Unless you mean that you just want to reset the settings and continue using your existing OS, No, you couldn't.

There is no bootrom exploit available for the 4s. Apple has changed the way they secure the firmware. Pre-saved SHSH blobs are useless now. You can jailbreak newer firmware but you're unable to downgrade to any OS other than the one they sign. (which is iOS 8 at present)

If you think mentioning it once in a casual comment amounts to "harping" on it, then you should consider buying a dictionary. Secondly, I'm perfectly capable of deciding whether I "benefit" from analytics or not. Your opinion on what is and isn't useful to me is irrelevant.

I wonder what kidn of web we would end up with if adblockers were installed by default on every system. Certainly.. PC vendors would reduce support costs. The user would be shielded from malware java/flash ads and useless resource-hogging "analytics" scripts. Yelp-type parasitic companies that make money by just taking content other people have created and layering a shit-ton of ads on top would disappear overnight. I think that a virtual tip-jar that people can anonymously give to would be a great way to finance the real content creators..

Yes, only 90+% of their revenue is from advertising.

I wouldn't call "It's somewhere inside this multi-million line code base" as pinpointing the problem. :)

You're claiming that Google is purposely breaking their own ability to data mine your email? I somehow highly doubt that. I'm happy to be proven wrong on this.

Its certainly not encrypted when Google receives it. Encrypted data is useless to Google.

Remember that awkward interview with Zuckerberg where he was asked why some of t he FB privacy stuff was opt-out instead of opt-in.. ? I think a lot of companies have learnt from that exchange. Other than nerds, the average person won't care about this as well. Hell 7 years ago all of us would be highly suspicious of software that downloaded unverifiable executables and could update them behind your back like Chrome does now. In the same way where you don't have control over the UI experience of a website, soon any program will be able to modify itself at-will removing control from the user. I remember people being outraged by cookies in the early 00s. The frog has been in the water too long...

So, your privacy hinges on the fact that Google programmers remain incompetent?

You can temporarily fix it by disabling and re-enabling hardware acceleration from the settings. (no restart needed)

Microcode has nothing to with any how you interact with the CPU though. ACPI However *is* the actual Interface. Hes saying lets label all the roads in this town and you're saying Mr. Smith never lets us play inside his yard.

Where did you find out about the lines of code?

Is there any positive reason to see an increase? I'm still using my desktop I built in 2008. The only thing that I might want is an SSD. But with 8GB of RAM, once all the apps/data are cached in memory, there are only very specific use cases where I'd see the boost from the SSD.

Even if the GP was a bit harsh, I don't understand why you think its wrong to be suspicious of Google's motives? What happening is fairly obvious. They want to become a platform like Windows/Linux/OSX and establish control. Chrome (the browser) + NaCl is the trojan horse to accomplish this. I personally would definitely *NOT* want a future with a SaaS model where running applications on my machine would necessitate internet access to Googles servers.

Your 'if you don't like it, fork it' attitude is misplaced. That works for tiny 'hello world' type open source projects. Once OSS projects get to be complex you cannot just fork them without major $ resources. Without the money all you can do is complain on online forums.

Also, One could say a similar thing to you. If you don't like the comment, ignore it :)