The way I figure it, VW did their longevity and warranty cost calculations, set the horsepower and price, and then someone came back from R&D to say "We've got a couple extra settings you can tweak! You get extra horsepower and it's only a little more expensive in warranty costs!"

So they sell it as an add-on. Sure, the change is only software, but it's not too much different than they were already doing with things like APR tunes. Get your stage 2 kit installed by an independent or DIY? No warranty. Have the dealer do it? Full warranty, minus the performance parts themselves. Some dealers, if you bought the kit from them, would even self-warranty the bits excluded.

Granted, the whole "Sell the car and it goes away" thing is naff and needs to be changed, but.

She was, as head of the Reagan EPA, the reason we have Chevron deference in the first place.

Long story short? Polluters didn't like some environmental regulations, so they asked Anne Gorsuch's EPA to change them. Bing, bang, boom! The regulations now said what the polluters wanted them to.

This isn't new, or even weird.

Almost thirty years ago I worked for a leasing company. We leased computers and equipment, not buildings, but the two things went hand in hand. Our customers would say they had a new office going in, we'd line them up for all the gear they needed.

And guess what? We'd have the vendors in there months before the place was even complete so they could install the phone system, or pre-stage cubicles, or get the switches installed.

Part of the reason things have been crap lately is that the studios have been running smaller and smaller writer's rooms. Why hire eight writers when you can hire four, work the hell out of them, and then lay them off before production so they can't do any rewrites?

They're pushing quantity over quality.

Re-rejected it, really.

The 'latest offer' was the previous offer along with a threat.

And who also sold Gizmodo to Univision when they went bankrupt due to Bollea v. Gawker.

They're now owned by some vulture equity firm.

Wang is still in business?

What are they making now, monitor arms and PC mounting cradles? Keyboards with useless keys?

> the interplanetary equivalent of sending coals to Newcastle

Famously, one man did this, Timothy Dexter. He was the world's worst businessman, but luck was with him every time.

Buy a buttload of worthless currency issued by a country destined to lose a war to the British? He was the one laughing when the British lost and the newly formed US government paid out. Ship bed-warmers to the West Indies? Well, turns out they make great ladles for molasses manufacture.

Same with the woolen mittens he sent there; His ship got there at the same time traders were leaving for what's now Siberia.

On to the coal. Someone suggested, as a joke or as an insult, that Dexter could make money shipping coal to Newcastle.

So he did.

His ship hit the harbor at Newcastle the same week the coal-miners went on strike and he was the only game in town.

This has the odd side effect of Chrysler now being in the business of selling Chevrolets.

The largest container is 53 feet long. The largest common size is 40/45. So no, not going to fit.

Microsoft is already charging for Android, in that they say 'Pay us license fees per handset or we sue' and actually get it from 60% of them?

Do you honestly think that, at a 100% payment rate, they'll charge more per handset?

One fellow did this to me three times in the same week. The first two times I merely changed the password and deactivated the account with a quickness. When it happened a third time, I figured I'd teach him a lesson. I let him add all his high-school friends, family and co-workers at the ice-cream parlor over the next week or two, then changed the password, Goatse'd his profile, and sent notices out to all of them. "If little Johnny Junior would like a Facebook account, tell him to get his own. This one is attached to my email address.". I let it sink in for a couple days before putting the kibosh on it.

Johnny's dad was amused and sent me an apology. It seems that Johnny Senior had signed up for a super-spammy dating site with my email address some years ago and I'd Goatse'd his profile in response.

They do operate on the honor system, basically.

When the port (or a railroad) accepts the container, it comes with a shipper certified weight attached to it in the computer. In rare cases the railroad or port will 'fudge' the weight closer to reality, reweigh it, or hold it for inspection. I'd say if you had a slightly overweight container you could get away with it 99.99% of the time.

I had to support a manufacturing company 15 years ago that was using (at the time) 15-20 year old gear. I did it by scavenging and making it myself. Robot needs a new SSDD floppy drive? Flea market Commodore. RAM in the Soviet S100 clone going bad? Take apart a broken synth. Winchester drive controller going tits up? Drive around and look at all the junk bins of every computer shop in the county. Need to move a bit of kit but now the non-standard 45-pin cable is too short? Clip the ends off and Radio Shack them to RS-232. I also swapped a lot of gear around; The DOS machine that was used to program one robot was gradually upgraded from an 8088 machine to a 486 as I stole parts from it to keep the CP/M-86 one running.

The other thing I did a lot of was preventative maintenance. Blow out the dust, check the power supply, clean the disc drive, make sure everything is well seated. Switches got lubed, cables checked for faults, and media replaced.