The DOJ made their bed.

They continue to hoover-up massive amounts of data on everything from telecommunications to, as recently reported, vehicle movements, on everyone within and outside US borders. We are meant to trust that this data will not be abused by those who collect it, and that it cannot be hacked/modified/stolen by anyone else.

We have no choice but to encrypt our data. We seemingly have no way to stop it's collection, and those who collect it have repeatedly shown themselves to be poor stewards of that data (lack of protection, accessed without warrant, etc.). They've transitioned their methodologies based on that data being available and unencrypted, and failed to prepare for the inevitable fact that data encryption would eventually become commonplace...with or without Snowden...because there are lots of bad actors in the world.

And upon one of those rocky worlds is an ancient and advanced civilization. They will be able to give us the secrets of the universe; from interstellar travel and zero-point energy to a smoother, creamier peanut butter.

I for one welcome our ancient alien overlords.

If all your client wants is a simple/stupid brochure site that they can maintain, just build it in Google Sites with a Google account they can own. You can do a whole site in 1-3 hours depending on how much custom graphics you have to build. You can reasonably charge $250-1000 depending on your time, and spend an hour training them on how to maintain it so you don't have to in perpetuity.

I've done this just a few times now (twice for free), and every time I'm glad I did. The more you dig into it, the more you realize it actually does allow for *some* customization. If you get into the scripting, you can do even more. I see tech-challenged people starting their small (1-20 people) brick & mortar businesses and being totally lost on things like document sharing, company email, web sites, cloud storage, etc. I just hook them up with the Google Business apps...$50/person/year. It's cheap and works.

Agreed. Also, I don't ever recall return on investment as being one of the selling points of BitCoin in the first place. It was meant as an alternative to currency, not an investment vehicle. Even if the value dropped to parity with the US Dollar or below, it would still retain its initial utility. So again, nothing lost.

Given the original Chevy Volt concept looked like this and the production looked like this. I fully expect the Bolt to go from this to this.

While not addressing all concerns, I wonder if it would be more effective to automate it through the use of a swimmer-worn panic button. I envision a situation where the swimmer hits the button, and the Ryptide copter flies to the swimmer automatically. Not sure if GPS is accurate enough for that though. A life-ring dropped four feet away from a swimmer in panic is probably useless.

Aren't there already several DNA library initiatives underway? I think one is called LifeTechnologies, and then there's the seed vault in Norway (I think it's Norway). There was also talks a long time ago about putting a DNA library on the moon, which obviously has not happened yet.

I have friends who are cops. It's a shitty, thankless job where you get to enjoy the worst of human behavior. Oh, and occasionally your life is on the line; risking widowing your wife and leaving your kids without a father. Many of them were soldiers who enlisted, had a gun put in their hand at 18 years old, and taught to kill other people. It's easy to see how cops can become jaded and not give a crap about rights. A lot of them are pretty nice work-a-day randos just trying to get through life like the rest of us.

That said, I think in this instance the best way to police cops is to let them police themselves by hitting them where it really hurts: personal finances. So for example, the resulting remuneration from a lawsuit where cop takes your phone and erases a video is paid for from the police pension fund. Further, that officer's personal pension is reset to zero, or halved or some other appropriate consequence. That's a pretty powerful motivator, and there will be huge pressure from within the ranks to keep their shit wired tight. I also think it would need to be very narrowly defined. The last thing we want is officers afraid to do anything for fear of losing their pension.

Let me know when they can do this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The Earth needs more Milla Jovovich.

Unless those stars are orbiting outside the galactic plane, then I don't believe that is "actual imagery". Maybe it's a representation (based on the data) of what it would look like if you could hover above the galactic plane and look down at the black hole.

This is why this project seems strange to me. Why image our own galactic center? There's roughly 25,000 light years of dust and stars to see through. Why not image the center of a galaxy that's plane is perpendicular to us?

John Oliver did a funny yet sad piece on Fergusson, MO and police militarization. My favorite part is the two stoners in Saginaw, MI filming the sheriff's armored truck; particularly when one has a moment of clarity and wonders how bad their city really is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Bookmarked in the event of zombie apocalypse!

I glossed through the lengthy article and didn't see if the DA's "Moneyball" approach is working, and to what extent if it is.

I'll start this off by stating I'm non-partisan and have no particular party affiliation. That said, the AC above is being disingenuous at best.

Domestic surveillance of the American populace by the NSA as almost certainly been in place since its inception, but it didn't really come into full-force until Bush signed the order to begin domestic spying on Oct.4, 2001. (see https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying... say that its reached "new and unimagined levels" under the current administration is true, but only because the program has grown and expanded steadily since 2001.

But all of that is history to be rewritten by those with the motivation to do so, and relearned by those with short memories. As Americans, our forefathers built a nation upon the idea that we could create and maintain a country free of political tyranny; that those with power could not subjugate those without; that as humans, we have the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that its laws will provide justice and protection for all its citizenry; and that those citizens will be brave in the face of those who would try to take those ideas from us, and fight to preserve what we have built.

The Senate had the chance to take a stand to honor the sacrifices made by so many, and everything that we've fought and bled for 238 years; but they did not. Perhaps that is fine. Perhaps ISIS, and Al-Qaeda before them, have shown us that the idea of America is a false one. That all it takes to shake our country to its foundation is to sneak in and blow up some buildings. Maybe we were delusional in thinking that we could really ever be free? Maybe it's all been romanticized through movies, literature, and rewritten history books; and that we never really were a "land of the free and home of the brave". Maybe that's just song lyrics. Maybe it is the best form of government on the planet, or maybe that doesn't matter because it's government of and by an animal driven by greed and fear. And maybe it's always been that way since we came out of the caves.

That's what I take away from this vote, and all the other votes on all the other measures that either erode our freedoms, or prevent that erosion from happening. That it doesn't matter what we do, no form of government can overcome our failings as species.

No, WAT is "which after typically". WTF is something else entirely.