Nobody has ever used the battery swap station, but Tesla has been collecting credits they've been selling to other automakers. That's how they've been staying afloat: getting credits for something they've never demonstrated to the public. Driving a car behind a curtain and claiming that a battery has been swapped is not the same as a demonstration. That's the kind of dog and bullshit show that you pull out when your demonstration isn't ready.

They only actually have to manage the swap in five minutes to qualify for the credits, not 90 seconds. But there are a crapload of connectors and there's rumored to be adhesives involved, at least on early cars. But we haven't seen swap one yet.

Not that I know of. It's a good option for cars, too. Kodi makes a dandy car interface. The last piece for home theater kind of fell into place recently when all the pieces became available to watch Netflix on Linux, that's a deal-breaker for many otherwise.

I won't buy Android anything [anymore] until there's a bootloader and at least one AOSP build. Obviously, I suggest the same policy to anyone.

You wouldn't happen to know if that 4V max screwdriver is powered by an 18650 would you? if so I might consider buying one

That is not nice. My guess is this guy is really good, got lucky job-wise and is working his ass off. The question is why is this amount of money not enough? That is what he needs to fix and he also needs to be prepared to have a 30-50% salary cut and be able to survive it.

Sadly, it sounds like it. If so, then this person is screwed...

That is risky. From a security POV, SDN is an absolute nightmare. And while that has been clear to actual security experts for a long time, it seems to get harder to ignore for management in the recent past. My point is that we could actually see a regression back to "one cable, one logical network link", because other things are unable to give you a perimeter or any kind of zone-separation.

Of course, SDN could turn out to be secure and even NSA-proof, but who really believes that?

If that where the case, then the only thing he could do is to hope to keep his current high salary as long as possible. A switch is not going to get him what he earns now for a long time, if ever.

if stopping terrorists wasn't generally trivial. We know about 9/11. We knew about the Boston Marathon Bombers. The only terrorists we've ever really had a problem with are the home grown ones (Unabomber and what all). You see, there's this thing called an Ocean that separates us from them. It's why our country is as stable and powerful as it is...

parts of the patriot act were used to coordinate the response to Occupy Wallstreet. Without the law what was done to shut the movement down wouldn't have been legal and we might have a very different political landscape.

I did. I don't have a phone charging problem, because I have both portable solar panels (including a 10W flexi built into a bag) and a car which puts out lots of ~12V, but I still bought a USB charger. I broke open some LiIon laptop packs and didn't know what to do with all the cells, so I bought a $6 eBay power bank and loaded it up. Now I'm trying to imagine stuff to do with it. Wasn't my question, though. I think my R-Pi might go mobile, but then I need a boost converter to run the display I have in mind.

Yep.

It's easy to see whatever you're expecting. A good LCD-aware scaler, though, can produce some really great results on an LCD.

Apple has crapped on their TV-connected product line, though, by cheaping it out so hard that it's now pathetic.

I would have hoped that they would have LCD-aware scalers on these chips by now, but I'm not a registered developer so I can't download docs to find out.

I'm not suggesting that you can live high on the hog. Although what I would suggest is not having three kids if you don't have some kind of financial security lined up. After just one unplanned child I'd be off to the snip snip.

If you earn 210K, but cannot afford to be unemployed for more then 3 months, than the problem is on your side because you are spending too much money. I would even say that it is unlikely that you will get this salary again if you switch jobs, as your current salary is way above even most high-qualification jobs.