IIRC, it's a nationwide thing that some had referred to as the "Obama Phone", but the program actually has it's roots as far back as Bush 41 or Reagan.

My electric company has me on a smart meter that knows my electric consumption at least on an hourly basis and I'm on a time of use plan where I pay a lot less for power during non-peak times and more during peak (peak time is 0500-0900 and 1700-2100 from November to April 1300-2000 from May to October; I'm in the Phoenix metro area). It saves me about 3-4 hundred dollars a year. Doing things like running turning the temp up a couple degrees in the day and running the pool filter during non-peak makes a huge difference for me.

I think they also will give discounts if you let them install an interruptor box on your A/C. When they hit critical peak, they can telecommand your A/C off for up to 10 minutes per hour, letting them "ration" the cool a bit.

If I hadn't just posted a comment here, that would've totally earned a +1 insightful from me.

I have an anecdote related to this.

In my last life, I worked at a lab involved in the MER missions. After the 90 day nominal mission, somebody asked my boss, a highly respected planetary geologist, how long it would take for a human to accomplish the gathering of scientific data that the rover had accomplished thus far. His answer was "it would be about a solid afternoon of work."

So if anyone old there thinks "100s of robots" is an exaggeration, it's not.

There are people who have built VPNs and proxies to Netflix in a data center host they control who got fine performance while using the VPN to their house, but would get crap performance when going direct over Comcast. I've said it before that the line between good traffic engineering and breaking net neutrality is a blurry one, so it's not a smoking gun by any means, but it's very interesting information nonetheless.

Honest people becoming dishonest doesn't scale either.

I'm good at what I do, but at 47 I'm over 20 years past my sell-by date as far as most tech companies are concerned.

I turn 47 this year, and I am conditionally calling bullshit, with the caveat on location. Yeah, there are the hipster post-social media tech startup places that might not be interested in you, but if you look behind the covers, you find they're not doing anything that interesting to someone with your seniority anyway. You mention your area, and yeah, if it's all Java monkeys and Windows admins, you might be right. The really cool tech jobs are out there, and they're not found in the same channels you found them in when we were in our 20s or even in our 30s. What technologies do you know? What technologies are you interested in? Find a meetup group or look for the user groups in your area for those technologies. Learn and network. These groups are where the cool jobs are found now. If they're not out there, start some, and if they don't take off, then consider relocating. It sucks, I know. I'm in love with where I live, and I'd hate to leave it. But it's not being 47 holding you back, unless you're going to argue that there's a big difference between being 46 and 47. :-)

Nothing wrong with Sudoku, but the EA version would say "Want to place a 9 here? Wait 20 minutes, or buy the 10 pack of 9s for $1.99!"

The losses of nutrients from canning, while not non-existent, are a lot less than people think. Sodium can a problem, but in any kind of mass economic disruption, the primary sources of crazy amounts of sodium in our diet will be pretty much offline. Most canned goods come in lower sodium versions as well.

Hedges and sets odds on the bets such that no matter the outcome, there is profit.

Until that day comes, I will refer to globalization with a more accurate name: "neo-feudalism".

Hmmm. That's a good point, especially since I carry around a big boat Note 2. But there's something I did with my Newton that I still don't do with any electronic device and that is take notes. It's the only device I ever had that recognized my native handwriting (not printing, not Graffiti from the Palm OS era), which is an amazing feat because I can barely read my own handwriting.

Sad thing was, I got much more utility out of my Newton than my iPad. I don't even know *where* my iPad is right now, and I'm not even sure where to look for it. It could be stolen for all I know.

Of course, if someone did that to Apple nearly 20 years ago when the stock was in the toilet but they still had a pile of money they would've pretty seriously screwed themselves. Not saying it's never a right choice to do that but it's not always right either.

You have zero expectation of privacy from the authorities. If however, you embarrass the authorities you are suddenly breaching important privacy protections. Funny how that works, eh?