Clippy is the only one still speaking to me.

I love socialism. Here in "socialist" Japan a great many people happily rely on (really great) public transport every day. I love it.

Even better is that my company pays for my monthly commuter pass. (That is standard practice here).

Oh, and left-wing bicycles are widely used here for shorter journeys.

What a utopia it would be if every human on the planet owned their car and there was not enough space to park them never mind drive them anywhere...

Although I can drive I have owned or strongly desired to own my own car. I would not like to give up owning my own bicycle, however...

I am happy with Gnome 3 (via CentOS 7) on my home laptop and work desktop machine. It looks great and I was able to configure it to my taste. CentOS 7 also comes with systemd. Never had to give it a second thought. For my needs this is a great desktop OS for home use and the development work I do in the office.

I think the low birth rate in Japan is due to the toxic effect of kombini lunches.

I work for a Japanese company but I am not pressured to work unnecessary overtime. If there was a serious drama happening I would stay late to fix it because I want the company to succeed. Otherwise I work the hours for which I am paid and feel pretty relaxed about that.

After reading recently about the overheads imposed by in-browser ad-blocking I switched back to Privoxy. The configuration is more complicated than AdBlock but after a couple of weeks I am getting results I am very happy with.

To be a Google employee you have to show a great love and respect for the honorable profession that is the advertising industry. That is, after all, what Google's business consists of.

I would not choose to work there myself.

If you only need a "phone dialer and a texting app" you have no requirement for a smartphone at all. Those needs are met by much cheaper feature phones that will give you much longer battery life into the bargain.

If these expensive "specialist" applications only run on Windows XP SP1 then they are not worth it. Whoever purchased high-priced software with such a ridiculous restriction made a big mistake.

But the NSA has access to all the data Google have on you and the NSA do have SWAT teams ready to smash down your door at 3am.

I live in Japan. I have a Sony Xperia. iPhones are locked-down, corporate, American shit.

My Soylent UID is even lower than my Slashdot one :-)

Soylent looks great TBH. I can actually see myself switching over if Slashdot's owners are determined to ruin all that is good about their web site with a crappy "modern looking" redesign.

Don't use paper money.

Funded by whom? I am happy to be anti-Google Glass for nothing.

Many people are becoming aware about the degree to which we have allowed our right to privacy to be eroded by adopting new technologies. Google Glass is an unnecessary toy which would facilitate a further erosion of our privacy. This has nothing to do with jealousy.