Now take you pill and return to the privacy of your padded cell.

The AK-47 is designed to win wars, not specifically to kill people. Read some Sun Tzu. With the normal military ammo (not the East German one) if the bullet doesn't hit a vital organ and with medical assistance there are very good chances of a full recovery. Can't say the same about many other firearms.

SIMs that can be fully reprogrammed by OTA already exist. All SIMs support changing the identity (IMSI) and a few also support changing authentication data (Ki, Op, algorithm). Most likely this is just a method to take away one of subscriber's freedoms - to become somebody else's subscriber.

Or... start drilling!

Early in 2013 the FCC decided to remove the subsidies for POTS and cell service in remote and hard to reach areas and instead sibsidize broadband Internet access. Now the operators may dismantle infrastructure that's not profitable even if some areas will be left with no service.

POTS is not the only service affected. AT&T plans to shut down 2G service and make spectrum available for 4G instead and Verizon is considering something similar. Due to differences in coverage between these technologies some sparsely populated rural areas will be left with no cell coverage. Small carriers may be able to provide an alternative but it will take time and money.

The on-board cell is fitted with jammers that prevent detecting the ground towers at all. This is to prevent phones from boosting power to reach ground.

Operational costs are dominated by the connection to the ground stations (usually satellite but can be something else). Not sure how much licensing the systems costs, I know just 2 vendors and there are thousands of patents involved.

At least for GSM and UMTS radios it means that the phone will fail to camp to the base station although it may be able to remain tuned to one. Note that in order to allow phones to find them base stations are required to have a frequency precision better than 0.05 ppm - that's about 50Hz at ~ 1GHz. Phones can still camp (but slower) up to some hundred Hz difference.

The initial hole was probably smaller and less circular. However, the warm water rising from the meteor has melted the edge.

If a new protocol is needed at both ends of the connection why not use a less experimental and more capable one like SCTP? It is heavily used in telephony networks for SIGTRAN and is also supported by some servers for SIP and HTTP.
Wait, I know, because it's Apple!

Shorting together data pins prevents iDevices from charging properly. A 10nF capacitor between them is a better choice.

A capacitor connected between D+ and D- lines will block any USB negotiation and data transfer without interferring with the DC levels used to "negotiate" charger capacity.

Then use all three of them in sequence and hope it would be quite difficult to have them all cooperate to break your encryption.

By international space law states are responsible in full for any liability caused by a launch. Insurance companies are only 2nd tier and obviously a government will refuse to allow any launch that's considered too risky.

There are international laws about rocket launches and insurance. In particular there are no liability limits. And the state that does the launch assumes full responsability.
Insurance companies are partially covered by state insurance but if serious shit happens (foreign city obliterated by out of control rocket) they will go bankrupt and the launching organization will go bankrupt and most likely in jail and the launching state could still go bankrupt or in a war.
Facing these risks imagine how many insurance companies can do that and how high are the fees, especially for new unproven launchers.