No, it's only slashdot which has degraded.

Most of my house lamps take 3 bulbs. Some of them I have an LED, a CFL, and an incandescent, on the theory that together they'll produce a broader spectrum than any of them alone. Also, some of the dimmers had problems with buzzing with multiple LEDs, but didn't buzz with one LED and two CFLs. I like diversity.

I haven't replaced all my incandescents with LEDs yet. I've got some, but mostly ones that are on sale and just enough to replace incandescents that have burnt out. The price and quality of LEDs is changing rapidly, so I'm holding out in hopes that the near future is even brighter than the present. I don't like CFLs, having mercury around is yucky, though I am happier with them now that I've noticed Home Depot makes it easy for me to recycle them.

The internet (in particular ancestry.com) will remember you forever, whether you want to be remembered or not. In particular it will remember your name, the day and location you were born, the day and location of your marriage (and the person you married), what children you had (when, where), and the day you died. It'll also remember how you responded to censuses. It'll probably remember one portrait of you, or a group shot. If you have an obituary it might remember that too. I expect soon it will remember your full genome as well, stored extremely compactly a diff of your parent's genomes.

What is the ultimate question to life, the universe, and everything? You already know it: "What is your name?"

I would approve of requiring labeling on food if it was produced by one of these.

I'm guessing the official answer sheet was fed to the automated multiple-choice grader upside down. Or, less likely, someone with control over the test decided their pockets would be lined well if nobody could pass the test. They're going to check the test and how students scored; that should identify those sorts of issues.

Indian: Boy, that was awful, Snowden releasing all that data.
Chief: Good thing he didn't release x,y,z as well
Indian: Hum ... wait a second ... let me check what was on Snowden's drive BEFORE he copied that data onto it
Chief: OMG
Indian: Y'know, with the proper tools, anyone with that actual drive could get at that ...
Chief: OMG! OMG!
Indian: I'm on it, boss

Does Google charge more for data that doesn't compress? (Encrypted data doesn't compress, so if you're going to encrypt your data yourself you should compress it yourself too first.)

Yes, exactly. This is a mechanism for motivating companies to correct it ... if there was a default 6-month waiting period, and some products had a 2 month one and others a 1 year one, and some refused to have any, that's information prospective customers can take into account.

I have no trouble with being tracked, and with the environment being modified towards my likes. However I'm royally sick of constantly being offered shopping opportunities. Hey guys, if you're tracking my actions and my likes, you should notice that actively trying to sell me stuff makes me go away, and stop doing it so much.

It should be standard that you notify the company before releasing the flaw publicly, and it should also be standard that after some waiting period the bug should go public. Well, standard per product ... different products have different release cycles, I could see some wanting 2 months while others want 1 year. But it should be public information, that product X you should notify them first then you're allowed to report the bug publicly after n months. That waiting period should be part of the product specs.

If you have the genomes of your parents, and your own genome, yours is about 70 new spot mutations, about 60 crossovers, and you have to specify who your parents were. About 600 bytes of new information per person. You could store the genomes of the entire human race on a couple terabytes if you knew the family trees well enough. I tried to nail down the statistics for that in http://burtleburtle.net/bob/future/geninfo.html .

I've always though our main future threats are AI and manmade viruses. If AI wins, we'll be relegated to zoos. If manmade viruses win, we'll all die. I'm rooting for AI.

oh, nevermind.

oh, wait, never mind.