While true it doesn't change the fact that we know for sure that the NSA and GCHQ are extremely bad offenders. Maybe others are at it too, but all we can do is act on the information we have and that information says that American and British products are routinely bugged.

80% of the world's phone calls certainly don't run through the US. A call placed locally in France stays in France. Why would they route it over the Atlantic and back, adding noticeable delay?

Can you link to some of your old pre-Snowden posts where you made those claims? As far as I am aware very few people were claiming that 4 in 5 phone calls were being recorded in the US, and they certainly had no evidence to back up their claims.

Each bullet creates two more "terrorists", or "freedom fighters" as they were known back in the 80s when they were our friends.

The best thing to do is provide aid from a distance, but otherwise don't get involved. No troops, no arming one side or the other, just food and medicine. The Islamists were losing until we destabilized those countries to the point where they could start winning.

This is a common misunderstanding of how solar fits into the current grid. Demand is highest during peak solar hours. Even if you don't use the power in your own home it gets exported to the grid and runs the air-con and PCs where you work, or some industrial process.

Since the daytime peak consumption is supplied by sources that can ramp up and down, including coal, solar has a huge positive environmental impact.

" Emergency responders suspected that Slot was already dead when they arrived at the debris-littered scene. But he wasn't. Perhaps it's a testament to Tesla's safety measures that Slot remained alive and was briefly resuscitated en route to the hospital"

From the article...

Holy crap. perhaps he died of medical malpractice :O

APC used to be good, but these days most of their range is crap. They went the same route as DeWalt and many other once good brands, relying on their name to sell rather than continued quality.

Also, they are a US company making things that connect to your network/computer, so you have to worry about the NSA. A surge protector filtering your entire internet connection as it comes into your house would be a fantastic place for a bug.

Oscilloscopes are not very good for testing audio equipment. Most only have 8 bit ADCs, or 12 bit at best. There is plenty of good test equipment out there, like spectrum analyzers and THD analyzers, but oscilloscopes only reveal the most glaring of problems I'm afraid.

Sounds a lot like what they are doing in the UK at the moment with paedophilia. They are actually talking about making it a law not to report suspicions now.

Thousands of dollars for speakers that are no better than ones costing a few hundred dollars. Klipsch are well into audiophile mega-money bullshit land I'm afraid.

It's more like they had too many qualities that audiophiles didn't want. The 650MB driver, limited only by the available storage capacity of a CD-ROM, contained vast amounts of crapware with hundreds of effects and "enhancements" available. Audiophiles bought cheap Via Envy24 cards that let you bypass everything, including the Windows sound mixer, and output an unmolested signal.

PayPal is not exactly something to be proud of. It's only popular because eBay forces you to use it and excludes all other online payment methods, not because it's good.

But yeah, all the other stuff is awesome.

Said someone about every president since WW2. You guys elected him twice, collectively you fucking love the guy.

People who really care about audio quality don't buy Creative hardware anyway. That's for gamers. If you want sound quality there are many cards with cheap but excellent chipsets. Via Envy24 codes and Wolfson DACs are the preferred combination, and cards with them cost under a tenner.

Much better to spend the money on better speakers or a headphone amp. If you really want high end sound get an external DAC.

Current EV batteries are good enough, we just need more infrastructure and lower prices. For most people not having to make a special trip to the petrol station would be a welcome time and money saving.