I can answer one of your questions - why some Russians have dash cameras on their cars.

- Dash cam means in case of any kind of traffic accident that can lead to legal conflict you have video of accident and an ability to use it or not. If recorded evidence is not in your favour - delete it. If it shows how this cute child jumped on the road from behind the truck right in front of your car - it might help you to avoid some jailtime.
- Set ups are not frequent any more - everybody have liability insurance so it does not make sense now, everybody is calling insurance after incidents as small as a scratch.
- You might get lucky and record plane crash,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHqFDsKq5DA
or meteorite,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FCJOuLXIz4
or, at least, just a deadly accident.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRWtf0000e0
- Dash cams are cheap.
- In Russia you do not need permit to use dash cam.
- So why not to get dash cam?

P.S. You say "have to have dash cameras on their cars" as if it is something bad. I disagree - youtube would be boring without Russian dash cams! And while cams are not feeding stream to central location but just record it on a flash - to be erased on a next day, if nothing of interest has happened - cams are not really a threat to privacy.

It looks to be real, here is Fukuppy on company website http://www.fukusima.co.jp/character/index.html - according to Guardian english name was removed from website not long ago. This company have nothing to do with Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant besides similar name - they produce refrigerators, maybe it's a bit strange PR stunt.

Exactly, why would anybody go to library when any book can be downloaded from torrents and read on device with e-inc screen? And if it's immoral to download 'pirated' book - what is the difference between downloading a book and taking it from library?

Try kindle or other reader with e-inc screen. If you still prefer old style books - that is probably because you used to it, in less than 100 years paper books will be no more than curiosity, like scrolls or stone tablets with inscribed symbols. There is certainly something about sitting with stone tablet that just does not work as well with the books, but stone tablets, paper books or books on a digital devices are essentially the same - information in human readable form. Digital reader is more convenient than a paper book, same as paper book is more convenient than a stone table - information density is higher, reproduction cost is lower (practically zero for digital devices). But newer formats are less sturdy - it's not easy to destroy stone tablet, paper books burn and rot, digital devices are even more fragile. So use stone or metal tablets if your want your message to be read in couple thousands years, digital reader for everyday reading.

Always yours, Captain Obvious

As a Russian I can not agree with you on Novaya Gazeta and Echo Moskvi. AFAIK those are very boring - whatever happens it's always one conclusion - Russian government is shit and country is going down. For example Snowden? Same - http://www.echo.msk.ru/blog/dobrokhotov/1127964-echo/ . Really, anything that happens anywhere - conclusion is always the same, it's just boring. Unbiased news source? LOL

Yes she does seems to promote sensible things and seems to understand what's going on. Comparing to our Russian counterparts that just add new topics to be included in firewall 'DROP' list in order to protect 'children' and rights holders - very very sensible.

Does not it make it kinda even more difficult to operate discussion forum, or IRC channel, or, I dare say, anonymous imageboard like 4chan? By what logic operator may be held liable for user's postings? If unidentified person offended other person in, say, supermarket - would supermarket owner be held liable? Operator may be forced to delete offending content by court order, or at least as with DCMA complaints - by the letter from offended person, that's understandable. But to hold operator liable for user's postings - means say farewell to any forms of discussions on the internet, except where user posted content is premoderated or user have to somehow authorise with his real identity.

AC that posted offending comment ought to be responsible. Can not find him? Oh well...

I tried to find not premoderated comments on any of EU officials blogs to give them a taste, no luck :(

But look what I've found, granma that's responsible for EU's 'digital agenda' (WTF is that?) wants our views on what she calls 'Internet governance'. http://ec.europa.eu/commission_2010-2014/kroes/en/content/internet-governance-i-want-your-views

BBC and Fox often present the same message different ways. For example on foreign wars - BBC shows some children in caves, children are suffering - cold, hungry, afraid of bombings by pro-government forces and want to return to normal life. After successful campaign children miraculously disappear - like in Libya, where anarchy currently is so widespread that PM was recently kidnapped. But evil dictator is dead, so children must be ok now, sure :) Fox message is just like "He is an enemy of US, we will destroy him!" - more straightforward, less sickening.

I remember how those "think of the children" news are made - I was around 15 y.o. in Moscow, it was around 1992, presumably Japanese news channel (there was russian producer who told us that) filmed as as "Russian punks". They told us to come to building in our block that was scheduled for demolition, generously gave us each 2 packs of marlboro and some vodka, somebody brought a guitar. So we were to sing russian punk songs while drinking vodka from a bottle and smoking cigarettes, all this with broken windows and overall mess of a building scheduled for demolition as a background. I do not know if it was shown or not, if shown we could be orphans of war near dwelling, half destroyed by government aviation in Chechnya, or where it was needed at the moment.

Try to create everything, then listen to this damn stupid prayers all day - like give me this, give me that, please destroy all my enemies, oh lord forgive me and so on. Oh, and there is another bunch of your creations brutally killed in your name by your faithful servants, again. I bet you'll become mad psycho in less than millennia.

But why would somebody believe that happy dancing with no close on (i.e. as created by, well, creator) is somehow insult to any deity is difficult to understand, unless they serve shopping god or fashion goddess.

Optimal strategy for ssd + hdd dual drive configuration on linux would be to use ssd drive for cache, there are couple of ways to accomplish this, easiest is flashcache - open source kernel module developed by facebook.

Or you can buy 32-64 GB SSD and HDD, and use flashcache, and you will have the same hybrid drive but with 4-8 times larger cache.

Interesting device! How to protect linux computer from such attack, besides glueing USB ports? Any way to make it to ask for user password upon inserting HID device?