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You're (I believe inadvertently) painting an inaccurate picture when it comes to Tesla's stance towards unions. Even if they are neutral towards employee unions (more on that in a minute), NADA is still one of the largest unions in the automotive industry, and has made no bones about the fact that they are opposed to Tesla's business model. Unions have been attacking Tesla from the start and continue to do so even now. Factory employee unions may not be a part of the fray yet, but they're hardly the only type of trade union.

Moreover, on the topic of employee unions, Musk may say he's neutral, but Tesla's actions make it clear that it is hardly neutral. From another article (emphasis mine):

Musk's opinions on unionization aren't clear. When he announced the Fremont factory's purchase from Toyota, Musk told The Chronicle that "on the question of the union, we're neutral." [...]

Tesla's last annual financial report struck a far less welcoming note. It listed the possibility of union activity under "risks" to the business.

"The mere fact that our labor force could be unionized may harm our reputation in the eyes of some investors and thereby negatively affect our stock price," reads the report, filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. "Additionally, the unionization of our labor force could increase our employee costs and decrease our profitability, both of which could adversely affect our business, prospects, financial condition and results of operations."

[...] Other Tesla managers, [UAW President Bob] King said, seemed to be opposed. Musk, he said, was "very open and said he would respect what the workers wanted. But his operating management has done the opposite."

And, contrary to your claims regarding Uber, it has been facing issues from trade unions, namely taxi, limo, and other professional driver unions across the country that have been campaigning extremely hard to keep Uber out. I'll grant that they are almost entirely operating against Uber at the city and state level, but that pressure on the governments is originating from the unions. Without the unions campaigning, the city governments likely wouldn't be getting involved at all.

That said, I do agree with you that the summary grossly missteps by suggesting that the issue of state-level protectionist regulators has much of anything to do with the complaints of small-government folks.

Ok the start menu is *a* problem, but really it *the* problem is strategy of Metro and Microsoft store, and turning open computing into a closed electronic device. I suspect none of this is rolled back, but the same old metro repackaged into a more palatable form like you got with the start button, and the rest store/electronics device kept for *cough* security reasons.

Where is Android compatibility on my GNU/Desktop goddamit!!!..at least there is chromebooks and I don't have to continue with the windows tax...hell now Microsoft has to compete because of success of Linux on the Desktop. I guess I still don't pay on windows machines. http://www.theverge.com/2014/7...

Yeah, rumors are above $200 [1] so good luck with that.

I've been wearing watches all my life, and no phone could change my habit of checking the time on my wrist. The first thing I'd expect from any watch (smart or not) is to last at least a semi-comfortable 4-6 weeks on a charge. I just want to use it more than I charge it, I don't think that's unfair to ask, and be able to go on extended trips without worrying that I won't be able to tell the freaking time.

Also, I'd never want a smartwatch that's dumb - i.e., it doesn't really do anything, it's just a clunky extension of your phone... thanks, but keep it.


[1] http://www.theverge.com/2014/5...

Here's a photo and a description of a USB adapter for the purpose of charging phones without native wireless charging support.

If you don't own a supported device, you'll be able to purchase a tiny, inexpensive receiver "ring" that plugs into your phone and lets you toss it onto the pad for recharging.

http://www.theverge.com/2014/6...

http://www.theverge.com/2013/1...

"One example occurred earlier this month, when the Federal Reserve announced its plans to continue a long-running bond-buying program. The news was announced in a lockdown room at Fed headquarters in Washington, DC, and allowed to leave the room at exactly 2:00PM EST, timed to the millisecond. Somehow, markets in Chicago began trading on the information instantaneously, without waiting the few milliseconds that it would have taken for information to travel via microwave. Clearly someone leaked the information — but so far, they're getting off scott free."

Compared to tunnels, poles, and especially land, yeah, those things cost absolutely nothing.

Secondly, as to your first point, see this link: http://www.theverge.com/2014/5...

It explains how these companies claim to be common carriers to get access to those rights of way ... until they start providing services and then they claim they aren't.

Reminds me of this Florida town, which annexed a tiny sliver of land connecting it to a quarter-mile stretch of highway so they could write speeding tickets.

at one point, the city's police force had grown from one officer up to 17, some of who were volunteers, some driving uninsured cars, and some who may not even been trained on using a radar detector

Ah, Florida.

Here's another example.

1. Claim common carrier status
2. Get access to public rights of way
3. Raise rates
4. Say you aren't a common carrier
5. Profit.

there is no ?

http://www.theverge.com/2014/5...

Today New York's Public Utility Law Project (PULP) published a report, authored by New Networks, which contains previously unseen documents. It demonstrates how Verizon deliberately moves back and forth between regulatory regimes, classifying its infrastructure either like a heavily regulated telephone network or a deregulated information service depending on its needs. The chicanery has allowed Verizon to raise telephone rates, all the while missing commitments for high-speed internet deployment.

It's a mess -- and, by all appearances, it's completely legal.

* * *

First, Title II designation gives carriers broad power to compel other utilities -- power, water, and so on -- to give them access to existing infrastructure for a federally controlled price, which makes it simpler and more cost-effective for cables to be run. And that infrastructure adds up: poles, ducts, conduits running beneath roads, the list goes on. Second, Title II gave Verizon a unique opportunity to justify boosting telephone rates in discussions with regulators, arguing that these phone calls would run over the same fiber used by FiOS, Verizon's home internet service. According to PULP's report, Verizon raised traditional wired telephone rates in New York some 84 percent between 2006 and 2009, blessed by regulators in return for its "massive investment in fiber optics."

Larry Page: I'd Give Money to Elon Musk Before Charity

Elon Musk in talks with Google to bring driverless tech to Tesla cars

Elon Musk: I’ve known Larry (Page) since before he got venture funding for Google.

Elon Musk: With Jobs Gone, Google Will Win Mobile

They really are buddies. This story is as much about SpaceX as Google.

It's called the loss of unearned privilege. They grew up with the status quo and have never critically examined it, so they think that not only is it normal it is morally right - they end up conflating their privilege with moral correctness.

Its kind of like super-religious people losing their shit over having their religion's iconography removed from government buildings. We're going to see some serious cognitive dissonance when those satanists try to get their statue put up in oklahoma.

The Verge had a good article criticizing this project. The article doesn't break down the project completely, but points out why their goals are far-fetched, and people should not get too exited.

Also note that when looking at the project, it's not initially clear that a connection with the main electricity grid is still necessary. At night, displaying the signs and defrosting the road is done with electricity from the net. During the day, the solar panels can transfer electricity back to the grid. Their current implementation doesn't include batteries to store electricity locally, and this wouldn't be very environmentally friendly anyway.

Onyx Book T68 and T96, full fledged android tablets with eink displays. The specs on the devices could have been better considering they're releasing them in 2014.

Also, YotaPhone, the specs are similar to flagship phones but its not a tablet and it has a regular screen and an eink screen so not exactly what you probably had in mind but still :-), a full fledge android device with an eink display.

You keep talking about the danger of the things as if every ER in America is packed full of related injuries.

The burden of proof rests on you to show why drone aircraft are 'not dangerous' or so special that no licensing or safety precautions should be required.

Drones are not very widely in use yet; this is expensive advanced technology that the 1% owns, so even ONE incident shows a high accident rate and high proportion of risk from each operator, and there have been plenty of near misses, accidents involving illegal operation in proximity to fatal crashes, drone crashes causing injuries and unlawful interference with emergency medical flights.

Now the PS4 is out and desperate for games (go ahead, name a PS4 exclusive)

Easy. Infamous: Second son. Which apparently sold better than Titanfall on Xbone.

There was nothing revolutionary in the approach of Outbox. The inefficiencies were hard to ignore. Simply a bad and stupid business model. This is what happens when you try to blindly imitate aspects of digital world ignoring the constraints of physical world.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/2...

that worked really good
http://www.theverge.com/2013/1...

Not sure if your realize the irony of you attributing the behavior of Horvath to an entire gender, whilst mocking women who blame the action of some people on the entire patriarchy.

Neither are applicable in this situation. Theresa Preston-Werner was a women and she only wrote a civilized blog post explaining her innocence and thanking support. The female engineer interviewed in this article said she never experienced discrimination but didn't speak ill of Horvath or her coworkers. Horvath Tiwtter temper tantrum and stories embroiled in drama is her own undoing and responsibility, not the typical behavior of all females.

Wanted: People who are smart enough to work in tech, but dumb enough to live in an unsafe place.

Yeah. http://www.theverge.com/2013/1...

You want a nice safe place like SanFrancisco And people who can't stand a little cold might be upset to know it isn't really all that warm either.

Regulations are exactly what is used to prevent competition. Local governments create monopolies through what are called franchise agreements. Unfortunately most people get confused about that and blame unregulated markets. (others don't even know what a free market is!)

If they can do the work, I'm sure there are plenty of third world factories that would take them.

Sure - for Samsung. At actual Samsung factories. Not at one, not at two, at 6 of them. http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/5/3293674/china-labor-watch-samsung-labor-abuse-underage-employment Fuck you, Samsung fanboys.

Damn, I wish I could sell a fading platform that is breaking sales records.

Just because you wish it so (for some reason) does not make it so. Remember, competition is a good thing for us - the best thing that can happen is for Apple and Google to have a healthy competitor in Google and Apple.

All serious Bitcoin mining is now industrial-scale using custom ASICs. CPU-based and GPU-based mining are dead. They can't even cover their own power bill. This guy's setup is primitive compared to this large high-density liquid-cooled mining facility in Hong Kong. The two biggest mining pools control over half of the mining power, and the biggest, "ghash.io", would have over half if they hadn't deliberately split up to avoid that happening.

The thing to remember about Bitcoin mining is that all miners are in competition for a fixed number of Bitcoins produced each week. More mining does not mean more Bitcoins are generated.

The one other thing to remember is that once a monopoly is stood up of this size and they come in and repeatedly mine the majority of coins all the time, from this or any other virtual currency, people will want to start making this activity illegal by regulation.

Then it's going to get really ugly.

All serious Bitcoin mining is now industrial-scale using custom ASICs. CPU-based and GPU-based mining are dead. They can't even cover their own power bill. This guy's setup is primitive compared to this large high-density liquid-cooled mining facility in Hong Kong. The two biggest mining pools control over half of the mining power, and the biggest, "ghash.io", would have over half if they hadn't deliberately split up to avoid that happening.

The thing to remember about Bitcoin mining is that all miners are in competition for a fixed number of Bitcoins produced each week. More mining does not mean more Bitcoins are generated.

Coincidentally, a mere week before that happened, Microsoft added Google Talk support to outlook.com webmail (which already supported FB chat and Live/Skype). Needless to say, said support became effectively dysfunctional for anyone who "upgraded" from Talk to Hangouts.

Yeah, Google really took a page from the Microsoft playbook there...

I seriously doubt they're going to get us anything open sourced. Google is starting to look more like Microsoft in the 90'ties.

This move is particularly sad, because Google went with XMPP because they didn't have a customer base and needed others to open up and integrate. And now that Microsoft plays ball, Google just kicks it off the field.


On-topic, open source baseband isn't so important. It's not really something that very hackable anyways. Nor should it be hackable, just imagine teenager bringing down the GSM network by playing around with their firm ware. That is not a good thing.
Nevertheless, Mozilla with Firefox OS might eventually be in a position to pressure manufacturers at some point. I know they should love to, but there is still some market to grow before they have enough leverage.

The Surface Pro 2 has a battery life of around 7.5 hours in mixed use.

The iPad has a battery life of around 11 hours for "internet use"

The Surface has very good battery life for a laptop, but it's still not nearly where the iPad is - which you'd expect with it having a desktop processor and OS.

The protocol is not XMPP anymore, not since Talk was phased out in favor of Hangouts. It was pretty big news item a year ago, did you miss it? It even made the EFF chime in to complain.

Coincidentally, a mere week before that happened, Microsoft added Google Talk support to outlook.com webmail (which already supported FB chat and Live/Skype). Needless to say, said support became effectively dysfunctional for anyone who "upgraded" from Talk to Hangouts.

Of course, how else will MS force Windows 8 on people...

And is this "Lower-level Hardware Access On Multiple Platforms" giving the access to computer users or to the US government TLAs?

Hacked invoices show how much Microsoft charges the FBI for your information
The Syrian Electronic Army recently revealed documents that show how much Microsoft charges a secret FBI division to legally collect and view customer information. The SEA, which is known for hacking Western companies and their social media accounts, allowed The Daily Dot to analyze the emails and invoices documenting months of transactions between Microsoft's Global Criminal Compliance team and the FBI's Digital Intercept Technology Unit (DITU) before the group went public with them.

http://www.theverge.com/2014/3...

Of course, Slashdot won't post this as news because they're paid not to.

I would have thought that computers would make it impossible to "lose" such funds

Except that computers make it possible for idiots to screw up even worse than ever before. And given that the guy apparently cared more about opening a bitcoin restaurant than, say, using a programming language that wasn't crap COUGHPHPCOUGH, I'm just barely willing to believe they lost it. I'm really more surprised that they found that wallet before it got thrown out on a junked hard drive.

Sure, it's a bit too convenient, especially after all the rumors of hacks that let people double-dip when withdrawing bitcoins, but it's not impossible that they came from a different source. So just how easy is it to look up the transaction records for 200,000 bitcoins, anyhow?

Revealed: secret plan to push'happy' pills
http://www.theguardian.com/soc...

Big Pharma Could Win International Price Monopoly, Unlimited Profits in 'Free Trade' Deal
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

US patent moves are 'profoundly bad' in leaked TPP treaty
http://www.theverge.com/2013/1...

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a proposed free trade agreement under negotiation between Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam. Leaked documents show the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) is pressuring TPP countries to expand pharmaceutical monopoly protections and trade away access to medicines.
http://www.citizen.org/TPPA

The medical industry the third-leading cause of death in the United States; after heart disease and cancer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...

Big Pharma Shamelessly Shills Dangerous Bone Drugs You Don't Need
http://www.alternet.org/story/...

The H1N1 Swine Flu Pandemic: Manipulating the Data to Justify a Worldwide Public Health Emergency
http://www.globalresearch.ca/t...

"Somewhere in Rayong or Chon Buri on the coast of Thailand, a young woman may at this very moment be baring her arm for a shot of an experimental Aids vaccine that many of the leading scientists in the field say categorically has no hope at all of working.

She will be one of 16,000 volunteers recruited for the second large-scale Aids vaccine trial, a $119m exercise many scientists believe is a farce."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/scie...

Fraud has become so endemic in this country that it's woven its way into America’s DNA. 2). Big Pharma Fraud.
http://www.alternet.org/story/...

Drug Makers New Targets for U.S. Fraud Inquiries, Report Says
http://prescriptions.blogs.nyt...

Merck drew up a "hit list" of doctors that needed to be "neutralized" because they criticized the now banned drug Vioxx.
http://science.slashdot.org/st...

Merck invents its own journal to publish bogus research findings to promote it's own products.
http://blog.bioethics.net/2009...

Why Aren't These Fraudulent Papers Retracted?
http://truth-out.org/news/item...

Doubts about Johns Hopkins research have gone unanswered, scientist says
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

A National Survey of Physician–Industry Relationships
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/1...

Yeah, not like Occulus didn't announce this and show it off back in January.

But your right, it could be either way.

Manufactures don't wait until phones hit the market to get their products approved, its done much earlier. Haven't you heard about the amazon controller that leaked from the very same Anatel? http://www.theverge.com/2014/3...

Also, the most important information that the story doesn't say. The system will work together with international partners (FCC etc), so it doesn't matter where it was certified, it will work here. Source: http://idgnow.com.br/blog/circ...

http://www.theverge.com/2014/3...

The restraining order was issued Monday, just days after the FISA court blocked the government's request to continue holding onto call records that were relevant to ongoing litigation. With its quick action, the California district court has put a hold on that ruling for now, allowing relevant evidence to be preserved.

If it is not using the GPS it is uploading tower data to get a rough position for the find my phone option.

So you want Microsoft to be able to find your phone without being able to know where your phone is.

How do you use your devices GPS for a local mapping application without also participating in Microsoft's crowdsourcing? It seems to be all or nothing which is unacceptable.

Perhaps it is, but AFAIK both iOS and Android do the same thing. Google even killed Skyhook and is facing a lawsuit in order to get hold of location data.
http://www.theverge.com/2011/0...
Why is such a stink raised over Microsoft doing it?

You need to developer unlock your device to sideload... this requires a Microsoft account and a developer account.. which means find my phone is then not optional.

That doesn't make any sense. You can turn off find my phone even if you have a MS and dev account and dev unlock your device.

Windows, any version, is architecturally insecure.

Actually every operating system is and anything widely in use will be targeted, as has been demonstrated quite clearly in the past couple of weeks, we have had:
The Windows EMET vulnerability
The Android E-Z-2-Use drive-by vulnerability
The OSX & iOS SSL vulnerability

> Developing useful software robots is a whole lot cheaper and easier than building and programming meatspace robots

Google also bought Boston Dynamics ( http://www.theverge.com/2013/1... ), who make very meatspace robots - in fact their robots are modeled on animals.

Nokia is creating its own store where it will curate “hundreds of thousands” of apps. Third-party stores will also be integrated into the Nokia Store, providing other sources for Android apps. The Nokia X will also support sideloading, just as Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablets do.

Sounds like Amazon will be able to support the X pretty easily. In fairness, this nugget was hidden away in the place we're all least likely to check. In the actual article itself!

Now, if they want access to Google Play Store they will probably have to go through the same process as any other Android phone vendor and sign and agreement and go through testing and certification. Virgin developers or not, if you want to access Play Store you need an agreement.

Not so easy.
http://www.theverge.com/2011/0...

It comes with a lot of restrictions, including shipping all Google apps like maps as default apps,say goodbye to Bing at the very least, not to mention it may not be "free" since Google is known to charge for GMS. So what's the point of forking again?
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets...

It can already be added to normal glasses http://www.theverge.com/2014/1...

From the article

. However, Google’s verification is not needed for an individual consumer to download and install a Google-signed version of the Google Play app store and then download the full inventory of Google proprietary apps to an unverified Android version.

That's quite wrong. The Play app is copyrighted, proprietary and is tightly coupled to Google's cloud. They even sent a Cease and Desist to CyanogenMod a few years ago and stopped them from distributing it. They don't go after individual users, but those users are still infringing Google's copyright and are essentially pirating the software. So this advice is like suggesting that Ubuntu make VM software that makes it really easy to pirate Windows to run Windows apps since MS does not go after individual personal home users for pirating their software.

Not to mention that even if all this manages to happen, Google can just tweak their servers and store app to reject connections from Android forks(see iTunes).

If you want read a better article about why forking Android does not make any sense, this article is way better:
http://arstechnica.com/informa...

Even if MS wants to do something like that, it makes a bit more sense to make Windows Phone able to load Android Apps, which they were/are supposedly exploring.

http://www.theverge.com/2014/2...

Perhaps, but considering MS has resorted to just creating website frontend "apps", that point is moot. http://www.theverge.com/2013/1...

It's not hard to believe there might be a lot of attacks on wireless devices in Sochi. The place is pretty fucked up. Whether these reporters and their consultants know their ass from a wifi antenna or not.

From a story I've linked below:

Dmitry Kozak, a Russian deputy prime minister in charge of preparations for the Olympics, complained about water being wasted by hotel guests when said; "We have surveillance video from the hotels that shows people turn on the shower, direct the nozzle at the wall and then leave the room for the whole day,"

It didn't occur to Kozak that someone might have a problem with being surveilled in the shower until after he blurted this interesting bit of knowledge.

You just have to wonder what sort of pay-offs went into this Sochi Olympics deal. Russia is a deeply fucked up place to begin with and Sochi is a special level of fucked up within that.

i've got the feeling the beta slashdot was designed by someone who makes websites for the elderly

Not quite. It was designed by someone who (sadly) knows what they're doing, and more importantly knows what advertisers currently want.

A lot of sites have shifted over to this kind of design, so Slashdot is far from alone. Advertisers like it for various reasons - mostly it comes down to ads being more eye-catching - and of course advertisers control the purse strings. But at the same time the public has also had it ingrained into their heads that such a design is the definition of "modern", and therefore any site not using such a design is by definition not modern, and therefore not worth their time ("the site's owners can't be bothered to keep up with the times?"). Which just leads to a feedback loop of advertisers liking it even more, since they want to advertise on sites that the public perceives as hip/modern so that their products are seen in a similar manner.

But the truly terrifying thing is that the industry isn't done yet. I can show you what the future will look like and it isn't pretty: http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/21/5307992/inside-the-mind-of-a-fanboy. By all accounts the advertisers seem to love it; the text is big and readable (i.e. not threatening), there's animation and lots of flashy effects, etc. It basically reads and behaves like an interactive glossy magazine (People, not Popular Science).

Not that I agree with any of this. Beta needs to be buried 6ft under in a grave lined with lead. But there is a method to their madness; despite what a lot of people here think, Dice hasn't gone off of their rockers. The rest of the world is just slowly moving on from text to images and iconography, as sad as that may be.

"We’re making our source code freely available on GitHub" and it's a promise they made good on... until the site launched.

so... is it time to post the code again... or ever?

It certainly will not make a dent in the console business though, which a lot of people seem to think.
Of course, that is unless Valve have a RRP of a similar price

Xbox One has AMD graphics and an MSRP of $499. Steambox One also has AMD graphics and an MSRP of $499.

I don't know if anybody has been taken to court, but it's not guaranteed that the company with the bug bounty program will pay out. If you want something specific, here's an example involving Facebook.

just like with M$ and Xbox, and sadly with SimCity, only a fan outcry of epic proportions forces companies to unlock feature bottlenecks:

http://www.theverge.com/gaming...

so you downloaded the patch? were you one of the ones who had to lobby the company to let you do it?

exactly my point of the whole example in relation to why Nintendo can rule the console industry again

If you have the money to spend and do not want to build your own Linux media server (plan to do this with my older ZaReason Breeze 4220 PC), you could checkout ZaReason's product offerings. They build Linux boxes, you tell them what Linux distro you want on them.

ZaReason's small footprint media server, MediaBox 5440 (quad core power in a little bitty living space) or if you have room for a bigger box and are interested in 4 hot swappable sata bays, the Breeze Server 5880 looks like a very nice server.

Of course any Linux server can be made into a media server and any Linux PC can be turned into your personal DVR and a Linux server. Once you start using a Linux box this way, you will not want to 'stream' content over the internet, especially if you are a cable internet subscriber. Especially with a new LG 60 inch LED TV 1080p 300hz (Monitor wall anyone?) costing under $800! Just plug into your Linux PC and enjoy watching what you download!

Remember that 100% of Cable Internet providers throttle their bandwidth, meaning DSL is usually faster than their throttled cable bandwidth promises. DSL is usually cheaper too! The cable company's marketing bandwidth claims are lies based on this throttling!

(Run DD-WRT on a supported device to see your actual bandwidth in real time after the speed test ends, cable users will be shocked and disgusted!

A promise of 20MB/4MB gets throttled to less than 101Kb/20Kb in my experience and I guestimate you need at least 230Kb upstream for the stuttering to stop and they throttle the upstream to less than 20Kbs if you have the means to see it, granted other factors apply) This is why most of us download something before we watch it, forget about streaming over the Internet!

And with the recent net neutrality loss in the DC courts (January 14, 2014), this is going to become more of a problem for those of us wishing to download and stream content. It's going to get ugly folks!

I highly recommend Firefox with the DownloadHelper Plugin in order to download content from the Internet. Don't worry about the proprietary Windows formatted content, there are always other options, usually on the same download site. My friends and I refuse to purchase music that can not be played on any of our Linux devices (mp3, handheld, tablet, laptop, PC, server). If everyone did this, proprietary formats would be useless. And I pay for some content, just not proprietary formatted content. Even in the days of VCRs, I did not want to own every movie that I watched, only the few that I really loved, thus using a PC like a VCR, as in DVR, simply is the way we have always been doing things. If a TV/Cable Series or Movie is that good, I go buy it, usually after multiple seasons our out. Got all 10 Seasons of Stargate for under $300 at Fry's Electronics in CA, think I paid under $199, but its been awhile. Bought DVR version of "Dave" too, wish all our presidents were like Dave! Love that movie.

You can pretty much download anything down to a Linux PC and then stream it from there 'locally' on your network. This basically uses your harddrive like your own personal DVR box, no bandwidth throttling by cable companies to cause your streaming to stutter or stop. And you simply erase it after you watch it, just like we did with VCR tape recorders back in the day.

Full Disclosure, I do not work for ZaReason, just met the owners at SCaLE in Los Angeles a few years back (SCaLE 7x in 2008 I believe) and was very impressed with them, their company and their products. Became a customer i

That probably counts as accesible any truecrypt volume you have in AWS and other cloud servers. Regarding your PC and laptops, there is anything in the NSA catalog targetting specifically this? They could had put it in when you bought it. If well a backdoor installation could make things simpler, this hardware approach could survive OS reinstalls/replacements.

Maybe some of them were bought online and then intercepted by NSA to install that hardware. There is plenty of evidence that they are doing that kind of things, including a catalog, but not a lot of reports that show how they are actually doing it.

Now, that the actual number of devices with those radios is around 100000 could be an outdated number (50k in 2008 and 85k in 2012 according to Snowden documents, and maybe 100k by now according to other sources), and anyway, seems that be considered by them an obsolete technology, and targetting mainly offline computers and closed networks. Probably the kind of installations that won't disclose that they were intruded even if they found what happened. Landline phones and faraday cages could become very popular in some installations.

Probably there aren't used in US because may have other ways to get in, even in offline networks (maybe embedded 3g radios?) without needing to have that kind of reach.

Sure buddy...

http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/10/4823944/microsoft-reportedly-working-to-replace-cookies-ad-tracking