It is actually very simple.

I ran the software engineering department at a previous job. Despite my and my boss's vehement objections we outsourced our entire software development team to India to reduce costs. I was to manage them remotely.

We made it work for a while, but in the end we did it by replacing 5 US developers with an office of about 20 in India (15 of whom were developers, rest were support staff like HR, LAN admin, Office manger, etc.) and I was able to show to our CEO that the cost of the India office was about the same as our US development team with just 5 people.

We shut down the India office, and retained 4 of the best developers there, paid them US salary (high five figures to six figures USD annually) as individual free lance consultants, and had them work remotely. I required that they get paid a US salary, if they weren't worth a US salary then we might as well hire someone in the US. We then hired a few developers in the US who would also work remotely (Our company was growing and so were our software development needs). The point was to higher few good developers instead of a lot of cheap ones, regardless of location.

Years later, four of the five developers from India continue to work for that company as freelancers, earning a US wage in India. The 5th one quit to head the engineering department for a major indian website.

The credit price is about 2% higher, but I get 3% credit card rewards on fuel purchases. So I come out ahead paying by credit, and save time, too.

Still check in here sometimes. Not as frequently as I used to, though.

Keep in mind that Amazon still doesn't collect tax for out-of-state third-party sellers (unless the order is "Fulfilled by Amazon"). From your Amazon account page, you can download your annual purchase history in spreadsheet-compatible format, with the taxes broken out into their own column, and use that to figure what purchases still need to be accounted for for calculating use tax. That was more necessary back when they didn't collect any California sales tax at all, but still comes up if you're buying from third-party sellers.

Note that if you haven't kept receipts to calculate your use tax, you're supposed to estimate it as (for 2013 in California anyway) 0.033% of your adjusted gross income. Depending on your spending, that works out to being as if, very roughly, 2% of your spending were out-of-state.

I've put LEDs in some of my outdoor lamps, but most of the indoor ones were replaced with CFLs years ago. They still do just as well as the day I got them.

I'll replace the CFLs with LEDs as they fail, but I'm not expecting that to be any day soon at the rate it's been going.

Prepaid debit cards, and burner cell phones, are only anonymous if you...oh, pay for them in cash!

Can highly respected "engingeering" school graduates also spell "engineering"?

" Emergency responders suspected that Slot was already dead when they arrived at the debris-littered scene. But he wasn't. Perhaps it's a testament to Tesla's safety measures that Slot remained alive and was briefly resuscitated en route to the hospital"

From the article...

Holy crap. perhaps he died of medical malpractice :O

While it’s true that they will open a physical safe themselves if you refuse, you can indeed be held in contempt if you have the ability to open a safe and refuse to do so when presented with a valid warrant. The “physical safe” analogy is one of the things that’s (unfortunately) applied as an existing-law analogy to crypto.

That's actually only true if they already know for certain it's your safe and you have access to it. Otherwise, admitting that you know how to open the safe (by opening it or providing the combination) is admitting that the contents of it are in fact yours. That's self-incrimination and you can't be forced to do it, though of course with a valid warrant they can still try to break into the safe. They just can't make you admit it's yours, and that's what you're doing if you open it.

In this case, however, the idiot went and bragged to the police that yeah, that stuff is all mine! To extend the safe analogy, that's like saying to the police "Yeah, I know the combination, but I'm not giving it to you!" Now you wouldn't be telling them anything they don't know, so opening the safe is no longer self-incriminating. If he'd kept his mouth shut (first rule of being questioned by the police, keep your fucking mouth shut, they mean it when they say anything you say will be used against you), this case would likely have been decided differently.

We seem fine filtering out the sea life with our fishing nets. The smaller stuff is actually more robust and quicker to regenerate than the bigger fish stocks we are depleting. Atleast in this case we are doing something constructive over all. So what if a little algae and plankton get sucked up too. It's not like they are an endangered species.

Sort of like how Ukraine was protected by the US if it were ever to be invaded?

There are other forces involved.. currents, water densities due to fresh water inflows, tides, topography, etc.. I do not personally understand these forces involved, I am just listing out what I think could be factors... but for instance the pacific side of the panama canal is widely known to be 8 inches higher than the atlantic side. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Canal)

China, not the US is the world's largest producer of CO2 emissions. And it is by a WIDE margin. China's CO2 emissions are almost double the USA's.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions

This does not mean that the USA isn't contributing to the problem. It definitely is.. but even if the US were to drop it's emissions by a Quarter (which is a LOT) it would barely have a 3% impact on worldwide CO2 emissions. I have no way of estimating the impact on the US economy if it were to drop it's emissions by a Quarter.

My point is even though you are right, the outcome of this debate in the US is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. My point is we are f*cked, this is a run away train, and there is no organizational or political entity big or strong enough to stop it.

While switching trains, I once saw the police arresting someone at the train stop. They were becoming very aggressive and seemed about to become violent with the man they were arresting, despite the fact that he was not threatening them in any way.

I took out my cell phone and began filming. Very shortly after, one of the officers pointed at me and said something (not audible, he was too far away), but all of a sudden, their behavior became very professional, and the arrest proceeded without incident.

If I were in the same situation, I hope someone would do the same. There is no reason police should not be accountable for their behavior while performing their duties. After all, isn't it they who so often say "If there's nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear"? What would be wrong with a video of police officers doing their job properly? If anything, that would protect them if they were later accused of doing something wrong. The only ones with anything to fear from a video recording are those who intend on doing something wrong, and that's the exact time we need them being taped.

Every "liberal" I've ever known (me included) is strongly in favor of the right to film the police in a public place. This is not a liberal vs. conservative issue, it is a free speech issue.