Autarchy of the Private Cave

I’ve tried it already under Windows, but as my main OS is Debian, I can’t use it

You can sign up for updates on Linux version.

After reading the Google Chrome book, it is a long time waiting for it to be released for Linux….

Also, I’m looking forward for the plugins to enhance Chrome. Although it did import my settings/passwords(?!)/bookmarks from Firefox, but it has no Foxmarks, AdBlock and some other goodies I’m now used to on all the computers I regularly use.

A lot was said about Google becoming the Big Brother of the internet. A lot was said about the quantity of personal information, available to Google via it’s numerous services. It was even discussed (elsewhere), that the history of someone’s Google searches might be used (or even is already used) to identify candidate’s fitness for the position in question (e.g., if you were once searching for child porn, then it automatically marks your “Google search profile” as illegal; the same goes for the searches like how to make a nuclear bomb, idiot’s guide to making biological weapons, terrorism how-to for dummies, how to join Al-Qaeda, and even smuggling a gun in and out the aircraft ).

What I’m taking you to: Google sends out PIN codes to AdSense account holders, to verify that the postal address is correct. As you already understood, this binds your postal address to your Google account (with all it’s services), and if police decides to check your search history, and finds some nasty query, they will already know where to go and get you.

So, if you are one of those how-to: nuclear bomb searchers, and you accumulate money for that bomb using AdSense - then either use “on demand” postal address (which is slightly more secure - but you’ll have to hire bodyguard services, when checking mail), or move regularly

Or, ask everyone you know to search for the linked phrases from the post above . In this case, the “noise” may just well overcome the “signal”, to render “Google search profile” verification practically useless.

Also, you can just use filtering alternatives like scroogle.

Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population (or here, if that link doesn’t work)

Worth reading for any IT guy, especially for people dealing with lots of HDDs.
Also might be interesting for those, who have Gmail with (now) over 6GiB storage…