Wake me up when they've got something a little more all-terrain. This thing couldn't negotiate it's way over a power cord, if it can even negotiate the pile in my carpeting (which looks doubtful)

I gave up on Firefox around version 1.4 when it became clear it was no longer anything like the lean, mean lightweight browser I was looking for, and once was it's apparent target. The bloat factor caused it to become irrelevant after that.

it's clear that reporting a vulnerability to someone in a position to actually fix it (such as the developer of the software) often doesn't work so well. We've seen severe negative effects as they strive to cover up rather than address the vulnerability, attacking the messenger instead. What better way to escalate a bug and get it fixed, than to sell it to the highest bidder and see it get exploited in the field by bad actors?

Your mistake is expecting much of anything from facebook. The sooner we all move to Diaspora where control isn't ceded to someone with a vested interest in selling ad space, the better.

Whether or not they are ACTUALLY storing everything is rather moot, since you can't tell when they are and when they're not. It's safest to assume everything is recorded, and that way you'll never be caught by surprise (nobody expects the FBI inquisition!). It's also prudent to assume that any encryption you are using will be cracked within your lifetime. Not that you shouldn't use it mind you, at the very least it might force them to earn their pay.

But why don't we all see if we can get Congress to raise their budget for hard drives by transmitting terabytes of hard to compress random noise to each other as if it were something important? We can prove they're trying to store it if all of a sudden the budget gets raised in the face of massive mounting debt and the sequester...

Does it come in a Guy Fawkes?

Who shops at major groceries anymore? I get most of my food at the farmers market. I like to pick my own produce, not phone it in.

And BTW, the real scandal here is why is this not a standard feature of answering machines by now? This is a relatively easy to implement feature that we should have had for years by now. Why don't we? Because the makers of the devices also make equipment for the phone companies who have no interest in blocking calls, and these powerful companies position allows them to call the shots in home answering machines.

Unfortunately, as long as surveys and political calls are exempted from the do-not-call rules, the PERCEPTION will continue to be that these systems, and the laws regarding phone solicitation, don't work. The solution is simple. Incoming calls from non-whitelisted numbers are first asked to enter an extension number, as if it were a business. You then give out your number to people you WANT to call you with an extension number. Incoming calls that don't know allowed numbers just can't get through, and you can have a few valid numbers so that you can categorize your allowed incoming callers as well if you want. Extension number as password. Asterisk can be set up to do this.

"Relevant" here means they don't argue with you when your ideas are stupid.

What they don't realize, is that it IS the Milky Way, as it was 13.3 billion years ago. Of course it's smaller.

However, it doesn't explain what would suppress both empathy and analytics, something clearly evidenced in this post.

"Laziness" is an easy claim to generalize, but it not always so easily stands up to scrutiny. Other possible explanations are: insufficient education, insufficient opportunity, and to risk being politically incorrect, insufficient IQ. Sufficient ambition may be able to counter some of these in some circumstances, not all. And someone who would think everyone who does not pay taxes is lazy and shiftless could hardly be less analytical.

The existance of conservative Republicans proves there must be an additional factor, something that suppresses BOTH empathy and analytics...

All it would take is one of these to mutate in the wild into something not so particular, and wham, worldwide pandemic.

So what exactly is the US track record of abiding by international consensus? Seems to me, it's not all that good.