I know it shouldn't matter, but reading this it does. If she's 8, 9 or 10 I feel more sympathetic than if she's 19 or 25. All the article says is "daughter", a daughter can be any age, and a little kid may not understand, a teen looking to cause trouble or an adult looking to make a name for themselves. It changes the dynamic of the story reading this depending on how old I imagine the daughter to be. If they didn't want to give her age, then grade school, high school, college could have been used, just to frame it.

As someone looking to buy a Switch next week - and charge it around the house and in the car - I've been looking at USB-C a lot lately, and this article tells me nothing. The biggest issue seems to be the USB-A 2amp bottleneck, or something, more than USB-C per se. For me the best thing about USB-C is it has no top or bottom, it just fits, USB should have been like this from the beginning. It seems to be nearly small enough for any device yet powerful enough for any device. Why is hasn't become the new industry standard I don't know, but reading that article didn't help. Here's hoping to a long and successful 5 or 6 years for Switch and USB-C gaining from that exposure.

I really don't know what else people buy in those stores, that's all I ever see anybody buy - cigarettes, alcohol and lottery tickets.

Thanks for the common sense. You also left out migratory workers, illegal apartments and squatters. And John Rambo in First Blood. 80% maybe, I'm feeling generous. Probably more like 40% if that, those barriors or whatever outside of Mexico City are like an ant hill.

Sony Dash failed. Funnily enough it terminates in July 2017. Chumby never took off. Amazon sells a $49 tablet but they think a $230 device is a good idea? Vidcam was a smart idea about 20 years ago, not sure it's needed now. I'm not entirely opposed to the device, but even $199 would seem alot, you could just get a $200 Chormebook. Maybe this is just an early adopter tax and it will be $149 this holiday? I can imagine this selling over the holiday for $149 for gifts even if people didn't know why they were buying it besides "just b/c it's new tech at $149." But I don't see it taking off. OTOH, maybe it sells better than normal Echo so they ditch that and this becomes ubiquitous? Well once it hits $149 anyway.

This isn't new.

This is the future, we have been heading there with VC, PS+, Xbox Live gold, MS Game Pass, EA Access. Gamefly doesn't work anymore. I signed up on a Wednesday, waited 8 days for a game to ship the following Thursday, then wait another 4 days for it arrive the following Monday. Mail the game back 2 Monday's later, they get notified from the post office 2 days later on Wednesday, but it's still "At home" in my Q on Thursday. So for a 1 month rental period that's 14 days of playing and 15 days of shipping & handling. I still think NEW games should be sold, then after a year move them to rental. Just like movies - theaters, video-on-demand, DVD. People don't BUY 2 and 3 year old games, better to have them in a rental program than forgotten.

Is the removal of the optical port considered a cosmetic or convenience upgrade?

The site hasn't crashed yet, what happened to the /. effect? It gave me 56, the Speedtest that it linked to gave me 57, but that one took much longer, I'm getting 50, so I think for a really quick check of your speed it's not a bad thing. I'm going to check again around 9PM, things always bog down between 8 and 10.. Just ran it again, still came back with 56, so it's consistent.

Nice timing of the article, right after the one about Opera's native ad blocking. I will update my Win 8 machine before the free Win 10 option goes away, but not much before.

Middle East was just too slow to legalize marijuana. Stoners don't riot.

Can't help but think that at some point these will be used mostly for police work. I'm guessing they won't hire Apple for encryption work, they'll want to know every single bit that passes thru these. Do they have cameras and "gunshot" detectors yet? I'm not compeltley paranoid, I do see the value in these, and more good than harm will come of them, but I feel like it's just the city getting us used to surveillance. At some point self charging drones will be stationed on top of everyone of these zooming around the city, peeping in windows. Benign today, malignant tomorrow.

They were probably targeting the BBC for pulling Dr Who off of Netflix and Hulu. "Give us back the Tardis or K-9 gets it!"

I'm not a big fan of government, or cops, or government cops, and I'd wear a tinfoil hat if I could afford the tinfoil, but releasing a blanket list of 20,000 employees seems more evil than good. I'd like to think that at least 20-30% of the people who work for the FBI aren't evil - maybe 10-15% for the NSA - and those people shouldn't all have their names and emails released on a stolen list. Go after the corrupt ones, post pictures of their illegal affairs and taking money under the table, wiretap their homes and release tapes of them talking about the 47%, but I'm not ready to lump them all together as evil and make a list for some psycho to use as target practice.

I'm pretty sure Rubio has a bigger issue with immigrants from Canada than he does the middle east right now.