Google don't sell your data to the advertisers. Of the advertisers we want to target a group, google's algorithms will decide, based on your data, if you are part of that group. No human looks at the data, just the cloud computers.

The sheer number of people using Google products ensure individual privacy, as there is just far too much days there to talk through.

When you first login to the Android phone, you have the option to turn off sync for any services you don't want to sync with the cloud. You might leave on mail, but disable contacts, calender and gallery. This way, none of that data will be sent to Google, our pulled down from Google.

Also, remember that a LOT of people use Google - 200m Android , 550k new daily - so unless there is a very specific need for Google to look at your data, they won't. You can assume that to a fairly high degree your secrets will be safe.

It's amazing that, when I visit the US, I feel less free than when I'm at home, or in just about any other country.
Except, perhaps, the UK.

Especially in airports.

No, I don't believe the 'land of the free' is actually free any more. I think that a lot of people delude themselves, but have actually given up a lot of their freedoms in the name of better security. There is always a fine balance between freedom and security, and I feel the US is leaning, these days, more towards security than freedom.

Case in point - TSA.
Freedom means that you have a choice. With TSA, the choice is "we feel you up or put your in our under-your-clothes scanner, or you don't fly, even if you are a 5 year old".

Sounds to me like there's going to be a deluge of back-of-the-taxi pr0n hitting your favourite site come 2015...

$ sudo -i

I find it increasingly frustrating that many applications default to US English, despite the locale of my machine or IP address I'm coming from.

And thus find it increasingly frustrating when it tells me words ending in -our are spelled wrong and wants to correct them, or words ending in -ise.

So what will this bot do? Would I expect to see, over and over again, that it's submitting what I would consider incorrect submissions because, like so many things, because it knows only about American English (and to hell with the rest of the English speaking world)?

Created cinematography. Cinema quality, no doubt.

I want to see the full feature length movie of this now...

'Food production creates carbon emissions.'

luckily photosysthesis eats up some of that carbon...

The world cannot be completely 0 emissions or all the plants would die off once the CO2 is all gone.

(But yeah, we still need to reduce the amount of CO2 we pump out)

How something if phrased is very important.

Given 64/100 for Facebook, and 77/100 for Wikipedia, how, exactly, do you define 'hate' and 'like'?

Facebook gets a lower score, but how does this equate to 'hate'?

Certainly, Facebook is liked a lot less than wikipedia. I don't like facebook (I closed my account there a long long time ago), but I don't 'hate' it.
(I also don't trust it, but that's another issue entirely)

In 'attack mode', it's following a set of pre-determined attack moved. Not even randomly determined. Boring.

But in 'defence mode', it's impressive, tracking the opponents sword and moving to block it. Very nice. Would be cool if it could move faster... but that's just a factor of time - next year's version will be twice as fast, and the year after twice as fast again...

LOL. But true! ;-)

Al contacted Lady Gaga through her agents, was asked to send a copy of the song for approval (so he want ahead and produced/recorded it), and was then denied.

He ranted about it, letting the whole Twitterverse know what happened.

Then Lady Gaga herself saw the post, and knew nothing about the song. While Al sent the stuff to the agent, nothing was passed onto Lady Gaga herself.

She, apparently, loved the song and gave Al her blessing.

Feckin' agents.

Yeah, he could have released it anyway, but he has never released a parody song without the consent of the original artist. He feels that it's only right to get their consent. Nothing legal about it - it's just his way. As some else posted, he's just a nice guy!

I wonder if the RIAA would allow you to estimate just how much pirated music you own, and send them a cheque (check, for you US guys) for a nomimal amount per track, thus legitimising all of your music.

Kinda like the tax system, I suppose - you send them what you owe on a yearly basis. Could the RIAA operation like that - download as much as you like, and then send them a cheque at the end of the year for the amount you owe?