I am inordinately proud of the fact that I discovered neal stephenson all by myself -- and I read Cryptonomicon at one of those formative ages where it bakes itself into your head at a pretty deep level.

Judging by their business decisions, I have come to believe that a bunch of other would-be Secret Admirers work at some but not all tech companies, and this does inform my choice of services. I bet you $5 there were Tombstone jokes at Apple during the san bernadino fiasco.

edit: and people like Moxie are doing their very best John Cantrell impersonations and I am extremely grateful for this.

> Some things just don't make sense to me. Why are the default settings for something like Facebook public? Why not friends by default?

They are not, AFAIK. I mean, Facebook keeps nagging me to make my posts private every other week, even though I explicitly want to post publicly.

Facebook was a much nicer place back when they actually were public-by-default. It felt more social. Now it's just a crossover between Twitter and a rolodex.

Why are people using there real names. Facebook requires a valid looking name not your real name.

They require verification if enough people report you. The people most harmed by "real name" policies are most likely to be harassed with reports.