Thursday Miscellany

• The NSA collects just about everything a user does on the Internet. They also, by the way, claim to not listen in on our phone calls. Maybe no human listens to 99.99% of phone calls; but as I've pointed out before, phoneme analysis isn't that hard, drive space is cheap, and MapReduce is well-understood.


• A Wall Street banker was finally found liable for his part in the 2008 financial crisis. Unfortunately, this is a civil case, so jail time isn't a possibility.


• SOS John Kerry promises to end drone strikes in Pakistan 'soon.' I'll believe it when I see it.


• Time Magazine points out that gay marriage in Minnesota probably wouldn't have happened if not for the Republican legislature substantially miscalculating how a proposed ban on gay marriage would play out.


• This woman may as well speak for me, at least with regards to deciding not to have kids.