I instruct the babysitter to SMS me if they need to. I will ignore vibrations from phone calls and emails, but an SMS is rare enough that it's probably the baby sitter, and I will answer it.

But if it is the babysitter, I probably need to leave anyways, so go ahead and kick me out. It would suck if it wasn't the babysitter, but that movie is probably costing me over >$100 because I have to pay the babysitter too, so I get really annoyed at those who ruin it for everybody...

I think the idea is that you're supposed to charge overnight at 115V or 230V in Vegas.

That's fine when the edge of the circle is your destination. But the fact that these are one way circles makes the map very deceptive. For example, take a look at the Fall 2013 map. It would seem that Toronto to NYC is a feasible trip, but it isn't, at least not by supercharger.

Similar question: Which would you rather have: software RAID or hardware RAID? On Linux, software RAID is usually faster, cheaper, more reliable, less buggy & fuller featured.

So yes, I'd prefer the drivers in my operating system rather than buried in some inaccessible firmware somewhere.

"everywhere" is a bit of a stretch. Pidgin doesn't support any of the most popular networks: whatsapp, bbm, ...

Lot of haters in this thread. Here's another example of a great use case for WebGL: 3d printing. Use your web browser to create a 3d model. Hit the print button, and it connects to one of the 3d printing services which fedexes the result to you.

Using a web site is so much more compelling than a standalone app: no installation, easy sharing/collaboration, integration with printing services, etc. But you will want a real computer with a mouse or a Wacom pen -- an iPad app would definitely not work as well.

And it's not like a printable 3d model is going to require a fancy video card or bare metal speeds.

Toys'R'us used to carry the Nabi tablet, which has been replaced by the Nabi 2. In its review, Wired said that the Nabi 2 may be the best Android tablet available for anybody. Of course, that distinction has since been lost to the Nexus 7 and others, but it's a very nice tablet. I was wondering why Toys R Us was not carrying the Nabi 2. Now we know.

Why would you think that LEDs are bad because you have a poor experience with CFLs?

You're right, many CFLs do have the issues you describe. That makes it a great argument FOR the LED bulbs, which don't have most of the issues you describe. One of the worst characteristics of CFLs is that their lifetime is hit hard by frequent on/off cycles. LED bulbs care about frequent on/off cycles even less than incandescent bulbs.

keyboard quality: full travel keys
endurance: 8 hours on 4 AA batteries. Replacement batteries are cheap and ubiqutous
discretion: no flip up screen
portability: 3 pounds
future ease-of-reference: plain text files are the easiest to search & archive

A lot of cities have an all-red time. And it does reduce the number of accidents for a few years, although the effect deteriorates over time as drivers acclimatise.

Most cities are installing magnetic sensors at intersections to reduce "stupid stoplights", as you put it. That's why those "push to walk" buttons are becoming ubiquitous. But it's expensive to tear up pavement, so it's only generally done when other road work is done.

Short term studies show that increasing the length of the yellow light decreases accidents, but longer term studies show that the effect disappears over time. As drivers acclimatise to long yellows, they run them more often, which is a dangerous practice.

Actually, Firefox has done a lot to improve addon compatibility. They now have a bot that checks the API calls of all addons in their repository and automatically marks those that don't use any changed API's.

I used to leave Firefox 2 open with hundreds of tabs on Linux for months at a time. Firefox 3 forced me to restart it every week or so. However, it has worked great for me since Firefox 7, and 8 appears to be even better.

Once Chrome gets the breadth of plugins that Firefox has, it'll be no better than Firefox.

Modern Firefox is virtually as fast as Chrome and actually uses less memory than Chrome. `The problem is that many Firefox extensions leak memory and really slow Firefox down. The reason that Chrome's plugins don't is that Chrome plugins simply aren't allowed to do a lot of the things that Firefox extensions do.

It's no surprise that those black people you've met in Silicon Valley are exceptional. Not only have they learned the skills necessary to break into the IT department, they've also overcome the cultural barriers put up by their own community, and any institutional racism that still exists. Pretty much anybody that makes it through all of those three filters is going to be exceptional.

Paradoxically, the answer is more industrialization, not less. History shows that pollution reaches a maximum for a country around when GDP per head reaches about $10,000. Below that number, citizens care more about the fundamental basic needs, and would rather have more money than a cleaner environment. As the citizenry gets richer, they start to care more about the environment they live in and demand that their government does something about it, and are willing to sacrifice some income to achieve it.

Luckily, China can take advantage of technological process, and will likely never be as bad as countries that industrialized earlier. No place ever has been or ever will be as polluted as London was in the late 1800s.