By incubator I meant having 20 computer nerds living in my house while I foster their startup ideas. I would certainly give more thought to internal security controls in this or similar situations. On the other hand with physical access to the network hardware, there's probably not much I could do if they wanted to be malicious.

I don't run an incubator in my house, so usually it's just friends' kids that want to connect their iPhones to my network, thus I have no reason to run a separate guest network, although Tomato on my AP's would make this trivial. The networked computers have passwords for VNC and keys for ssh, and I'm not overly concerned that my friends' kids will have compromised iPhones that want to brute-force anything.

I think the threshold for unreimbursed business expenses is still 2% (don't remember if it's AGI or taxable, whatever). Let's use an easy, $100,000 per year income. The first $2000 of unreimbursed expenses aren't deductible. So, say, business class internet is $2000 per year, that's only the starting point for deductibility. I'm not sure of his situation, but reputable companies pay GSA/IRS rates for car use ("reimbursed"), and not sure what other business expenses an IT pro might have; let's imagine it's another $1000 per year. If he's single, that comes out of the 28% rate so he could save $280 a year.

If he had Comcast at $900 a year instead, then total unreimbursed expenses would be $1900, which isn't enough to get a tax break. On the other hand, he would have spent (3000 - 280 ) - (1900) = $820 less per year regardless of the write-off.

Granted, this is assuming that he's not the business, but only an employee of a business, and of course I don't know what he pays for his business class internet. In my example, it's an extra $69 per month, so it may very well be worth it to him regardless of the write off myth.

American cars are not failing to sell in china because of lack of metric adoption.

American cars are selling less well because the Chinese are making better cars domestically.

Um, I work for an American car company in China. We’re 100% metric here. We’re 100% metric globally, too. And globally includes the United States. We’ve been metric for nearly 20 years, with a few exceptions here and there for legacy products (think 20 year old platforms).

We’re also indeed not failing to sell in China. We can’t build enough cars – literally. We do get a huge premium in what we sell though, because Chinese cars are dirt cheap, and those dirt cheap cars really are pieces of junk in objective measurement we can make. The Chinese are getting better, though, because in addition to 50% of our Chinese profits, our joint venture partners get to learn how to design and build cars.

I remember driving on I10 and/or I19 between Phoenix and Nogales having had dual signage. I'm not sure there's ever been an all metric marked highway in the US.

Why "troll"? I live in Nanjing. It's west of the cities mentioned in the article, and in the same province as many of them. I have a Chinese driver's license.

I'll reiterate: "Would try in Nanjing."

Would try in Nanjing.

Yeah, not a bad idea, and much more economical than upgrading service. I would only have to free up two slots for the new 220 circuit, so a couple of tandems would do it. If my panel supports them. And if my township enforces the right version of NEC. I could hire an electrician, but it seems silly for such a simple change if I can verify the requirements myself.

(Dear electricians, I have the utmost respect for your profession, and yes, I know when to let you do the work instead of doing it myself!)

My HVAC was an upgrade, and is running off of its own meter and panel. Everything else is natural gas, except for my oven's 220 circuit that I ran myself (with permit). I'm pretty sure NEC requires a dedicated circuit for the oven, so I'd have to run a new cable from the service panel. It's still the original 1983 panel, so probably 100 to 150 amp service, and I think I'm out of capacity.

Would I pay an electrician $1500 so I can use my coffee maker? No way; I'm not that type of coffee snob. But I'm a handy person who likes to mold his house to his liking.

Goodness no! Nema 6-15 or Nema 6-20 will do quite nicely, have pretty consumer-like versions available, and don't look like giant, ugly heavy appliance hookups on my countertops.

Plugs and/or cables on most appliances are amazingly easy to change, so I won't be using a "conversion" cable or anything. I'll add the proper plug or cable for the outlet.

(Appliances' cables are Chinese, not European.)

As other child post says, it's only really important for motor loads. I currently run a couple of my US appliances on a transformer. While the food processor doesn't bat an eye at 50 Hz, I had to recalibrate the speed control on the stand mixer, and it's a bit slow.

Coming back, both the kettle and the coffee maker are resistance-only devices, and so line frequency won't matter. Yeah, the coffee maker has its solid state logic, but its power supply negates any frequency effects.

When I return home to the States from my current assignment, 220 outlets in my kitchen will be a top priority. Sure, I could buy a new kettle and a new coffee maker, but running off of 220 is so much better.

Actually, New York City has an excellent history of pre-planning. Wikipedia. While it's true it's not the 1700s, remember that the population was significantly lower then. And "New York City" as people know it wasn't even formed until the late 1800s when the four outer boroughs joined Manhattan.

But, yeah, infrastructure technology is hard to plan for.

If I have a cell phone without an FM radio, it's exactly the same as having no cell phone at all, for the purposes of the question being asked. Not having a built-in taser increases my chances of being mugged, too.

I think it's a good question, and they're both questions; no one suggested that they stop working on the project.

Why is it a good question? Why do we still read human interest stories? I think it's fascinating to know who is doing this work, and why.