BryLog

FalseExpense will mail you an envelope full of fake receipts, suitable for submitting for reimbursement or deducting from your taxes, “FOR NOVELTY USE ONLY”. Bruce Schneier notes, “I’ve heard of sites where you give them a range of dates and a city, and they give you a full set of receipts for a trip to that city: airfare, hotel, meals, everything — but I can’t find a website.”(via BoingBoing)

The process is simple:
You pay us a small fee- using your credit card
Email us the answers to a short questionnaire about the false receipt you want designed and printed (see below)
Within 24 hours, we will send you a draft scan by email of the fake store receipt.
You give us feedback/changes you may require
We print the fake register receipt with a real Point of Sale (POS) Thermal Printer and post 2 copies of the real receipt to your address.
You use them for whatever purpose you choose, we don’t ask questions.

It sounds like such a simple thing to do: buy some new light bulbs, screw them in, save the planet.

But a lot of people these days are finding the new compact fluorescent bulbs anything but simple. Consumers who are trying them say they sometimes fail to work, or wear out early. At best, people discover that using the bulbs requires learning a long list of dos and don’ts….

Some experts who study the issue blame the government for the quality problems, saying an intensive federal push to lower the price essentially backfired by encouraging manufacturers to use cheap components….

Compact fluorescents once cost as much as $30 apiece. Now they go for as little as $1 — still more than regular bulbs, but each compact fluorescent is supposed to last 10 times longer, save as much as $5.40 a bulb each year in electricity, and reduce emissions of carbon dioxide from burning coal in power plants.

Much of the credit for that sharp cost decline goes to the Energy Department. The agency asked manufacturers in 1998 to create cheaper models and then helped find large-volume buyers, like universities and utilities, to buy them. That jump-started a mass market and eventually led to sales of discounted bulbs at retailers like Costco, Wal-Mart Stores and Home Depot.

Consumers are supposed to be able to protect themselves by buying bulbs certified under the government’s Energy Star program. But experts and some environmental groups complain that Energy Star standards are weak, permitting low-quality bulbs with too high a level of mercury, a toxic metal contained in all compact fluorescents….

A team of researchers from the UPC Center for Technological Innovation in Static Converters and Actuators (CITCEA-UPC) has designed the device “100% Off,” which disconnects electronic appliances in stand-by mode and reduces their power consumption to zero. The device is compatible with all existing appliances, and the technology is adaptable to other equipment manufactured in the future.