What has Chase or Bank of America done for you, really? Really? more ›

Amazon is getting sued for broken Kindles and promises to replace them at no charge. JP Morgan says there will be no new layoffs in Seattle, where it purged WaMu's operations after taking it over several months ago. More UW scientists are cashing in on their lab work and raising venture capital to go into the biofuel business. more ›

Christopher Harris is in a coma and on life support after being chased by two King County Sheriff's Department deputies, says the Seattle Times: "He suffered life-threatening skull fractures when his head struck a concrete wall as one attempted to arrest him early Sunday in Belltown." To be precise, his head had some help in striking that wall. A video is said to show one of the deputies smashing into Harris after he halted--having run as two men started shouting and heading toward him from out of a dark alley. We're not sure if the online P-I will append this to their "Conduct Unbecoming" series, exposing a troubling history of brutality in the King County Sheriff's Department, but it feels like nearly killing an innocent person should raise some questions on how the Sheriff's Dept. is doing on all that reform we were promised. more ›

We switched most of our banking over to USAA last year (WaMu was pretty good for a bank, but USAA is stellar). We've still got an account at WaMu, though. As recommended, we'll continue to use WaMu's website as usual, and we're not really worried about the security of our well-under-$100,000 deposit. But we were curious about what's going to happen when at our local branches. Consumerist found a banking insider to provide a one-year timeline of the assimilation process. Short version of the prediction: No big changes for about 6 months, but by the end of the year you'll be writing Chase-logoed checks and saying "good morning" to different faces at your local branch. more ›

There's talk that Kindle sales have hit a wall recently, so we have a new slogan for Amazon: "RE: Kindle your love of reading." *crickets* Well, we have all sorts of buzz to report, too. First, there's the 8.5" x 11" textbook edition of Kindle. Then there's that $100-off-a-Kindle deal. Finally, there's the Kindle 2.0 rumor-mongering: "[T]he new version is significantly thinner, has a better screen, is more stylish and includes fixes to some of the user interface annoyances with the first version." Now how much would you pay? $249-$299? more ›