My wife has Mint, I've been using MobileX since early this year. I don't use as much data as my wife, so my bill is a bit cheaper. I think if you use a lot of data, you're better off elsewhere. But the service on MobileX has been decent. They talk about their "AI" driven plan, but really it just takes 10 days and gives you a data budget based on that. You are free to adjust your monthly data as much as you want. So if you want 3.7GB, then you can get that exactly. The other new thing is that you get a credit on your next month's bill for any unused data. So you really just pay for exactly what you use. This has lead to me actually purchasing more data than I normally need, because after the first month it's just a wash, and now I don't have to think about adding extra if I do have a higher usage month for whatever reason. If I do use the extra, then I'll get less of a credit the next month.

That was in Dallas in 2016.

I get paid and the new owner takes possession. I have to disclose and problems with the house in a seller's disclosure, but no special notification is required for any work I have done myself. It's common for buyers to hire a professional home inspector that will make sure everything works and look for signs of potential problems, including going in the attic (or crawl space if there was one) to look at utilities. They'll spot things that may not be up to current code and let the buyer know.

That depends on state and city laws. In a lot of places a homeowner is allowed to do any work themselves on their own home. So I could do electrical and plumbing work on my own house (and in fact I have), but I could not do electrical work on someone else's house or a commercial building without being a licensed electrician.

It's the law. The maximum hold is 9 business days, but that's only for new accounts; accounts older than 30 days can hold funds for at most 7 business days.

Here's the IRS page on the issue. Basically you won't owe any US tax on interest income as long as you don't work in the US or have other business interests in the US. However, since 2013 all US banks are required to report accounts of foreign nationals to the IRS if their country has an information sharing agreement with the US. This is not really for the IRS to tax you, but rather for the IRS to report your income to your home country so you can't hide US income from your country. See this page for more details and a list of applicable countries.

I've been voting 3rd party or independent for the last several presidential elections. People tell me I'm throwing my vote away. I tell them that voting for the two major parties and actually expecting something to change is throwing your vote away. I had to come to a place where I looked at the D and R candidates and decided that if whichever one I voted for won, then I would have to take responsibility myself that I helped put that person in power. I can't in good conscience live with that decision, so I vote 3rd party. Now, I still vote in the Republican primary because in large parts of Texas that is the real election for all of the local and state races (no Democrat is going to win if one even runs, which a lot of times they don't). But I don't have to vote for every spot on that primary ballot. And come November, I can vote for any completely different candidate that I want. I like to think of it as giving me two chances to replace some of our local politicians that I don't care for.

Absolutely. I like to know my boundaries, like which major roads, highways, or geographical features are in which directions. Then even if I end up on a road I'm not sure about I know I'll eventually run into one of those boundary features as long as I keep going in mostly the same direction.

I always like to look at my route in advance and have a basic idea of where I'm going in case GPS doesn't work correctly or there's some other issue. Also, I find the GPS voice annoying if I already know where I'm going, so I don't use it most of the time.

There are two things that I've found my phone's GPS really useful for. One is finding local restaurants, hotels, etc. The other is helping to avoid traffic jams. It's saved me hours of time in avoiding traffic. So even if I know the route, I usually check for traffic with my phone before committing.

Nah, that's too new still. Here's to the new Microsoft Bob.

The 27% in your first article is full-time tenure-track. The remaining 73% does include adjuncts, but there are also full-time non tenure-track positions, such as a yearly contract. I know because I have a friend in academia that has been doing those positions for a several years now. He at least is paid decently as a full-time position, but he has to essentially reapply every year and doesn't get paid as well as tenure-track positions. Several of those spots have been truly temporary positions (a permanent faculty on sabbatical or something), so he is pretty much job searching every year.

I have no idea how Uber works (never used it), but the problem you describe is easy enough to overcome by having a time limit to leave reviews. It should not take you more than a day to leave a review over your recent ride if you're going to bother with it. After the time passes, any reviews can be made available without worry about retaliation.

To clearly see a scene on a screen, you focus on the screen. To clearly see what's outside the car, you focus outside the car. One distraction is that your eyes have different points to focus on to see contiguous parts of the same screen. You don't really get to experience that distracting effect from a flat 2d picture or video of the system.

These folks have several open fonts that cover some lesser-used code points. They don't have a big font with everything, but the Doulos font has pretty good coverage for Latin and Cyrillic scripts.

I'm largely independent, but you'd better believe that I vote in every Republican primary in Texas. For a lot of local offices there is no opposition in the general election, so the Republican primary really is the real election. For offices where there is opposition in the general election, I look at it as a way to get two chances to unseat incumbents that I don't like.