Firstly, I don't particularly care whether the whole of the internet knows my shopping / browsing history, likes and dislikes. I'll enable some basic privacy measures mostly to limit ads because I dislike those resource hogs, but by and large I don't consider myself to be interesting enough for others to give a damn. But from a rhetorical standpoint, how does one truly eliminate their exposure to this while still interacting with others who don't?

Take email for example, I could set up my own email server and avoid Google cataloging every email I've ever sent or received, but it won't protect me from them gathering that information from other Google users I send emails to or receive emails from ...

You have very little control over the collection / creation of your credit history and it's essential for most basic aspects of living, so going to a cash-only state of being likely isn't realistic.

I just don't see how we can truly eliminate the threat. People are so accustomed to the services we enjoy and are certainly accustomed to not paying much for them. If every site wanted to exist without being a surveillance threat, you'd have to pay to keep each site online, and most people won't do that.

I'm not sure why anyone cares. Apple is clearly marketing this against products like those from Bose and Sonos, not a sub-$100 echo / echo dot / google home. They clearly spent time on a product that they thought would have great sound quality to compliment their Amazon Music service. Sure, it will probably connect to more services over time and become more useful for the home automation / information services that many have come to respect the Echo / Google Home products for, but I don't think that's their short game. Apple's products have always been about the not-so-subtle-hand-in-your-back push toward using only their services, so I'm not surprised they don't integrate well with Pandora/Spotify, etc. However, it also doesn't do it any worse than their current system (start playback -> set playback to airplay compatible device -> done). They will sell plenty of these, don't waste your time comparing it to products half its price, and don't buy one if it doesn't suit your needs.

I have 5 Echo products and love them, but they could still sound way better than they currently do, but I've also spent less than $500 to have devices throughout my house, so I can't complain about what I've achieved for the price.

And really, who asks their smart device about their calendar?

Overwatch's implementation of loot boxes is slightly different from the standpoint of the rewards being merely cosmetic in nature. It doesn't unlock playability per se. My issue with loot boxes and other forms of progression reward systems is that game content (which you believe you paid for) is locked behind a door that can only be opened through either 1) a potentially obscene amount of time or 2) an indeterminable amount of cash. My first frustration with this was in Mass Effect 3, where individual characters for multiplayer were locked behind a loot based system. Try as I might I kept unlocking more skins for characters I already had instead of the new characters I really wanted to play. They didn't even offer those characters through direct sale so the ONLY way to obtain them was to gamble money buying loot boxes. I don't mind cosmetics being a gamble, but don't lock game altering characters/weapons/powerups behind a system where those with more time/money have an advantage. We all bought the game and she be able to compete in the multiplayer game modes based on pure skill.

Probably not a lot of gold owners sweating it out over the fear of their gold being stolen via the internet, or becoming worthless if their computers crash or they forget a password. But now we're getting into the differences between a store of value and a currency. Gold is a store of value, you don't use it for transactions as it's not well suited for that. Bitcoin wants to be a currency, but has its own shortcomings there (and let's not even get started discussing the number of high profile thefts of bitcoin to date ...)

You know, except for 2007-2010, during the financial crisis, when home values plunged about 30%.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Unless they start receiving public funding, I have to disagree. I don't care which candidate it's against, these are private companies run with private money and if they want to push personal agendas to either attract or deter potential customers, that's their right. If you're going to go to Facebook or Twitter for objective news, you're already barking up the wrong tree. These are social sites, where people post all manner of mindless rants, T&A, and pet photos. It should not be your primary source of objective news.

I really don't see a problem with the way that Tesla has implemented this or the name they choose to call it by. Clearly you are going to have some people who push it to the extreme and those people will suffer (or possibly die) because of it. I don't really see how this is all that different from cruise control in general. Cruise control was originally designed to alleviate the physical stress of maintaining a constant speed over long distances (for similar reasons that it exists on planes). Adding the ability for the car to maintain itself in a lane is a further iteration of that, as is the car's limited ability to respond to obstacles in its way. Guess what, if you set cruise control on your car and don't pay attention to changes in traffic ahead of you, you may slam into a car going slower than you, yet none of our cars warn us when we engage cruise control that we should keep checking for cars in front of us (I'm sure it's in the manual in the glove box though). Should Tesla change the name of the feature? I suppose they could, I doubt it would modify anyone's behavior. It doesn't take you that long to realize what the car appears to be able to do before you'll let it steer, accelerate, and brake, regardless of what's it called or what warning messages are read to you.

Umm, an iPhone 6S Plus with 128GB of memory is already $950 ...

Problem is, with mobile carriers abusing us on data limits, most people are thankful that their phones will find an open network and use it to update their Facebook feeds in the background. So it's not just about maintaining a list of AP's, but also checking if you have permission to get on them.

Couldn't agree more. In fact, on the topic of SSH, it baffles me that the port option is different between ssh and scope. In ssh it's "-p" but in scp it's "-P". Who made that decision?

The fallacy in your argument is that the other person's behavior (slower driving) causes more accidents due to his speed. I'd wager that's not the case. It likely causes more accidents due to everyone else's impatience. An example would be if everyone drove 5 mph the likelihood of a car accident fatality would plummet. Why? Because there just isn't enough energy imparted in a 5-10mph collision with a modern vehicle to cause any loss of life. So don't try and sell me that their slowness causes accidents. It only creates a dangerous situation when other people on the road can't cope.

Your argument also addresses a few things I did not. For one, stoplight timing is an issue and, as you said, it can be set to correspond to the speed limit. If so, then little is gained by speeding, and I have no argument with you there. Remember that my argument is that cars should not exceed the speed limit.

Well the sentiment here definitely seems to lean toward "let me speed, limits are for dummies" camp. I, for one, would be in favor of a system that enforced posted speed limit signs. Each day that I take to the road I'm putting my life and those of my family members at risk because some other driver HAS to get to the next red light faster than me. I've also found that in many areas around me, speed limits are entirely unenforced, creating a situation where there is a posted limit of 55 mph but an average speed of about 75 mph. If you choose to be the law-abiding citizen, then you are met with inconsiderate gestures and road rage for being, what I can only assume they deem to be, a douche.

Perhaps if everyone were actually restricted to going the same maximum speed, then the maximum speed might be increased slightly due to less variability. That is what has always perplexed me about the resistance to automated cars. People seem to be in a rush to get places, presumably out of some need for transportation efficiency. But think of how much more efficient the entire system would be if it were automated? Following distances could be reduced, speeds increased, stop lights practically eliminated, the list goes on. My safety, and those that choose life, should be given priority on roads and for their sake, cars should be limited in reasonable ways to ensure compliance with posted limits and other traffic laws. Remember that driving is not a right, it's a privilege, and my safety shouldn't be subject to someone else's desire to see if their raised 4x4 is stable at 95 mph in the rain.

With a stable currency you're unlikely to lose money that way ... as opposed to an untimely investment in a speculative market where you may lose 0-100% of your value which you may or may not have the time to wait out for that value to return, but don't take it from me, take it from the millions of baby boomers who wanted to retire in 2008 but then had to work another 10 years because their investments lost a big chunk of value. I'll bet the money in their mattresses didn't get affected much.

I agree with some of what you're saying, but I think the biggest thing holding back Linux on the Desktop is all the duplicity of development effort carried out on the hundreds of various distributions. If we want Linux to be a competitor, we need to stop forking. There's clearly enough development taking place to support a competitive operating system, but we're spreading that effort too thin by trying to maintain and improve a dozen window managers, two dozen email clients, a hundred music players, and a few dozen package managers, etc. I get it, everyone thinks they have a better idea and 1 in 10 of those actually is better. But just think about how great an OS we could have at this point if all of that effort had been put into perfecting just one or two products. If we limited ourselves to one or two distros then it would be easier for all of that development work to be put into creating a standard set of gui tools for configuration settings so that the use doesn't have to open a terminal prompt to change something. If we focused our collective efforts on one set of PDF viewers / music players / IM clients, etc, we could pull together an OS that is AS polished as OS X is.

I install Linux on a "desktop" every 2 years or so just to see how things have improved and every time I do that, even with the same distro, there have been numerous changes but very few improvements. There's a new picture manager app, or a new default email client, but the feature sets haven't improved much. If we can get to that level of polish and consistency, then we'll open that door to more market penetration which will then hopefully lead to solutions for the other 2 problems:

1) Drivers (mentioned already on this page)
2) Commercial application support (also already mentioned)

Both of those are important, but their solution becomes easier if we can create a standard linux distribution that they can focus their efforts around.

Agreed. There are also OpenMP implementations for doing your parallel processing. If you're running on a Xeon processor then I would SERIOUSLY consider Intel's linux fortran compiler as it will provide the best performance by far.