If you distrust manufacturers to the point that you want them to put in On/off switches, how can you trust them to put in on/off switches that actually work?

Dude, I've been earning my living programming for over 35 years. I have never ever, not even once, encountered an instance of a programmer deliberately injecting a bug into a system. You're either speaking out of your donkey, or you know some of the most worthless excuses for programmers in existence.

Seriously? I've been changing tires on my family's vehicles since I was 12 (aka more than 4 decades). Why would I need a tow truck to change a tire?

In my 30, or so, years working as a programmer, I have changed jobs several times. And when I say changed jobs, I mean different employers in different industries using a different tech stack, so really changed. Switching jobs makes you worse in the sense that your corporate knowledge - local source code, local program design, local tools, contacts, etc - is now worthless and you need to replace it. That takes time to learn, and learning it will slow down your productivity. Switching jobs makes you better in that you learn a new tech stack, new techniques, new concepts (design, how to work with clients, how to think about problems), etc. Whether you switch jobs is somewhat irrelevant. In our industry, you need to be learning new stuff. If you cannot sit down at the end of a year and list a couple of significant things you learned over the past year, you've got problems. The industry is ALWAYS changing. You cannot keep up with everything, but if you don't grow, you will become obsolete. the good news is that it's never been easier to learn new stuff.

OR you find yourself subjected to various forms of torture until you provide the decryption key. Followed by additional forms of torture because they're now POd that they had to work to get the decryption key.

As a developer, I've worked with 3 QA testers who were worth their weight in gold (well, at least silver). They did things that I would never have dreamed of doing and helped me make my code much better than it would otherwise have been. Developers need to write unit tests. We need to automate them so they run every blessed time we compile our code. QA tests at a higher level than we do. They don't test the same things we do. Having developers do QA work is a bean-counter move. If the bean-counters are running the projects, I'll be updating my resume and looking to jump ship.

My experience is along the following: Noobs develop a new website. Senior devs have little time to review what the noobs have done. Website goes live. Users are happy. A year or two down the line, the former noobs move to other employers so as to obtain a real raise. Some time thereafter, serious security flaw is noted on original website. Flaw is fixed by senior devs, who may, or may not, adequately explain the problem to the noobs currently maintaining the website. The original devs involved never learn of the flaw or the fix. Simply put, we are not adequately taught security in school and we are unlikely to learn it at work. Compounding the issue, there is always a rush to production and very often security is the low priority task that gets tossed in order to meet the (artificial) deadline.

That depends. My local airport has residential neighbourhoods right up to the fence surrounding the airport. Those residential neighbourhoods grew up AFTER the airport was built. Bottom line is that it's entirely possible the helicopter being at 500 ft is perfectly reasonable for that locale. The article doesn't provide details for either side of the argument.

Seriously, traveling sans GPS is adventurous? You can get a wonderful book of maps at Flying J, or pretty much any real truck stop. If that's no good, there are things called signs that sit alongside the highways telling you how to get where. I've travelled across North America (and Europe) without GPS or maps, relying on signage, without issue. Try putting your brains into gear.

For gaming, it might be useful. Not into gaming. Other than gaming, is there a good reason to care about VR?

That attitude is not limited to Americans. Any national government ought to think like that.

Muggles should not be allowed to create laws pertaining to magic.

how would I be certain that the text message was not a spoof? I don't answer phone calls from numbers that are not in my contacts list. I don't respond to texts whose origin is questionable.

Not that I know much about texting, but how do I know for certain that the text ostensibly from the police is truly from the police? I'm not paranoid, at least not since the Snowdon revelations.

At work, many of our doors require both card and pin. On those doors, the pin pads are randomized. So unless "they" can be close enough to read the keys you are pressing, simply noting the pattern of your finger movements won't help. At the end of the day, there is no 100% perfect security. Even then, I suspect that rubber-hose crypto would defeat your perfect security.