Nobrainer’s Think Tank

I spent some time this morning reading a research article that had piqued my interest. The article made an interesting claim that by way overbuilding renewable resources such as solar, onshore wind, and offshore wind, we could end up saving money. Rather than learning anything new and important, I was reminded that a lot research articles are garbage.

Long story short, this paper was claiming that 20% of the US grid could be served entirely by renewables upwards of 99% of the time. And it would save us money. But here’s the kicker: the researcher did this by only providing power to about 40% of that 20%. It’s pretty shady.

Another little bonus was that as part of their modeling of electricity storage, they decided that plug-in vehicle-based storage was the cheapest option. However they didn’t seem to do any accounting for the fact that plug-in vehicles need to actually be used as vehicles. They didn’t account for cars being unplugged sometimes. Nor did they account for electric cars actually consuming electricity.

I bothered to email the author to see if there was something I was missing. So far I can only confirm that I’m missing a response from the paper’s author.

(more…)

Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz has proposed legislation to fire federal employees who aren’t bothering to pay up on their federal taxes. Common sense, right. Nonsense, say the Democrats.

Democrats on the committee opposed the bill. Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking member on the committee, said the legislation “seeks to demonize federal employees rather than ensure their compliance with tax obligations.”

“By requiring agencies to fire employees for not paying their taxes on time, the measure actually undermines the ability of the government to collect the unpaid taxes,” Cummings said. “It is much, much, much more difficult to recoup the delinquent taxes from someone who is unemployed.”

The legislation requires agencies to conduct reviews of public records for tax liens for current and potential employees, something Cummings says would be costly.

“In fact enactment of this legislation will increase costs to the taxpayers by requiring agencies to spend time and resources to review public records to find tax liens filed against current or prospective employees,” he said.

Wow. Just. Wow.

I had to roll my eyes at this non-answer to a question about Social Security.

Mystery #2: Is Social Security a good deal?

Seems like a good question to ask.

Social Security is a complete package of worker benefits, including retirement, disability and life insurance. The average worker earning $43,000 with a non-working spouse would need to save over $700,000 to duplicate their retirement payments, plus buy additional disability and life insurance. The Social Security Administration’s administrative overhead is a low 0.8%. Social Security payments are at least 15% tax-free.

So it’s a shame the answer is, “hey look! Big numbers!”

Last week I ordered some air filters from Lowe’s. At the time, 1) I needed air filters, 2) I had a $15 rebate on the purchase of 4 or more filters, 3) Lowes had a 10% (or maybe 15%) discount on the purchase of 4 or more filters, 4) Lowes offered free shipping on a purchase of $50 or more, and 5) I had a Lowe’s gift card burnining a hole in my pocket. So all the stars were in alignment. But Lowe’s is apparently a little quirky now.

First, in the checkout process, they said that I got free shipping, then they made me choose a shipping method, none of which were labeled as “free.” I chose the cheapest, freest looking option and figured I would be credited the charge at checkout. I was right, but WTF?

Second, they split my order. Instead of having 4 filters the same price, they charged me one price for three of them and a second price for the fourth. As best I can tell, they decided to eschew the method of calculating the discounted price of each filter and rounding to the nearest cent in favor of getting every single fraction of a cent. Those fractions of a cent, we all know, are like candy for criminals and supervillains.

Then, to prove that they’re at the top of their game, the sent me a shipping confirmation, which I received a mere 12 hours after I received the physical shipment. Here’s the screen shot of the email I received at around 2AM this morning. Although shipping silliness seems to be the norm now.

A few weeks ago, I saw someone bashing Bing for providing a service, albeit somewhat different in form, that Google provided and of which I had made good use. That feature is the Blocked Sites feature. The idea is simple: there are sites you don’t want cluttering up your search results, so you can exclude them from search results. Easy as pie.

Was easy as pie.

Blocked Sites is discontinued
The Blocked Sites feature is no longer available. To block particular sites from your search results, we recommend the Personal Blocklist Chrome extension from Google.

Why do I have a Google Account to save my search preferences if they’re just going to ignore that and hold my browser choice hostage? Fuck you, Google.

I think I just got Scroogled.

Long, long ago in the early days of blogs, I signed up for a Technorati account. I never used it. Many years later, in April 2012, I googled myself and was surprised to see my Technorati profile page pretty high up in rankings. So I figured I would close the account and just be done with it. I figured wrong.

Unlike a lot of, you know, modern websites, let alone “tech” websites, with user registrations, Technorati has zero infrastructure for letting users close their own accounts. Instead they have various instructions such as to email a particular address with a request or post a request on some external website. Compare that with CollegeHumor which let me close my account with about three clicks of the mouse. Or compare it to Facebook which makes things a little difficult to navigate, but still lets you do it. Long story short, I’ve been making requests, approximately monthly, for about 9 months and no progress has been made, although I am assured that their “technical team is currently working with [my] issue.”

The way I figure it, Technorati is the most incompetent tech company ever, or they’re willfully ignoring requests (perhaps because their business is imploding?).