Yeah, Iowa's #43 in per capita Federal spending for 2013 based on the 2014 Pew Trust spending report, getting roughly $25B. (Source: Wikipedia...) Meanwhile, we were #37 on per capital Federal tax contributions for 2015 (roughly $24B). Sorry, I can't quickly find numbers from the same exact year, but 2013 vs. 2015 wasn't that much different. Really suckin' at the ol' government teat there, eh?

We'd do just fine without the coastal states, but we have no oil, and they have inadequate agriculture to feed their populations. It makes a decent trade.

Plus, we're just plain smarter than you coastals:
https://www.washingtonpost.com...

I miss home. One of these days I'll give corporate America the finger and move back to the farm.

Hell, sometimes not even months. Bought a new truck in Denver late July and had a crack across the windshield from a rock before I even got it home. Less than 100 miles on it and a broken windshield already. And of course, because it's a 2017 and a new body style, you can only get the glass from the manufacturer at a hefty price ($900, all said and done). I would happily pay double for a windshield that wouldn't break every time a rock hit it, particularly since CDOT thinks spreading small sharp rocks all over the road is an acceptable substitute for adequate plowing and/or salt.

Yes, people should be allowed to make calls, but only as a form of assisted suicide. They're just asking for the rest of the plane to murder them after the third loud outburst you didn't give a shit about anyway.

Oh wait, nevermind, the TSA grabbed everything we can use to murderate them. Guess we'll have to resort to "no calls" until I can bring my nail clippers on board again.

Probably not much would happen. Many of them just put +5V on the power line and leave the data lines floating or tie them together. Sometimes they have various resistor networks to trigger higher charge rates. Depends on the size of the resistors, but my bet is even throwing 100-200V at them isn't going to do much given how little energy a few ceramic caps can hold. You'll exceed the power rating for a bit, and that will quickly drop off as the caps discharge.

The bigger problem will be USB C chargers and things like Qualcomm Quickcharge, which actually use digital communication on the lines to trigger various non-5V voltages and higher currents. Because they use actual signaling, they're much more prone to damage.

As the parent said, the sort of antisocial taintsuckers that would do this are why we can't live in a decent society.

I applaud your support of my utopian "pants free workplace".

My phone has intrinsic value as a small computer. My credit card does not - it's just magic numbers on a two cent piece of plastic. If I lose the card, I call the company and get them to issue me a new one essentially for free. If I lose my phone, I get to go plunk down $700 on a new one.

I'd rather carry cheap, disposable things that don't cost me a huge amount if I lose. Plus, again, I don't want my ID or my payment methods to run out of battery.

I fail to understand why I'd want to pay with my phone.
A) Cash never runs out of battery, and the merchant can always verify it's valid without a network connection
B) Credit cards never run out of battery, and there's a backup process for when the terminal can't call home to momma (although imprint machines scare anybody under 30 if they have to use them...)
C) Mobile OSs are subject to security holes that are being actively pursued
D) I have to carry a wallet anyway. Drivers license, health insurance cards, *cash*, etc. So what does it gain me?

Seriously, this is the standard "wouldn't it be cool if your smartphone could..." sort of thinking, without pondering if it's really better to do those things with a smartphone.

You say "democrat sex fiend" like it's a bad thing, troll... :)

Personally, you almost couldn't pay me enough to live anywhere in the Bay Area. I mean sure, there's some number at which I could put up with it for a couple years and then retire elsewhere, but it's crowded, expensive, and I find generally unpleasant. I dread any time I have to go work in SFO, SJC, or OAK. About the only place I'd want to live in CA is out along the eastern edge - think Inyo County - or maybe anywhere north of Redding (east or west).

Then again, I generally loathe humanity other than a small group that I call friends. I like my space - open roads, clear skies, high speed limits, and enough property that I can keep my neighbors at least a quarter mile in any direction.

At the end of the day - and it has been this way since two decades ago when I was fresh out of college - the most important thing to me is living where I want. I'm flexible enough that I can find work that meets my salary needs. I've never understood the appeal of the Bay Area, and I probably never will.

But hey, if folks all want to be there, it keeps them from moving closer to me.

Likewise - I've seen this in a number of companies, regardless of if they know where you're going or not. If you have access to what they consider trade secret IP (despite either having developed it or worked on it for years), I've seen friends get shown the door within minutes of giving notice. However, those companies have always paid them for those two weeks, they just didn't want them to have access any longer.

I have to agree - if you work for a big company and don't have anything lined up, never quit. If you just do your job half-assed and play along with them having performance reviews, putting you on an improvement plan, making marginal improvements in some areas and failing worse in others, wash-rinse-repeat, you can drag on employment for years by surfing the process.

Then again, I echo the words of others - don't screw over coworkers and friends you respect, or a company that's always treated you with respect. Wheaton's Law absolutely applies at the office.

My coworkers would know, because I'd give them two weeks notice or more so they wouldn't feel screwed over and so they could make an orderly transition. My management may not be privy to such information depending on how they'd been treating me lately. That said, I have no intention of leaving my current position for the foreseeable future.

[quote]to share sensitive information over public Wi-Fi connections, which are notoriously insecure[/quote]

I've never understood this whole idea - anything sensitive should be going over an encrypted connection anyway. Who cares if some idiot sitting next to me in the coffee shop can sniff it? He can't make heads or tails of it anyway. In the case of a MITM attack set up in the wireless gateway, the certificate validation / host key / other host validation protocols should fail. Adding a VPN connection adds layers of defence, but something that's highly unnecessary for most individuals and data.

Otherwise, I'm probably just browsing sites that don't require logins or any other information from me - in which case, again, there's nothing secret or proprietary there and I don't care if I get sniffed.

I still *carry* paper maps on the road with me, but I very rarely ever use the darn things anymore. They're heavy, bulky, and having a blinking GPS dot that says "your dumb ass is right here" is rather handy sometimes.

I have my tablet loaded with MAPS.ME, which is quite possibly the most awesome mobile application ever. It allows you to download all the datasets for anywhere you'll be (which are based off the OpenStreetmap dataset), such that you have very finely detailed maps at any zoom level with absolute certainty you aren't dependent upon a data connection. Unless you're carrying detailed local maps as well as large scale stuff, my electronics have you beat by a mile on #2.

#1 has never been a problem for me. #3, yeah, I'll give you that one, but on a 10" tablet, it's not bad.

Actually, I'd give him a choice - ten identical doors. He gets to use an unmodified ADE651 to pick which one to open. Nine out of ten have real (big) bombs mounted under the door frame. The remaining one has nothing. We give him an option at sentencing - he can either do life in prison, or pick a door and possibly go free. If his device works, that shouldn't be an issue at all.

Should make great pay-per-view.

Wish I had mod points, I'd bump you up. Nobody actually thought the FCC was going to make hacking your router illegal. It's outside their jurisdiction anyway as long as it doesn't change the electromagnetic emissions. The reality is that the easiest way for a manufacturer to assure compliance is to sign the firmware and lock the hardware to that signature, effectively preventing any firmware modification. If anybody thinks manufacturers are going to take the intentional hard road in the design just so a tiny subset of their customers can go in and modify things, you're nuts. Effectively the FCC is still boning us all.