I set up OpenDNS Family Shield on the router. It's OK but I prefer to try the ISP

I live in the USA, and I wish my ISP offered this for myself, even if I had to call to opt in.

I would use it even if I didn't have three kids, which I do. Also, I would use this to supplement, not replace, good parenting.

I want a simple way to stream Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon using one remote control, but I don't need any more features---web browser, ads, etc.

Deduction creates a conclusion that is necessarily true through logic, but in this case machine learning comes to a conclusion that is only probably true.

It's elementary, my dear Watson.Elementary, my dear Watson

It's not just ads: financial companies track your transactions, and by default, they share your information with "partners." Scroll through your credit card usage, and you can quickly imagine how your trips to Starbucks can be used to build a valuable profile. To opt out, they make you mail a paper form because they hope you will be too lazy to find a stamp. Of course, Facebook tracks everything.

I am still young and healthy, but my employer is too cheap to provide a standing desk without a doctor's note: this kind of attitude seems to have a short-term perspective considering the high, potential future costs of medical care.

Anyway, my cheap hack is to drink a lot of fluids---usually tea or water, so I am forced into walking breaks.

Sweetening the water significantly increases how much I drink, while making me feel like a lab rat. Using sucralose avoids growing bacteria in my water bottle and does not add calories.

SpiderOak is a cloud-based, zero-knowledge storage and backup system. It has clients for Windows, Mac, Linux, Andorid, and iOS. You can also access from the web, but you have to provide a password, which means it is no longer zero-knowledge. I signed up a few years ago when large fires burned through my city, and I needed a secure, automated, off-site backup. The fires are gone, but now I still use it on Windows and Linux. The GUI is a little clunky, but it works. I stay in the first pricing tier by loading my old family photos (>>50GB) instead onto Google Nearline, which is cheaper but less convenient.

Among popular cards, American Express uniquely has 15 digits. (VISA, Mastercard, and Discover have 16 digits.)

Not all 3.5M people want a feature phone. Benefits of feature phones include: cheaper phone, cheaper plan, smaller hardware, longer battery life, less distractions (e.g., email, social media, games), fewer privacy concerns (e.g., tracking, malware), and smaller target for theft. Also, it's much easier to text from my phone's slide-out keyboard than from a touchscreen.

According to Nate Silver in The Signal and the Noise, earthquake prediction has a long history of failure. Unlike weather, there is not much understanding or useful data. Many have claimed otherwise, but when applied to the future, their models failed.