So many well informed comments here I have to ask... and please forgive the spam... If you're interested in this area and might be be interested in working at YouTube then please email me using the address in my profile. I work in this area at YouTube.
If the inaccuracies are due to the meter's assumption around the current waveform then there probably is a way to exploit that. I suspect (from the little I have read) that the meters in question are: 1) assuming a sinusoidal current wave form, 2) assuming that the peak observed current is the peak of that sinusoidal wave, 3) effectively integrating under the area of the curve (with respect to voltage) to estimate total power. If all that's true, then to 'cheat' you'd need a device for which the current waveform looks like a 'fat' sine wave - same peak height, but wider peaks and steeper gradient through zero. In the extreme case it would be a square wave, but that might have too much harmonics.
For example, you could create a heater (a simple resistive load) that alters its resistance at 60hz. When the voltage reaches its peak the heater would have its 'normal' resistance, and during the next 1/4 cycle it would ramp down its resistance, reaching a resistive low as the voltage passes through zero, and then ramp up its resistance for the following 1/4 cycle until it reaches its 'normal' resistance at the peak 'negative' voltage (1/2 a cycle from where we started), then repeat over.
I think that would trick a meter that only looked at peak current and assumed a sinusoidal waveform. But who knows what other things it might break...
This is called phase shifting(1) adding a large enough inductor to all of your resistive loads will cause your power factor(2) to drop. Unfortunately for you the power company bills you for your apparent power useage which takes into account both the real and imaginary parts of your power consumption, it measures your shifted loads.
60 lm/W is very low these days. Commercially available screw-base A21 bulbs like Cree's "100W replacement daylight" (17,000 lumens at 15W) are up over 110 lm/W. You can get that for $14 at Home Depot.
Yeah, terrible timing. A CNAME record conflicted with our new SSL cert - renewing the cert forced us off VIP on to SNI (per GAE's deprecation schedule for VIP) and the CNAME we had in place for VIP then prevented DNS from resolving properly - at least that's what I think happened ! (videopixie engineer :)
>repackage what actual news organizations publish with ideological slant.
Which is what The Economist does - it's been doing so since 1843. Current circulation is over one million, and it's widely respected, though not by all...
There's a bit of a difference in that the actual facts in the Economist are probably trustworthy, but I agree that they argue from a certain (free-market worshipping) point-of-view.
It's obviously a scale, and opinions will vary widely. It's not even a problem for journalism to have an opinion (I'd actually argue it's impossible). What readers should demand is a good-faith effort to argue the best version of the opposition's case.
At this point, the problem with the US right isn't actually ideology. You can believe that coal is the future, and I'll vote against you, but I'm not looking at CDC statistics to find out when I can expect you to die. It's the complete disregard for the system that's alarming. All over the country, there are polling places, often staffed by the older generation, people from both parties and independents, and the ones I've met always gave me the feeling that they'd defend the integrity of the vote no matter what. I wish I could say the same about the people being elected.
Hilariously enough, my fiance now works in printing and actually mixes the colors (t-shirt printing).
I haven't brought it up yet because we once had a fight over whether that thing you put outside your shower is called a bath mat or a bath rug (Both are correct in different circumstances)
Hope this doesn't sound nitpicky, but I'm curious about the implication that 'Yelp customer service' would be considered 'middle class'. Were you specifically meaning that, or was it just co-incidence? I'm curious because I find that the issue of 'the hollowing out of the middle class' hinges on the definition of 'middle class', so I'd like to know how this might help inform the definition. thanks.
Discussions of class can be semantic minefields, but broadly I'd consider that entry level customer service job ($20/hr as another poster mentioned) as lower middle class. Importantly though, entry level lower middle class jobs can serve as a path upwards for skilled individuals who would become more solidly middle class after a few years. It's not just the loss of the entry level jobs I'd look for but the few rungs in the ladder above them as well.
Looking at the 'before' and 'after' designs, I'd say that the biggest difference is that in the old design the first question you ask (via a textbox) is one to which the user already knows the answer ('what icon do you want?'). Whereas in the new design the first question is 'please pick one of these three options (with which you are not already familiar)'. So the questions requires the user to think. See Dont Make Me Think :) IANAUXD, just my $0.03
I would tend to agree. It runs afoul of the UX maxim "If you can't decide what you want your user to do, they can certainly not decide what to do." If you really want them to pick "custom" or "fast-track" or whatever (for which there is no coherent explanation visible in the mock I saw... fast-track? What does that even mean?), bring it up after they've committed in spirit to doing the thing you want them to do (request an icon).
I looked at the "after" design and no idea where to even begin. There is a "Request Icon" button, but I don't want to request one. I just want to search. Where do I do that?
