I don’t write too much about online poker, simply because I’ve been too busy to write about much of anything these days, between work, school, and the rest of the banalities of life. However, it’s hard to ignore the subject on the day that the U.S. government essentially shut it all down. Charged with fraud… Continue reading U.S. Government shuts down online poker
Author: Nathan Hunstad
The budget: numbers or values?
At both the state and national level, our elected officials are dealing with budget deficits and how best to handle them. This leads to a lot of numbers thrown about, such as “15% cuts” and “$30 billion versus $38 billion” and the like, along with various stories about who is “winning” or “losing” the debate.… Continue reading The budget: numbers or values?
Job-killing taxes?
“We can’t raise taxes, that will drive away jobs!” Such is the oft-repeated refrain uttered by Republicans at the Capitol. The implication is that it’s a direct correlation: high taxes means fewer jobs. But is that really the case? The statistics seem to say otherwise.
Tax Incidence Update
Minnesota’s latest tax incidence study came out this week (and can be found here). I’ve written about it before, and the trends are pretty much the same as previous studies. Two graphs jump out at me. The first is the overall effective tax rate: It peaked in 1994, and since 2000, has stayed remarkably stable.… Continue reading Tax Incidence Update
Customizing Clonezilla’s custom-ocs
In a (very popular by search engine standards) previous post, I talked about moving from Norton Ghost to Clonezilla. Part of the move from Ghost to Clonezilla was creating a method of automatically determining the computer model I was imaging, and selecting the right image. This is possible by changing the custom-ocs file, and here… Continue reading Customizing Clonezilla’s custom-ocs
New GnuPG key
My GnuPG key was set to expire at the end of this year, so I created a new one. The key is located here. In the extremely unlikely event you need to email me something securely, use this! I’m a big fan of crypto and secure email. Too bad I so rarely have need to… Continue reading New GnuPG key
Politics, without the nasty politics
There’s a lot of trends in the U.S. that annoy me, mainly having to do with politics, pundits, and the media. The “he said, she said” method of reporting in which ridiculous arguments are put on an equal footing with sane ones, and hence legitimized. The inability or unwillingness to point out when leaders are… Continue reading Politics, without the nasty politics
Google Two-Factor Authentication
Google has recently enabled two-factor authentication for Google products like Gmail. What is two-factor authentication? It means that in addition to providing your password, you need to provide a random verification number that Google will send to your phone, either via an app, a text message, or an actual phone call. Thus, to log in,… Continue reading Google Two-Factor Authentication
Dayton’s budget
Governor Dayton released his budget yesterday. It was essentially the budget that he campaigned on: higher income taxes on the richest 5% of Minnesotans (who aren’t paying their fair share in state taxes in the first place), protections against property taxes increases by not slashing LGA to the bone, more K-12 education spending, and no… Continue reading Dayton’s budget
Motorola loses a customer
I have written earlier about my displeasure with Motorola’s delay in upgrading my Cliq XT from Android OS 1.5 to 2.1. That update was in September, when the upgrade was supposed to be out by the end of the year. Fast forward to February, and in the end, Motorola gave up. Unsurprisingly, a lot of… Continue reading Motorola loses a customer