JIM: I was wondering the other day what happens to the facebook accounts of people who die (or any other kind of online accounts people may have)? There must literally be thousands of people every day now who die who have facebook accounts. Do their families need to contact facebook and get their accounts cancelled? Do they just live on in cyberspace indefinitely? After some period of time, does facebook just deactivate or delete accounts that haven't been logged into? How does that all work?

DAVE: FB is nefarious, in many ways. It used to suggest people with whom I maybe exchanged emails once in my life, and I didn't even have their email address in my address book, but they came up as suggestions, anyway. A lot of first and only dates from my past reappeared. And so did my deceased Aunt Betty. I got sick of seeing FB's friend suggestions, so I turned off that feature. But I assume that my aunt's profile will live on indefinitely. I suppose a person could try and contact FB about deceased people, but I don't know what their policy is on that.

JIM: Kind of creepy, don't you think?

DAVE: Completely. That's why I don't post anything on FB other than two innocuous photos and my basic hometown info. In today's job market, that's also a good idea since employers are checking FB and myspace now for signs of issues.

These tech companies are something else. And many of them have an office at CMU where all kinds of shit goes on. They are working on robots over there that are going to take away even more human jobs than they already have, and I just don't understand why we endorse (and the government funds) research into areas that will eventually replace the need for humans in certain areas. That doesn't scare me as much as it makes me mad.

JIM: Control your emotions. It's hard to be a Quiet Observer if you're mad.