The cost really depends on who Snowden leaks the SSL keys to doesn't it?

Probably Snowden stole everyone's SSL key and password. It explains a lot.

Also they are presumably using the keys to store passwords for later.

So probably Snowden has hundreds of SSL private keys and millions of passwords and account details.

It would explain a lot.

I get paid to audit code, so I'm biased.

The article says that no one employee could find hundreds of bugs and that's true. But when you hire employees you are building a process. Improving the process by writing a new QC script can eliminate hundreds of bugs over a couple years. These are not attributed to one employee and since the offending code is not committed then they aren't even counted as bug fixes.

Offering a bug bounty, on the other hand, is a unpredictable thing and you'll get random fixes. It is valuable because it provides a fresh perspective.

My guess is that if you collect a few bug bounties then Google will send you a recruiting email. It might be more expensive to hire you to work full time it's still a worthwhile thing.

In all fairness, Washington Post opinion pages are normally very stupid so this is not out of line with what's expected.

I am a fairly active linux contributor. I have patches all over the kernel tree. I also review drivers/staging code.

Most of the patches that I send are things that I cannot test because I don't have the hardware. Even though I'm careful, there are still a few times where I have introduced bugs. The most recent example was code like this "if (!attributes & 0x4000)". That has a precedence bug so the condition is always false. Unfortunately changing it to "if (!(attributes & 0x4000))" disabled certain graphics card. The correct thing was to delete the condition.

Breaking stuff is just a part of development, you try your best but don't let fear of breaking things stop you from applying patches.

Probably over 5% of the 10,000 patches in every new kernel are cleanups. We're always merging API changes and unlike Microsoft we don't care if it affects out of tree drivers. There isn't any subsystem where the owner says, "This code is stable now and I'm only accepting actual bug fixes."

The other thing that helps is the short release cycle. If something does break, it's easy to fix.

Some people find linux development frustrating. One developer told me, "Ever since XXX took over the YYY subsystem he has been constantly changing the API and re-writing my code. Does he ever sleep? I don't know how anything works any more."

It's hard on reviewers as well. I have reviewed literally over 3000 cleanup patches to the comedi subsystem. I have mornings when I feel lazy and it doesn't fill me with joy to see 40 new cleanup patches in my inbox. The process is expensive.

But I do feel a great deal of pride in the work.

I set up a computer lab in Uganda 3-4 years ago.

We bought second hand computers locally. They came with 256 MB of RAM and we upgraded them to 512. It was good enough to run Gimp and Firefox. That's what most of the internet cafes do too.

The computers were networked so we set up apt-cacher on the teacher's computer. The other software tip is that you will want to be able to block high traffic websites because internet access is so expensive and bad.

One thing which you might want to think about is if you'll have to pay tax bringing computers into the country. Uganda allows computers to be imported duty free. But for a while Uganda started banning people from bringing used computers into the country.

My sister-in-law's NGO is setting up a computer lab as well. They are bringing laptops from the US. Laptops are good because they have a battery built in so power fluctuations aren't such a big deal. The problem with laptops is that they can be stolen easily.

If you're bringing stuff from the US then bring a bunch of cheap USB keys for the kids. They will be very expensive locally.

> 1) What does promoting domestic energy entail?

One thing it entails is using the Canada oil sands. A lot of people don't realize how much oil there is right here in Canada... The only bad thing Romney doesn't realize is that Canada is still claiming to be an independent country.

iPhones have 19% market share in China. Windows phones are NOT probably outselling iPhones.

Congo is, of course, a complete mess. You're taking the worst, most difficult example and trying to extrapolate from there. The situation would be far better in Zambia, Rwanda, Uganda or other surrounding countries. Even in the Congo, I doubt that the numbers are that over 50% of the mosquito nets are used for fishing as you claim.

People do study the effectiveness of different approaches. It doesn't take a genius level intelligence to go through a year later and check that there were fewer reported cases of malaria.

Obviously nets can be used for fishing. It may be news to people watching TV documentaries in the US, but it's not news to anyone who has visited Africa.

There are other approaches such as spraying the inside walls of every house with insecticide. People are doing this in some areas. It's probably more effective and there is nothing to steal. The advantage of mosquito nets is that you can do it one person at a time. But with the insecticide approach you want to try get every house.

I think you mean a cashier. The cashier is the person who rings up the purchase. The sales person is the one to tell you which phones are good and which ones are rubbish.

Don't feel embarrassed, it's an easy mistake to make.

Only idiots made fun of the Xbox. Windows has always been the best platform for games.

Also Nokia is not getting enough money from Microsoft to collapse the way that they have. Nokia is a publicly traded company so if Microsoft was paying them for all the customers they are lost, that would show up in their financials.

You would think if the human body can block the radiation from the scanners then the fuselage would block it as well. One theory that I've heard is that radiation that goes through you is potentially less dangerous than radiation that doesn't. I'm not an expert so I can't say if it's an apples to apples comparison or not.