In order to use Cortana, you have to switch your Windows login to be your Microsoft account. No, thanks! I have no intention of changing my desktop login to be my Microsoft account. Cortana will have to wait.

Privacy in danger? That question assumes that we still have some privacy to BE in danger. We haven't had any data privacy for a decade already.

You don't drive your house around, but you still insure it. Home insurance is a thriving industry, despite the low odds of payouts, especially compared to the odds of payouts for car insurance. Don't worry, car insurance companies will still be in business, and make money. They will adapt.

Maybe an idea like this could be used in countries whose governments want to squelch free speech. Radio Free Europe did this kind of thing during the Cold War, broadcasting ideas that weren't welcome in the Eastern Bloc. Satellite-based Internet is out of reach for most citizens of such countries, but maybe not something based lower down, like in the stratosphere.

It works fine on all three. But what I thought was interesting was that when I opened the page in IE, the computer's fan started revving up. As I zoomed in and out and panned around, it really got going. Chrome and Firefox...both cool as a cucumber. That says something about the optimization (or lack thereof) in IE's rendering engine.

This is fantastic work. It's a great demonstration of what WebGL can do, but also a great demonstration of what James Yoder can do with it.

James, if you're looking for a job, we need to talk!

Third party apps tend to be loaded with adware. Google may not make the best apps, but at least they don't constantly spam you with blinking, dancing ads!

"using its enormous data assets to make meaningful connections between people and facilitate organic engagement within a rich ecosystem"

Huh? And they would do this by what, a mind meld? Maybe they should do this by creating...apps!

I have a very old Yahoo email address, it's my name @ yahoo.com. I've never used it for actual email, I only got it because I used another Yahoo service, and it came with the package. So I've never received a "legitimate" email at that address, but I've received many thousands of spam messages. I started getting spam in my Yahoo inbox within seconds of creating it. I can only wonder if you've ever tried GMail...if you had, I don't think you'd be saying that Yahoo has a good spam filter!

That's all true, but maybe we should let people buy their own snake oil with their own money, rather than the rest of us having to buy it for them via insurance or taxes.

My company of 80 employees has already done this, nobody has a phone on their desk except for the customer service reps.

Self-driving cars might lower accident rates, but they won't do away with them completely. Equipment, especially complex equipment, does malfunction, and there are limits to what equipment can do. There will still be unexpected icy spots that the computer can't compensate for, and blowouts, and road debris, and so on.

And then there are the drivers of the OTHER cards on the road. Even if self-driving cars became a reality in 5 years, it will take years, maybe decades, for the cars to become economically priced. And then there are all the existing cars on the road. The average car on US roads is 10 years old, so we have to add at least another 15-20 years before the number of human-driven cars drops to negligible numbers.

Self-driving cars will do nothing to change the need for comprehensive coverage, such as hail damage, or theft.

Insurance coverage and pricing will change, but it won't be going away.

HIPAA imposes fines for each patient's record lost through security breaches, even if the medical provider "did not know (and by exercising reasonable diligence would not have known)" https://kb.iu.edu/d/ayzf that there was a breach. These kinds of punitive rules have scared the entire industry to death, and yet the open secret is that nobody is safe from breaches, or these fines. This story illustrates how the law has done little, if anything, to actually protect privacy.

Most providers react to HIPAA in one of two ways:
1) They over-react, creating stupid policies like refusing to tell even a patient's own spouse the details of a patient's medical condition, unless the proper paperwork has been filed, or
2) They under-react, blissfully ignoring any privacy concerns.

If we're going to try to regulate privacy in the medical industry, how about let's focus on the device and software makers with certification programs, and let hospitals and physicians get back to doing what they do best: treating illnesses.

The problem with this idea is, they would take your money and and give you privacy...for a while. But eventually, the lure of big bucks would make them cave, and they would sell your data anyway. All this would be allowed by unannounced changes to the TOS document, which would be hidden away on the site somewhere.

A pixel is just one dot, or as Wikipedia puts it, the "smallest addressable element" of a digital display. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... If each of the 32x32 elements can be turned on or off, then they each constitute a pixel.