a far cheaper way to arrive at mayo. Today this means less cost to make a nice sandwich, but continued development could lead to far lower cost, but still tasty alternatives to mainstream protein sources.

Except, for the same energy input (cost) you can get the most pristine organic peas, vs what it would take to get a chicken to lay an egg. If you are trying to reduce the unknowns/unnecessaries from your food chain, it's a no-brainer.

Hmm, so to get an egg you need many gross things (chickens, hormones for the chickens, vaccines for the chickens, food for the chickens, fertilizer for the food for the chickens, etc etc etc) and yet to get peas you need a seed, sunlight, and water. Yep, let's go with eggs as being more natural!

But seriously, eggs arent that bad for you, but they are incredibly energy intensive compared to just eating plants. Something like 20x more energy goes into an egg than goes into the peas that make up this product, to get the same result. Thats the big innovation, you can start to get foods on the shelf that really are far more sustainable (even if they arent cheaper yet) and leave more energy on the planet for something else to use, like perhaps more delicious beef.

This discussion is especially hilarious because pro-male gender bias (marketing of early home computers strictly to boys starting in the early 80s) predated IT/CS being male-dominated, and all these guys are showing up just to say "hey you get your damn dirty discriminating paws off of the perfectly egalitarian IT/CS system!". If it weren't for biased sales and marketing there likely would be a very narrow gap between men and women in CS. More importantly, lots of very talented women would be able to displace some of the god awful men who find themselves in CS.

Seriously, if you want a car that's fun to hack go as old as you can find that still looks nice, runs smooth, and has 100k miles (to reduce the odds that poor maintenance habits have caught up with the motor). Avoid any car with theft provention since that will totally block the remote starter unless you get the factory-approved option.

Which brings me to the next point: If you want convenience you won't get it by spending days hacking your car... You will get it by buying a convenient car. There are so many low and mid model cars that offer complete convenience packages, so just buy it if you want it. Unless you are already an experienced automotive engineer you just won't be able to come out ahead by doing it yourself. Then, to get your geek on buy a OBD-2 to Bluetooth adapter, and a nice app (like Torque) for your smartphone.

Almost as fascinating as this documentary about Russia, based on the music and themes in Tetris...

If your goal is to not have a grid any more, then yes. Doing away with the grid is something no one has mentioned in the context of a national energy plan, though. If your goal is to generate enough power for your home, you can do it during the day, sell it to the utility (if net metering is available in your area) and then use power from the grid at night. When your meter shows 0 net power, you have generated all the power you need (just not at the right time). There's no reason to stop using the grid.