> Out of curiosity, what is the significance of "<<" and ">>"? I'm assuming they're not bitwise shift left and right. I've seen them more often as of late, and they seem to come mostly from non-Americans.

They're quotation marks in many European languages and I believe (though I'm not sure) that the correlation isn't non-Americanness, it's non-English-keyboardness. People from English-speaking countries will still use the quotation marks you're used to.