Is this a surprise to anybody? why do you think all TV vendors are pushing for "Smart TV"? all this metadata could be a huge source of revenue to them in all kinds of areas, from advertising profiling to law enforcement.

Since we have more and more connected devices in our lives, you've got to take extra precautions. First and foremost, if your device doesn't need to be connected to the Internet, just don't. There is no reason your wired printer need Internet access, so block that MAC address for external access. If your device does need it, then make sure that it's in an isolated segment with no raw access to Ethernet frames from other systems in your house, and if it's WiFi-enabled, make sure you have guest isolation turned on. Then, setup a proxy, transparent or not, to make sure you have the chance to monitor that traffic for unexpected surprises. If you can, whitelist some specific sites that your application needs to access, like Netflix or VUDU for example and block access to everything else.

Finally, why use apps in the TV when you can have excellent open source software provide you with content, like XBMC or MythTV?

Many of the comments here are from people who has not seen or read the books. Gourmet cooking at home is my hobby so I actually own both, the Modernist Cuisine and The Modernist Cuisine at Home. I've read them thoroughly and I've done many recipes from them, and I must say, I yet have to see another set of books as useful and complete as these. You learn the principle of things, the math, physics and chemistry associated with the processes, from smoking and grilling to sous vide and pressure cooking. It's amazing the wealth of knowledge in these books. Also, the photography alone makes it a work of art.

If you are in doubt, simply make one recipe: the Caramelized Carrot Soup. It will blow your mind (and your guests). This recipe works because by increasing the pH under pressure you achieve the Maillard reaction before the carrots can burn. You cannot achieve this result any other way, and that's the kind of knowledge behind these books. Also, check the Hyperdecanting trick with wine. You'll impress your friends at any party.

Nathan said in an interview that he wrote this because that's the kind of book that he'd wish he has had access to when he started cooking. There is nothing else out there like this. It's true it's not for everybody. It's for either chefs or very serious amateurs. I for one, welcome an app. As wonderful as the books are, they are complicated when you need to find something quickly. Unfortunately, I don't do iOS, so I'll have to wait for the Android version in the future or steal my wife's iPad when I need it.

I've actually had the chance to see this myself. I started working for VMware in at the end of 2003, when virtualization was new. It slowly and gradually entered the datacenter, first in development and testing workloads and then production to mission critical apps. All this time I've seen the server to admin ratio change dramatically, first with tens to hundreds to now thousands of systems that can be managed by a single admin. This obviously means the gradual extinction of the traditional sysadmin, same way the operators disappeared with the decline of the mainframe.

Now automation tools and proactive analytics are gaining huge momentum and will doom yet another segment of the IT force, even managers who approve or deny decision can be replaced by software policies and self-service portals.

If any company would have the chance to run their whole IT as a single black box with a switch and no humans involved whatsoever, most would do it. It sucks, but denial won't help either.

Since it was invented by a Magnetic Healer, I guess it's related, but it has grown as its own scam on its own.

My favorite reference site when these type of "topics" come up is Science-based Medicine.

I understand your thinking. Yet, once your eyes have been opened, you can't go back anymore. I know it's a cliche in this audience, but it's really like swallowing the red pill. We now know we were not crazy and there really is an extremely powerful entity out there attempting to break all our most trusted systems. We can 1) ignore it, 2) accept our fate and go kosher (according to 'the system') or 3) fight it. I've chosen 3, mostly because I think this is just the beginning and things can get really dark very fast if we let this stand. I also want to point out that the NSA hires really smart folks, but they are not superhuman. We, as a collective, can outsmart them all, and then we can create open source software easy enough for the masses to use. We've done it before and we can do it again. THEY are not infallible!

I for one, am more concerned about the classic little towns like Groveland that live out of the tourism coming in and out of Yosemite. My wife and I go to Yosemite at least a couple of times per year, and we always stay in Groveland, a tiny town with such an old gold rush history and character. They've got the Iron Door Saloon, the oldest saloon in California dating from 1852, The Groveland Hotel that used to be a brothel and where every one of the rooms is named like "Lotta Crabtree", "Betty Fries Room" and "Just Juanita".

Right now I'm less concerned about our water supply vs. the lives and livelihood of their residents and rich history of all those places.

What bothers me is that Microsoft has really good engineers but lacks a clear strategic direction. Their massive amount of legacy code plus some seriously bad "assumptions" about what the users want have sustained their decline in the last 10 years. It's a sad state of affairs, having used their products since Windows 1.0 when they were "the rebels".

I know it's just my opinion, but given their deep pockets, they should create an incubator unit or a completely separate start-up with huge funding for a re-acquisition later on (similar to what Cisco is doing with Insieme). The purpose of this group should be to go back to their roots, and re-think the way people and companies are expected to interact with computers in the next 10-20 years timeframe, and create a brand new OS with no legacy code, and anticipating the challenges and threats that will evolve overtime as much as possible.

I've always wondered why airplanes and MRI machines can have "mission critical" OSs and software while we all have to deal with crashes and uncertainty. They have the capability to create and bring to market a practical, usable EAL-7 OS. We know it has been done before, but Microsoft has the capability to make it commercially viable for everyone. And this is only ONE of the things they could do.

The way this post was presented is totally idiotic. The fact that some of these ideas have been around for a very long time means only that technical feasibility was not there yet. Remember Jules Verne or DaVinci for that matter. Many of their ideas have become normal part of our lives, while many others were just product of a fertile imagination.

What I really like about the hyperloop is that the idea is old, but it's been re-thought from the perspective of the 21st century, by someone who has the credibility to make things that everyone else said were impossible a fact.

I, for one, think Elon Musk is one of the greatest minds of our generation, and not only because of the ideas, but because of his attitude of "why not" and "build it and they will come". I'd trust him with my tax dollars any day when I see what he has accomplished, vs. the bozos in the State Government.