He said he installed an extension, not a Browser Helper Object!

I wonder, would Google let APK sell an .apk? Harassment and stalking are kind of a no-go in their microcosm.

Don't forget Roland Piquepaille ;)

"Goof?" I'm not convinced. It's just as likely that this was engineered into the products intentionally.

News broke last year that NSA was intercepting Cisco equipment enroute to customers and making a few tweaks. Cisco made a big production a few months ago about how they were suddenly willing to ship to random addresses to avoid NSA interdiction. Perhaps that's because whatever NSA needs is already built in, and always has been, and the whole story about NSA physically yanking packages from carriers was misdirection. Put that story out there and people who are able to control the delivery chain will have a strong, but very false, sense of security.

I hope English is your second language. Meet Bob.

The plural of company is companies.

Since when is "questionable" a synonym for "evil"?

They are, but when they find something, they add it to their arsenal and use it themselves instead of alerting anyone to the vulnerability. This fact was the subject of some hand-waving from the White House earlier in the year. There's a good chance NSA has known about several of these for a long time, which is a little disconcerting since the Adobe Type Manager exploit may date back to 1998.

Most functionally useful weather radars, including NOAA's, require Flash. My state's Department of Transportation uses Flash for their traffic cameras. Livestream.com, which hosts my local TV news broadcasts along with other stuff like SpaceX launches, is still Flash. And if I want to view any cable TV programming on the computer, Comcast's player is Flash based.

I'd love to have uninstalled Flash a long time ago; for the time being I have to keep it around and use Flashblock.

The stories and illustrations are public domain in the US, but copyright laws vary by country.

Big data is like sex in high school. Nobody really knows exactly what it is or how to do it, but everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, so everyone says they're doing it, too.

I see a "Share" menu has replaced what used to be the link to read each story's comments. I clicked "Share" by accident, intending to click through and load the discussion. You fooled me and my muscle memory one time. In exchange, you've pissed me off and guaranteed that I won't ever use that feature. What's the point?

I think it's funny, there's a story just down the front page titled "Are There Any Search Engines Left That Don't Try To Think For Me?" I might ask the same about Slashdot, lately!

Not only that, but at the time of the Moon landing, the Russians themselves were rather heavily involved in that arena. Had the landing been faked, Russia absolutely would have known; they would have distributed the proof far and wide to humiliate and one-up the Americans. It's just a tad late for a Russian to start asking questions.

Maybe you should switch banks. I can't speak for the UK, but it never ceases to astound me how many people whine about banking in the United States when there are thousands of small community banks you could be doing business with. It's a tough industry and the little guys are facing setbacks on a daily basis, but they're still there if people are willing to look for and do business with them.

In the day and age of remote deposit there's no reason to do business with a large national bank. I get waived ATM fees worldwide, no account fees of any sort, and competitive loan and deposit rates, all from a little regional bank that you've probably never heard of unless you're from my small hometown.

For the life of me I don't understand why Chase, Capital One, or Bank of America have any retail customers at all. They bend people over on fees, structure your transactions to obtain yet more fees, and generally do all sorts of nefarious things while offering no real advantage over their smaller competitors.

You're implying that people of the same ethnicity find it easier to agree politically. Reality suggests that's far from the truth. The Finns fought a pretty nasty Civil War, even by Civil War standards, within living memory.

The reason the Finnish system works on consensus has to do with the structure of their political system and the rules in their Parliament. I suggest reading Finland: Myth and Reality; it's a bit dated, most of the foreign policy stuff lost relevance after the Cold War ended, but the domestic discussions are still applicable.