I live in Southern California, smack in the middle of Orange County, in an affluent neighborhood. We have two (2!) options for internet - Cox cable and AT&T DSL. I hate both, but there are no other options where we live. It's ridiculous.

looks interesting. we were thinking about using VPN connections to perform messaging on our own server, so they would have to break the VPN, or actually get into the server to get the communications. but retroshare does look interesting, although i worry about those keys too. i suspect breaking simple encryption is beyond easy for the NSA, as in it's already automated.

several non-tech folks have stopped communicating with me except for face-to-face, simply because they don't want the government to read our conversations. my text and emails have gotten very matter-of-fact ever since the snowden revelations leaked.

as a result, i've been researching the available encryption resources out there so we can actually have private conversations without worry. there aren't many that are really simple to use and actually effective. i'm talking with a friend about setting up a home server we can VPN into for chat sessions until there's a workable solution for non-tech types.

i've wanted to do this for a while, but no one else around me cared. now they care.

appreciate you doing this. if enough people were like you, we could have some fun overwhelming the DMCA system.

i said "will probably end up costing much more"

funny how you cut that bit off. that was my personal extrapolation.

regardless, here's the real information:

perhaps you weren't following what actually happened with TARP very closely. this is only where things are now. suffice to say it won't get better, and will probably end up costing much more than $140 billion.

All our money is imaginary. It's all numbers moving around in computers. The difference here is that the money spent on rolling out fiber infrastructure wouldn't end up in the hands of the the 1%. Some of it would, but not enough.

So we can bailout Wall St. and the banks to the tune of hundreds of billions, but we can't afford to invest in infrastructure. Good to know.

Totally agree with this. I use these for my own writing, which is meant to be archival (in journals, and I want to be able to read them in 30-40 years). The tip is very fine, there is no bleed, the ink is waterproof and fade-resistant, and the pens last a long time. My current one is from 2010. They're not very expensive, and can be found at most art stores. I've gone through so many pens, and these are the best.

the author is playing games. Denver gets .3 rem PER YEAR hotspot measured at .1 rem (no time length given, but probably per hour) as you say, that adds up over a year pretty significantly. suffice to say it's well over 100x the background radiation in Denver.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id455117843?mt=8

or in my case, they know every bill i pay through them, and that i take out lots of cash. they know how much gas i use, because that goes on my credit card. otherwise, they know very little about me.

i have a savings card for the local safeway - i actually have three i use in rotation, with fake names, numbers, and addresses.

at the moment, gmail is the biggest security hole in my life. i'm working on fixing that.