If you're already in the Kobo ecosystem, you could upgrade to the Kobo Aura ONE. Kobo bought Overdrive a while back and integrated borrowing into the e-reader. You just search put in your library card info, search for a book, and select borrow. It's all done on the e-reader. You don't even need to use a computer at all. I've been really happy with mine (for the few weeks I've had it). The other option is to go over to the dark side and get a kindle. Many libraries let you temporarily add books to your kindle library and they sync over just like a regular purchase. Either way, no WINE, no USB cable, no proprietary OS on your computer.

The interface used to freeze randomly and completely for varying periods of time. Made it completely unusable for me. It's not an unknown problem. Unfortunately, none of the fixes ever seemed to work for me.

You can rather easily host an instance of Nextcloud on rather modest hardware in my experience. It just needs to be able to run apache/nginx, php, and sqlite (you're supposed to use mariadb/mysql but don't absolutely need to if you're just running it for yourself). Activate the tasks app and you're good to go. The entire infrastructure is all open source and you get a whole lot more benefits than just self-hosted tasks.

Everything is accessible with CalDAV so you can use the built-in sync from the iPhone or DAVdroid and OpenTasks on Android. For desktop/laptop you can access it from the web interface or through your preferred groupware software.

Since security is an issue, if you don't want to pay for an SSL certificate you can self-sign one or get one from Let's Encrypt.

This is slashdot. We're a bunch of nerds with a tech bent. Even if our paranoid delusions didn't convince us we need to hide our grocery lists from the NSA, it would need to be self-hosted because we can self-host it.

Samsung Pay uses a virtual prepaid card as an intermediary just like Android Pay did when it was Google Pay. Having the card number won't do any good because the card number you would intercept will never have any value on it for more than a fraction of a second.

Here is an excerpt from the opinion and a bit of legal analysis. What it basically boils down to is that the purpose of the first amendment is to promote public discourse and make possible the ability to observe and criticize the government. The trial court had said that it wasn't clear that her purpose was expressive at the time of recording but that's stupid because how to do you go back in time and record something once you realize should have been recording. People need to be able to record police at all times according to the reversal because "the value of the recordings may not be immediately obvious, and only after review of them does their worth become apparent."

Heat is kinetic energy. Temperature is a measure of the average kinetic energy of a system. It also happens that individual atoms/molecules can transition between energy levels by emitting/absorbing infrared radiation. That's the way that heat from something like the sun can travel through the vacuum of space to reach Earth.

You are correct that the trademark is only supposed to be in one area of industry. The problem is that sometimes that distinction isn't as clear as it probably should be. Pandora and Paypal are both technology companies as well as their primary purposes (music and finance, respectively). That is definitely a reason to give pause and may be enough for Paypal's lawyers to prevail. Go back and take a look at Apple Corp vs Apple Computer. One was a record company and the other sold computers. But the computers could make and record audio and that was enough. The battle raged on for 30 years before Apple Computer finally won.

This is absolutely about trademark. I recently started using Pandora again a few days ago. The first time I looked back at my phone I was confused because I hadn't purchased anything with Paypal recently. I didn't know why there was a notification. It was just Pandora. The logos, especially when monochrome, are strikingly similar. As far as I know, Trademark law requires Paypal to defend their mark or risk losing it, too.

I'll second the Canon recommendation.
Their fancy inkjets and color lasers are the same way. We have a PIXMA-100 PRO and an MF8280cw. Both will warn you that the toner/ink may be running low but neither will stop...ever. My laser has been warning me that two of the colors (both starters) are "beyond usable life" (or something like that) for over a year now but continues to print (in B&W and color) without a hitch. Given the abhorrent behavior of the other printer manufacturers, I'm not sure I'll ever buy from anyone else.
The only problem I've ever had is a little bit of difficulty with the Linux drivers. However, with Windows, Android, iOS, and OSX, though, it just works.

No, I've never done that because that would be rude. It's not my place to judge them. Of the one with whom I had a personal relationship, I know he had a child with greater-than-average medical needs. The others seemed to signal that they were just trying to make some extra money.
I don't know where you live, but in my state, the average teacher salary is ~$50,000/year (source). I wouldn't exactly call that rolling in dough, especially when you consider that many have a master's degree and also have their own kids to take care of. Also, our budgets for resources and supplies is garbage in this state. Many teachers ask for donations of paper, glue, etc from the parents. Many end up buying the stuff they don't get with money out of their own pockets (so that employee discount helps). The problem just magnifies when you get to poorer school districts.

I'm glad we found a common ground. I see the same thing happening. Even in the 90's when I was in high school, I knew people who worked at K-Mart, Pizza Hut, grocery stores, and other low wage positions. Now those positions are increasingly staffed by older people. A knew quite a few people at Wal-Mart who were teachers trying to supplement income on the evenings and weekends. It's a sad commentary that the people who are educating my children are having to work 7 days a week just to make ends meet or provide a decent living for their own kids. How much time does that leave for lesson planning outside of school? Something needs to give. I don't think huge minimum wage increases are the answer because that will make everyday items more expensive and lead to even more job elimination. I'm personally a big proponent of the various universal basic income schemes. We'll see what happens in the future, but the status quo is just not heading in a good direction.

You realize, though, that the crappy situation you're talking about is something endemic to the US economy and not just Wal-Mart. There's a reason that so many people are pushing to raise the minimum wage. Wal-Mart, right before I left, announced that there would be a $10/hr minimum for front-end workers which was a decent improvement from the previous status quo.
That being said, Wal-Mart isn't that bad of a place to work, especially after you break through that living wage barrier and get up to store level management or higher (and they will promote almost anyone as long as they are reasonably competent and stick around long enough). They even offer health insurance to part-time employees (again, if you've been there long enough). From what I understand, it's not as awesome as when Sam was still alive, but it's still not bad.