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That silly Backspace thing is not in Firefox by the way

browser.backspace_action

This link does a pretty good job of explaining why calories are not all that useful when trying to lose weight. They are a piece of the puzzle, sure, but simply counting them isn't all that effective.

I really don't understand the "gee this is boilerplate" milquetoast shrug-and-bear it response. Boilerplate dogshit is what it arbitration clauses are.

These include details like waiving your right to a juried trial and agreeing to go into arbitration instead

Did you know you can opt-out in many cases?

"All things considered" has more on why these arbitration clauses are evil and you should always say "no".. So does the la times, the nation, lifehacker", and pretty much everywhere.

When you agree to arbitration you're agreeing to wave your right to a try in lieu of a system that is biased for business and rules against consumers 94% of the time

TIL that the Oculus Rift is toxic.

http://it.slashdot.org/story/1...
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http://krebsonsecurity.com/201...
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APK

P.S.=> So much for your faith in routers alone stupid (225 in total, 15 posts with 15 items each)... apk

If you PAY Twitter, they will insert your ADVERTISMENTS into peoples timelines. So this is public relations excusing that, and OP didn't even notice it. http://lifehacker.com/how-to-t...

It's to do with the particular Desktop Environment: Five Best Linux Desktop Environments

prompt before checking for updates, prompt before downloading updates

In Settings > Update & security > Windows Update > Advanced options > Choose how updates are installed, the explanation states: "Updates won't download over a metered connection (where charges may apply)." "Metered" is the clue for delaying update downloads, as explained in articles on Lifehacker and How-To Geek. In Settings > Network & Internet > Wi-Fi > (your SSID) > Advanced options, you should be able to set a particular SSID as metered.

The Lifehacker article does acknowledge a defect in Windows 10: it never lets the user set a wired Ethernet connection as metered, even if wired Ethernet's upstream is a satellite or cellular connection with a 5-10 GB/mo cap or a cable connection with a 300 GB/mo cap.

and prompt before rebooting

In Settings > Update & security > Windows Update > Advanced options > Choose how updates are installed, change the value to "Notify to schedule restart".

Apple is guilty of the same thing. In this case, it isn't Google doing anything of the kind, it is usually the carrier as they feel they HAVE to load their crapware on every phone.

Apple and Google have pretty much the same support time frame.

When iOS 8 shipped, the iPhone 4 was not supported anymore. That is 4 years.

Google supports their Nexus line for 3 years.

Most phone batteries frankly don't last past 2 years anyways, and as they aren't replaceable on most phones anymore, the phone lasts only as long as its battery. Expecting companies to support their products forever is naive at best.

Here is a cute little comparison chart of Apple vs Google in support timeframes.

http://lifehacker.com/this-cha...

--Hmm. I've had good luck with Acronis in the past, and WD has free transfer software based on it. Admittedly I have only done HD -> HD instead of HD -> SSD so far. Try booting the system normally, but with the SSD attached to an extra SATA port as a spare drive, so the OS loads the driver 1st before trying OS migration... Also try checking the SSD mfr's website, they may have migration software, or try EaseUS - and feel free to email me, I'd be interested to see how it goes.

Refs:
http://www.easeus.com/partitio...

http://www.todo-backup.com/bac...

http://lifehacker.com/5837543/...
^^ Note that this recommends using your Win disc to Repair if unable to boot after migration

http://www.backup-utility.com/...

http://hackaday.com/2010/03/31...

http://hackaday.com/2013/03/14...

http://hackaday.com/2013/03/18...

http://www.extremetech.com/com...

https://www.avforums.com/threa...

Most any WiFi firmware artificially limits the radio -> http://www.qsl.net/kb9mwr/proj...

http://www.ilounge.com/index.p...

Whoa, your car has hidden features? https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Extra cores on your CPU? No way! http://www.bit-tech.net/hardwa...

Cripple phone features? Oh noes! https://www.techdirt.com/artic... https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

More than one HAM radio have been found to be subject to software tweaking for improvements in scan speed and frequencies covered.-> https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Got a RAID card? Some of them can be crossflashed to gain features BTW. Or you can pay thousands to the manufacturer for some features (*cough*PERC*cough*) http://www.servethehome.com/ib...

Gains can be had by flashing custom firmware to your DVD\BD RW drives but I didn't feel like spending any time past a cursory search to find this. http://binflash.cdfreaks.com/ http://www.rpc1.org/viewtopic.... http://dvrflash.rpc1.org/

Firmware being used in external HDD has also been found to be crippled vs a standard drive, this didn't used to always be the case....

Here's one that's just an upgrade with features the manufacturer didn't include (see also ANY Jailbreaking post ever)

http://lifehacker.com/find-out...
http://lifehacker.com/5942229/...
http://www.digitaltrends.com/p...

Oh look, your camera now supports RAW? Thought that was only for pro cameras not P&S pocket models...

I could go on and on with examples but suffice it to say yeah it DOES happen and it happens fairly often. It happens most often with system that have a full OS, often Linux, where a firmware flash can give you all sorts of features (OpenWRT or Tomato anyone?) but it also happens in cameras, lab bench tools, TVs, stereos, and just about anything else that is driven by software. Want more turbo boost in your car? Software baby! Want that printer to register an empty toner cartridge sooner? No problem!

Tired now, think I've made my point?

http://hackaday.com/2010/03/31...

http://hackaday.com/2013/03/14...

http://hackaday.com/2013/03/18...

http://www.extremetech.com/com...

https://www.avforums.com/threa...

Most any WiFi firmware artificially limits the radio -> http://www.qsl.net/kb9mwr/proj...

http://www.ilounge.com/index.p...

Whoa, your car has hidden features? https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Extra cores on your CPU? No way! http://www.bit-tech.net/hardwa...

Cripple phone features? Oh noes! https://www.techdirt.com/artic... https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

More than one HAM radio have been found to be subject to software tweaking for improvements in scan speed and frequencies covered.-> https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Got a RAID card? Some of them can be crossflashed to gain features BTW. Or you can pay thousands to the manufacturer for some features (*cough*PERC*cough*) http://www.servethehome.com/ib...

Gains can be had by flashing custom firmware to your DVD\BD RW drives but I didn't feel like spending any time past a cursory search to find this. http://binflash.cdfreaks.com/ http://www.rpc1.org/viewtopic.... http://dvrflash.rpc1.org/

Firmware being used in external HDD has also been found to be crippled vs a standard drive, this didn't used to always be the case....

Here's one that's just an upgrade with features the manufacturer didn't include (see also ANY Jailbreaking post ever)

http://lifehacker.com/find-out...
http://lifehacker.com/5942229/...
http://www.digitaltrends.com/p...

Oh look, your camera now supports RAW? Thought that was only for pro cameras not P&S pocket models...

I could go on and on with examples but suffice it to say yeah it DOES happen and it happens fairly often. It happens most often with system that have a full OS, often Linux, where a firmware flash can give you all sorts of features (OpenWRT or Tomato anyone?) but it also happens in cameras, lab bench tools, TVs, stereos, and just about anything else that is driven by software. Want more turbo boost in your car? Software baby! Want that printer to register an empty toner cartridge sooner? No problem!

Tired now, think I've made my point?

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APK

P.S.=> So much for your faith in routers alone stupid (225 in total, 15 posts with 15 items each)... apk

Watch the Original Star Wars Trilogy As It Was Before George Lucas Screwed It Up:
http://lifehacker.com/watch-th...

Hi AC re "Is there a browser plugin that does that already?"
"Six browser plug-ins that protect your privacy" (Oct 17, 2014)
http://www.computerworld.com/a...
"The Best Browser Extensions that Protect Your Privacy" (8/31/15)
http://lifehacker.com/the-best...

I'd stop slashdot from automatically reloading the page at random, causing it to suddenly jump away from whatever paragraph I was reading. Drives me crazy. You'll find lots of discussion around the net with people trying to find ways to fix it.

https://webapps.stackexchange....

http://www.kellestine.com/disa...

http://lifehacker.com/5321420/...

Please slashdot, just get rid of this horrible behavior, or at least give a way to turn it off.

Nah, mass surveillance is actually needed, otherwise it's hard to pick out suspicious patterns. Writing as anon b/c of former anti-money landering work. Crimes that are being perpetrated by networks are more feasibly detected if information on all is aggregated. By the way, the EU AML directives also mandate banks to try to discern patterns on their entire client base (not just on those already suspicious). Even with this, the whole thing fails because much of this monitoring is at a bank level; the nation level analysis already works with impoverished information. E.g. if participants of a money laundering ring are all at the same bank, it's easy to pick up; however if each ring member is at a different bank, the ring nature, and maybe the entire laundering activity, can go undetected by the bank. Since no bank will then report suspicion to the FIU (e.g. country level investigation agency) nothing will be suspicious at the FIU either (well... they still have access to SWIFT/SEPA/etc).

Also, crime is not like an exclusively contagious infection, where network adjacency and involvement is needed for a new member or cell to become active. Anyone anywhere can plot whatever hideous plans they have. So it's not good enough to monitor only those who already warrant monitoring, or those who come in contact with them.

In the age of Internet, information and religious fanaticism spreads quickly. Did you know that a large corner of Europe, the Balkans, has a bunch of countries with 10-90% muslim population, and even according to very politically correct analysis (where they accept self-reporting on religion, but there may be a lot more muslims that don't reveal or participate, than non-muslims who report as muslim for the heck of it) Western Europe is on a journey from around 5% to 10% muslim in like a decade.

http://greece.greekreporter.co...

So there is an incredibly large, distributed population, many of whom can be 'good muslims' but radicalized later. Also, non-muslim people are not immune from committing mass murders either.

So how can you stop a perp in the making, unless you monitor the as yet law abiding citizen? Sure you can say, 'target people who transfer money to extremists' or 'who buy weapons' or 'who browse the internet for bomb making' etc. but many of these alone don't necessarily corroborate suspicion, or prone to incredibly high false alarms, however, they may be more revealing as a faint but emerging pattern across modalities (phone calls, bank transfers, journeys, browsing, purchases etc.).

Even then, nothing at the moment can stop the one-person terrorist, who has no violent history, grabs a legally owned kitchen knife, and goes into crowded places and possibly kill dozens or hundreds before stopped (not possible against participants of a heavy metal concert or a krav maga training session, but people in hospitals, women, children etc. are more defenseless).

If somebody thinks mass surveillance isn't needed or isn't useful, they're wrong. Also, if he think we're in the age of mass surveillance, he's also wrong. You ain't seen nothing yet. Given sustained acts of massacring civilians, everybody will be tracked down to the inch, all the time.

As an early example: there are people who deal with how to identify if somebody carries a weapon - from the gait, or holding the hand protectively or conceaingly, e.g. http://lifehacker.com/know-how... - does anybody think there aren't developments and products that apply stuff like this to automatic CCTV analysis? Or face recognition? What if you extrapolate the terrorist and school shooting trends (e.g. flat or growing), and extrapolate what can be monitored inexpensivey?

It's not signed code per-se, but nvidia does provide checksums from the website:

cuda_7.5.18_linux.run (md5sum: b22ef6bc073f7cf767f547a84fb0e3c2)

(see https://developer.nvidia.com/c... for more versions)

If your unfamiliar with how to use a checksum, I suggest reading http://lifehacker.com/247262/h...). Basically though, if they don't match, don't trust it.

The critical question for such a determination is:
--Do you have anything else you can get get cheaply?
This very much alters the outcome. Por ejemplo: Given the inexpensiveness of wide screen monitors, the old 17" are thick on the ground at a couple of my work places, used only by interns. If your middle class folk can get you a heap of them for near-free, then yes, the Raspberry Pi2 will work well and keyboards and older mice are found in the same filing cabinet drawers. The Pi2 addresses shortage of CPU that was painful in the previous versions. It's very usable.
--Do you have shop class at a local school that can make you some cases?
http://lifehacker.com/make-an-...
--Are you looking for an amazing set of projects your kids can do?
https://www.raspberrypi.org/ma...

If you can't get the monitors cheap/free, then the Pi and even $80 worth of monitor have brought you into the Chromebook range.

At that juncture you have to choose your poison. If you want consistent and easy to maintain, you'll need to purchase large batches of new chromebooks. If you have a little technical know how, you can pick them up in the $120's all day on ebay and as refurbs on woot.

I guarantee that every single one of these families has an HD tv in their home. They can use that as a monitor.

The critical question for such a determination is:
--Do you have anything else you can get get cheaply?
This very much alters the outcome. Por ejemplo: Given the inexpensiveness of wide screen monitors, the old 17" are thick on the ground at a couple of my work places, used only by interns. If your middle class folk can get you a heap of them for near-free, then yes, the Raspberry Pi2 will work well and keyboards and older mice are found in the same filing cabinet drawers. The Pi2 addresses shortage of CPU that was painful in the previous versions. It's very usable.
--Do you have shop class at a local school that can make you some cases?
http://lifehacker.com/make-an-...
--Are you looking for an amazing set of projects your kids can do?
https://www.raspberrypi.org/ma...

If you can't get the monitors cheap/free, then the Pi and even $80 worth of monitor have brought you into the Chromebook range.

At that juncture you have to choose your poison. If you want consistent and easy to maintain, you'll need to purchase large batches of new chromebooks. If you have a little technical know how, you can pick them up in the $120's all day on ebay and as refurbs on woot.

the Apple TV will have an App Store. [...] You don't get that with a Roku.

Roku apps are called channels. There are plenty of them, some unlisted (so that they don't show up in the channel store if they don't have to), and there's no $99 per year fee to develop your own channel.

http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

http://lifehacker.com/5933248/...

so easy

http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

http://lifehacker.com/5933248/...

beyond easy

What I go out of that is Learn When to Fold, Even If You're Right

I moved my long-time landline to my cell several years ago, and I could not get robocallers to leave me alone, even after several years on the do not call registry and regular complaints. It was particularly annoying when parts of their ads ended up as voicemail messages.

I finally added the tones for a disconnected/no longer in service number to the beginning of my voicemail message, and the calls are drastically reduced, and I haven't had such an intrusive voicemail yet this year.

That's some pretty convoluted logic there, at least by my reckoning. If the user hasn't purchased the item in question, how exactly are you assuming he/she knows the product sufficiently that they're in a suitable position to review it, judging it's strengths and weaknesses?

I don't, but with the exception of books and movies, you also can't assume that people who bought the product know the product well enough to review it. The majority of reviews are posted within a couple of weeks after buying a product, for better or worse. For anything more complicated than a toaster, by the time people really know the product well enough to give it a thorough review, they've owned it for at least six months.

Worse, if you assume a typical one-year product cycle, that means half the purchasers won't understand the product well enough to give it a good review until after the next product is on the market and nobody cares about the one they bought.

The way I approach buying products consists of different approaches for different types of information:

• Product failures: Analyze first in aggregate based on the number of people reporting failures in the product, then historically based on the number of people reporting failures in previous similar products by that manufacturer, under the assumption that most failures will occur after the next model comes out.
• Product support by the manufacturer (e.g. firmware upgrades): Analyze historically based on similar products in previous years.
• Comparison of features and usability: Seek out people who mention other products in their reviews, either because they chose to buy those other products instead or because they chose to buy this product over the others. Ignore all other reviews, because they rarely contain enough objective data to be of value.

Now that last one isn't precisely true; sometimes other posts do contain objective data, though they are a lot less likely to do so. I usually skim a few 5/5 and 1/5 reviews to see if I spot patterns, and if so, I then decide whether those patterns are indicative of device malfunction or user malfunction... but that's the last step of analysis for products that I didn't rule out in the previous, easy steps. :-)

Also, if the product sucks, assuming the product isn't so bad that folks return it, people who own the product are more likely to feel the need to give it better reviews to justify the money they spent.

Wow... again. I'd bet that people who have purchased a product and are unhappy with it are actually *more* likely to review it harshly in an effort to punish the company for their poor product, and at least warn others against a crappy purchase. There are some old marketing saws that say similar things, I believe.

It's not my theory. We even have a term for people who do that frequently: fanboys. Worse, those rare people who understand a product well enough to give it a thorough review in the first few weeks of ownership are much more likely to be fanboys, because that usually only happens if they've already owned a similar product from that same manufacturer. So the least accurate reviews are likely to be the positive reviews that look the most accurate....

At the very least, that holds true for me. I've purchased a couple of stinkers, and I made damn sure to leave a one or two star review, and explain in detail *why* it was such a terrible product.

Me, too. I've also often posted reviews on products with obvious design flaws that I chose not to buy, in which I explained in detail why it was a terrible product. And invariably when I do, I get a bunch of whining idiots asking me how I can possibly know how well something will work without buying it. And my answer is something li

Google don't need to provide any more than Apple have done. The *capability* to do so.

In fact, they already do that, it's just not made a huge fuss about because - why would you unless you DIDN'T have it? Google don't make their own ad-blocker the same as Apple don't make their own ad-blocker, but now they are just providing the function to allow such things.

This just allows ad-blocking plugins on iOS, basically. Chrome's had plugins on iOS for ages: Safari's had plugins too. But neither were able to have ad-blocking plugins because Apple didn't approve / design for them.

http://lifehacker.com/chrome-f...

The problem is, in the Apple mono-culture, you have to wait for Apple to add the functionality before you can use it. Try finding an MDM product that can actually do things on managed iPads / iPhones that Apple don't provide an MDM API for. You won't. The MDM API is supplied by Apple and no matter what you use, that's all you can use to modify Apple MDM functions, settings, etc. There is no MDM app that can push an app over-the-air without the user having to sign in to iTunes App Store to authorise it as well. Because Apple just don't provide that functionality, even on "supervised" devices.

As usual, this is an "Apple adds features that everyone else has had for decades" story that somehow turns it into something earth-shattering when, actually, Apple are playing catch-up after years of denial for such features.

http://lifehacker.com/turn-on-... I've noticed a speed bump doing that, and the usual addons for ad blocking etc.

As to watching live streaming. Why do you assume you can do just one at a time, watch or do? I stream to about 100 people nightly, and many of those people are actually working on their own project(s) with me on in the background as a support/comfort/buddy layer.

Because multitasking doesn't work. http://lifehacker.com/5922453/...

Because they run the repository. It's not Google saying, "only these extensions may install", it's them having a centralized location for the ones they've approved.

Given you need to enable Developer Mode to install them from any source other than the Chrome extension store, they kind of are saying that.

Windows 10 is not a finalized product. The keylogger in the Technical Preview builds are for debugging purposes.

Windows 10's "Keylogger" Fiasco Has Been Blown Out of Proportion

You can take off the tin-foil hat now. If a keylogger turns up in the release version, then you can bitch.

.
I'm sure you can find one horror story or two or three about any business out there, some of which may even be true and not planted by competitors. If you really "steer clear" of a business because of one bad review on the Internet, then you must not buy anything.... ;)

Here are a couple of reviews that use more than one data point:

Best domain name registrars

Five Best Domain Name Registrars

I thought this article is a really good outline on mechanical keyboards (at least the Cherry MX ones). Mechanical switches don't have to be loud and heavily tactile; something like a Cherry MX Red or Cherry MX Brown is probably well worth you looking at (I'd buy a Brown if/when I have spare funds). You can also get dampeners to make them even quieter. But, even if you choose a switch type, you still have a lot of choices. I would suggest making a list of what you want (as "critical", "want", "might be nice", "don't care", "no way!") - a few ideas:

• Media buttons?
• Backlighting? Brightness options? Specific keys only (e.g. WASD)? Colours?
• Numeric keypad?
• Preferred layout style (lots of subtle variations here, more than you would expect, and unless you're used to it, can get really annoying - I have a work laptop that doesn't have the Windows "menu" key on it anywhere - and it's quite a surprise how annoying that is).
• Keypress depth of travel/keypress force required (you'd probably have to go into a store and experiment to work these out)
• Slope.
• Extra features (e.g. alternative key sets, programmable macros, application-specific macros, extra buttons)

You could always go nuts and get something like the "Ultimate Hacking Keyboard"! (Worth looking at just to get an idea of some of the more creative ideas in keyboard design).

I think their application for .dev to be Google-only highlights a major problem with a company like this having control over any TLDs:

No, it highlights the major problem with turning generic words into a TLD ownable by any single entity. I mean the whole idea of making a generic word a TLD was pretty stupid to begin with. But then selling it off for $100,000 or the highest bidder? That was nothing but pure greed on ICANN's part.

Given Google's history (e.g. Android is FOSS), I actually consider them less likely to abuse this than most other companies. In fact I suspect the primary reason they snapped up a lot of these TLDs was to prevent them from falling into the hands of someone they thought might abuse them. Same reason they participated in the wireless spectrum auction - even though they didn't win any spectrum, they did get the FCC to require that the winners not discriminate in the type of traffic sent over that spectrum. A provision which nailed Verizon when they tried to block tethering apps.

If all that matters is "Energy Balance" how is it you can feed some people 10,000 calories per day and only get an increase in body weight of 18%? Why are you ignoring the reality that some people simply can eat anything and stay skinny?

The body is a complex system and just to think of energy in and consumed is ignoring the ways the body metabolizes and processes different forms of food coming in.

http://lifehacker.com/how-to-r...
http://www.wintobootic.com/

>The authors are using Backblaze data. Backblaze uses consumer grade SATA disk which isn't going to be as reliable as the Enterprise SATA/SAS disk we would use.

Why Enterprise Hard Drives Might Not Be Worth the Cost

In addition to recording failure rates of thousands of consumer grade hard drives, the online backup company has also been keeping tabs on the enterprise-class drives used in its servers. (The consumer grade drives store customers' backup data, while the servers from Dell and EMC store Backblaze records that run the business.) Long story short, they found that the failure rate of the enterprise drives is higher than the consumer ones—4.6% annual failure rate versus 4.2%.

For god sake, check your facts!

Adblock Plus... Install it, love it... no more crazy flashing ads.

...Install Ghostery because privacy... Install NoScript because many reasons... Realize Adblock Plus is now useless.... Deinstall it.

http://lifehacker.com/ad-block...

You are not violating the law as far as ripping goes as long as you actually bought the disk. If you borrowed or rented the dvd/blu-ray, you would be illegally distributing.

Unless the DMCA has changed recently, I believe I'm still in violation:

http://lifehacker.com/5978326/...

The moment you crack DRM (Digital Rights Managemnt) to rip the DVD, you've violated Title I of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. 17 U.S.C. 1201 prohibits circumvention of DRM . . . Some courts have tried to leaven this rather harsh rule, but most have not. While it's typically hard to detect small-scale circumvention, the question is whether bypassing DRM is legal. The statute sets up some minor exceptions, but our ripper doesn't fall into any of them. So, the moment a studio protects the DVD with DRM, it gains both a technical and a legal advantage—ripping is almost certainly unlawful

While ripping the movie from a non-encrypted DVD may be legal, I don't believe that i'm legally allowed to bypass the CSS encryption.

And as far as torrenting, then that's illegal because you would be doing two things that are bad. 1. You are receiving illegally obtained goods; 2. You are distributing without authorization.

If I leech the torrents, am I really guilty of illegal distribution? Though it's likely that I'm guilty of receiving stolen goods, though I wonder if there's any wiggle room on that if I already own the movie?

Make sure you actually own the physical disk.

That part is easy, I have a big DVD binder full of every movie I own, plus amazon purchase receipts for probably 90% of it.

The ironic thing is that even though I purchase a lot of movies (around 350 at last count), the movie industry received very little of that money since I buy almost exclusively used movies. If I had a legal way to purchase non-DRM'ed content, they'd get a lot more money from me.

Try again, bitches, you've got nothing on me. And people think I'm paranoid.

You might want to do some research on cookies. http://lifehacker.com/5461114/...

- You check your hotmail emails. AdvertCompany1 creates a Cookie
- You do some online shopping on amazon who have a contract with AdvertCompany2 to update that cookie.
- You then goto your "fake" facebook account
- Because Facebook are using AdvertCompany1 and AdvertCompany2, they can obtain all the information from those cookies.

Game over.

You could get a new quad core i7 for two thirds that price.

And then install OSX on it.

1. Can be taken further, in a manner not dissimilar to disabling the retarded pre-load-at-boot that such things as Open Office and Adobe Reader like to do on Windows:

Keeping seemingly-innocuous apps from doing non-productive things, triggered by system events that they have no business keeping track of, is something I've found to be very good for both performance and battery life.

As an example Pandora, the popular music streaming service, wakes up (runs) on all of the following universally-useless intents by default: After startup (why?), locale changed (eh?), application replaced (any app!), timezone changed (!), time changed (!!).

I don't want Pandora to run on boot, or any other time that any of those things -- booting is already slow enough as it is. And what business is it of Pandora's when I update an application? I want Pandora to run when I run Pandora.

I use Autostarts to do kill these hooks, and many other hooks for other apps. (Requires root and Xposed,)

2. Turning off radios helps, but not like you think it does. Modern Bluetooth sips so little battery in the idle state that it's silly to bother with adjusting it if you use it for anything, ever.

Manually GPS off is laughable: It's -always- off unless an app (navigation, etc) requests access. Some apps do use GPS when their needs are better suited using cell/Wifi geolocation (Weatherbug's first Android releases did default to GPS years ago), but I don't see it anymore because.... Rule #1: Look at permissions when installing...if an app doesn't need to know precisely where you're at and requests GPS access, just find another app.

One radio does make a difference: I found massive improvements in battery on VZW by having disabling LTE when the screen is off.

By default, both the LTE (data only) and CDMA radios are always on (this is how voice calling works), and I don't care if I have fast data if I'm not looking at the phone.

3. Yep. A good ROM will also disable LTE when connected to Wifi. Another big improvement: Turn on WMM in your access point if there are options for it. Without WMM, the client radio is always listening for a packet when connected, with WMM packets can scheduled and client is allowed to sleep for a short period. (This seems to be enabled by default on home routers lately, but it wasn't always the case. Hence the option in standard Android to turn off Wifi when the screen is off. WMM is what makes Wifi battery-friendly, and without it it can be very thirsty when connected, even if seemingly idle.)

4. I wish. (VZW.)

Also: 5. Greenify FTW.

My problem is that I want to control my data by placing it on systems under my control. Storing everything on Google is fine for Eric Schmidt because Eric Schmidt owns (many shares and a significant amount of control) of Google. Storing everything on Google is not so good for me because I don't.

And that's the real issue. Google and Facebook's entire business model is to violate my privacy. I don't know if Dropbox does anything with your data, but they've definitely chosen convenience over security. I'd rather store my stuff on SpiderOak than Dropbox. As long as my data are available to somebody other than me, then my data are vulnerable to hackers and immoral government officials.

How to Delete Your Google+ Account http://lifehacker.com/how-to-d...

If you could get Microsoft Office and Adobe CS on Linux, I think you'd see a significant increase in adoption just from that

What you have said is very debatable however Microsoft and Adobe would have to port those products to particular Linux distributions although it is possible to run them under "Wine" or even on a virtual machine with a Microsoft OS. For a business were you are told to run the products you mentioned you would normally have no choice but to run them on a Microsoft OS and in most cases all costs are born by the business.

Key "home use" and people either join the "green parrot and peg-leg brigade", purchase the appropriate license or look for alternatives.which run under Microsoft Windows or natively under a Linux distribution. For the amateur through to the professional "LibreOffice" and "The GIMP" are quite viable alternatives. Of course if the business you work at requires those commercial products and is willing to pay for them then fine.

BTW. I am aware that Adobe's Creative Suite is a collection of software of which one is "Photo Shop" which can be reasonably compared to "The GIMP" (Key the flames), however you would have to look around to get pretty close to it's functionality. if you are interested this site can help.

O RLY? Okay then, explain why Groove IP and ObiTalk's Google Voice integration quit working at the same time! Surely Groove IP, at least, didn't do it out of greed since they told people to stop using their app at the same time...

Google Voice integration with Groove IP and ObiTalk didn't "quit working", those developers chose to remove the code on their end. And you are very mistaken about GrooveIP -- they too took this opportunity to push http://www.androidpolice.com/2014/05/16/grooveip-updated-with-support-for-a-new-voip-service-and-makes-paid-features-free-as-third-party-google-voice-access-ends/ people to a partnered alternative VoIP provider.

Also provide a link to this mysterious "GVoice+" APK, because despite my quite decent web searching skills I couldn't find it and I don't believe it actually exists.

Ain't no "apk" because it's iOS only http://lifehacker.com/gv-mobile-gets-google-voice-voip-calling-and-a-brand-585215809. And late night typo, it's GVMobile+.

Here is an article from Lifehacker on how to record incoming calls on your smart phone. It looks hard unless you use Google Voice, and GV only records incoming calls (fear of grey areas around wiretapping laws it seems). Free Android apps seem to record all sound coming in the mic and end up being lower quality recordings.

HUD's don't require you to take your eyes off the road. Also, really they aren't a distraction from driving when their purpose is to actually assist in operating the vehicle safely.

I've bolded the critical part. When assisting the driver with operating the vehicle, HUDs are a very good idea. However having read Navdy's site, they seem to emphasise things people shouldn't be doing whilst operating a vehicle like texting or making a tweet. A driver focused on their text messages is not focused on the road regardless of where they're looking, their brain will be occupied with the task of texting and mutlitasking is doesn't really work. Even though they've got their eyes right in front of them, they'll still drive right up the tailpipe of the car in front because their brain simply wont register that the car is in front of them as it's focused on the task of texting.

I'd very much like a HUD for my 14yr old Nissan that could display things like my current location, speed, engine RPM, boost pressure (especially boost pressure as I dont want to mess my car up with 3rd party gauges) that can be obtained from the OBDII port and I would look at momentarily as part of normal driving. It would have to be one with a configurable UI. However having read Navdy's site, their device doesn't seem to do this as they keep going on about phone calls, texts and tweets.

Domestic Wi-Fi is now available on nearly all flights within the U.S.

The following URL breaks it down even more by the various airlines:

http://lifehacker.com/how-to-find-out-if-your-flight-has-wi-fi-and-how-much-805389211

Sufficient to say, wifi on US flights isn't that uncommon. And unlike you, I've never had wifi on any of my flights over Europe or Asia.

I won't become a facebook slave, thanks.

I really don't get what your complaint is.

I thought of getting a jabber/XMPP account but don't exactly know where to get one

Facebook provides Jabber/XMPP access to their chat system for free.

With iOS, it's a simple option to securely delete everything. And it takes no time.

With Android it's not a one step operation and it's full of ifs and buts. And it will take some time. See for example:

http://lifehacker.com/5808280/...