So what is your point exactly - that iThings are inhackable or that they are hackable but they are not popular enough to make a difference or what exactly?
What I see a problem with is, that increasing the amount of devices having mostly crappy software inside does not stop. TV sets usually call home (i.e their makers) or else you cannot use some of their functions, the same will happen with the rest of appliances. The problem is not with all but with some of the users who will be abused - trough misuse of the processing power and storage capacity as well as of your connection etc. The increase of attack surface is inevitable. I am rather pessimistic about the remains of our privacy and wealth. IN wild west as well as in middle ages it was not whether you were robbed but whether you survived a robbery and whether you could recover from it. It seems we are getting or already are in a digital version of that. Having more digital shit at home is not going to help much.

Sorry to bring it to you but for this you would need an automated system to sip trough the information and ask you only in rare case of doubt for decision or else you are going to do what all other users of software do - press appropriate key to get rid of the warning or disable warning after the first time already. While such automated systems are possible to make by your self you will have to tweak it for each new appliance having slightly different set of APIs and then maintain the whole lot because the upgrades will surely introduce changes that your systems did not foresee etc. Automatic upgrades will require your attention etc. You can of course switch to bought in privacy and security protection suite from the market leader but uhum how is that going to save you if they are hacked by some criminals on request of NSA etc.
It is increasingly close to impossible to live a normal life and stay out of reach of digital criminals hunting for your data and money. It is like musical chairs but you participate as soon as your mobile and more often when that of your neighbour is on. The digital equivalent of missing a chair is when your data is stolen and misused by privet and state criminals.
1984 is already there only we do not notice because there is not one but a legion of different organisations, mostly private, that dig into your life every second.

I knew it. Something was a-miss this morning, some hidden urge or itch was there. I am sure you know this feeling, you know something is wrong but do not know exactly what. You took cover away and then the difficult to identify feeling becomes a full blown itch and burn - this big monster is called Putin sending his proles to do their dirty deeds.

But seriously - I know there are technical means to mitigate such attacks but they are still an annoyance and the only way to combat those is to go after the attackers. Pointing fingers in general direction of Putin, Russia or Zamunda is not going to do anything but raise tensions possibly, strengthening this overwhelming feeling that conflict is inevitable making the conflict in fact inevitable - if you are under pressure from all sides you may justifiably feel threatened , sort of self fulfilling prophecy.

Yet from another angle - all the BS that NSA and security military industrial complex did over years is making me uneasy about any request for more power. Clearly the police needs more powers to find perpetrators of such acts of IT violence but we also know that they are going to abuse that as soon as they get those new powers. Thus NSA is also a culprit then.

It is not only his but he got 2 insightful mods too. I guess this means lots of Aspies got mod points today.

Calling what a call center worker in India or Pakistan uses English means that English dialects are indeed wider apart than Nordic languages are. That is normal. The language norms have a lot to do with written forms and enforcing (even if not formal) authority. The same happens with English - many people speak it and they do it very differently. Some dialects deviate so much that they are or at least may be considered languages on their own. Whether it stays so is just a guess. With weapons of mass destruction* getting cheaper and cheaper it may be that we will not have that problem in 50 years.

(*) this will inevitably be not only chemical, biological and nuclear agents but also robotics and malware like agents and we shall not forget that biological agents powerful as they may have been so far will become cheaper.

I have to agree with this working in maintenance of closed source and also in QA - our own fault reports were often ignored because the product part reached end of its active development and there was nobody to pay for a fix. This even in a situation where a customer wrote a bug report on that too. So closed source is just as bad or as good. It all depends or in other words: source v. close source is a false dichotomy - there are good&bad products, development teams etc

I have worked in maintenance team few years of my life and if product left the active maintenance you will find out that even paying customers get told to sod off if they complain. Unless of course the problem reached customer-vendor relationship busting proportions and vendor thinks it is worthwhile. It all depends. free software often sucks so much that we went on to make our own or buy shit from 3rd party. Often times this 3rd party or our own in-house developer was even worse.

Life is complex too and it is good so. It is also this complexity that developed as a response to viruses and bacteria. It is probably unavoidable. Connection to interwebs means you are connected to all hackers of the world at once. Using common software means that they had eternity to find weak spots. The cheap and good enough protection that nature had to this problem was complexity and dynamic adaptation to agents of destruction. Theoretically we could develop those things well enough if we tried hard enough but bean counters and our own laziness being forces of nature prevented such positive development.

Indeed - when I was younger, I took for granted that when I go to a doctor or lawyer I would get advices that suit me best. The result is however that you need to know what the hell is going on and this means getting advice twice at least twice especially in doubtful cases. This is not even their fault - they assume you know what is going on and and additional questions are not welcome for many different reasons. They are like any other professional - go with a routine which means in any case out of main road you have to double check yourself. As for glasses - I had to wear them whole my life but I refused. I noticed that a lot depends on the light and on whether I do exercises for my eyes - looking at display whole day long is no way of exercising you eyes and in old age this accumulates very fast because you eyes get stiffer requiring more pressure from muscles to accommodate. Of course exercises are not enough but they actually help me enough to go by without using glasses.

The disease can be catapulted into a new land without 'discovery' - I mean it is enough that some good christian visit the heathens, pass on a few bugs and never manage to come back and here you go - spread disease without discovery.

assuming human population being at 7b, rejecting 99.9% means you still (can) socialize with .1% which is 7m. Pretty social or?
Why so aggressive. There are social people. Then there are owners of super male brain. Then there are sociopaths, or just simple assholes etc. There is very small chance that the social people will ever understand what super male brain actually means. I know because I tried to explain it to my mom, my concerned friends etc. Some people like me because I am good at discussing things (I suppose). All my relationships ended badly which made me research(!) and the result was exactly this. I am maybe not very intelligent but then I am not very social either. I still can hold to few friends that accept that I need some distance and ask nicely from time to time how is it going and then accept complex answer that they get (I guess some of them have the same problem as I do). Keeping a distance is a key not be become a major asshole which works well but not with women.
Ease up a bit - let it go. Some people do not need cuddling and talking about weather. For them discussion about some technical matter instead of weather is very social even if done over IM. It is also better if you talk to them in a way that they can understand i.e. certain procedures of social interaction make chances of professional and date success higher, some not. Please quote relevant statistics and reports.

With one womb and one sperm carrier you are not going to restart the civilization anyway so better choice would possibly be realize that shit is coming down and enjoy the time left by drinking up beverages, using drugs and having sex or just cuddle and comfort each other before the ultimate question is put up in front of us.

You know of course that talking about reality in such politicized subject is not going any good to the moding situation of your post, do you?

So we miss vital information - how many lawyers were on the missing plane.
I can imagine, that in not so distant future the news on such sad occasion would look like this: A plane X from Y to Z went missing with N people on board of which M were lawyers. If M were close to N (conference in some nice brothel in Prague etc) there would be additional info about an official day of mourning.

This is not entirely true - there have been airlines that took precautions and flew over Black Sea instead. Is it not he captain of the plane that has the ultimate power to go for a safer route? We would not have known that MH-17 were at risk then, unless of course somebody were to shoot something out of the skies anyway. This makes for an interesting decision tree. I fly over Black Sea and spend a bit more on fuel and clearly risk my job or I fly over an area where from time to time other planes were shot down and hope that 10+km is enough not to be in a missile range. If he had saved his life, while flying over Black Sea, we possibly would have never known, that flying over Ukraine was such a high risk or maybe we would if other plane were shot down. If another plane were to be shot down, it could have saved his job then. If OTOH his job was not at risk due to slightly higher costs of fuel used to fly over Black Sea then he took moronic decision (together with the guy who pushed the button - if this were the BUK missile operator he probably faced bad choices as well, as there were enemy military aircraft in vicinity).