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According to their We don't accept EBT, food stamps, or any other payment method not listed for grocery purchases.

I guess this is all moot. Rethinking the article, I guess this only is a discount on Prime membership, not opening up the floodgates for EBT purchases from an overlooked market.

I don't see how this is a good deal. Food stamps can't be used for the Prime membership cost (but lest's put that aside).

The price of food tends to be so overpriced, unless you are ordering from the middle of nowhere it's a waste of food stamps. Took a quick peak and a package of Thomas' English Muffins is priced for $12.19. What. a. deal.

I guess families are supposed to survive on one-fifth (or less) of the food they can get by getting their butt to the grocery store.

Sure, I'm sure you could find a good deal on there somewhere, but you have to wade through a swamp of overpriced crap to find them and it's all on the taxpayer's dime if they tired of looking. There should be a separate search setting for purchases geared to the food stamp customers.

Except that Amazon does not accept EBT cards for payment.

EBT cards are a special type of debit card that requires a different system than normal credit cards due to the fact that they are used for both SNAP (food stamps) as well as Cash Aid distribution of funds.

As far as I am aware, you cannot use them online anywhere, only at physical locations where the retailer has tied into the EBT system.

p.s. "Food stamps" for an individual in California are currently around $186 a month, so when people talk about people living the highlife on welfare's dime, try to keep that number in mind as what some people survive on. Cash Aid is another $198 per month per individual, which bring the total for ALL monthly expenses to just under $400 for a single person. Could you survive on $400 per month and be happy?

What should the default be if not the most popular?

The default should be the brand you ordered last time ... which is the default. Amazon's first step is to search your order history.

Also, instead of "Alexa, order toilet paper", you can say "Alexa, add toilet paper to my shopping cart", and later review the items on your laptop before committing.

My modest nVidia 740 2GB video card could probably run circles around your IRIX.

That's the DDR3 version isn't it?

$ lspci | grep -i nvidia | grep -i vga
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GK208 [GeForce GT 640 Rev. 2] (rev a1)

That's the rev2 GDDR5 SC variant (which slightly outperforms the DDR3 740's). I've had it for 3 years and I just ordered its replacement a GTX 1050 TI SC. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M...

Crazy but that is how the UK thinks now. Watch "caught on camera with nick wallis" no one cares to stop a crime in the act, often they say "oh well we have them on camera, we can catch them later" https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06X...

For answers to that and more, read my blog.
https://www.kickingthebitbucke...
or my books
https://www.amazon.com/C.-D.-R...

Puh! As long it is not an harvesters outbreak ...
https://www.amazon.com/Season-...
Actually a very good trilogy !!

Non-mainstream or deeply religious people that don't simply follow doctrine are excellent fantasy writers, not just Tolkien but for example look at Lewis Carroll and the Chronicles of Narnia,...

Read about The Inklings:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Tolkein and C. S. Lewis where both members. G. K. Chesterton was an occasional guest. Charles Williams is probably less well-known at this point (possibly because his prose was more unabashedly Christian -- e.g. "War in Heaven": https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00R... etc).

I've always found it interesting that both Lewis -- arguably one of the most famous of the Christian Apologists of his time, although Chesterton was no slouch -- and Williams wrote books that were either thinly disguised Christian fantasy or openly fantasies about biblical/apocryphal fantasy, while in the Hobbit and LOTR, the characters (with the exception of the Elves, maybe) HAVE no overt religion. Yes, there is a fantasy connection with the supernatural and magic, but there are no descriptions of worship or prayer -- it is more a matter of "invoking" the protection (or sometime receiving it gratis) of e.g. Elbereth. Elves are immortal (but not unkillable), they don't die they "return" to "the west" (a.k.a. "heaven") through some sort of dimensional barrier. And although there is magic in LOTR, for the most part in the BOOKS (as opposed to the overheated movie) it isn't "telekinetic" magic like battling with wand-based thunderbolts or using a ring to stop the heart of an enemy, it is more "perceptual" magic -- making somebody invisible, generating light, extending life, healing, harming. The closest you come to religion is probably the "resurrection" of Gandalf, "sent back" from death because his work "isn't finished".

This has the effect of making it remarkably uncomplicated and ecumenical. We don't really understand why Sauron is so horribly evil, or how he manages to get killed but come back from the dead to try to take over the world -- again -- or just what he wants to do with the world when he wins that he can't do already. We don't really understand why or how "rings" can be given power (or what power they actually grant, since nobody actually USES a ring to do ANYTHING overt anywhere in the story). We don't understand where Ents come from, we don't understand Bombadil, we don't see why or how barrow-wights could come to be. We don't even understand Saruman -- supposedly good guy turned bad.

We don't need to. It's just a damn good story about a war between cartoon good (so very very good, so very very uncomplicated) and cartoon evil (so horribly unredeemably bad, so very very uncomplicated). Not at all like real life, where evil doesn't come with such a clear label -- and neither does good.

rgb

The book was better. /kidding. Please tell me there isn't a Baywatch book.

Well...

They also badly match songs and if your rip is better quality or from a slightly different recording, you get their version anyway. There are songs on Amazon that have album art from a completely different artist.

You can always use cloud fingerprinting when metadata is missing without actually playing from the cloud. That can be covered whenever the library is indexed. I have a lot of music with more correct metadata where cloud services won't actually be able to find what I ask for.

And yet, here's this:
https://www.amazon.com/Personn...

Gillette Sensor compatible cartridges from a different company. Inconceivable!?

I did say the interface could not be patented, the interface is where the handle attaches to the blades. The easy to manufacture, easy to use, reduced complexity (of the cartridge) are irrelevant as regards the ability to connect and interface to a handle. I tried to find evidence to bolster my claim that mechanical interfaces cannot be patented but came up empty. :-(

I don't know if this is the case in the Airbus A320, but in smaller aircraft (including GA airplanes) there often is a power port that looks like the cigarette lighter port in many cars. They easily fit USB car chargers such as this one. (For years I used an earlier generation of this very adapter in a Cessna 172 to power my iPad.)

The problem is, unlike in a car where the power port is always around 12-14 volts, the voltage in aircraft has (to the best of my knowledge) never been standardized. I've heard of airplanes which pump out up to 28 volts (instead of 12-14 volts), which is why if you are not certain of the airplane you're flying in, you need a specialized adapter such as this one.

Since so many aircraft have power ports at 12 volts, many pilots I know simply buy a car power adapter. But if you plug it into a 24 volt power port (and the ports are often unmarked: the only way to tell is to crack open the airplane's POH), you're going to have a bad time.

Unfortunately, if you want a full fledged computer, you probably won't find anything smaller than a Zotac. That's the limitation of micro ATX boards basically.

Have you never heard of Mini-ITX? It's significantly smaller than micro-ATX, but still not sufficiently low power for battery operation. And then there are these boxes, but again, still probably too power hungry for battery power.

https://www.truthmapping.com/a...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://cognexus.org/id41.htm
https://www.amazon.com/Dialogu...

Others: http://barcamp.org/w/page/4722...

An idea: "The argumentative theory of reasoning" (Humans may be adapted to find solutions to problems and approach the truth through arguing with each other in small groups)
https://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes...

Is the United States a nation? Despite what the ritualistic pledge states, it doesn't meet any of the anthropological criteria. No common language. No common religion. No common culture. No common cuisine. In fact, many scholars have made strong cases that the US is composite of several regional nations.

https://www.amazon.com/Nine-Na...

https://www.amazon.com/America...

https://www.amazon.com/Our-Pat...

The US speaks English, is predominately Christian, has movies TV shows and music that are recognized across the country, and leads the world on standardized food (McDonalds, Coca-Cola, Starbucks, all US).

If anything it's that American culture is so successful it has been adopted into so many foreign countries that creates the illusion that there's no shared culture in the US, because you just forget that those golden arches in China are a piece of American culture that's been exported/appropriated, not an independant development of China.

Additionally that definition is terrible as "religion" should be replaced with "rituals" as otehrwise is unfairly biases against any non-teological community. In the US we have quite a few rituals from the pledge of allegiance in school and the national anthem at sporting events, to homecoming dances at schools, to birthday ceremonies. You can pick any town in America and expect those rituals to be recognized and observed in more or less similar ways.

Is the United States a nation? Despite what the ritualistic pledge states, it doesn't meet any of the anthropological criteria. No common language. No common religion. No common culture. No common cuisine. In fact, many scholars have made strong cases that the US is composite of several regional nations.

https://www.amazon.com/Nine-Na...

https://www.amazon.com/America...

https://www.amazon.com/Our-Pat...

The US speaks English, is predominately Christian, has movies TV shows and music that are recognized across the country, and leads the world on standardized food (McDonalds, Coca-Cola, Starbucks, all US).

If anything it's that American culture is so successful it has been adopted into so many foreign countries that creates the illusion that there's no shared culture in the US, because you just forget that those golden arches in China are a piece of American culture that's been exported/appropriated, not an independant development of China.

Additionally that definition is terrible as "religion" should be replaced with "rituals" as otehrwise is unfairly biases against any non-teological community. In the US we have quite a few rituals from the pledge of allegiance in school and the national anthem at sporting events, to homecoming dances at schools, to birthday ceremonies. You can pick any town in America and expect those rituals to be recognized and observed in more or less similar ways.

Is the United States a nation? Despite what the ritualistic pledge states, it doesn't meet any of the anthropological criteria. No common language. No common religion. No common culture. No common cuisine. In fact, many scholars have made strong cases that the US is composite of several regional nations.

https://www.amazon.com/Nine-Na...

https://www.amazon.com/America...

https://www.amazon.com/Our-Pat...

The US speaks English, is predominately Christian, has movies TV shows and music that are recognized across the country, and leads the world on standardized food (McDonalds, Coca-Cola, Starbucks, all US).

If anything it's that American culture is so successful it has been adopted into so many foreign countries that creates the illusion that there's no shared culture in the US, because you just forget that those golden arches in China are a piece of American culture that's been exported/appropriated, not an independant development of China.

Additionally that definition is terrible as "religion" should be replaced with "rituals" as otehrwise is unfairly biases against any non-teological community. In the US we have quite a few rituals from the pledge of allegiance in school and the national anthem at sporting events, to homecoming dances at schools, to birthday ceremonies. You can pick any town in America and expect those rituals to be recognized and observed in more or less similar ways.

https://www.amazon.com/Nine-Na...

https://www.amazon.com/America...

https://www.amazon.com/Our-Pat...

https://www.amazon.com/Nine-Na...

https://www.amazon.com/America...

https://www.amazon.com/Our-Pat...

https://www.amazon.com/Nine-Na...

https://www.amazon.com/America...

https://www.amazon.com/Our-Pat...

Zeiss makes lenses for Sony cameras. Sigma makes lenses for Sony cameras. I think you're a bit confused.

Zeiss makes lenses for Sony cameras. Sigma makes lenses for Sony cameras. I think you're a bit confused.

It's interesting you bring that up, because the last book I read about neuroscience mentioned the work of amateurs recently in the field. Connectome , it's a good book, you should read it.

No amount of shaming men to try to make them more like women is going to change that

Not true. I first heard of the interruption difference years ago when I read this book. Once I was attuned to it, I noticed it happening in meetings, and I noticed that I did it myself. So I try to interrupt less, and if someone else interrupts a woman during a meeting, I often later ask her to finish her point. So at least in my case, it made a difference.

Wifi is restricted to max 20 mW or so with an omnidirectional antenna, less if you use a directional antenna.

Well that's just simply untrue.

You use x86 itx motherboards with dual NICs. Stuff like this https://www.amazon.com/Intel-F... Actually this isnt equivalent, it destroys any ARM based router in performance and reliability.

https://www.amazon.com/Herbal-...

Was disappointed many, many times before JJ put the nail in the coffin. The magic is gone, long long gone and ain't coming back. Yet Paramount (or whoever owns them this time) keeps trying to press more life out of a series that the suits thought to kill back almost 40 years ago. Fuck. Nearly everyone who had anything to do with TOS that inspired such unprecedented fandom in syndicated re-runs are now, quite literally, dead - and yet studio execs slap a Trademark on a pilot and stick a few Trekkie easter-eggs in the script, and it's gotta get the green-light.

I've learned my lesson. If they have to slap "Star Trek(R)" and related paraphernalia on it to make you give it a second look, it's junk designed to take your money. There's better stuff out there like The Expanse or Oasis that don't need to name-drop to a 40-year old three-season TV show in order to get people to wanna watch it.

Trek Is Dead. Let it rest for fuck's sake. But you can't stop studio suits from squeezing "value" out of a Copyright and a Trademark property. Shit, Netflix is working on doing a remake of *cough* Lost In Space for fuck's sake. You could have a stroke thinking what sludge could spill out of that, but they're gonna produce it, probably at the expense of something original and good.

I've just checked Amazon, Curry's, Argos and even Tesco's websites. Almost all hard drives are USB3 and very few are USB-C.

I did't say hard drive, I said small external HD enclosure.

I bought it on Amazon and the best ones I found were mostly USB-C...

The cases go first but the other things like portable hard drives follow soon after. Do you seriously not remember this from past transitions??

In fact it's hard to find USB-C

It sure seems like there are a lot of options to me.

I have had zero trouble finding USB-C anything.

Once Threadripper is out, AMD will have a consumer chip with more cores than Intel's top enthusiast chip. Intel's enthusiast chip with the most cores was the ($1600) 6950X with 10 cores, and a 12-core Skylake-X upgrade is expected to release in a few weeks. The big question is pricing on these chips. Once the hype dies down, the question is who really needs these? Professionals who REALLY need to quickly reencode lots of video at maximum quality, or run lots of Photoshop filters, can afford a $1600 chip. That $300 Ryzen with 8 cores will be 'good enough' for nearly everyone who can't afford to spend top dollar, otherwise you should use the EPYC, or the Radeon Vega Frontier Edition. I hear that most servers only user 4-core CPUs and don't need more than that, so I guess EPYC will be a niche use-case.

I'm quite sure the "enthusiast" line of CPUs only exists because all the work is pretty much done for servers. Even paired with extreme high-end graphics cards it's completely unnecessary and people who do the kind of photo / video / rendering / simulation work that can saturate 8+ cores are more prosumers than consumers. But it's a lot better for AMD to offer good value for some than to offer poor value for everyone and it's easier to justify buying something good you might not strictly need. I bought an 1800X even though a quad core would probably be enough, but it's four more cores on the rare occasions I need them, future proofing and a fuck you to Intel's 5% IPC improvements and $1000+ CPU prices.

I hear that most servers only user 4-core CPUs and don't need more than that, so I guess EPYC will be a niche use-case.

Well a lot of servers will naturally trend towards what's the most cost efficient, if we do 100 2x4 core servers or 50 2x8 core servers it's still 800 cores type of thing. I think your information is a little out of date though, if you look at say AWS dedicated pricing they offer servers from 2x10 cores to 4x18 cores. If you need less than that you'd just get a virtualized instance with four cores. They still have high frequency 4/6/8 core CPUs for applications with crazy per-core licensing requirements but they're now the niche, 10 is normal. But there's lots and lots of servers that can't just scale horizontally like that, mostly because "eventual consistency" isn't good enough because either you sold the airplane ticket or you didn't. It won't be for every use, but it has plenty uses.

No, not lying. The current version of the TI-84 is just under $110 on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Texas-I... If your kid buys one in a brick and mortar store it's probably a bit more expensive.

I know, I know, don't feed the trolls ...

Ah, the fallacious argument of:

* I don't use X so it doesn't matter for anyone else

Or to use an analogy:

* "I'm blind, so these people who can see are irrelevant."

Get off your fucking high horse already. Your myopic POV isn't valid for everyone so stop pretending it is.

It is obvious:

* you don't play a music instrument such as drums -- mp3s tend to do a lousy job of accurate cymbals -- there is a HUGE difference between 64 kbps, 128 kbps and 320 kbps (Kilo-bits-per-second).
* you don't use a DAW. You don't "add" .mp3s together -- you work in an uncompressed format to minimize "clipping" and other errors. Storing uncompressed losseless music, such as WAV, is dumb. FLAC solves the problem here.

> audiophiles that need to buy monster cables.

Audiophiles don't buy monster cables. They buy cheap 16-gauge speaker wire for $11.

IDIOTs buy over-priced Monster Cables.

--
"Better to remain silent and thought a fool,
Then to speak and remove all doubt."

The Blu R1 HD costs around $110 without subsidies ($60 with Amazon's subsidy) and has a 720P screen and 2G of RAM (probably beats it on the other specs too.) Alcatel has similar phones in the same price range. This Motorola has a 2007 era screen resolution and 1G of RAM?

Sounds distinctly unimpressive to me. Plus Motorola does sell cheaper phones right now in the same ballpark pricewise. There has to be more to it than "This is what Motorola thinks a cheap phone should be".

Well, it makes sense, considering she literally has been pushing for this kind of funding for the arts, and even has a Ted talk and book about it.

Wars are only fought when BOTH sides think they can win.

That is not always true. Sometimes nations blunder into wars that are clearly not in their best interest. When I was in high school, my history teacher made us read The Guns of August, a book about how Europe blundered into the First World War through a serious of diplomatic misunderstandings and misjudgements about the intentions of both their adversaries and allies.

Before I read that book I had the naive belief that, although politicians may make self-serving statements in public, in private they were actually smart competent people that knew what they were doing and worked for the best interest of their people. After reading now they sent millions of their citizens off to die in a pointless war over a dead archduke, I realized that wasn't true.

I thought about that book in 2003, as America was blundering into the Iraq War.

USB is serial, so a $200-300 converter box is required

I don't know where you got that $200-$300 price estimate, but you are way high. Here's one for $10:

Sabrent USB to parallel adapter, $9.99 quantity 1

I almost added "...and a USB to SCSI adapter" but SCSI isn't common at all anymore, and the few such adapters I have found really did cost hundreds.

I like the feel of USB-C. Every cable I have tried goes in easily and with a satisfying click. So far I only have factory provided cables though, maybe third party ones are that bad. I have to admit I'm a bit afraid of ordering more cables.

Look for Benson Leung's review before buying: https://www.amazon.com/gp/prof...

He does standard compliance testing to verify that each cable, charger or hub fully and correctly implements the spec. There is a lot of crap out there, but there's also plenty of good stuff.

My new laptop at work (ZBook 15 G3) has USB-C. It's everything USB should have been since the beginning.

Reversible, Just Works(Tm). It'll drive 2 4k external TVs.

Laptop itself has Ethernet, VGA, 3xUSB3.0 and 2xUSB-C ports. Holds 64GB of RAM, 2xM.2 NVMe drives and 1x 2.5" drive.

The dock could still use some work. You shouldn't have to issue a white paper on how to hook up monitors (Which is still wrong, the HDMI port drives 4k just fine.).

If I *need* to do some GPU work I can plug in an external GPU. Or gigabit ethernet or any other PCIe device.

Microsoft screwed up on this one. They're releasing old hardware. I bet they could have easily charged a surface on over USB Power Delivery. It's taken us a while but USB-C is pretty damn good as far as a physical connection. And Thunderbolt 3 is equally as good of a protocol.

For most people if the 'desktop is dead' it's because USB-C/TB killed it. I just want to plug my laptop into cluster of CPUs when I'm at my desk.

How is this Insightful? I don't have my Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments handy, but this is classic strawman, isn't it? The FCC is investigating Colbert because they received numerous complaints about his having said something obscene. Every other late night host makes fun of Trump every night, and they don't get investigated.

Come on.

I find wearing headphones (something kind of large that covers the ear, not earbuds or anything)

Anyone have suggestions for such headphones? I have a pair of Sennheiser HD 439 that I like, but they don't suppress as much ambient noise as I'd like.

Fascinating book. Have you read Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy?

Amazon offers the same. Managed, and HA if you want it.

And it's not Oracle - no contracts. Plus if you wisely hate Oracle, you have useful choices for other DBs. (Though if you want MySQL-compatible, Aurora is probably a better plan - hopefully Postgres will go live soon).

You don't need Prime for free shipping on Amazon if you wait until your order total reaches $35 before submitting the order.

The paid television services bury you in bullshit, the advertised price has no relation to what the bill is

Doesn't subscribing to Internet access in the first place bury you in exactly the same bullshit?

Did you not look at Amazon Lex for the voice part?

https://aws.amazon.com/lex/

"$1000 for 4 GB of non-upgradable RAM and a (probably) non-upgradable 128 GB SSD"

I'm sure you can get a similar laptop for half the price in the fantasy world you live in with your cartoon-girlfriend.

I'm not sure about half price, but you can definitely get more for less. It's upgradable, too.

ASUS: 8 GB RAM and 256 GB SSD and FHD 13.3" for $700

Acer: 8 GB RAM and 256 GB SSD and FHD 15.6" for $580

"$1000 for 4 GB of non-upgradable RAM and a (probably) non-upgradable 128 GB SSD"

I'm sure you can get a similar laptop for half the price in the fantasy world you live in with your cartoon-girlfriend.

I'm not sure about half price, but you can definitely get more for less. It's upgradable, too.

ASUS: 8 GB RAM and 256 GB SSD and FHD 13.3" for $700

Acer: 8 GB RAM and 256 GB SSD and FHD 15.6" for $580

An extension to the "name brand" thing -- why is it that most cases for an iOS device include a cut-out so that you can prominently see the Apple logo? Even brands like Otter that are known for extreme protection make sure that they include an extra area that can get scratched just because users are afraid that others might not notice the brand of their phone.

Typing "Otter iPhone Case" into Amazon yielded this as the first result, which proves my point: https://www.amazon.com/OtterBo...

I do not ever recall seeing a case for an Android phone with a logo cut-out.

I'll use Python as an example -- we use functions, objects, modules, and libraries to extend the language, and that doesn't just make programs better, it changes what programming is.

Ok young whipper-snapper programmer that thinks you're all that and a bag of potato chips and you're using some new fancy language that supposedly has all these "new" features. Check out, just to name a few, these languages that have been around for several decades: C++, Pascal, Smalltalk, Java... even C# has been around for 15 years now. Do I need to continue? Even Python isn't really all that new.

This article just makes the author sound like they have no clue what is currently going on in software engineering and complete and has a complete and utter lack of knowledge of what's happened over the past 30 years in software engineering and OOP.

Hey look at the publishing date on this book. Oh snap it was published in 1995. I rest my case.

Some of us actually care about writing welll, doing our research thoroughly, and having our books professionally edited - and still choose to publish as indies, because it's nearly impossible to get trad publishers to so much as add our books to their slush pile. (Slush pile: in publishing parlance, unsolicited manuscripts, generally assigned to interns to evaluate for possible consideration.)

So we publish on Amazon or Smashwords - the Big Two of indie publishing - because that's the outlet available to us. It's not what we'd prefer. It's merely what's possible.

Here's a link to my book/