New bumper sticker appearing on cars around biotech hubs soon:

- God is just a severe case of HADD

I wish I could get one of my independently-processing mini-brains to diagram in Visio one of its predictive models. My main brain would like to see that shit.

I had to look that name up. Now I know what you've been spending your time on, instead of trying to get straight even just the basics of the American political scene.

It's like trying to discuss the pros and cons of the set of next possible moves on a chessboard, when the person you're talking with hasn't gotten straight in his head how the pieces move.

About the most intelligent thing that can be said to you is "pass the bong". Maybe all your knowledge is in how to rebuild the engine for a (psychadelic) VW Bus; who knows.

p.s. Fuck the iPhone.
p.p.s. To celebrate Cinco De Mayo I went to Taco Bell. Thank you brown people for taking time out between siestas to invent the delicious quesadillow or whatever. I love Mexicans!

Right, because identity politics has been brought to us by both sides. Damn those Right-wingers for giving us Political Correctness, multiculturalism, affirmative action, etc.

And evidently "stability" is Leftie code for "stagnation":

You delicate little flowers need to get over his having a personality. Obama is a stiff fucking cardboard cutout with a devious, deeply evil man inside. I'd rather see who I'm dealing with, even if the New York thing isn't my cup of tea.

Otherwise, yes, Hillary would have carte blanche, and the political class on the Right would love if their comrades in knowing better than the little people ousted their problem for them.

I'm a/have been a Trumpster, but I don't see how a Trump presidency could work. The problem is the people would be sending him there because the politician assholes aren't doing what we want. So we say here, he's our guy, work with him, but they'll just say fuck you (to the people). Like they always have.

$30 for less than or equal to a single watching of a movie? No. For a physical copy that I can watch whenever I want? No, still too high. But the fact that it is streaming over the internet and may be subject to buffering, disconnects, jitters, bad encoding and all manner of other issues? No way.

Smartphones are not reliable enough to be used as the only source of entry to a vehicle and not secure enough to be an alternate source of entry to a vehicle. Nor is the user interface efficient enough that you would want to use them for controlling vehicle functions rather than using a knob or button on the car itself. Nor do you want people with their head buried in their smartphone while trying to drive the vehicle. Nor does everyone have nor want a smartphone. A many times better solution which already works is a keyless entry fob with a physical key inside in case the battery dies. Stop trying to make smartphones do tasks which are better done with tools specific to the task. Yes, a smartphone can drive a nail, but you will go through a lot of screens before the nail is completely pounded in.

Good idea. Since they are saving the postage and printing, you can just print it locally and they can reimburse you for it. of course, a million people printing or saving locally is a lot more expensive than sending out statements in mass from a central location.

Yes, and if you are a victim of identity theft, your paper statements will be your salvation. You will be unable to prove who you are and thus unable to access any of your online accounts.

Yes, and they don't really save THAT much money compared to how much money in time hassle and opportunity cost that it costs the customer. They don't actually have staff print that stuff out and stuff envelopes. That is all done by machine. The postage for presort is much less than the price of a stamp. in truth, a large bank may save a few hundred thousand a year by going paperless. Their customers, however, will have expenses in the millions for their own hassle, record retention, paper costs, printing (if desired), etc.

I've had several accounts "cram" me into electronic statements by sneaking some wording in somewhere that if you look at a statement online or something that you are automatically enrolled in electronic statements. American Express did it to me, Best Buy did it to me. Then the problem is that they don't bother to send you statement reminders in email either, so at some point you just start getting calls from them asking why you haven't sent a payment and start racking up huge late fees.
Even if they did send a statement, which they didn't, I checked spam and everything, it is not just the technically clueless who get the shaft, it is the technically competent as well. I get dozens of e-mails a day. If I get an email from a credit card, unless I am at that very moment prepared to deal with it and pay it, it is just going to get put on the back burner and ultimately forgotten. My paper bills sit in a pile on my desk, in date order and get dealt with.
Also, paper statements are not available online forever. If the government comes after you, they can demand paperwork for in some cases 7 years, and in some cases, from the beginning of time. It is up to you to have that information available, and if you depend on your third parties to keep that for you, you are SOL. Basically you need to save a local copy electronically, or print it out and store. So they are outsourcing their cost of doing business to you without providing you a nice discount for performing their job for them.
As far as banks go, I go to my bank about 3 to 4 times per week. Most of those are for deposits. Yes, my bank has a mobile deposit app. Yes, like most banks, they charge a convenience fee for something which is a convenience for them and an inconvenience for you. The tellers are still free, so I make my deposits in person at the bank, where the tellers all know me and personally greet me by name.

Advertisers have always been lame, but what's newer is that today's web site operators don't seem to care how trashed up their sites look. Pop-overs are so common now it's becoming unbearable, but oftentimes they're not even ads. It's enter your email because every Tom, Dick, and Harry has a newsletter now. Or wouldn't you like to take a survey.

And videos that auto-play. That shrink down and position to always being visible when you scroll past the full-size player. Because they're sure you didn't really mean to avoid it. Or the I guess HTML 5 video player controls where there's no stop or pause button present, so all you can do is drag the progress bar to the end to get it shut the hell up and stop visually distracting.

The point being, it's the in-your-face kind of ads that I want to block, but it's also a site's own content, that's been implemented in a purposefully pushy way, that needs blocking.

These days a lot of autodialers ARE failures. If you actually answer it, about half the time it either hangs up on you or there is nothing there but silence and you eventually get tired of saying "hello" and hang up.

Some of Porche's current offerings I could see getting the self drive treatment. Like the Panamera and whatever the heck they call their SUV/XUV/whatever they are called this week. I could see people who want the Porsche label for name only, but want a sedan or minivan totally picking the self drive option. They could rebadge these models as the Porsche PINO edition and all the hipsters would fall over themselves to get one. At least until they find out it means Porsche In Name Only.