When they gather every data across all VPNs, they will still be able to analyse a tiny fraction of it all. What they want is the capability to decrypt anything, but then they'll only listen to what is on the topic of the day, because too much data is too much. So a targeted attack might be as good in many scenarios.

Not quite. According to wikipedia there is about 10-30g/km3. One cubic mile being 4.2km3, I can extrapolate and see that there is only 42-126g of gold every cubic mile of sea water. That's about a tenth of a kilogram, or 10000 times less than what you claimed.

I know, but you don't need flash (or Java for that matter) to detect fonts in a browser. And the browser doesn't "send" a list of fonts, you have to have dynamic code to list the fonts on the client side.

I, for one, find it nice that I can use all the very nice fonts available on ALL iOS devices without a 100kB payload to my users. Specially for mobile devices where 100kB payload can take quite a while, depending on the network conditions.

Other platforms will default to other fonts, chosen by me as well.

NoScript will be disabled on the websites you want to do something with. Those will be able to track you.

Who cares? Whatever your default font is, it doesn't have the same widths of most other fonts, so they can be extracted.

Then give me a link to one !

This page will detect the fonts on your system without Java or Flash.

What are you talking about? Browsers don't send installed fonts list to anybody!

The detection occurs when in CSS you specify font-family: XYZ. This is going to be displayed in the default font, unless the font XYZ is installed. By analyzing the width of the element you specified the font for (or drawing it into a canvas element) you can distinguish the cases where the font is installed from the case where the default font is used instead.

Hard to circumvent...

Thanks. Not a native English writer.

And I predict that warmer climate will generate more evaporation from the ocean and thus more clouds. The ocean levels will go down by that measure. More rains. So, in order to save desert regions, I encourage people to emit as much CO2 as they can.

You see? I can too make out-of-my-ass predictions on the climate, and end up with a random advice. The problem with your nice theory is that it's been repeatedly challenged by many models and observations. Expect me to divide by x (x>1) my way of life for a hypothetical outcome that may or may not come? Hardly.

There is no evidence (still standing at least) that link CO2 emissions (produced by burning fossil fuel) to the global warming. There is no evidence that CO2 emissions will have or did have any meaningful impact on the planet climate. If anything, the planet is getting greener because all those trees love all that CO2.

Furthermore, there is no evidence that the global warming is going to be harmful in any way for humans. But most of all, there is no shred of evidence that humanity can do anything to stop or act on the global warming.

So before shouting out loud that we are "turning this planet into a hellhole", let's stop for a minute and think about it. Because in every scenarii studied so far, most lead to an economic disaster, but none to a better climate.

It's not deskstar but deathstar I was told...

As an anecdote, my first HDD to ever fry was a 8GB deskstar. I lost everything. Now I have backups and raid. Many failures later (at least 3) I've yet to lose a single bit I deemed important.

No they haven't. People applauded him because he was brilliant onstage giving physics lectures, not because they thought his sex life was exemplary. Nobody is perfect, and I'm sure we most of us have secrets that we wouldn't want anyone to know about. His were just worse. His physics lectures are still as good as they were yesterday.

A government, like any other entity, has a tendency to grow and expand its powers and perimeter. The problem is that the government also makes the laws, which makes it the worst and most dangerous of all entities, because if it doesn't have the absolute powers it's pretty damn close.