However, Facebook recently decided to hold my account hostage against me giving them my mobile phone. Sadly, with no mobile phone, the 5 year old account will likely remain locked. The funny thing is, going cold-turkey on facebook is like any addiction: painful and traumatic the first day, then less and less so. Just say no to Facebook, then you don't have to worry about Russian propaganda telling you to vote for this or that bunch of crooked politicians.

MP3 players seem to be a dying breed, killed off by cell phones. I am a huge fan of the Sansa Clip and Clip+ lines. I use them to listen to audiobooks, and the Sansa devices integrate well with the Audible.com software (which sucks btw). Currently the Sansa devices command a premium on Amazon since they've been discontinued by Sansa but still have a fan base. For my money, Sansa Clip was the best MP3 player. It wasn't Apple (no iTunes lock in), had decent memory sizes (4 GB, now 8 GB + microSD card), a nicely simple interface. The glaring flaw was the headphone jack. It would wear out (stop making good contact) after about two years heavy use.

This is not the best way to win a battle of ideas. Neil Gaiman says quite nicely here: http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2015/05/neil-gaiman-credo Now I'm going to start searching youtube trying to get censored. Oh, yeah, and now I won't be able to trust any of google searches either.

I'll give them a pass on net neutrality, as it's really not their fight. What they need to be fighting is regional content deals. I am so sick of having Netflix spastically fail if I'm using a VPN.

The calculations to predict when the space station will actually de-orbit are nearly as complex as weather forecasts. It's impossible to do long term, accurate predictions. As for damage, that is one possibility, though lack of fuel to do the final de-orbit burn is also a possibility. As far as suggestions to do weapons testing on it to break up the station, that is a absolutely terrible idea; it just adds to the growing orbital space junk problem.

I have had several long acrimonious conversation with the chat bots that Netflix calls customer service and have come away extremely disappointed. 1) Netflix doesn't care that your a US citizen and your VPN gives you a US geolocation. This is too sensible an approach I guess. They also turn a deaf ear to the 'vpn use for computing safety' argument. 2) Netflix doesn't have an email address that you can send complaints. They like postal mail when hearing from customers. 3) I have lodged complaints to both the FTC (no response) and FCC (a stretch, but they've seemed consumer friendly of late, also no response.) 4) To date none of the netflix chat bots can point me to a terms of service that allows such denial of service. This long after they've started doing it makes me think they are afraid of putting it writing for fear of the consequences. 5) I've been considering a small claims action. Since it's not in the terms of service, a breach of contract claim might work.

Just so everyone understands why Pentatonic is winning: http://ptxofficial.com/home/. I'm actually surprised that so many of the /. crowd had been exposed to this particular musical niche. Good news is that the music is great, bad news is that they are under contract with Sony as a result of winning musical talent TV show call the Sing-Off (season 2).

Law enforcement as in the individuals in our various agencies that decided that no one deserved any privacy. On a related note, every time i read about some government official whinging about terrorism and child predators, I just ignore them. They've cried wolf too many times.

I think I would rather they concentrate on putting more government information online, making government more open rather than implementing systems to make citizens prove who they are.

The article was pretty light on the actual science behind the leak detection, and what it implies. Here's a few facts to help you understand more. 5,000+ 'leaks': This is actually 5000+ areas where the concentration of methane is above some pre-determined number. The instruments used measure into parts-per-billion range, and they also classify every high reading as a leak. While this is likely true in the majority of cases, they seem to neglect things like anaerobic decomposition in sewers, drains and other such places. 'Explosion': Combustion of methane in an unenclosed space has a flame propagation speed that is sub-sonic. Enclosed spaces change the physics of the produced pressure wave and can explode. As methane is lighter than air, this is actually quite difficult to achieve naturally. Propane and higher hydrocarbons are heavier than air and tend to collection in low areas. '10 times the thresh hold for explosion': See above. Methane's lower flammability limit is 5% (in air), and the upper bond is 25%. This concentration would have been too rich to be flammable (5% x 10 = 50%). However at that concentration, the atmosphere in the space is approximately 10% oxygen and you would suffocate.

There hasn't been enough in the news lately to be scarred so the helpful congressfuck decided to try and create some more.

How is the FBI agent not guilty of the following? 1) Breach of chattel -> spy ware program on laptop belonging to the public 2) Wire tap violations -> electronically monitoring communications of another citizen 3) Unlawful access to computer services/devices to which he had no legal right to. 4) Vandalism of public property 5) Wire fraud I don't care what the guy found, he broke the law doing it. Not only should any information collected be tossed out, he needs to be prosecuted. Further more, I'm really sick of hearing judges weasel out of upholding my 4th amendment rights. I'm almost as angry with the spineless judge as I am at the FBI guy for his role in this.He needs to do about a year in prison.

I'm not at all comfortable with credit card companies making unilateral and largely black-box decisions like this. While it's true that having a Visa account is not a right, I'm expect them to provide services without making such decisions for me. I feel as if I have more to worry from Visa than I have from the people they claim are selling shady goods.

I'm not sure if I can defend it, but it actually happens quite frequently to start-ups that burn through investment monies before they become profitable. Essentially a group of people invest money...we'll say A-D in this case.. At some time after investment, company X is still not profitable and have spent all the invested capital and none of the investors want to put new money in. If no one is interested in the business, it just dies. All the workers get fired, any debts get settled in court, and all the investors loose 100% of their investment. In many cases however, one or more of the investors will say, "I'll buy the company for Y dollars, assume the debts, hire some of the staff, ect.". Sometimes Y is very low, so all the remaining investors get nearly completely wiped out, all the stock is worthless. I think of it like a poker game where everyone else folded. Surprisingly the staff at the new company isn't typically all that upset about loosing their stock options. They've known for a while their company wasn't making any money and the options were worthless anyway.

If by 'heatmap' you mean the map that shows 1st year expected radiation exposure in REM? There is nothing wrong with that graphic. I has clearly labeled units and values. I don't find anything scary at all about it, nor is it misleading in any respect.

The rest of the article does gets a little wishy-washy talking about the 'Denver Dose' and other concepts that are nothing besides poorly supported theories, and even goes to complain that the current best model of the dangers of radiation doesn't fit with his own hopes and wishes. Nevertheless the graphic ATMAvator complains of doesn't have the faults he attributes to it.