I'm not a tax (or any other sort of) attorney, but I would think that, once the original poster's employer has paid his conference fees, they will expect (require) him to travel to and attend the conference, even if he's paying for the travel himself.

Generally, travel to and from required work-related tasks that are not at your normal job site is tax deductible. So, yes, to the OP, buy your own tickets to Vegas, stay a few extra days after the conference and enjoy a vacation, and (after consulting with an accountant or tax attorney) deduct the cost of the airfare plus the hotel costs (during the conference) from your taxes. And of course travel days and days spent at the conference are work days, not vacation days. Maybe you can negotiate with your employer to also provide per diem?

My Kickstarter edition of Euphoria: Build a Better Dystopia was $49. Since it arrived just after we had a baby, I resold it at a flea market, new in shrink, for $140.

So no good idea ever has been ignored by capitalists (banks, VCs, businesses)?

No bank would loan against money that would be returned to the backers, not the bank, were the project to fail.

I followed Fisker for years of development, primarily because they had a four-seat convertible on their roadmap, the Karma Sunset. Tesla hasn't managed one of those yet.

Funny enough, my suggestion was going to be:

1. A PC with no hard drive, that boots from a CD drive taped shut and buried in the case.
2. A printer.
3. Software that automatically prints emails from you or others on your white list.

There ya go.

Per Apple, this album is your own stuff. Let's flash back 20 years...

Assume you've told your maid service to always bring in the mail. One day, a U2 album arrive, unsolicited, in the mail, and the maid puts it on your CD rack.

Whether you paid for it or asked for it is irrelevant; once it shows up in your account/mailbox it was placed where it goes by your instructions.

But the router you attach to the router you are required to use can do it just fine.

At least the tax breaks for Tesla make more sense than the ones for the film industry. States continuously try to attract film and television through massive incentive programs, but they only work if the state has one of the best packages at the time of filming a particular film or season.

Texas had a good package for a while, and things were filmed here. Other states got better, and shooting moved to places like Louisiana. Right now Georgia has a great package and things like The Walking Dead and Archer are shot there, but don't for a moment think The Walking Dead wouldn't move to Louisiana or Arkansas or northern California if the incentives changed.

It's much more difficult for Tesla to move their factory, since they'll have extensive immovable infrastructure costs. The film industry is used to packing up every 6-26 weeks as films or seasons end.

Even KlearGear's lawyer can't hide his scumminess from his public statements.

>> "Ironically, if Mr. Palmer [consumer] had simply approach[ed] Kleargear first last fall and requested a stay to finance their new furnace — we would have worked with him," Mathieu [shitty company's lawyer] wrote. "We are human beings. Instead he has chosen a public forum."

Yeah, and be sure to ask your mugger if he can hold off a minute, so you can buy your lunch before he steals your credit card.

What you're saying is, every small business has to do business with Yelp. They're the 1000 lb gorilla in this case, and Yelp itself has earned plenty of bad reviews from businesses forced to deal with them.

The first recordings that included Mickey Mouse should be in the public domain at this point, yes, but there's no reason whatsoever why Mickey Mouse as a trademark couldn't and shouldn't remain valid in the fields for which it has been registered, if it remains in use. Trademarks != copyrights.

HE washer takes about 2 hours to clean a sanitary load, but uses just a few cents of water and detergent. Cleaning costs are in the noise.

Modern cloth diapers, while expensive, are very easy to use, and contain waste as well as disposable diapers. They pay for themselves in a reasonably short time and prevent all of this landfill waste.

Our daughter was premature, and we used disposables until she was large enough to move into the "one size" BumGenius diapers we got from our registry. I think we have ~20 of them, which means about $340 spent and a 3ish day supply without laundry. When we're done with them, though, we can resell them - yes, they have resale value.

The alternative we would be using is $0.21 each, so we'll break even after 245 or so days. Larger disposable diapers are more expensive so the savings will grow with time, not shrink, and the cloth ones are very adjustable.

Why would I be a fool to accept their cash? I wouldn't promise a conversion rate until I had it in hand and was at my bank, and if it's worth nothing all I lost was a few minutes of my time (and they're out all their money).