The US keeps lots of information about everyone's airline ticket purchases and appears to keep it for at least 10 years.

Even in Isolated, Pristine Tasmania, Pressure to Allow GMO Farming.

RJ Reynolds has been hit with 23 billion dollars in punitive damages for advertising designed to make minors smoke.

The article says "children", but adolescents are not children, so I won't use that word. Advertising tobacco to adolescents is arguably even worse than advertising it to children, since children are not likely to start smoking whereas adolescents may well do so.

7 Reasons Why the Internet of Things Is Doomed.

Actually, some of them are reasons why we should kill it, which do not necessarily imply it is doomed on its own.

A "smart house" project Japan is a scheme to impose total surveillance and tracking.

This demonstrates the danger inherent in such schemes.

Google has abolished the "real name" requirement for Google account.

This might mean that Google+ is acceptable to use. But I am not certain, because I don't know the answer to two follow-on questions:

• What other personal data must one supply to make an account, and do they amount to identification of the user? Is it possible to make a Google account named "Rumplestiltskin358", contacting the server through Tor, and not enable Google to identify you?
• Does that require running nonfree Javascript code.