I'm really struggling to think of applications for this. There isn't much connectivity and it isn't very low power, so both micro server and low power node applications are out. For prototyping you will probably want an ARM board to ensure long term availability and low cost.

They make their money from corporate stuff. The personal accounts are a small fraction of their capacity and at worst they see them as loss leaders. Keep in mind most of these guys don't run their own data centres, they just act as a front end for Amazon or someone else.

Tape is not very good for long term backups. The tapes degrade with use when you test them periodically. The drives fail and are expensive to replace. Recovery options are limited. You need to have the same backup software you used to create the tape, which is fine for Unix but an issue on other operating systems.

Bluray is a better option outside of a corporate environment. The drives are cheap and likely to be easily available for a very long time (modern drives still read CDs from the 80s). You can make video discs for non technical people, or just throw the files on as most media players can cope these days.

I don't think any manufacturer warranties data at all. The drive might be replaced if it fails but you are on your own for the data.

If you can't be bothered with the effort required to keep checking backups just make multiple copies on different manufacturer's bluray archival media and distribute them. Check one copy yourself every year and keep some par2 files around. It's not bank grade but adequate for most people.

For video archival grade bluray might be more suitable. No internet connection or maintenance required, and non-technical people can easily watch them if the OP gets hit by a bus. These videos are not live data so write once media is fine.

Metal punch tape - chosen by the military to survive nuclear apocalypse and still be human readable without tools. Much denser than cuneiform, too.

For pro video editing - which is to say lots of content that frequently changes - tape backup still makes sense. There's still no better way to archive large amounts of data, although 2.5 TB (IIRC) tape size for the latest LTO has fallen behind, and the next gen isn't due for likely a year.

But the one-time cost for tape drives is pretty steep. If you're going to use many tapes each month, it's worth it. Heck, I'd say even at 10 TB of new data a month being archived, there's no better way. But for, say, 10 TB of fixed data that just needs to be archived once, it's overkill.

Buy a few HDDs, keep their shipping containers, make a backup and ship them to a friend in a different state. Repeat yearly. That's the economical way. Eventually it will all fit on a single drive, after all (aren't there leading edge 10 TB drives already?), and so you're looking at ~$10/month long term (heck, no matter how much fixed data, eventually it will fit on one drive and cost about that much).

Now if only someone would exhaustively search out HER e-mails.

Who are you going to believe, Snowden or the NSA? Keep in mind that one has been caught red handed lying to Congress and the media over and over and over again.

We already know that new artists do well from free distribution of their work. From Metallica back in the days of bootleg tapes of their gigs, to modern artists who get started on YouTube and social media. We already know that established acts aren't significantly harmed by piracy either, and this just confirms that in a high profile way.

Artists have always needed to give their music away for free. The money they get from radio play is a fraction of the pittance they get from CD sales, but it's an essential marketing tool. If they don't give it away for free no-one will hear it and no-one will buy it, simple as that.

It takes me all of five seconds to delete spam in my email inbox, or throw junk mail in the recycling box. That completely excuses it, clearly.

Well intended spam would be a polite message offering you the album.

Spam wastes your resources and your time. Fortunately most spam is small and easily filtered so the impact isn't too bad. In this case it's tens of megabytes, and even on a home wifi connection that will cost some people money. It wastes space on your device too.

You must love all those free magazines and catalogues that come through your letterbox. Why wouldn't anyone want bandwidth wasting spam in their inbox?

Let's hope this sets a precedent and Apple regularly fills your music library with free stuff you didn't want. It's no bother to just scroll past it, or hide each track individually each time, right?

It is a very dangerous game for the NSA to play. Presumably Snowden, being an intelligent guy, kept copies of those emails he said he wrote and will be able to produce them one day. Maybe he is still hoping to return to the US for a trial where he will enter them as evidence, or maybe he will just give up on the US entirely and put them out to defend his reputation.

Can you point to a security issue that hasn't been mitigated by a patch from Google?

FWIW my Galaxy S3 is still getting updates, three years after it was released.