An ad-network and spyware blocker for most of the major ad networks. May ad-blockers just stop the ads from displaying. This one can stop them from spying on you, too. Nice.

An excellent summary of the what the "real name" policy Google are attempting to enforce is, basically, Evil. Me, I'm absolutely in favour of real names being used on-line, and I certainly insist on it in forums I moderate. But those forums tend to be small, relatively closed membership things, formed with the intent of supporting offline in-the-flesh interaction. That's a very different use case to massive social networks, where the ability to feel comfortable using one's real name is a privilege that all sorts of people don't possess for all sorts of reasons.

Here's a thrilling example of our lack of privacy in the 21st century. There really not a lot that's going to be done about it,I'm just linking because I think this is good illustration of how the world work now. It's probably not an earth-shattering revelation to most of you, but nonetheless, it's interesting background in these days of phone hacking…