This. Google is not stupid, they know that users that want to install extensions from their disk know how to install Chromium. I'm fine with it if less crap is going to get installed on my parents computer. I'll just install Chromium and everything will stay the same for me.

As a Canadian, here's the thing I don't get about the American "fear" of single-payer health care system : "Oh my god, the paperwork! And the bureaucrats that deny care!"

Now here's how it works for a Canadian : You go see a doctor, you give them your single-payer card and... That's it. There's no additional charges or paperwork to fill out, no administrative useless bullcrap. Heck I got surgery done a few years back and all I had to do was to show up at the hospital on time and show them my little card. No cash needed, no bill, just care.

La merde vient de frapper le ventilateur.

And we've been wondering what that 350 GB "insurance file" from WikiLeaks was...

Plus, patching the software of a million cars isn't the same as using auto-update on Windows. My biggest concern would be an attacker getting in the car, installing a wireless device in the OBD port and controlling it from a distance, especially since you can buy an OBD II Wifi adapter for under 100$ these days.

You could do some really bad things to someone you don't like on the highway...

I'm sure it's a lovely idea until you come back home and your TV has become an interactive chewing tool...

Good grief, how hard is it to not be paranoid is this day and age? They don't want child porn to show up on their searches so they find a way to flag the images and not display them : that's it. If there comes a time when the technology is used malevolently to suppress political ideas, then you'll be able to bitch about it but going all "tinfoil hat" on it because there might me an hypothetical use which you don't like is just ridiculous.

At the moment, Google uses mostly human beings to review flagged content so if their algorithm makes those reviewers sleep better at night, I'm all for it.

" or wanting their children to get educated in a good state will eat the net loss."

Isn't it Florida we're talking about here?

I'm in the distant land of Canadia, Montreal to be precise and get somewhere between 32 and 36ms. I guess not being on Comcast or Time Warner has its perks!

A private insurance company would have for sure spared no expense to recover this man's files...

No, ever.

A solar panel can only transform into electricity the amount of energy it receives from the sun. 100% efficiency would bring about a 1kW/m^2, unless you can make the sun spew more energy.

Believe me you don't want that to happen.

I'm also Canadian, from the wonderful province of Québec.

A couple of years ago, they did some kind of "super city elections". Pretty much every city and village of the province had elections held on the same day, most of them using an electronic voting system. It was, I think, the best type available : your ballot wasn't any different then the one we're used to, just white circles on a black background. The difference was that instead of putting it in a box, you'd put it in a scanner first and it would fall in a bin after that. Re-counting, if necessary was pretty straight forward.

It was, however, the last time I saw electronic voting used in the province. Because of electoral law, the electronic ballots were kept at the voting stations until they were closed, the scanners would then upload their results in batch onto the servers of the company that had been chosen to do the counting. It failed miserably, possibly because of the amount of data they had to process at once, most probably because they had a web facing interface where you could go and watch the results coming in live. Most ballot boxes had to be recounted by hand and the results had to be phoned in.

(I'm from Quebec)

I've heard of many barrels or trucks full of maple syrup having been stolen in the past couple of years. Considering it retails for around 7-8$ per 540ml can (50$ a galon) it's fairly easy to see why it's such a high profile target.

They still are but the 27" is in the same price range as the Apple. (Especially if you consider the purchase of the Dual-Link DVI Adaptor)

You can buy some cheap 27" displays shipped from Korea for about 350$ that use the same panel as Apple and Dell. The stands are crap but the display itself looks amazing.

You're OK with them storing every single one of your emails but not your phone number? I hope tinfoil hats are on sale these days.

If you're too scared of using the phone number auth, just use the Android or iPhone authenticator app. Setup is quick, it's not too invasive and it just works.