No, it does not come as a surprise that they run their software on a 20 year old laptop. Have anybody noticed their current standing in the Formula 1 Championship? They have made what - 4-5 points in total this season. In other words - they are at the absolute bottom of the field, so it can hardly be a surprise they are not really up-to-date from an engineering perspective.

Come on guys - think about it. Facebook have in fact managed to turn themselves into the world's first anti-social social network. And _that_ is quite an achievement really.

I am fully aware that the law suit is a bit more complex than simply using Java in a product, but I still think that Oracle is sending a weird signals to their existing and potential customers:

"Feel free to use our products for free but if you get successful we will sue you to get a piece of the cake."

I miss Sun!

Well, I do understand the concept of changing the time zone "just because you can", but half an hour - seriously - that shows complete lack of imagination. If I was in charge, I would have done GMT+31 or something like that - or perhaps GMT+31 1/2 and then adjust the calendar to match too. Half an hour - bah! It just seem so petty.

Forgot: And I have now tried hard to find anybody owning one of the "fixed" boxes so I can check that out. So far no luck. I assume the particular device I've got is seriously out of warranty.

So let me repeat that here - I would very much like to hear from ANYBODY who have received one of the "fixed" boxes and I would very much like to borrow that for a short while :)

Yeah, I did consider that one myself :) And, well - I can add the following (and then let everybody make up their own mind).

1. We did pledge on the Indiegogo campaign

2. The Anonabox was received on Apr. 1 in UK (the date was funny)

3. I received it about 2 days ago from UK (I live in Malaysia)

4. Anonabox mentioned nothing about recalls before I posted the analysis

5. There _was_ bitching in Indiegogo comments about the lack of WiFi passwords/encryption and there was a mention that if anybody wanted a password he could send the unit back and Anonabox would add one.

6. To this date the one who ordered the Anonabox have not received any direct mail with a recall (albeit there could be a reason for that in this particular case)

Technically you can't log in to it - every access to the Web gui and/or ssh has been "blocked" (only they forgot IPv6).

Firmware ripped out is here: Github

Well, since it wasn't linked in the summary above, I'll do a shameless self-plug here:

Anonabox Analysis

And yes - I am the author of that analysis, so if anybody got questions I'll be happy to respond here.

Well, the major difference between Julian Assange and Snowden is that the latter did not seem to have any hidden agenda whatsoever, he just felt morally obliged to inform the world of illegal government actions. Julian Assange however could have left that embassy any time for the past 2 years. Just walk out, go to Heathrow, fly to Sweden and face a jury of his peers like everybody else in the civilized world who is accused of a crime.

Personally I think TP-Link's routers are unbeatable comparing features/price. They have a range of dirt cheap routers with gigabit switches and USB ports all running OpenWrt perfectly. The good old WR1043ND has gotten a facelift (+ more memory and flash) and the N600/N700 (WDR3600/WDR4300) are quite powerful. A stripped down OpenWrt takes around 4 MB flash and all these models have 8 MB, so plenty of space for added functionality.

Mine is bigger than yours.

I installed whatsapp 2-3 years back because one of my friends was using it (and I guess that's why most people install it). I seem to remember vaguely that at the time they mentioned that I would be asked to pay after a year, but I most certainly never did pay anything and I think it is still working (still only use it for that one friend). Would I pay? Absolutely positively not. Whatsapp doesn't add anything at all to what I've had for free since forever using icq, msn, yahoo chat, jabber etc. There are other - also free - services that add much more functionality - Skype, Viber and even Hangouts (that was great until Google butchered it). So, I'll probably leave Whatsapp on my phone as long as they don't annoy me, but the moment they do or the moment they ask me to pay anything it will go and I will venture a guess that 90 % of their 450 million user base is like that.

It is entirely possible to run an Android phone without any use of Google whatsoever.

I was facing the same problem as you are, and I would have gotten myself an N9 if Nokia hadn't announced that they would ditch Meego completely. That day I decided I was done with Nokia for good and I was forced to find a viable alternative.

To me it was Android on a Galaxy S2, but - and this is important - one built entirely from source. Granted - there are still things I miss from my N900 (the keyboard mostly), but a rooted Android device comes close these days.

Personally I would look for any Android device that is well supported by Cyanogenmod (Nexus for example), ditch the stock firmware immediately and go straight for a Cyanogenmod 11. There are things you will be missing from the N900, but there are also a lot of stuff that was never possible on the N900 which will now work fine.