They're probably talking about actual, old-fashioned double-edge safety razors, not a Gillette Mach 3 Turbo or whatever. And yes, a very nice one can cost $78 and does not come with blades. The $78 razor would also be a heck of a lot nicer and shave a lot better than anything you could print, and would last for decades. I use one, and it's older than I am. I didn't pay anywhere near $78 for it. More like $10.

These scanners are NOT using UV illuminators, or interested in a "full spectrum" of light. They use near-infrared.

Yes, this is the most likely route they're taking. My fear is that this may actually promote the creation of new child porn. Google only knows to filter for hashes of images they already have, so this would add more value to the having the newest, latest stuff that is not in the database yet.

Those "find my iphone" things are actually quite often pretty inaccurate. They'll get you within a couple hundred yards, but that's not much help in a densely-populated area. You can find stories of folks who are constantly harassed because folks keep showing up on their doorstep because that's where their little dot tells them their phone is. That's a big part of the reason cops don't want to deal with it. For what it's worth, I'm not actually usually much of a defender of the police.

Those "find my iphone" things actually often have pretty poor accuracy. They'll get you within two hundred yards or something pretty reliably, but that's not all that helpful in a densely populated area. There are lots of stories of innocent people having folks show up at their door all hours of the day or night falsely accusing them of stealing their phones due to this. I'm not generally a big fan of police officers, but I think their (in)action in such cases is actually warranted here.

I'm just disappointed that this one didn't include a link to the Wikipedia article on Betteridge's Law.

I had T-Mobile for about seven years, up until a year ago. My default, free, "lousy" voicemail always played new messages before saved messages.

I don't think this is fair or accurate. For most of human history as far as we know, church and state were the same thing. Any sort of marriage recognized by a government or tribal group or whatever was de facto religious.

I'm sure someone above has already asked this, but I'm surprised it wasn't the first post. People have been easily hacking NES roms to switch around or replace sprites for about fifteen years or so. There is already a HUGE body of Donkey Kong rom hacks that change the game graphics, and there is no doubt in my mind that a version of this exact hack has been around about that long. You can find even more hacks of the original Super Mario Bros, replacing Mario with a woman, a klansman, Mike from MST3K, or just about anyone. Why is this particular hack suddenly news?

Just a small nit-- Rush Limbaugh does not use the term "feminazi" as a general term for a feminist. By his own statements there are fewer than a dozen public figures in the country who would qualify.

You're right that I did not mention microlensing. I didn't think it necessary to the point I was making. However, you are greatly overstating the performance benefits from using gapless microlenses.

CMOS sensors do not use their full surface area for photosites, unless something fundamental has changed in the last five or so years. For each photosite, there are other surface area needed for things like providing data paths off the sensor. I'm making an educated guess here and saying that having physically larger photosites allows a larger proportion of the sensor area to actually be used to collect light in this case, since less of the surface area needs to be used for other purposes. Additionally, larger photosites are less prone to noise. These are the reasons that 3x3 binning is not equivalent.

I don't think e-Ink is a good choice for a watch, especially if you want the screen to update every second. You'd burn through too much power just updating the seconds counter. You'd have to charge your watch every week or so.

Keep in mind that the former long distance runners you mention probably top out at 140 lbs, if that. Being small helps a LOT.

How are these children supposed to get a complete science education if they don't include Swamp Thing?