It's true that Honda and Toyota don't have much interesting going on beyond the new Civic Type R and the FRS (Which is actually a re-badged Subaru.). There are, of course, those rumors of a new Supra, but I'll believe that when I see it. And that airbag issue is just disgraceful.

Mazda, Subaru, and Nissan however, are all putting out vehicles that are innovative, fantasic to drive, and every bit as reliable as Japan's reputation for quality would lead you to believe.

Maybe the Army has been pretty pragmatic about what works and getting rid of boondoggle projects this last decade. But the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps sure do seem to be fully committed to burning billions upon billions of dollars in the F-35 money pit.

> stupidity on the part of a few cops doesn't mean
> we're living under ISIS.

When those cops go unpunished it means we're moving in that direction. I'm not saying that the sky is falling and it's for sure we'll get to the point where it's that bad. But we do have a serious problem with increased militancy on the part of the police and a lack of accountability for their misconduct. And it's not out of line at all to call their pattern of abuse to reigned in and to have the abusers punished.

Also, modern pressure cookers are not the same beast as those old relics. They're programmable and multi-function. Mine also functions as a slow cooker, rice cooker, steamer, and yogurt maker; allowing me to save space by owning one appliance instead of four (I don't actually make my own yogurt. But I could.). For someone without a lot of time to cook, it's fantastic. I can just measure the ingredients, toss them into the pot, seal it, start the program, and go off to do other things. It even releases the pressure automatically after it's done cooking. So I get a fantastic dinner while investing a fraction of the time, effort, and attention.

It's not that theft is an uncommon crime though. It's just that the police don't want to be bothered investigating thefts, arresting thieves, or recovering your property. A stolen car will get a bit of attention. But for just about anything else, the best you can realistically count on is them letting you go into a station and fill out a report that a desk officer will sign and photocopy so you can file a claim with your homeowner's or renter's insurance. Even if your stolen property is GPS enabled, and you can show them on a map a 100 ft. circle where it is, you won't get any help (Not if you're "little people" anyway. A corporation with a stolen prototype will get plenty of help.).

Violent or not, thieves are scum. I'd happily replace every single drug offender, of any kind or level, in prison with a thief.

This is terrible.

Just how are body cams supposed to do their job of uncovering and providing evidence of police misconduct if the footage can be redacted, automatically or otherwise? These people are public servants who have a history... an especially ugly and heinous history in the last year or so... of misconduct on the job and dodging accountability for said misconduct. I don't have any particular expectation of privacy from my employer during the performance of my job. Why should they?

You do realize that, unless you're 100% solar or otherwise disconnected from the grid, the electricity you charged your Tesla with is also taxed. Why should it matter whether the tax is paid piecemeal at the gas pump or on your monthly electric bill?

> I understand that semis tear up the roads more than
> cars, so yes, an extra road tax for them is not
> unreasonable.

I don't even see why that is necessary. Those very same semi trucks also use a lot more gas than a Prius or similar. Likewise, one of the ways said Prius, or any other hybrid, achieves it's high mileage is by being as lightweight as possible. And lighter weight cars cause less wear and tear on the roads and should pay less to maintain them. So just set the gas tax such that it's sufficient to bring in whatever revenue is necessary and be done with it; with no invasive monitoring.

Sure, there will be boundary cases. Some exotic sports cars are lightweight but have low mileage because they're designed for speed and acceleration, not efficiency. And electric cars, obviously, do not use gas; though i'm pretty sure the electricity itself is taxed (At least it is in my state.). But in both of these cases, they're rare enough that they really don't need to figure into the equations.

The last time I flew, the little map w/ the airplane icon gave only a very rough approximation of where were actually were. Just from looking out the window, it was apparent that it was tens of miles off... almost 50 at times. (It was showing that we were way down by Moffat Field, when we were *landing* at SFO.

So, on Virgin America's A320s at least, I highly doubt that the passenger entertainment map data comes from any FMS. The thing would be useless to the pilot if it was that far off.

> aren't always entirely honest

That's an understatement if there ever was one. Outright dishonesty is pretty much a requirement to work in sales or marketing. How else do make a claim that some sugar-laden, tooth-rotting, breakfast cereal is "a healthy part of a balanced breakfast" while showing a "breakfast" that easily has better than half the calories one should eat for the entire day?

I think that's where a bit part of the assumption of the stupidity on the part of sales and marketing types comes from. It's a lot harder to be dishonest as an engineer. A pice of code either works, or it doesn't. A bridge or building either stands up to its designed load, or it collapses. And there's a very common assumption amongst honest people that dishonest people are dumb, because if they were smart, why would they have to resort to lies?

Proper insurance and background checks are definitely a good thing.

But the legacy taxi companies, the medallion system, and the laws they're bought to fix prices and prevent competition... especially bringing about that aforementioned medallion system, are a font of corruption and scumbaggery easily on the level of the RIAA/MPAA/Metallica copyright cartel types. They effect fewer people, as people out in the suburbs don't generally take cabs/Uber/transit. But as someone who's lived in an urban city since before Uber, Lift, and Sidecar were around; I'll celebrate and support pretty much anything that kneecaps the taxi companies.

MCI? Convenient? Maybe for arriving flights. If you have a connection or a departure, it's bloody terrible. I've never been in a more poorly-laid-out airport. Instead of one checkpoint per concourse like any sensible airport, that rathole set up a jobs program for their security types or something, and set up separate checkpoints for every half-dozen gates or so, with each post-security area closed off from all the others.

Changing planes? Guess what... chances are you have to leave the secure area and go through the TSA goon squad again to get to your new gate. Departures are just as miserable. The post-security amenities in any given slice of the secure areas are paltry and low-quality at best. And that's if your flight is departing from a gate that HAS shops or restaurants in its little chink of the secure area. I've never had the displeasure, but I've been told that there are a couple that don't even have post-security bathrooms.

It's also *really* far away from almost everything. If you're downtown, it's not that bad. But if you're there for business or a conference, it's a good hour's drive from the the Overland Park district where you'll be.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not hating on KC. The people are nice and I've had a good time every time I went. But the airport is a disgrace.

I wouldn't so much crap on it. Overall, it was a very good set of novels. But there were definitely some pretty annoying things about it. My top three:

1) All the singing in Fellowship.

2) The structure of The Two Towers (Specifically: Tell the entire story of one half of the split group. Then go back in time and tell the entire story of the other half. Reader must pay obsessive detail to minutia in order to get the two halves time-synced.)

3) Aragorn can't ever just tell anyone his name. It always has to be: "For I am Aragorn, Son of Arathorn, descendent of Isildur and heir of Elendil and the kingdom of Gondor; for behold, I hold the sword that was once broken and is now reforged." Gods. Can you imagine if Peter Jackson had subjected us to *that*? The movies would all be an extra half-hour long just to let strider introduce himself.

> What made silicon valley was what Texas or North
> Dakota is today. Cheap land, cheap employees,
> friendly government, no one leaving for another
> startup.

You couldn't be more wrong. People leaving for another startup is EXACTLY what made Silicon Valley.

Pretty much all of the Intel founders met at and left Fairchild Semiconductors to form their own company. Fairchild itself was the result of people leaving Schockley Labs. Jobs and Woz worked at Atari and Hewlett-Packard before founding Apple. Palm came from ex-Apple employees. AMD also came from Fairchild employees. The cofounders of Nvidia jumped ship from AMD and Sun. YouTube was founded by ex-PayPal employees. And all that's just off the top of my head.

Smart people meeting smart people, having an idea, and having the freedom to leave their employer to implement that idea, is the vert heart of innovation. The fact that you tout non-compete shackles as a good thing *does* mark you as an "anti employee asshole". You labeled yourself in your very first sentence. It also proves that you just don't get what makes for an environment that generates companies that are not only innovative, but fantastic to work for.

There have always been a handful of big players that "dominate" the valley. In the past, it was companies like Hewlett Packard, Sun, IBM, Xerox, and Fairchild Semiconductor.

The names change, but the big companies play their role too. A big part of the valley is people getting their start at the big-name companies, meeting people and developing their skills, and then leaving to form their own startups... which something grow up to be the next big name that "dominates" the valley. Remember: The Intel founders all met each other whilst working at Fairchild, and Wozniak worked for HP before co-founding Apple.