The MacBook Pro with a Retina Display of 220ppi sounds great, but I have a serious question.

Has Apple fixed the problem with the system font being sized in a fixed number of pixels? My parents' 17" MBP with hi-res display is almost unusable with my parent's aging eyes (or even my middle-aged eyes), and it doesn't have a ppi anywhere near 220. I'm incredulous that Apple has allowed this UI flaw to persist for so long -- my parents cannot be the only ones who would appreciate a larger system font.

I don't know how well it pays, however an avenue to investigate is working for a textbook publisher, writing, editing, or error-checking new versions of textbooks. A roommate of mine in college did this to help pay his way through school, and he thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I'll wager that in this networked age this might even present an opportunity to work from home, which may be important to you if you are thinking of starting a family.

Another line of investigation is to work with local home-schooling cooperatives. They'll often hire teachers to write a math curriculum for them, and conduct weekly classes for the students. In a larger metropolitan area you may even be able to do this with several cooperatives.

I'm more than happy to allow liberals to demonetize themselves, so long as they quit trying to demonetize me. :D

While I second the notion of Cameron from Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, I'm going to have to go with the Buffy Bot.

What AC said. It's the one and only comment on this story you need to read.

We still do. The only major difference (other than generational improvements) is that these days it's x86 instead of MIPS.

More than 0, typically. I am the 98%!

You mean that old people don't basically set policy already (at least in the U.S.)? Up until recently any politician who even breathed a word implying that Social Security or Medicare benefits would be reduced, or even held constant, could count on getting kicked to the curb.

The Baby Boomers and their parents have saddled their children and grandchildren with a crushing debt while enjoying the benefits of shifting a bunch of spending from the future to the present. In my opinion it's time for them to start repaying the piper.

Perhaps I was lucky, but I did read the top three books I'd recommend as I was starting my first job:

1. Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment, W. Richard Stevens. This was influential in teaching me what clean functional programming interfaces look like, and hopefully the code I've developed since then has lived up to that ideal.

2. Network Programming in the UNIX Environment, W. Richard Stevens. Much the same as the first title, but in some ways illustrating programming interfaces that tackle more complex/flexible situations.

3. Writing Solid Code. Steve Maguire. Fifteen years later I still daily use a few of the ideas presented in the title. However it also served to show me the ugliness of some programming conventions (e.g. Hungarian Notation and StudlyCaps()) and led me to avoid those practices in my own code when I have a choice (i.e. when not having to conform to the style of existing code).

Fwiffo? Is that you?

This one time, at imaginary band camp...

So now we're stuck waiting on the NSA to release Duke Nukem Forever?