I use owncloud and I really love it. It's been awesome to be able to access my files from anywhere while still maintaining control of them down to the metal. I sync my calendar and contacts with my phone through caldav and carddav. I am very close to running cyanogenmod/lineages without google play services. It certainly isn't as convenient as Google, but freedom isn't free. I am glad that I can get a little bit of control back.

Not exactly true on 1) (unless you still run Windows XP). So long as UAC is enabled, programs run with non-admin privs by default (even under an admin account). Of course this won't stop users from blindly clicking 'Allow' without thinking about what they're doing.

Well said. The fact that Samsung (and other manufacturers) can brick your devices remotely is disturbing. Even PC's are not safe from this sort of thing anymore thanks to Windows 10. What's disturbing is that this capability could be used for any reason at any time.

The more immediate threat (at least until 01/20/2017) is to domestic violence victims. Abusers won't need to install special tracking apps on their victim's device. They just need to enable this feature. And before someone comments on the attacker needing physical access to the device, they oftentimes have it in these situations.

I didn't know that iPads had floppy drives. Units are important. :-)

If I get any IoT devices they will go on a separate subnet that has no internet access. I will only purchase devices that will talk to a server I control. The firewall will only allow traffic to the device subnet from my trusted subnet and VPN. It's not perfect but it's a lot more secure than handing over control to a company that "cares" about security only after they've been compromised.

The feature I'd like to see in Office is a search bar that finds the button you're looking for on the ribbon.

I'm getting scared of Thermaltake power supplies now. I just had one fail (1/2 year before the 5 year warranty expires). It shorted out the AC input. I'm glad the circuit breaker worked or I would have had a fire too. :-{

Yep, they will. It's still good to have it on paper. The separation of powers in the United States is far from perfect, but we're still way ahead of countries with a single-party dictator.

It would be awesome to see an emphasis on home servers and server clusters. I run owncloud and I recently clustered it (two web server VM's, 3 mysql galera VM's; two pfSense/HAProxy VM's). All of this runs on hardware with Intel chips (one Xeon E3, one i7, one NUC - all Haswell). I might even get another server I have so many VM's. :-)

Unfortunately, the biggest barrier to entry for running a home server is the internet connection, not the hardware. Dynamic IP's can cause your cloud to be unavailable until dynamic DNS updates and the cache gets cleared. My encrypted offsite backups to dropbox slow my upload speed almost to a halt (and downloads from my server when I'm not on my network). I'm already paying way too much money for a static IP.

Of course they're doing it for business reasons. The opposition of tech companies to government spying is one of the few situations where corporate interests align (coincidentally) with those of the people. The fact that corporations play a large part in US politics gives a tiny bit of hope that something will be done.

I was waiting for someone to mention pfSense. I used to run iptables / packet forwarding on my server but I've replaced it with pfSense running in a VM. I've since spun up a second pfSense VM on my other server and configured CARP. Last time I tested it I got close to gigabit routing between my subnets. pfSense (pfSense.org) is an enterprise grade firewall / router that is based on FreeBSD. It is completely free and open source (no community vs. commercial edition). If you plan to do anything advanced with your home network, I highly recommend it!

I really wish I could replace the CPU/Board/Graphics of my old Thinkpad T400 and keep the case/keyboard/display (especially the indicator lights). No such luck so far. :-(

Putting stuff like this on a separate VLAN is always a good idea to protect against unknown backdoors. To protect against known backdoors, I prohibit those devices from connecting to any of my networks at all.

There should be a constitutional amendment against it.