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The most hilarious part about the "unfiltered water" fad, to me, is that it probably has a bunch of hipsters drinking industrial run-off and many of the same chemicals they rally against.

That's not to say I disagree with them about industry destroying water supplies or poisoning us with various poorly-understood chemicals. It's just the lack of self awareness that I find amusing.

"At Amazon, a telescreen is known as an 'Echo Show'. Would you like 'free' 2-day shipping with that?"

> if you're going to invade privacy on a massive scale, you better be ready for the consequences.

Like a job at Google/Facebook, where you'll continue invading privacy on a massive scale?

As a bonus, this press release will create a fresh wave of greater fools for him to sell into.

Relationships (both romantic and otherwise) can become incredibly complicated when your wealth goes beyond comfortable. I'd say that's more than a minimal impact. Human nature tends to show its ugly side when you have a lot of something others want or feel like they deserve more than you.

That's another reason why I don't really understand the instagram bragging thing. It's like these people are actively trying to create bullshit for themselves.

> Money isn't the key to happiness, however it lets you get rid of a lot of the bullshit of life.

Wealth brings with it plenty of other bullshit to make up for the bullshit you lost when you first obtained it, though.

I wasn't talking about the desk picture.

Instagram bragging is so incredibly cliche at this point that it actually makes me sad for those who engage in or with it. It's like a race to see who can appear more desperate for the approval of strangers.

This seems to be the case with pretty much every event I go to lately. Concerts, firework shows, etc. All being experienced through a phone display just so people can "show off" the fact that they were there and earn internet points. It's incredibly sad what social media has done to society, and incredibly obnoxious trying to see past hundreds of smart phone displays just to see the stage at a show.

> Far less intrusive.

Then you must not have yet had the pleasure of being exposed to the massive, blindingly-bright displays playing animated ads near many major cities.

I go out of my way to come up with particularly ridiculous answers to these questions in cases where I know someone might eventually want me to answer them over the phone.

Birth city: Octopus Mainframe Z7X

> MIT Just Created Living Plants That Glow Like a Lamp

The implications of this clickbait title don't match the reality of what MIT achieved at all.

If I visit a site for the first time without any ad blocking enabled, and realize it provides no value, how do I reverse my exposure to those ads? How do I claw back whatever data their tracking scripts collected about me?

> The day will come when we no longer can opt out.

That day already came a long time ago. Even those of us who do everything we can to avoid the surveillance end up being sold out (often inadvertently) by those we know when they share information about us or have their contact lists harvested. That's without even getting into the data Google/Facebook/Amazon/etc collect from public records, credit card companies, etc.

I don't want "big tech" anywhere near my doctor's office or anything else having to do with my health.

If you provide value, people (myself included) will happily pay for it. People who go out of their way to optimize their websites for ad revenue are not among those "providing value" to anyone.

Ads are psychological malware, even when they aren't serving actual malware.

> why so negative?

Probably has something to do with the advertising industry doing everything it possibly can to infiltrate every facet of our lives and ruin everything that was ever good about the internet and the web.

You think installing these products in your home and teaching your children to use them is "unavoidable"?

It makes me want to ramp up my efforts to get my friends and family members to install ad blockers, and also makes me even happier about the piholes I gave to several people as gifts the other day.

Just wait until they start using the voice data they've been collecting from millions of people via "OK <brandname>" enabled devices to imitate individual consumers' voices and use them to endorse products/brands to their contacts.

> I have two kids. You should see how they use Alexa. A ton.

Amazon thanks you for the data points they've been collecting on your children, and for teaching your children to tell Amazon all about themselves before they're even old enough to realize the possible implications of doing so.

> the Chromecast / Home combo has made me consider what a life in the Google ecosystem would look like.

Like living in a fish tank being filmed from all angles.

The thought of millions of children growing up in "Google homes" being programmed to yell out a brand name constantly, is incredibly sad.

> Why do you think millions of people bought an Echo Dot or a Google Home? Not from YOUR perspective, but from the perspective of millions of people that seem to see value in this product?

Because it was the "hot new thing". Of the many "non-technical" people I know who foolishly put these things in their homes over the past couple years, all but a few have unplugged them and thrown them in a closet already.

It was a novelty at first, but one they quickly realized didn't offer much or any advantage over what they could already do with their phones - and wasn't worth the added surveillance. My sister in particular was creeped out by how often it seemed to activate without any "wake words" being said.

Now that Amazon made them cheap enough to be stocking stuffers even for lower income families in order to expand their mass surveillance network, a whole new portion of society will get to go through the same process.

I think anyone who puts these in their home should be required to have some kind of sign on their door to let anyone who enters know that "by entering this home, you agree to Amazon/Google's privacy policy".

I don't want advertising companies anywhere near my medical records. If I was in a position where the NHS handed my data to Google, I'd be beyond pissed off.

Tricks to make yourself look like a sleazy salesman to anyone who sees through your bullshit. It's like the "developing your 'personal brand'" concept those without personalities use on social media, but applied to real life situations.

I prefer not to interact with people who need to use "tricks" to make themselves seem trustworthy. The fact that you're faking a personality (aka lying) already tells me all I need to know about your trustworthiness up front.

The idea of "startup" business concepts being applied to that market is absolutely terrifying to me. Cannabis doesn't need any Kalanicks.

See Zuckerberg buying the houses that surround his and building himself a massive walled-off privacy compound in Hawaii for examples.

"Privacy is dead.. unless you're the one trying to destroy it"

I'm sure Bitfinex would happily give him some "USD"* for it, just as soon as they fire the printing press up again.

* Internet monopoly money

> BTC will make a massive rebound in 2018

...

> I'm sure a lot of BTC bulls have full knowledge of this possibility

"Soon" is a pretty hilarious term to use here, assuming you're talking about mass scale resource mining in space. We must have very different definitions of that term.