That sounds more like an online backup (although geographically distinct) than an offsite backup.

If the backups were offsite, then how did they get wiped?

That's not quite the same situation as the NSA aren't just looking at people who are involved in a terrorist attack, but instead data-mining everyone. If the police were checking phone records of everyone driving, regardless of whether they were involved in a crash, then your analogy would be better.

I'm no fan of the modern lack of privacy and I definitely believe that freedom should trump security. However, if someone is in a crash, then there is a good reason to investigate further and the specific phone records are a reasonable infringement of privacy.

To be honest, I'd be more concerned about being in a traffic accident than the police getting access to phone records. Privacy is important, but so is not driving a ton of steel into someone else. Maybe this would reduce traffic congestion if everyone who values their privacy chooses to not drive their own vehicle in case they crashed.

The vast majority of road incidents involve driver distractions, so I don't think that reducing speed (which is not necessarily a cause of accidents) by increasing the distraction is really going to work out very well.

I just tested out chromium (the non-google version of chrome) and that allows you to add chrome extensions without a Google account.

Are we out of cat food?

Even worse, they claimed to have offsite backups which they clearly didn't have.

No, they just need to stop teaching Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy in a science class if they want to continue to receive funds.

I've been roasting my own beans for a few years now. I started off using a hot-air popcorn maker to roast very small batches and after a few years of that, I ended up buying a home roaster and roast a batch a week on average.

I've never tried cold brewed myself, but I've heard lots of reports from people who swear by it. I'm an Aeropress man myself, but I do like espressos when they're properly made - I've just never bothered spending enough money on a decent grinder to make proper espressos myself.

The Aeropress doesn't make Americano per se, but it's somewhere in-between espresso and americano in strength. For the record, espresso should be made with 95 degree Celsius water - I doubt that you can get a "perfect" espresso with boiling water. I tend to think of Aeropress coffee as a distinct type of coffee as it produces a distinct strength/flavour that you don't get with other methods.

I've never encountered any instant coffee that is anything but a very poor approximation to properly made coffee. I don't know what part of the making/freezing process destroys the flavour, but there is a huge difference.

I personally think they should use a variant on the Hario vacuum brewers just due to the whole pressure/gravity scientific nature of them.

Yes, but I'm more concerned about the coffee being made correctly than whether someone burns themselves or not.

Priorities.

I've always found JBM to be over-rated. I think there was a period of time when it was excellent, but once it started becoming sought after, they started churning out tons of sub-standard coffee from the region just because people would pay a premium for it.

I do think that the freshness of the beans makes a big difference, but it's not easy for most people to get hold of freshly roasted beans without spending more money. Supermarket coffee beans are hopelessly stale (and don't even get me started the staleness of pod coffee).