I read the Bloomberg article that this Slashdot "article" tries and fails to summarize. You can't just quote two random paragraphs and call it a "Slashdot article." C'mon /. editors, why did you let this through as-is? At least kick it back to the author and say, "yes, this is interesting, and we'll publish this if you rewrite it." To be fair, this is the first time I've seen a summary this bad, but it is also fair to hold Slashdot to a high standard.

Itâ(TM)s a careful balancing act. G*d only knows what chaos would ensue if phone apps went completely unchecked. The advertising industry has shown us what happens to privacy when there is minimal oversight, and we can hardly expect governments to protect us, so the phone OS and browser makers had to step in. Google and Apple have had to adapt to a rapidly changing world. The early âoeflashlightâ apps sprung up to gather user data. Now mobile device makers are in an arms race with commercial spyware vendors.

I’ve gone through two generations of Apple TimeCapsule, and mine is still alive and kicking. This automatic (“fire and forget”) backup device is literally the reason I started buying Macs for my family. Never looked back until recently... now that Apple has discontinued them. :-( ‘Course when my kids are away at college, this system doesn’t work so well. Thank heaven for the Cloud!

Let’s not forget, the microprocessor wasn’t the awesome brainchild of a single inventor. I love the 4004 because it distills the essence of a CPU chip, it is great for teaching, and it was truly general purpose. But in 1970, the time was right, the race was on, and depending on what hill you planted the flag or where you placed the finish line, sure, Intel crossed it first. But running alongside Faggin, Shima, Hoff, and Mazor were an elite pack of marathon runners who also knew the time was right. Texas Instruments was concurrently designing a single-chip calculator, Garrett AiResearch had already secretly built an avionics DSP chip set for the F-14 fighter. There were others too. Federico Faggin was fully aware there was competition to “be the first” (he just didn’t know who they were). That’s why F.F. worked so very many late nights that year. If Intel didn’t, someone else would have.

I’ve been a stubborn two-spacer ever since I enrolled in (manual typewriter) typing class back in high school. But who writes documents using Courier font anymore? Even in the early 1990s, my author roommate learned that his publisher didn’t appreciate the extra spaces because it messed with their typesetting software, which “did the right thing” (w.r.t. white space after periods) all on its own. They forced him to remove every extra space, poor thing.

This is not exactly a novel idea. An early form of this biometric was pioneered in Japan years ago. But it is true, there has not yet been wide commercialization in the United States. Still, companies usually try to file for patents that can be defended worldwide. I'm guessing that the Japanese patent has expired.

Re: This Bloomberg article's claim that "rebels made an impact on the global price of oil with a strike ... using 25 drones and missiles" is a stretch. Which state actor(s) or militias instigated this drone and missile strike is controversial at best. These strikes were launched from hundreds of miles away, and with remarkable, pinpoint accuracy. Experts say it is unlikely this was done with home-brew technology. The point of this article is about low-tech drones not cruise missiles and sophisticated drones, and indeed that "horse" is definitely "out of the barn." It has radically changed guerrilla warfare forever.

It bums me out when the first time I hear about something cool is when it's getting shut down. I sounds like this Google project/subsidiary was doing great work, but Google didn't bother to give them a marketing department. Then they say it isn't viable. Catch 22 - QED.

Eval has been part of the Lisp programming language since the dawn of computing, but few experienced Lisp programmers ever used it outside of read-eval-print loops and software development tools (where its existence is a totally awesome gift). Eval is widely considered a beginner's trap. It is rarely "the right thing," typically because it is super inefficient. But my biggest concern is that it is a huge security hole, especially when the expression to be evaluated comes from the user. Think SQL injection attack. It is wise to require some sort of security credentials and/or filters to make sure the expression is within a "safe subset" of the language... at which point you might as well write the mini-interpreter you really need, instead of making the entire, underlying language and the application's entire data environment available for anyone to use or misuse.

This might be a new idea in the U.S., but at one of Canada's premier colleges, this is already old hat. Go look at McGill University's "menu" of tuition fees. You'll see that they charge radically lower rates to the art student, English major, or nursing student compared to the computer scientist or pre-med. I hadn't thought of the costs of running these programs, but up in Montreal they almost certainly did. What seemed striking to me is how compassionate this policy is for the student. Is it coincidental that these Canadian tuition rates happen to be scaled to the earning potential of the graduate? So no more crazy high debt for your "B.A. in Barista." But for super in-demand and high-paid software engineers? Sure, they think you can afford to pay off those big loans. Oh, but wait... if you are a Quebec resident, your tuition will be so low that you won't need any big loans! 20/20 hindsight: if only we had moved to Canada, my wife and teenagers would have been way less stressed.

This is a myth. Viking and Voyager used custom processors.

The 4004 was used in the first electronic taximeter, the Argo Kiensle 1140, and these were in service for many decades, but have since been largely replaced. I'd speculate that there are still some traffic lights that have an Intel 4004 inside. The chip went out of production in 1986.