If nothing else, this shows just how bad an idea it is to put too much trust in computer models. There are always factors that we either don't know about or don't know how to include properly and getting even one of them wrong can throw the whole model off. Yes, computer simulations and models can be very, very useful but you have to take the results with a grain of salt and remember that they're only approximations at best.

No where else in the world do people expect "Free" things to also mean that they then own the copyright.

This is why so many of us talk about software being FOSS: Free and Open Source. The graphics drivers that nVidia provides are free to use, but they're only provided as binary blobs and the company has never made their hardware specs or programming interface public so that anybody who wants to create an OSS version has to start out by reverse engineering the binary driver and hoping that they haven't missed anything important. Some people don't care, some don't like it but accept it because the OSS versions work well enough for them and some simply avoid using any graphics adapters that don't have Properly Open Drivers.

I don't use Ubuntu, I use Fedora. Fedora has very strict rules about licensing and any package that doesn't meet those guidelines can't be offered in their official repositories. There is, however a third-party set of repositories, known collectively as rpmfusion, that hold those packages, including things like codecs and binary-blob video drivers, that can't be directly offered and most of the Fedora help forums either contain instructions on how to install the repositories or links to those instructions. Once you've installed them, the only way to know if a package isn't offered directly by Fedora is by checking to see where it's hosted. When you come right down to it, the only difference between how Ubuntu and Fedora handle the issue is the fact that Ubuntu automates the process and Fedora doesn't.

If you can show, somehow, that the defendant was not in the habit of clearing his browser history or cache, but did it minutes after he learned that he might be under investigation, you've probably got a good case. But unless you can show something that blatant and obvious, a good defense lawyer will eat you alive if it ever gets to court.

...empty recycle bins...

Even better, don't use the recycle bin; if you don't need or want a file any more, just delete it. Gone is gone. If you're not sure, just rename it, then delete it once you're sure it isn't needed.

Your life is in the hands of twelve people who were not smart enough to get out of jury duty.

If that's your opinion of jury duty, I wouldn't want you on the jury if I were being tried. Jury duty is a civic responsibility, and one to be taken seriously rather than something to dodge if at all possible. And, if you have that low an opinion of the average jury member, shouldn't you consider it even more important to do your part and help them do their job better? I've done jury duty, including a complex civil suit that required us to answer a number of questions, each depending on what had come before. (It had to do with a verbal contract. First, we had to decide if there was a contract because if we didn't think that there was any contract, the other questions became moot, and the others were tied together in a similar fashion.)

Glucose tests cost $1/test strip, and even mildly rigorous control takes roughly 5 strips/day.

That depends on how well controlled your diabetes is. My Endocrinologist has me checking before breakfast and at bed time, only. The only time he wants more is the four days before he sees me, and then he wants before each meal plus bed time. Of course, my readings are well controlled and my Ha1C has been within acceptable limits for the last several years. YMMV, and if you're having trouble with your numbers, I can easily understand needing to take four or five readings a day. Of course, I'm Type II, diagnosed about 13 years ago, but I can understand just how tired of the constant monitoring you can get.

That's an interesting idea and might just work. Of course, that also means that it won't ever get implemented.

I trust my sister not to abuse my ATM card, just as she trusts me. And, I'd trust a few of my friends the same way in an emergency. If you don't know anybody you'd trust that way, you might want to ask yourself why they're your friends.

On the other hand, maybe that is a good thing.

I don't know if it's a good thing or bad; it all depends, I'd guess, on how often people need to do things like that. I just wanted to point out that there can be times that the facial recognition can cause problems, even without the issue of false negatives.

I'm fairly sure that they have Personal Identification Number numbers in China because they love redundancies there just as much as you do.

Let's say that I want to loan a trusted friend some money. I give him (or her) my ATM card and PIN. They get the cash they need and bring me back the card and receipt. For some people, that's not at all unusual, if they're right about who to trust. Even so, this facial recognition is going to make this kind of routine transaction impossible.

Well, I suppose that it would be a tad easier if I'd ever had a Facebook account.

805 should mean something to you as should 484.

I've never made any secret out of which county I live in, and in this case that tells you my area code. What's interesting is that even if you know my real name, if you look me up on Google, you'd have to go through several pages before you found the first link to me, although at least one of he images on the first page is mine, and it's over a decade old and I've changed considerably since then. No, I don't want you to publish everything you know about me because I'd consider it just as unwise as I do. And, I never said that there were over 20 Glendales in Ventura County; I said that there are over 20 in the US. Last, I know how you learned my name; if I'd wanted to keep that a secret, it would have been trivial to do so, meaning that I probably wasn't concerned in hiding it.

I've mentioned what part of the country I live in on Slashdot, more than one time. Alas, just telling me that something like this is happening in Glendale doesn't make it clear where I live, considering that there are over twenty Glendales in the USA.