Not doubting you, but I just happened to be thinking about this very sort of thing as I was walking to work, and I just wondered if you could point to any particular brands or models (regions/countries?) of TV that does this. I have a Samsung that I've stuck behind PiHole on my network to block all it's incoming and outgoing 'telemetry', but I'd never considered it might be screen capturing too, even if I won't let it send on it's pretty pictures.
Wonder how many porn screencaps they get :D

I think this will his harder for these services in certain countries where cable isn't quite as entrenched. In Australia, for example, the cable roll-out was controversial and where I am these companies were banned from stringing cable from above ground poles and iirc, they couldn't use the conduit underground, so if you wanted 'cable' you needed a satellite dish on the roof. Free-to-air tv was kinda the norm until reasonably recently.
The people I know who do have Foxtel (I can't think of anything that's not streaming that could be called 'cable' or satellite tv here, there probably is), have cable for the sports which used to be on free to air, but are now almost exclusively on pay tv.
I think a lot of people cancelled their subscriptions when that happened as you had to pay extra for sport, and you also had to have the standard package of pretty ordinary channels too.
When streaming first hit Australia with Netflix and Stan(Aust only iirc), content wasn't as fragmented, but it was limited compared to the US Netflix content (vpn subscriptions went up a great deal around then I hear), but now with Prime, Disney+, AppleTV etc etc, the fragmentation is starting to hit and at least again in my anecdotal experience of talking to others, the idea of having 4+ subscriptions to get content that used to be on Netflix but then rights changed to x, then to y, and how Prime has stuff that was part of your subscription but now is rent/buy.... well, I'm thinking that it's probably universally hated by consumers, but I think we Aussies haven't had this sort of content restriction and array of services needed to get stuff that 'I'm sure it was there yesterday?'.
In the end, IMO, it's just going to make it something that becomes front and centre in the public eye, and I don't know that it will help these services keep subscribers or get new subscribers at all.

I've even heard that the 6502 and via etc chips are popular due to the assembler being pretty much x86 without the extensions. Overkill, but cheap and well known. Last time I checked, some suppliers (not small ones) don't have them, and the ones you mention, in stock at all.

I was really impressed with the YubiKey, and I still have one, but I won't use it unless I have a way of unlocking my account if the key fails - this is all because my last key did fail, and I didn't carry it on my keychain, or anything that would cause it to be excessively knocked around.
One day it just started to spit out only roughly half the size of the expected key, and of course I had no way to verify whether what it did output was valid or not. This bit me hard with Passpack (not a recommendation, in fact I left their service too) as I couldn't get in because I needed the yubikey for my packing key. If you don't have that, you're out of luck.
To be fair, however, I didn't email their support and explain the situation - I only used my account for passwords shared by work, so it was trivial to create a new account and have the passwords shared to that account instead.
This experience, however, has made me very wary about any hardware only encryption/private key devices. The Trusted Platform Module (TPM, kinda created for evil in the first place), is getting some interest in using the hardware key for whole boot verification and encryption, but if your motherboard craps itself and you don't have your data somewhere else, you're SOL. Just my 2c

...but can you be sure they're not a nuclear scientist, who up until now was at a loss as to how to boost their thermo-nukes and now we've gone and pointed them in a new exciting direction! (I'm sure there is even something you could add about lithium and the mood of a previously depressed AC nuclear scientist but I'd need more coffee ;))

You touched briefly (or made me think of at least) the idea of the consequences of 'cheap easy power', irrespective of how it is made. Ever since we jumped on a new energy bandwagon - coal (industrial revolution), oil (motor vehicles, plastics), electricity (however it has been historically and currently generated) and more, it has led to a fairly large jump forward in technology, way of life and so on.
Limitless power has always been a holy grail of sorts, IOW what we might do if we get even closer.... quite an open ended 'hand-wavey' sort of statement, but we already live in quite interesting times... questions of ownership and collaboration, sharing of information just regarding the actual technology itself are themselves pretty huge, but then what!

The mind boggles eh

I'd like to hate you but I can't - I'll admit it's pure jealousy.
- drinking at 11am on a Thursday
- beautiful (from your description) microbrew
- IPA

*sigh*

Raise one for me if you'd be kind enough sir

Indeed RPM is going to be what makes or breaks fuel efficiency. We can't forget torque as well - the m3 has a nice big v8, getting that power at low RPM (well all through the range, but in the above instance) which in turn allows it to be running at 1.5k-2k RPM. IOW how much difference the extra top gear or higher ratio would work if you have to build up that smaller car through 4 or 5 higher rpm gears to get to the speed it can run at a lower rpm. Might work ok in country drives....

I was diagnosed a few years back (I'm in my early 30's now, so around 29ish) with ADHD-Innatentive and to be honest I was very sceptical (not to mention my family or other people I told). I had been battling with depression since my teens, and after going through a great deal of different medications I saw another PDoc.

He explained to me about research (sorry I don't have the citations needed) which talked about the inatentive form of ADHD being linked with some kinds of anxiety and depression. In my case past medical help had been treating only part of the whole, and suggested we try treating the ADHD as well.

The diagnosis (well the treatment) really changed my life - it gave it back to me and you really can't put a price on that. I will have to take medication for the rest of my life unless some major breakthrough happens, which isn't beyond the realms, but should that breakthrough not happen so be it - I have finally found something which works for me, and I'm happy.

First up, I'm not an American or a Russian and this is pure speculation..... :) The image of a person on the inside who becomes outraged with 'the system' and enlightens the rest of the affected populous (kinda sounds like - "it's people... you're eating people!") is one that conjures a romantic image of a 'good' person. To most the idea of being spied on without your knowledge or even a good cause is abhorrent, but irrespective of what it was that was leaked/whistleblown/shut down it does make a good story, almost worthy of or even similar to movies made of super spies and jaded heroes of the people. I have no reason to suspect that Mr Snowden is anything but a good man who felt he had to act, and I'm certainly not trying to suggest otherwise.

Now, I was just pondering your post and it made me think of the contrast to the Cold War days - "CIA vs KGB" and the whole espionage/intelligence gathering and how information can be used. Propaganda is certainly nothing new, but let's say a government did have a spy/agent/whateveryacallit inside the government gathering intelligence. Of course locations of Armies and military operations, movements of VIPs etc are always going to be intelligence gold, but what if you wanted to not just gather information but wage an information war. I'm sure in conjunction with cyber attacks and strategic stock or other economic trading a government sized entity could do a country a serious amount of damage without firing a shot.
I'm sure it's not a new idea by any stretch, just an observation of the way information and the media age we live in can be used as a weapon.

Weird conflicted feeling..... :)

I agree with you on the outset, (assuming I understand correctly...) that for example slowing traffic at already busy intersections, at busy times etc does have the effect of getting more people to see a message at the cost of inconveniencing people who perhaps are already on the side of the protesters or as you say have nothing to do with whatever the protest is about...

I don't think that cyber attacks are a great deal different. Let's make up a company, say Sarny, they make um... sarnies. For some reason many people who are savvy online don't care for the actions of Sarny and use a denial of service or something to make their online presence go slow which is their form of protest. In comes another consumer who doesn't know/care about Sarny's online activities, but they need to connect to the same website to get some kind of update or information, firmware, whatever.

In an ideal world (IDK is it the ideal outcome?) - people who would not know about the reasons behind the protest, become informed, and then join the protest, at which point above company realises the error of it's ways and consults with the community at large to make sure they can make everyone happy. (I know I know, not the usual outcome, but we can still dream). The upsides being that both the consumer is informed of an issue they may not have known about before, and the company realises that either intentionally or not, they need to do something to keep their customers.

Now, there are many many other outcomes we could invent, imagine or point to previous examples of, but one that springs to my mind (one I can't answer but would be interested to hear what people think), let's say that DDoS became a valid form of protest. How much of the population at large would be able to really understand what it means and what the ramifications are? What if the online protest seriously damaged the company to the point of causing great loss or even bankruptcy? How does the law deal with extended in person protests that might damage a company still trading?

I know there have been times my primitive brain would have said 'yay 'x' company went down to people power', but I do wonder what happens to workers, communities, and .... shareholders (*shudder* ;)

Anyway just some ramblings

I agree, they have to treat every threat as a possible real danger.

I'll admit that the likelyhood of there being more than one person sending in the threats is at least moderate - copycats who thought it was a laugh at the beginning, but I'd say now after 70+ there is also most likely a large percentage of those threats that came from one individual.

Now to go a bit 'criminal minds'-ish on you, but if you'll indulge, many cases of criminal behaviour which lead to rather random events (bombings, spree shootings, serial killings) and others that are more common will have an individual who will send bizarre and often non-sensical warnings beforehand:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_McVeigh#Plan_against_federal_building_or_individuals
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unabomber#Manifesto
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Son_of_sam#Letters_and_profiling

Just a few examples. So perhaps it's possible we have an individual here who has a grudge or some twisted mission. They begin to send letters, hoping for action, attention. Suddenly things are happening, people are being evacuated, the media is listening, even another man (ex-professor) was arrested for sending threatening emails. What if there is a next stage in their plan?

I honestly hope there isn't and it's just some fool who has let a prank get way out of hand, but I don't think they should ignore any threats because the results could be devastating.

Terminus is what I tend to use now, but I really liked Neep and Neep Alt(I think). I think it was in the jmk-bitmap packages or the like. Google would probably find them :)

Reading code is not like reading prose. It's more like reading poetry, where how the text elements are spaced and aligned can say a lot about the author's intended meaning. If I'm reading a book, I definitely want it typeset with a proportional typeface. Code, on the other hand, is MUCH more legible when set monospaced.

It's really great that Daltrey an Townshend are into this. Keith Moon would have made it into a joke