The website is pretty sparse on the details of what actually happens when this plugin is doing its thing. Unless it's all explained in that paper they posted (which I can't make any sense of, and I'm an IT professional).

Does this plugin simulate a click, or does it actually load the entire target page offscreen, and if so, is there any possibility for recursion here? Suppose there are banner ads on the page being "simul-clicked" on? Does the plugin proceed to them as well? How does this affect bandwidth? And what about security? What happens if that page wants to install the Ultra Monkeys Toolbar in my browser? Is it able to do that? Am I not able to decline or close the offending page before something bad happens because it's all happening offscreen?

Please, developer we've never heard of before, explain to us a bit more why we should trust this plugin. In ENGLISH.

Seems to me if he could get his cat to do it with a specially-designed techno-collar, he probably would do that too. And we'd all be impressed.

Facebook has no compact with its users to offer fair and balanced news (if you'll forgive the expression). They are not obligated to feature any particular array of stories to anybody; in fact, we've heard over and over again how the relevance of items that appear in the news feed is skewed and unpredictable. Nobody should be relying on them for news and I don't think we should expect any more journalistic integrity from them than Buzzfeed.

I don't usually take this angle when it comes to corporate responsibility to the public, but in this case I think people are getting too close to Facebook, when Facebook really just wants to be friends. Or perhaps researcher & test subject.

This has always bothered me: If his name is Linus, then why is it a short I-sound in the name 'Linux'

It doesn't, it goes to 8.1 Update 1 SP1. At least until 8.1 Update 1 SP1 Rollup 1 comes out. Then 8.1 Update 1 SP1 will no longer be supported, though you may have to continue using it until they release an appropriate fix for Windows Update in the form of 8.1 Update 1 SP1 Rollup 1 Subrevision 1

Have you noticed how these dire predictions always seem to be made by people in sales or finance? From the perspective of an investor, these devices may have been dead for years now, i.e. there aren't gobs of money to be made by mass-producing them or pumping money into a company who is mass-producing them. The market is saturated, and everyone who is going to own one already does, so there's no opportunity for growth. It doesn't matter that every household/business has at least one of them that they depend on every day, from a financial perspective the PC is dead. This really shouldn't be the perspective that speaks the loudest though.

You know, give us New Coke, gain a huge amount of publicity, then "j/k lol!" their way to victory.

Somebody mod the biologist here! That's it right there!

No sane environmentalist judges extinction to be unnatural in the platonic sense. Extinction IS a direct effect of natural selection. That doesn't mean we should just "get over it" or any other dismissive crap that usually appears in the same sentence with "you damn hippies" or "humans are nature too" or "the climate has been hotter than this in the past." We care about the Sumatran Rhino becoming extinct because we like the world better when it has the Sumatran Rhino in it, not because we have some hang-up about extinction itself.

I have no problem at all being selfish about this: the world is a nicer place for me to live with a healthy ozone layer, fresh air, old growth forests, thriving oceans, and Sumatran Rhinos. Don't try to tell me I'm a hypocrite because the environmental problems we're experiencing today are "natural." I'm not even going to tackle whether or not humans caused all these problems (hint: we did), I'm just going to say that it's perfectly ok to want species to live, even spend time and effort helping them to survive because they are valuable to us. No extra points for true altruism here.

...I can scarcely imagine how it could be less efficient than everyone carrying around their own personal combustion engine and fuel supply ON the vehicle itself.

It's pretty hard to get excited about a DirectX release these days. We all saw the comparison screenshots between DX9 and DX10, and later DX10 and DX11. We saw the ever-so-slight improvements in texture mapping, reflections, shadows, etc. Hasn't the rise of the indie game taught Microsoft anything? It's the gameplay, stupid, not your incrementally more realistic rendering of hair. Not that I object to that kind of thing, but as a selling point for the train wreck that is Windows 8? Get real.

I think I'm gonna wait for Windows Yellow so I can have a Pikachu.

Definitely, don't ever shell out the money it costs to have the #1 best fastest hottest GPU (I wouldn't recommend the #2 either). It's basically digital viagra. Lasts about as long too.

Hopefully they'll soon realize that when people are happy with the functionality of their OS, they're really not all that interested in replacing it on someone else's arbitrary release cycle. The "Ok, it's been three years and we need some more money" routine is pretty ineffective with folks keeping their PCs for 4 or 8 or sometimes 12 years.

Microsoft continues to bank on the idea that because they make something newer and shinier, people will flock to it just for the sake of newness and they keep falling on their faces because the new thing doesn't do the job that people need it to do substantially better than the product it's replacing. This is doubly true with their Office suite; Office '97 is a perfectly usable product with at least 90% of the functionality of its successors, obsoleted only by OS compatibility problems (OS's by the very company that released it no less) and it's less-than-modern UI. WinXP CONTINUES to live on and be useful to people even after three subsequent OS releases, and I suspect it will continue even after MS "pulls the plug". It does a job and it does it well, and Microsoft needs to get it through their thick marketing and sales departments that THAT is why people buy a product.

I really think instead of churning out new shit that nobody asked for, Microsoft should take a good hard look at who their user base is and consider more of an LTS, or maybe a rolling release model. I don't think I have a single business client who wouldn't pay twice or thrice as much for an OS/Office Suite/etc. if it would last 10-20 years. As it is, they all seem resigned to the idea that their stuff needs to be replaced every 5 years at the most, and that is an complete myth.

ZDNet's inflammatory, attention-whoring headline has some truth to it...

Excuse me Mr. Government Guy, Mr. Reporter? I think I missed the part where you assured us that these drones wouldn't be armed. Or in some way acknowledged everyone's tacit reservations about using drones in civilian areas. *checks TFA again* yep, definitely missed that. If you could just append here.......and.....here....