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Since when does 35% = “almost half”? Its a lot closer to “a third” than “almost half”.

3 days ago on Senators blast Apple in hearing for keeping most profits overseas 2 replies

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35% is too high, 5-10% is too low. I’d argue for 28% minus foreign taxes already paid on those profits (e.g. if Apple paid an average tax rate of 15% on their profit in the republic of Moldova, then they only have to pay 13% to bring it into the US). If they pay an average tax rate of 28% or more in any country, then they can bring that money back to the US w/o any taxes.

3 days ago on Senators blast Apple in hearing for keeping most profits overseas 3 replies 2 recommends

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Its a lot easier for the FBI/CIA/NSA/etc to spy on your phone calls if they’re over carrier-supported VoLTE rather than some OTT VoIP solution. Duh. ;)

3 days ago on Nvidia's newest Tegra chip is ready for faster LTE-Advanced networks

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I live in a market that is blacked out by 6 (SIX!!) Major League Baseball teams – Arizona, San Diego, both LA teams, San Francisco and Oakland. End the sports blackouts.

15 days ago on John McCain proposes 'a la carte' cable bill, encourages death of sports blackout rule 3 recommends

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I’m disappointed David didn’t put his pinky finger to his mouth when he said “trillions”.

16 days ago on 90 Seconds on The Verge: wiretapping, 'Diablo III,' and Caesars Palace 1 recommend

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They guarantee resale value by offering to buy it back for 50% of the purchase price in 3 years. If the resale value is higher, then you can go sell it to a private party, if its lower, sell it back to Tesla. The guarantee is personally guaranteed by Mr Elon Musk himself, so even if Tesla goes under, as long as he hasn’t skipped planet and gone to live on Mars, you can find him and sell your car.

The batteries (on the non-performance 85kWh and the 60kWh) are warrantied for 8 years or 125,000 miles, so you shouldn’t have to buy new batteries at the end of 3-4 years unless you drive more than 40,000 miles per year.

This deal makes a lot of sense for people who drive their own cars for business (or can write them off as a business expense). The write-off and tax savings are pretty huge.

21 days ago on Tesla's Elon Musk apologizes over Model S financing calculator: 'we didn’t get it quite right' 1 reply 13 recommends

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TL;DR – hire an MBA or someone who knows about corporate finance.

24 days ago on Why is Apple issuing $17 billion in debt when it has $145 billion in cash? 2 recommends

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“created more jobs”

We tried this repatriation in 2005, and the studies show we didn’t get that many new jobs out of it. So your assertion is dubious at best, and possibly flat out wrong.

24 days ago on Why is Apple issuing $17 billion in debt when it has $145 billion in cash? 1 reply 5 recommends

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I cant seem to find the stats to back my claim up with a quick googling, but I’m pretty sure that the “problem” is that our best at brightest are following the money – I believe the number cited was the number of MIT engineering degrees awarded, its going down and is below what it was 20-30 years ago (percentage basis of total MIT undergrad degrees), instead finance degrees are increasing.

So our best and brightest are going to work in the giant ponzi scheme known as Wall Street doing “financial engineering” like derivatives and CDOs, instead of engaging in actual engineering and innovation that keeps America #1.

25 days ago on Report: US workers may meet demand for tech industry jobs, but the pay isn't enough 2 replies 10 recommends

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18 Million tons? Thats it?

I estimate (based on some research that I did back in 2008-2009), that Nevada has about 30M metric tons of lithium, and North Carolina has about 14M metric tons in deposits.

The issue of domestic lithium mining isn’t an issue of resources, its an issue of profitability and demand.

28 days ago on Newly-discovered lithium reserve could satisfy US demand for hundreds of years 1 reply

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Amazon is a not-for-profit company masquerading as a regular company. How they get away with it, I haven’t the foggiest…

29 days ago on Amazon earnings: revenues continue to grow, but profits prove elusive 1 reply 1 recommend