activescott's Notes

Charts, apps, and api for amazon product data

Detailed Price History charts for over 5 billion Amazon products.

$49/mo

Returns details about a listings item for a selling partner.

contains pricing

Search for a list of Amazon catalog items and item-related information. You can search by identifier or by keywords.

While Amazon pays more commission for PC components like motherboards, graphics cards, and CPUs (2.5% compared to Newegg’s 1% or 0.5% for ‘returning customers’) Newegg also offers their publishers better rates based on publisher type, such as Editorial or Content Creator. Additionally, Newegg offers a 7 day attribution window, which is much more flexible than Amazon’s 24hr window.

The Grafana Kubernetes Monitoring Helm chart deploys a complete monitoring solution for your Cluster and applications running within it. The chart installs systems, such as Node Exporter and Grafana Alloy Operator, along with their configuration to make these systems run. These elements are kept up to date in the Kubernetes Monitoring Helm chart with a dependency updating system to ensure that the latest versions are used.

OpenCost is a vendor-neutral open source project for measuring and allocating cloud infrastructure and container costs in real time. Built by Kubernetes experts and supported by Kubernetes practitioners, OpenCost shines a light into the black box of Kubernetes spend.

Tech companies have moved more than $120bn of data centre spending off their balance sheets using special purpose vehicles funded by Wall Street investors, adding to concerns about the financial risks of their huge bet on artificial intelligence.

Meta in October completed the largest private credit data centre deal, a $30bn agreement for its proposed Hyperion facility in Louisiana that created an SPV called Beignet Investor with New York financing firm Blue Owl Capital.

The SPV raised $30bn, including about $27bn of loans from Pimco, BlackRock, Apollo and others, as well as $3bn in equity from Blue Owl.

You should either put chains on the Rear, or on BOTH front and rear. This is something I learned when first driving a front-wheel drive car. If you put chains only on the front and then you put on the brakes your rear wheels will have little control and can easily cause you to spin around. Having chains on the rear wheels provides a safe stop, slowing the rear of your vehicle and allowing the front to stay pointing forward.

spreadsheet-like project planning tool

I don't know if it is intentional or not, but this appears to be misrepresentation of the situation. The "truck to transport supplies to a well" is not an operating cost. It's a capital expense since it is expense directly going into creating a long-term, income-producing asset (the well). Sticking with his fast-food example, "trucking ingredients from a distributor to the restaurant" to be eaten by patrons in a couple days is most certainly not a long-term, income-producing asset, so it is an operating cost.

Contrasting the expenses included in “intangible drilling costs” with intangible assets shows how intangible is a misnomer in the case of IDCs. An oil producer hiring a truck to transport supplies to a well is clearly not analogous to, say, a company buying up the intellectual property rights to a beloved children’s cartoon character, or the trademark of a fast-food brand. To stick with the fast-food company example, the analogous cost to trucking supplies to an oil well would be trucking ingredients from a distributor to the restaurant—an everyday operating cost of doing business.

Intangible drilling costs are called “intangible” to distinguish them from tangible drilling costs, namely drilling equipment, but it would be more accurate to call IDCs operating drilling costs. Allowing companies to fully expense operating costs is an uncontroversial feature of the tax code across industries, and IDCs are just how operating costs are categorized in the context of oil and gas extraction.

Over the past century, the federal government has pumped more than $470 billion into the oil and gas industry in the form of generous, never-expiring tax breaks. How it all got started:

2013 Despite talk of everything being “on the table,” oil’s tax perks survive the fiscal-cliff negotiations. Congressional Democrats introduce five bills targeting tax giveaways for oil and gas companies. Their death is all but assured, especially in the Republican-controlled House. In April, Obama introduces his 2014 budget, which includes $23 billion for renewable energy and energy efficiency over 10 years and permanent tax cuts for renewable power generation. It also would end “inefficient fossil fuel subsidies.” In contrast, the gop budget proposed by Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan targets “federal intervention and corporate-welfare spending” by cutting subsidies for renewables. Tax breaks for oil are left untouched.

The oil depletion allowance in American (US) tax law is a tax break claimable by anyone with an economic interest in a mineral deposit or standing timber. The principle is that the asset is a capital investment that is a wasting asset, and therefore depreciation can reasonably be offset (effectively as a capital loss) against income.

The allowance encouraged people who were taxed at a high marginal rate to invest in, perhaps risky, oil ventures. If the venture failed, then the costs would effectively reduce income, so the effective loss at a 90% marginal rate would only be 10% of the actual investment. Conversely if the venture was successful, an amount up to initial investment (under cost depletion, see below) would be tax free. Under the percentage depletion method the amount could potentially be even greater. The oil depletion allowance has been subject of interest because one method (percentage depletion) of claiming the allowance makes it possible to write off more than the whole capital cost of the asset.

Percentage depletion: With this method, a fixed percentage of the gross income is treated as deductible. The percentage is dependent on the nature of the resource being extracted. It is possible under this scheme for the total deductibles (or indeed the annual deductible) to exceed the original capital investment.

Over the nine decades of its existence since 1916, the oil depletion allowance has benefitted oil companies and the petrochemical industry by more than $470 billion as of 2014, everything else being equal.

Federal tax concessions for oil and gas are the largest of all incentives, amounting to over 70 per- cent of all tax-related allowances for energy. Regulation of prices on oil for stripper wells or new wells, and related incentives, comprises the second largest amount of incentives aimed at a partic- ular energy type. In the R&D category, nuclear energy received about 45 percent of the expenditures since 1950, coal about 23 percent, and renewables about 17 percent of the total. Some additional observations on the data:  Oil and gas received 54 percent ($554 billion) of federal spending to support energy since 1950. Oil alone received three-fourths ($414 billion) of this amount.

Let’s be real about what we’ve learned from you, the owners, and the market over the last few years. You love the electric performance, smoothness, and the tech, but for those that drive long distances, take frequent trips or tow heavy loads across state lines often, an F-150 Lightning might not be the truck for them. And we want it to be.

That is why our next-generation F-150 Lightning will be an EREV. 100% electric power delivery, sub-5-second acceleration – and adds an estimated 700+ mile range with locomotive-like towing capability.

For those who aren’t familiar with EREVs, this isn't a traditional plug-in hybrid. This is an electric vehicle with an on-board generator. It’s designed to give you the electric capability you enjoy around town, but with the range and towing confidence of a gas truck when you’re hauling a boat or camper. It will be assembled right here in Dearborn at the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center.

Production of the current generation of F-150 Lightning will end this year, and we have also made the decision to no longer produce the next-generation full-size electric truck, also known as “T3”. For those that still wish to purchase a MY25 F-150 Lightning, we have good inventory and interested customers can purchase from dealer stock.

What about support for my current F-150 Lightning?​ I know reading "production is ending" can be nerve-wracking for current owners. I want to be clear: We are committed to ensuring ongoing support of your vehicle’s software updates, quality and experience. Like all vehicles, we will maintain parts and service for 10 years. The team is not walking away from the current F-150 Lightning, and I’m not going anywhere.

While his higher profile targets have gotten all the attention, the Associated Press has a very good story you should read about Carr’s efforts to bully a Bay Area radio station (KCBS) after it accurately informed locals about the goonish behavior of masked ICE agents.

Carr opened a fake investigation into the network last February, claiming the station had violated ambiguous public interest standards. The fake inquiries were tethered to a right wing antisemitic propaganda campaign attempting to link George Soros to these stations despite Soros’ limited investment involvement being both irrelevant and three or four layers deep.

As our already struggling, highly consolidated, and under-funded media outlets tend to do, KCBS immediately folded under federal existential threat, just as Carr hoped:

“KCBS demoted a well-liked anchor and dialed back on political programming, people said. For months, reporters were dissuaded from pursuing political or controversial topics and instead encouraged to focus on human interest stories, according to the current and former staffers.”

When staffers did try to cover more political fare, they say the tone was heavily scrutinized and the content was watered down to a bland gruel to avoid upsetting Republicans:

“Doug Sovern, a veteran political journalist at the station, said he was sidelined after Carr announced his investigation.

“‘Chilling effect’ does not begin to describe the neutering of our political coverage,” said Sovern, who retired in April. He said his retirement was not related to the controversy.”

As Carr was distracted by his other extremist projects, like failing to censor Kimmel, some of the scrutiny eased and the station regained the confidence to at least report on things like the No Kings protest. But the bullying appears to have had its intended effect. At one point, a KCBS reporter says he was denied the opportunity to interview Katie Porter because management felt it would upset Donald Trump:

The updated vaccines have not been specifically tested for safety in people, just as flu vaccines are not tested in people every year with a strain change. The safety of the shots, however, has been well established in the original trials and through surveillance of billions of highly similar doses.

The main serious safety risk of each of the vaccines is inflammation of the heart muscle or its surrounding tissue, known as myocarditis and pericarditis, respectively. The conditions are rare, most commonly affecting young men after a second dose.

Studies have shown that for most people, myocarditis is much more likely following a COVID-19 infection than a COVID-19 vaccine. Infection-related myocarditis is also more severe and linked to worse outcomes.

U.K. health officials analyzed preliminary flu data and predicted that subclade K may spread more easily than other versions. The researchers estimated that the reproduction number of subclade K is 1.4, meaning that each infected person spreads the virus to 1.4 other people on average. Typically, the reproduction number of the flu is closer to 1.2.

While there will be more flu cases this year, so far, there is no evidence that this new flu version will cause more severe cases, hospitalizations or deaths. Health officials have already recorded many more cases this year than at the same time last year, about 4.5 million cases compared to 1.9 million in 2024. But of those nearly two million cases last year, 1.2% were hospitalized and 0.05% died from their infections. So far in 2025, the rate of hospitalization is 1.09% and the mortality rate is 0.04%.

The CDC has not yet commented on the effectiveness of this year’s flu vaccine in the U.S. But U.K. health officials previously estimated that their vaccine, which is different from the one used in the U.S., reduced hospitalizations by about 70-75% in kids and by about 30-40% in adults.