According to the indictment, part of how they were caught is that as part of laundering their proceeds, they tried to strongarm the payment processor Venmo, who had closed their accounts as part of automated fraud detection. Venmo was unhappy with being strongarmed, and sent a complaint to someone higher up at the agency. The agents then tried to suppress the complaint, and simultaneously retaliate against Venmo by trying to start an investigation. That attempted investigation pulled in the IRS, whose investigators thought a bunch of things looked suspicious, and dug up enough dirt to blow the whistle on the agents in this case.

So I guess in short, they pissed off both a payment company and the IRS.

Because reaching your customers directly is hard. If it was easy, nobody would sign up for these services. Its especially hard for a small business like these- you expect them not only to be master craftsmen, but master marketers, master SEOs, and master businessmen as well? And do all of it in the span of a working day? Not exactly realistic. Now alternatives competing on margin- that can and will happen. Amazon isn't even the first here. Some of them, like ANgie's list, are paid for by monthly subscriptions.

No they don't. At least not in the US. Do you think the guy who drives a train has a state certification? And they're the originals.

Does it matter? I'd think Amazon will be happy to grab a percentage on as many of them as they can. 20% of 50% of transactions > 20% of 0% of transactions.

Even when running on Exchange I've never seen recall actually work. I've gotten "Would like to recall" messages by the dozens. It never actually deleted the email.

Water features also provide significant air quality benefits, especially if you aerate them. There's just lots of good reasons to implement them. Trees, as well; I cringe when I see posts permanently erected for vehicle control. Removable or sinking bollards, certainly. They have their purpose. But fixed ones?

I like motorsports because I like motorsports, I don't care about any particular team. It's thrilling just to see it. That's what's great about stuff like world rally.

What does the outcome of the race have to do with the enjoyment? You're not racing. What do you care who wins? They're doing it completely and totally without you. Same for sports. That's not your team. You just bought some of their marketing crap.

A moat is still a good idea. It can be an attractive feature, if done correctly, and someone entering the moat is a flag that they may be able to jump the fence.

Classic all-time backfires; much of the time, even trying to prove that it's okay to pollute is going to show the opposite, because duh.

The money is in agreeing with you. Big Oil and the like are happy to pay scientists for studies which say that they can continue raping our ma.

The area of geography she studies is how communities/economies are impacted by and adapt to changes in prevailing climates, which seems pretty relevant, depending on what question you're asking. She would be a poor authority on questions like modeling the impact of CO2 on weather, but more within her area if asking questions like, "how easy/difficult would it be for Indonesians to adapt to a 2" ocean-level rise?".

In terms of the IPCC reports, the research/authorship is divided into three working groups: #1 studies the underlying science; #2 studies impacts & adaptation; #3 studies possible mitigation strategies. She's part of #2.

They've fiddled with the licensing as part of competition for developers with Valve's Unreal engine, which makes it work for some use-cases where it didn't previously (e.g. the mobile exporter is now free, too) but it's been pretty popular for a while now.

Yeah I think that's likely: if they become a large company with multiple large contracts, they'll end up spread over the US.

Heck they're already doing a little bit of spreading out. They have a significant test facility in Texas along with some engineering offices, and are building a new facility in Seattle to build satellites. I don't know if this is strategic/political or just happenstance at this point though. For example I believe a big motivation for the Texas site was that they were able to buy facilities off the defunct Beal Aerospace cheaply.

Well, no, I don't. That's why I asked. It sounds like the answer to my question is yes?