My first Google "Project Fi" cellphone bill:

$20.00 - Fi Basics -Calls, texts, 24/7 support
$10.00 - Data - 1 GB at $10/GB
  $5.51 - Taxes & regulatory fees
$35.51 - Service total

$12.46 - Device payment - $12.46/month, $274.08 remaining

$47.91 - Billing total

I used almost exactly 1GB of data, so my monthly total for cellphone service (including regulatory fees!) was $35.51. The amortized payment on the phone itself is an extra $12.46 until I pay it off. The phone was surprisingly good at finding free WiFi service while I was out running errands.

My wife and I both switched from Verizon to Google's Project Fi. Even with the ETFs, even with paying the 24-month amortized payments on the Nexus 5X, we're at break-even in four months, and it's gravy from there on out. The cost savings was huge. Once we did the numbers, it was a no-brainer to break our Verizon contracts early. Fi's coverage so far has been excellent.

My friend and I were recently same this very thing. Years ago, it seemed like everything Google developed either worked exactly how you'd want it, or it worked in even a more clever way than you thought you wanted it. Now, it seems like everything they touch becomes worse for it.

I was hoping someone would write all this up so I could simply say

THIS THIS THIS THIS

Especially the "should be fired" part. At first, I was concerned that they made all these foolish changes due to carelessness or ignorance. Now I am becoming more concerned that they are doing these things quite deliberately (for whatever reasons).

Toddler Lock is good when the child doesn't yet understand the meaning of the home or back buttons:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=marcone.toddlerlock

At around 18 months, our toddler figured out an exploit in Ice Cream Sandwich that got him back to the main desktop. Amazingly, on his own, he figured out how to swipe desktops and run his favorite kid apps! (Fortunately, he didn't go shopping for any new ones.) At this point, we switched over to Kid's Place:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kiddoware.kidsplace

This is a fully sandboxed kid-friendly desktop environment that offers your child all the apps you deem fit to allow. It enables airplane mode, disables the Google Play market, and so on. Our (now) 23-month-old knows how to navigate in and out of all his favorite apps with no trouble. There's also a separate Kid's Place Video Player app (accessed from inside Kid's Place) that they can use to play their favorite videos.

Disclaimer: I haven't evaluated other toddler desktop environments; this one worked well for us so we stuck with it.

As for all the tablet haters in here, it has been simply incredible how quickly our toddler is improving is cognitive capabilities. There are things that app can teach in a very intuitive way (memory match games, connect the dots, letter/number and counting games with fun rewards, shape puzzles with several dozen variants) that are difficult, impractical, or impossible to teach with physical toys.

And guess what? When he gets bored of his tablet, he puts it down and goes and plays with his other toys. Imagine that.

This is out of your remodel budget, but it's a possibility for future new construction. Consider room-by-room zoning:

http://www.getemme.com/room-by-room/index.php

This system places a small, discrete wireless thermostat in every room, which provides two advantages:

* Each room can respond separately to room-specific demands, eliminating hot and cold spots in the house.
* Different rooms can have different temperature programs.

We have the older version of this system (MyTemp) and we love it. It's not cheap, but I only paid the difference between the builder's standard 2-zone system and this system. Some highlights from our own use:

* To simplify scheduling, you can group rooms together to form named zones. For example, we group the master bedroom/bathroom/closet into "Master Suite". Most of the downstairs is grouped into "Living Space".

* We set our toddler's room to more moderate temperatures than our room, since we like it very cold at night.

* Guests can set the guest bedroom to whatever they like. When the room is not used, we simply press the button on the wall controller to put it into "Saver" mode. This runs the room on an alternate program you define with wider temperature swings.

* Any room can be put into/out of Saver mode at any time.

* The temperature of any room can be overridden temporary with arrow buttons on the wall controller. Just came in from mowing the lawn and you're hot and sweaty? Crank the temperature down in the family room and kick back! It changes the temperature of that room only, leaving other rooms in the house/zone undisturbed.

* Each room/zone is completely programmable. For example, our bedroom is on a 7-day schedule (it's always relaxed during the day), but the toddler's room is on a 5/2-day schedule (relaxed during weekdays because he's at daycare, conditioned during weekend days because he takes naps).

* I work from home. My home office always ran hot due to the two computers. With this system, it now directs air conditioning to the office as needed, which has been fantastic. No more fiddling with vents!

* You can bring up temperature graphs for each room that allow you to see the temperature history and heat/AC calls from the room. I can actually see the air-conditioning demand follow the sun on a room-by-room basis as the sun swings around from the east to the south to the west. All rooms stay perfectly comfortable, regardless of whether the blinds are opened or closed, etc.

* For special rooms like dedicated home theater rooms or workout rooms, this system is a huge advantage. Anyone with a home theater can tell you how warm they can get after two hours with the projector, A/V equipment, and a bunch of dead bodies. With Emme, the room will demand as much air-conditioning as it needs. If you don't use the room often, put it in Saver mode as you walk out to save a few bucks.

* House-sized HVAC units have minimum airflow requirements. When only one or a few rooms are calling, the system conditions as many additional rooms as needed to meet the minimum airflow requirements of your HVAC unit, using a pressure sensor in the plenum to account for any flow differences from room to room. It's smart enough to choose the rooms that are furthest from their comfort points, which would have been the rooms that would have called next anyway.

* To save energy, the system can circulate air instead of running your heating/cooling. This is possible because it knows the temperature of every room. For example, in the summer, it can circulate air from your cooler rooms on your first floor to warmer rooms on your second floor, without kicking on the AC compressor.

This may all sound complicated, but it's not. The complexity is hidden from you. You simply create your zones and program temperatures over time, and the system does the rest. The best advertising for this system is the user manual:

http://www.getemme.com/pdf/Emme-Room-by-Room-User-Manual-WEB-4.5.pdf

Feel free to ask me any questions; I'd be happy to share our experiences.

I found it pretty terrible too. After uninstalling it, I came across Avidemux which is much easier (for me) to use. I've been using that since.

http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/

Ahh, but Blu-ray figured this out already. Digital output is all the same? Easy, just make the player operating system so inefficient and slow that people pay extra to play an inserted movie in less than a minute!

I'm a Netflix customer. I'm much happier about the greatly improved streaming options, and could care less about a 4-week delay of new releases. I've got several dozen unwatched movies on my list at any given time anyway. In my mind, Netflix pulled a fast one on Warner on behalf of the customer. Good move, Netflix.

I think you're thinking of area. When the resolution in two dimensions doubles, the area quadruples. 640x480 becomes 1280x960 - twice the resolution (measured in linear dots-per-inch in each dimension) but the area quadruples.

...simply enough money for the team to figure all this out themselves? As far as government grants go, that amount is the equivalent of "You boys go out and play, and be home by dinner!"

And nothing of value was posted.

...it was game over. I was a staunch believer in VHDL and its many features (generics, records, operator overloading, strong type checking). But once Verilog implemented proper signed arithmetic which didn't require tedious manual sign extension in the code, then I never looked back. SystemVerilog continues to push Verilog forward. gwait (179005) had the right idea - start with Verilog, and if you ever need to work with VHDL, you will have a much better idea of what aspects of the VHDL language you do and don't need to learn.

You're worried about nighttime light pollution from white roofs reflecting more sunlight? (I doubt moonlight would be significant enough to be a factor.)