California has no business trying to regulate what sites on the Internet can/can't do. For that matter, neither do national governments.

Let's say I operate a site similar to IMDb, from here in Texas or some freewheeling island country somewhere. If California (or Germany, or Russia, or whereever) tries to regulate the content of that site, I will cheerily ignore them. They have no jurisdiction.

They're quite welcome to block my site, if they can get their ISPs to cooperate. But it's BS to specify what websites can/can't show.

Now, maybe IMDb operates out of California, so that's where "jurisdiction" comes in. If that's the case, IMDb needs to move the site (& dba location, but not necessarily office/staff location) out of state. Too bad, CA, you just regulated a business out of your state entirely!

I didn't mind the sidebar ads in Yahoo Mail, but when they started putting ads in the list of email looking like another email - that's when I'd had enough.

So if they want to get rid of THAT one practice, I'll gladly turn off my ad-blocker.

But I like Yahoo's email interface much better than Gmail or almost any others. Especially the ease of moving messages to folders.

He should have taken the money and run long ago - I mean, it's Bitcoin, he didn't even have to launder it!

First Microsoft with Windows 8 - flattened UI elements, soft unshaded coloring, squared corners, etc. I dub it the "crayon look" - both because of the dumbed down simple look, and because of MS seemed intent to treat us like kids using crayons, instead of intelligent users who prefer a more polished look. It took years to finally get the sculpted, more-pleasing look of Windows 95 (remember Windows 3.1?..it was 'flat'). Now we're being regressed backwards.

After Windows 8, many apps and websites began updating their own visual schemes to "the crayon look".

Then Apple follows suit (essentially) with a similar style in OS X Yosemite - and iOS8.

Now we're going to have the same thing in Android.

It's like they've all become lemmings, rushing to trample off the edge of the usability cliff!

I kept hoping this was a temporary trend and I could wait out these releases until sanity returned...but it's starting to feel like they've all drunk the same kool-aid and this isn't going away for a while. How long before most major Linux distros start adopting the 'flat' (crayon) look, too?

Why is this even an issue? Unless the Post is an International company with offices in Europe (maybe it is?) then this request should not apply at all. An EU ruling is not a worldwide mandate - much as they might like it to be.

More importantly, there was a clue to a treasure map found on board. Ben Gates is being called in to analyze.

EXACTLY. Was hoping someone had pointed this out - a Fuel Cell car IS an EV - it just uses a fuel cell to produce the electricity, instead of batteries. Everything else is basically the same. So let's get electric done right first, then worry about swapping out batteries for a fuel cell. And that's what the manufacturers should be aiming for - a module approach, make a battery-module and a fuel-cell module and make them swappable....there was an announcement of some small EV maker planning on just that...but what should happen is Tesla & Toyota get together on it...

> I consider it to be the UI equivalent of the Brutalist architectural style (those bare concrete box buildings from the 70s).

I've been calling it the "Crayon Style". I consider it condescending...it's like MS decided we were all children (or old) and needed the "simpler" look to better use our computers. I prefer a more sculpted look - if that's "skeuomorphic" then fine, give me skeuomorphic.

Yes! Sheldon is vindicated!!

Also sounds like the dominant paradigm in WebOS...

Maybe the answer is, not to block Germany from accessing YouTube - but withdrawl all business presence from Germany. I mean, why can YouTube be taken to court in Germany, if it's not a German company? I suppose it's some international-corporation thing, but I'm not a businessman so I don't know. But I've never understood why Germany thinks it can regulate YouTube - at least, not youtube.com (vs youtube.de). So - get rid of youtube.de, and Germans will just have to go to youtube.com instead.

If I were to open a US based site, as a US-only business (or not even as a business) and some users uploaded german-copyrighted material - could I be sued in Germany, just because Germans could reach the site? I'd think not! That would mean anyone putting up a site on the Internet could be sued in any country in the world. Of course, that's a lot of the impetus behind the SOPA and CISPA type laws. Essentially, publishing on the Internet will become like broadcasting before too long - regulated, licensed, and definitely not cheap. The "frontier" is ending.

In the race for subscription dollars, rates for TV services across providers have risen sharply over the last decade as the number of specialty channels, each commanding its own fee, has soared.

There's the real problem right there. The cost keeps going up. So, reduce the overall cost to the consumer, and we won't care if you "bundle" other channels. Get the specialty channels to reduce their fees, or to be included in "bundles" and so long as the overall monthly cost is kept low, the other channels can ride along.

What I fear is everything becoming "specialty" - or charging like it - can you imagine paying $10/mon PER CHANNEL? e.g for SyFy - $10, Discovery - $10. Food network - $5. But that's basically what a la carte will do - eventually each channel will cost $5-$10/month, with "bigger" ones (HBO, Showtime) being $12-$15.

So, for just a FEW channels, the cost is MORE than it would be now:
SyFy $10
Discovery $10
HBO $15
Food $5
ABC $5
NBC $5
CBS $5
FOX $5
CNN $5
COMEDY $5
TBS $5
USA $5
-----
$80/month!

So, PLEASE, let's just go back to one flat rate per month for EVERYTHING - and let's keep it to say, $75/month. Any more for 'tv' makes me just want to kick the thing out on the curb and go back to playing card games, reading, etc.