I think that they just wanted to have an attractive price to get people on the service, and now that people are there, they want to hike the price. But they're deflecting anger by saying "there's been abuse, so we're cutting our sizes if you don't sign up soon", rather than "we're doubling our prices".

Yes, this and many other things. I volunteer on my company's Emergency Response Team, so I get some exposure to this sort of thing. There are many reasons why they have you call security first:
1. Security is much closer. Even for us, where the fire truck and ambulance are only a block away, Security (and the ERT) can respond at least 3 or 4 minutes faster.
2. Security has a "go bag" that contains a defibrillator, oxygen, and a lot of other useful equipment.
3. If you call from an office phone, the address that shows up at the 911 center is our main visitor entrance. We have about 15 different buildings, and if you go to the wrong one, it'll take you an extra 5 minutes to drive to the correct one. Security knows how to direct 911 to the right place if you call them first, because they know to ask you which building and which cubicle you are located in.
4. Security can meet the ambulance. They get their vehicle out to the street to meet the ambulance and escort them to the door that is closest to the emergency. Then, they can provide access to the building and escort them directly to the emergency, since all entrances are normally locked.
5. Not all emergencies are necessarily worth calling 911, and Security has training on which ones are likely to be critical. Obviously, if someone is unconscious or not breathing, 911 should be called immediately (and that should be communicated to Security). But what if someone is just feeling a little off? Our company has a list of about 10 things that we must dial 911 for (things like chest pain, loss of consciousness, etc.); other things are up to our judgement as to their severity - but with the knowledge that it's always better to call 911 and be wrong about it being an emergency. The ambulance will show up for free, they only charge you if you go away with them.

At my company, Security is pretty much always the first on the scene, since they're always communicating via radio. A couple minutes later, people with some basic medical training (first aid, CPR, AED) from the ERT show up after getting an E-mail/phone/SMS page. And a few minutes after that, the ambulance arrives. That's even the case when somebody calls 911 from their cell phone (as long as they eventually call security too) - it's better to get our first responders on site early and get everything prepared for the ambulance to arrive, rather than to have the ambulance wandering the parking lot trying to find the emergency.

I'd agree that this is often true, but not always. Apple innovates in hardware when it makes sense for them, and buys off-the-shelf when it doesn't.

Here's an obvious example, although from quite a long time ago; Apple developed its own chipset for the PowerPC 970, aka G5. Although it was fabbed by IBM, their architect confirmed that it was an Apple design. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if they bought some of the IP inside from somebody else too.

Another example is touch input. Apple used to get all their trackpads and controllers from Synaptics. I believe at some point, they switched to making their own. They still sometimes use off-the-shelf parts for them when it makes sense - but there are also rumors that Apple is working on its own controller for touchscreens now too.

A more recent example that they've advertised is the "TCON" (the display's timing controller) in the Retina iMacs. When everybody else was starting to think about going to 4K, they just skipped past that to 5K, and presumably couldn't find one that met their needs. It wouldn't surprise me if, in a few years, they go back to an off-the-shelf design, unless they've come up with a unique method of driving the display (like NVIDIA's G-Sync, followed by AMD's FreeSync).

Another example would be the backlit keyboard - I don't think I'm aware of anybody else that had done such a thing at the time - Apple put LEDs on the side of the keyboard, and used optical fibers to spread the light across the whole keyboard, shining through the key caps. The usual keyboard lighting for laptops at the time was an LED embedded in the top center of the screen that pointed down at the keys, illuminating them from above. They've since gone through another generation of the design, with individual LEDs under each keycap.

And finally, you have their iPhone/iPad/AppleTV CPUs these days. Nobody really knows much about Apple's architecture except them, but it's a custom design that undoubtedly has plenty of innovations (some of which may be patented by somebody else, whether they know it or not).

There are also plenty of innovations that are driven by Apple, although largely developed elsewhere. I'd be willing to bet that they are heavily involved with certain display and camera manufacturers - maybe not so much in the engineering/design side, but in the direction that development should go. Few companies would've made a "retina display" the size of an iPhone a few years ago, but Apple really pushed the idea. Or the whole sapphire thing that obviously went rather poorly a couple years ago - without the backing of Apple, GTAT wouldn't have had the funds to buy a bunch of sapphire furnaces to make the huge quantities needed. Unfortunately, GTAT wasn't successful at refining the manufacturing process enough to make it cost effective, and the whole thing imploded.

So yes, 99% of the time, they just buy off-the-shelf parts. It makes sense, because they're usually cheaper and do everything you need them to. But by choosing the right 1% of the time to innovate, they make a much larger impact. It's what any smart company would do.

Maybe because it's not uncommon to test a stolen credit card with some trivial amount first, before making a huge purchase with it. That, combined with it being foreign, probably triggered the fraud alert.

Maybe it's obvious, but if you're having bad experiences with your bank, maybe you should... try a different bank? I can recall only a few instances where my bank has suspected fraud, and they've always called me before my card was deactivated. Once was when I moved halfway across the country, and I spent $350 at Target for random housewares - while I was loading the bags into my car in the Target parking lot, my bank called to make sure it was me. On the other hand, I've travelled to a number of different countries (often without notifying the bank), and I don't recall ever having a problem with my card.

I'll take a stab in the dark, and say it's because my card is through a large but local credit union, where they actually care about individual customers. I think the huge national outfits tend to care about customers in aggregate - if they can offer a better deal than everybody else (e.g. more cash back, or a "double" rewards card), then it doesn't matter if they lose you as a customer - they'll pick up two more to replace you. But that means that to maintain their margins, they have to catch fraud with a much higher false positive rate, because they can't afford any loss.

> "Just about every image..."

Oh, so they haven't posted the ones where you can see the behind-the-scenes rigging of the TV studio they filmed the whole thing in? And they cut out the ones where the aliens are visible, too.

That is one option, but you can buy them too (including installation and inverter, of course; they're not in the business of selling just a panel). I bought my system from them; I owe nothing for the next 30 years or so, but they owe me a warranty, insurance, and a minimum production guarantee. I still have to pay the minimum monthly charge for my power bill to the power company, of course - I'm not off-grid, just roughly net zero.

If I sell my house, the benefits go to the next owner (who also would have no liability to SolarCity), or I can pay $500 to do a site survey of my new house and another $500 (if the survey is acceptable) to move them to the new house.

And because I own the system, I get the rebates, not SolarCity. (For me, that was just the federal tax credit, no utility incentives or anything like that.)

But their usual sales pitch is either the lease or (new in the last year or so) a loan that is paid off based on energy production. Many people prefer that because you don't have to come up with tens of thousands of dollars all at once, and you start paying less for power immediately.

Don't worry, he's stopping *himself* from selling the software in his homeland. Although the term "selling" is generous - it's a free license. And as Wikipedia notes, the license distributed with the software states that the license is valid until the next version of the program is published, at which time the new version's license will apply to the older version - but no new version has been released since 2011; so in case anybody is still using this crackpot's software, they can just ignore all his crazy licensing changes in the past year.

+1 to this. Verizon almost always has the best coverage (though right now, I'm vacationing in a spot that has AT&T but not Verizon, surprisingly). AT&T has good coverage of interstates and any city of probably at least 10,000 or more. Smaller cities may or may not have great coverage. T-Mobile and Sprint are less expensive, if you're willing to sacrifice coverage, though they're usually good near urban areas.

That means that you get unlimited data on the phone itself, but only 5 GB for using the phone as a hotspot (eg to connect your computer).

But that was exactly my point; Google knows about trees, and they have 3D models of them. Not everywhere in the world, but at least in the areas that Sunroof is covering now (and many others - like I just checked my parents' house in Wisconsin). As to your "most people don't live in urban areas" comment, the US Census Bureau would say otherwise. According to them, it's about an 80%/20% split between urban and rural.

As far as SolarCity, they put exactly what they can charge you in their contract. If someone didn't read the contract to find out what they'd be paying, that's their own damn fault. Personally, I got my solar panels from them, but I bought them outright - no lease, loan, or power purchase agreement. They still warrant both functionality and energy production (with a per-kWh payout if they're too low) for 30 years, but I owe them nothing. That said, the sales guy I dealt with was a bit of an asshat, trying to push me with high-pressure tactics. In the end, they were still the best deal, both in terms of price and future maintenance, and everybody besides that one sales guy was very nice.

Solar certainly doesn't make financial sense for everybody. And you can't put a solar system on every roof today and expect the grid to still function (see: Hawaii, where many places are not allowed to add new solar systems). However, California (for example) is mandating that utilities build a lot of energy storage, to help smooth out the burst of solar power available, so more people can install it. A friend of mine works for a company that provides such storage, in the form of gigantic flywheels.

In any case, for many people, solar is a good idea. Google's tool helps you determine what makes financial sense in your particular situation. And its estimates (compared to what I actually paid and what my panels actually produce) are more accurate than many of the other estimates I saw while shopping. And even if it's not a financial positive, some people prefer solar just to reduce the amount of carbon and other pollutants they are contributing to the atmosphere. As for your case, yeah - maybe the trees make it unprofitable to install solar. Or maybe you could do it, but you'd need more expensive microinverters to help counter the shade. The point is, this tool can tell you. (Well, at least it could, if it were offered in your area.)

You're not being very imaginative. They don't need to take pictures every few minutes all year to find shadows; they just need a 3D model. The sun's position in the sky is easily calculated for any given day of the year and time. And they have 3D data (probably collected by airplane) for many areas, as seen in Google Earth or Satellite View on Maps. The data's not perfect (if you've looked at the 3D trees, they're pretty ugly!), but it's a pretty decent tool given that nobody needs to climb on your roof to take any measurements to get a decent idea of how effective solar panels would be. It pretty clearly shows the west side of my house as partially shaded, due to a line of trees nearby. I have some friends who live a mile or two away from me, and their house is almost entirely shaded - and shows as such.

In addition to getting data about shadows from things near your roof (trees, other buildings, etc.) they're also apparently including data based off of weather patterns. So, for example, in my area, where mornings are often cloudy and afternoons are almost always sunny, the west-facing surfaces show up as sunnier than east-facing surfaces. Another area that's covered by this project doesn't show the same effect, because they don't get the morning clouds. Heck, it even picks out the chimney on my roof, and shows the area around it as slightly less favorable.

That's not to say it's perfect - it makes some small mistakes on the roof shape on a lot of houses. For example, it thinks that a pergola attached to my house is part of the south-facing roof. And a nearby neighbor with an odd-shaped roof line looks even more odd in Sunroof, as if it had been architected by a Cubist. But it's a pretty good first cut, and a nifty use of their extensive data to make something new with not too much extra effort required. That said, if you're serious about solar, whoever installs it is going to do a site survey that basically determines this for you anyway, and they will hopefully pick the best surface.

My panels actually face East, which is uncommon - but it was the largest available area, and has the least shading from trees. Sunroof shows the South side as being better for my house (and West worse, due to trees), but a lack of contiguous area on the South made the east side less expensive per kWh produced. (The South side would have required more expensive higher-efficiency panels, driving up the cost of the system.)

Yeah, I was gonna suggest this. Just put your update on a USB thumb drive with a rootkit, leave a few out in the parking lot, and wait. Someone will plug it in, at which point your drive can take over the machine and update it!

At that point, you might also consider installing something else to help dodge the air gap to make future updates for your customer even easier; for example, try data transmission via ultrasonic frequencies to another compromised^w updated machine with a network connection!

Perhaps OP was thinking of what they promised (a 5-year flight), or perhaps my quick googling is insufficient... I was able to find a 14-day unmanned solar-powered flight in 2010 from Qinetiq's Zephyr craft.

Following the link to the article (I know, I know, this is slashdot, we don't do that here), there's an important qualifier missing from the summary; this is a record for an aircraft *in its class*. Specifically, that class is aircraft under 50 kg total mass. They do cite the Zephyr (now as an Airbus property) as the longest UAV flight, and Solar Impulse 2 as a longer flight by a (manned) solar airplane. It is also notably different than the Zephyr because it is a "low-altitude" vehicle. From one of the research papers on their website (OK, I realize this is getting out of hand... I mean, following the link is one thing, but doing a google search for the company involved???), it looks like they're staying below 1,000 meters. The Zephyr is intended to fly between about 60,000 and 70,000 feet, where winds are weaker and there is less drag. On the other hand, apparently this craft has an IR camera to help it find thermals that it can ride to help reduce the power requirements.

That said, given the additional requirements of transporting a human, I give the award for most impressive achievement to the Solar Impulse team. Their pilot outweighs not only the payload of the AtlantikSolar and Zephyr crafts (0.8 kg and 2.5 kg, respectively), but probably also the whole UAV itself (6.8 kg/15lb and 53kg/117lb, respectively - I'll assume that their pilots don't have a second job as a jockey). Add to that about 5 pounds of food and 7 pounds of water/drinks *per day*, plus some bottled oxygen so the pilot can breathe at 40,000 feet... And apparently the sensor and data downlink package from Solar Impulse consumes up to 50W - that's as much as the craft in this article uses for all its needs, including propulsion. There's a lot of stuff required to keep us silly humans alive.

I'll grant them that it's an impressive feat in a small package - but I still think the bigger package with the bigger payload (a human) is more impressive.

SIX revisions? Hopefully only metal layers, or were some a full base spin too?

Where I work, we usually go into production on the second revision. Occasionally, the first one is good enough (usually if it's similar to a previous chip). The one I worked on most recently was a brand new design from the ground up with a new team of people, so we shipped the 3rd version (both spins were just metal layers). We (almost) never change the base layer - the case I heard about was when somebody in Marketing told someone in Engineering that there was no way they'd ever want to market a specific part to use >n MB of memory (probably 512 or so), because it was a low-end part. So they put enough address bits on the part for 512 MB - and then not too long after making it, Marketing decided that they needed a 1 GB version too. Then it just became a question of "is it worth a million dollars to be able to sell it with 1 GB?"

I'm in verification, so my whole job is to make sure we haven't made any million dollar mistakes. I produce no useful output, other than a thumbs up to management right before they start producing wafers. Some mistakes still get past us, but when a million dollars is on the line, some creative changes (often just in software) can help us keep the problem at bay.

And any time a big mistake gets by, another item gets added to our checklist. Being the first guy to make a particular mistake is usually professionally survivable; everybody makes mistakes sometimes. But being the second guy to make the same mistake does not bode well for your future...

My bank uses IP addresses as part of its algorithm, as a proxy for location. One of their security options is to only require 2-factor authentication when logging in from a new computer, or doing something suspicious (changing your contact information or wiring all your money to Russia, for example). It was reasonably convenient, but I eventually decided to go with the stronger security of always requiring 2FA.

The best thing you can do is probably to find a bank you trust. My local credit union is friendly, tech-savvy, and has decent rates. They also have far less of a 'screw the customer' attitude than some of the big banks. I've heard of some that will reorder all your withdrawals in a day before all your deposits to try and overdraw you so they can charge a fee. Mine does the opposite; all the deposits are processed first, so even if you do overdraw, you have a grace period until the end of the day. And at that point, you can still have an automatic overdraft transfer to protect you from being overdrawn by taking from another account, or you can have an automatic line of credit so that you only get charged interest instead of a big fee.