"Addressing" can mean "acknowledging" as in "Frock acknowledged the privacy concerns of its technology, then proceeded to lie about its ubiquitous survellance data...."

Or, to put it another way: "Dear person with privacy concerns, let me address them by simply saying 'Frock you!' Sincerely, Frock executive."

I don't know about you, but when I'm driving and I see a police car, if there's little or no other traffic I make sure I'm at or below the speed limit. If I'm in moderate traffic going the speed limit, I wait until the cop is out of sight for a minute or two before trying to pass. If I'm in heavy traffic I'm probably stuck in a pack, so it doesn't matter.

In the first two scenarios, my increased attention to my speed probably has a non-zero improvement in safety for the moment in question.

Back to your original point:

I don't have any citation to back this up, but I've heard that for most crimes, the certainty of being caught is a stronger deterrent than the expected punishment. Unfortunately, "near certainty of being caught" when you break the law is pretty much the definition of a police state. As long as "X" is tolerably low, I would rather live in a country where I have X% chance of being a victim of a particular type of crime in a given year with less survellance than where I have 0.5X% chance with more survellance.

"Convincing would-be criminals they will be caught" does nothing to deter the person bent on suicide (like the Brown University murderer) or the person who intends to be caught (people engaged in civil disobedience expecting to be arrested to make a point).

There's not much that can stop someone who is 1) smart enough to pull off a crime, and 2) determined to commit the crime no matter what the consequences.

Deterrence keeps honest people honest and it sometimes keeps those who are dishonest but who do don't want to face the consequences honest - or at least it makes them think about committing a different crime or committing the crime in a different place, one where he's either going to face tolerable consequences if caught or where he believes his chances of being caught are tolerably low.

He was dead for 2 days when they found him. He had things with him that tied him to Brown University murders and I think to the MIT professor's murder. He would've been found eventually without any assistance from Flock or from the eyewitness.

The only thing that the eyewitness and Flock provided was a quicker end to the manhunt. Given that people in the Brown community were living in fear that a gunman was still out there, this is still worth something. Is it worth living in what is a few short steps away from (or arguably, already) a police state? That's a question society will need to answer.

What about other subscriptions? No need to actually answer this (it's really not my business what you spend your money on), but it's something to think about.

Do you subscribe to a garbage-collection service (if you live in a US city, you probably do whether you want to or not). Does your water, electricity, or wastewater service have a minimum or flat-rate charge (some do, some don't)? Do you have any kind of insurance with recurring charges? Do you subscribe to any dead-tree or electronic magazines or the like other than the online newspapers mentioned above? Do you provide ongoing monthly/yearly support any non-profits that give you something that you value in return?

These are all subscriptions of a sort.

It's easy enough to rent a shell somewhere that will let you do what you want using ssh-reverse connections. Yes, that's another required monthly payment, but at least it's not to your smart-device-manufacturer or to your ISP, which collectively put you in this position in the first place.

Sidebar: Personally, with the current security landscape, your average consumer is best served by having inbound connections blocked at the ISP level. That said, they should be able to unblock them without having to pay extra for the privilage. The only requirement should be "I know what I'm doing, and I won't let the inbound port be abused to cause problems for you, your customers, or the internet at large."

If ending support violates an "implied warranty for fitness" the seller or manufacturer could owe you a refund depending on what legal jurisdiction you are in.

Arbitrary bricking or arbitrarily removing features that were marketed at the time you bought it could also be grounds for damages, depending on where you live.

Arbitrartion requirements notwithstanding, the companies could still be on the hook for lawsuits from goverments on behalf of their residents, particularly if a state Attorney General thinks he can score political points by suing the company. As a consumer though, I wouldn't count on my government to stand up for me in a case like this.

With all the space junk, you need to be able to get out of the way.

As for going on the offense, nobody should be shocked that military satelites are able to do this.

I have an alarm clock that lets you set multiple alarms and choose the special effect you want when it goes off. The choices are 1) blaring noise, 2) play what's connected to the audio-input jack (designed for CD-in), 3) play one of the many available AM or FM broadcast radio stations. You may know it by its common name, "radio alarm clock."

But it doesn't have a network connection. It doesn't need one. I wouldn't use it if it had one. If I was forced to use it, I would get a different alarm clock.

Oh, if you want special effects on your alarm clock, you might as well go all out, Wallace and Gromit-style.

Cars require you to buy gas or electricity. Flashlights require batteries (especially pre-LED ones). Smartphones require you to buy connectivity (or mooch for it). The list goes on.

The main difference is vendor lock-in. I can buy gas or electricity from a company other than the one that sold me the car.

Either way though, if I don't pay up every month, my device is pretty useless except as an paperweight or status symbol.

I get that the heat has to go somewhere, but there are ways to build a system that doesn't "consume" much water.

Building these kinds of systems may cost more cash up-front but the cost to the people in your state/country (which becomes a political/regulatory cost to you down the road) of using water in areas where water is scarce needs to be factored in.

You want the Harvard Architecture version of AI.

Create AI-generated "fake" movie trailers for movies entering the public domain this January 1. Just be sure the AI is only trained on public-domain materials.

Here's some previous /. coverage of Public Domain Day.

I'm not surprised that people use crypto-currencies for criminal acts, just as I'm not surprised they use US Federal Reserve Notes for the same.

As for profiting exhorbitantly by inflating the exchange rate, that sounds like the free market in action to me. Back in the day when crossing the border meant changing out your paper money, you saw the same thing with money-changers near border crossings - customers were willing to pay a less favorable rate for the convenience of not having to go to a bank.