I think the most important piece of news of this story is that Wikipedia is no better than Google or Facebook, and exploits/sells search data too.

They made the assumption that if a disease is spreading somewhere, there people start looking for information about the disease on wikipedia

Imagine the potential: if a lot of search logs contain "EBOL-AAAARGH", they'll know a particularly fast-acting variant of the virus has emerged.

Seems Mozilla has sold out. Which makes their choice of DuckDuckGo as default search engine interesting: have they sold out too?

The thing with DDG is, I'd be happy to believe their no-tracking pitch, but I can't quite understand how they're gonna make money out of a free search engine without it...

Choice #1: my smartphone isn't encrypted, the FBI "protects" my safety

Choice #2: my smartphone is encrypted, the FBI can't get to my data.

I choose #2 thank you very much.

the next giant leap in ubiquitous mass surveillance.

I just can't wait for all the devices that surround me to snitch on me and report all my life habits to their corporate or state masters 24/7...

A surprising number of sites use CloudFlare. The trouble with CloudFlare is, if you want to stay anonymous on the internet using Tor, you're SOL, as they serve you captchas every 3 pages when they see a connection coming from a Tor exit node.

So essentially, if you're a Tor user, CloudFlare:

- Renders a sizeable portion of the internet unusuable for you
- Makes money on your back by making you solve captcha, and turning you into a human OCR.

CloudFlare and Google (which also serve captchas to Tor users, only fewer exit nodes are concerned) are quickly making Tor unusable, which must make the NSA wet their pants.

Making Up Names Of Bills With Cleverly Crafted Backronyms Is So Fucking Annoying.

Cuban cigar smokers in the US don't have a PAC to push through changes. They're just not a big enough special interest group.

Rich people can get Cuban cigars without any problem whatsoever, embargo or not. Hell, JFK smoked Havanas during the Cuban missile crisis.

Normal rules and laws don't apply to the one percentile...

How to distinguish whether the phone user is driving a car or riding a bus?

At least you can exclude all iPhone owners from that particular test: people who can afford Apple products are so not riding busses... Or if they do, they probably know better than to whip out a multi-hundred-dollar device begging to be stolen onboard the bus.

I suppose the same way PawSense detects whether a cat or a human is using the device: when you text and drive, you have a funny way of using the device - because you're constantly switching between texting, putting down the device and driving, picking it back up after 10 seconds, and doing that over and over, as opposed to a human that's fully committed to the task of inputting text.

Ah nevermind, I got it. It's not terribly obvious though...

Look, I'm not picky or anything, and I know headlines are shortened, but what the hell does " Apple Said To Team With Visa, MasterCard On iPhone Wallet" mean?

Software monetization is basically just like anal sex. You keep on pushing until the person you're doing it to can't take it anymore. And then you keep pushing.

You seem to know a lot about monetizing anal sex...

That's how I feel too: they've turned Firefox into a cheap whore - albeit with an opt-out option.

Yet I realize they have to make money to keep bringing out new Firefox releases.

Yet... it sucks. Ads sucks. Ad-funded internet sucks.

I don't know what's worse: being blown out of the sky with explosives or having to stay in Phoenix.