Here's another heuristic.

Apple, Microsoft and Blackberry uses closed software. Google uses open source.

So, Android is the best choice because you (meaning a team of concerned citizens) can essentially take all the privacy leaking parts out and create a private and secure system. In the others, you are at the mercy of others who likely are to care about your privacy as much as your cat cares about your rants.

So, apparently this has a fitness store ... not a store to sell you stuff, but a storage of the user sensor data (snarkily probably a store for advertisers).

I think this might be a good idea. Recently motorola discontinued their motoactv watch and in the process also broke their website. So, your entire history went with that and your device became almost useless after that.

Also, the devices have made data overly fractured. The pedometer syncs to a different website than your running app. They don't want to co-operate. Maybe the fitness store will be one central repository for all that data.

I would rather have an open standard and have the encrypted data stored in dropbox but I guess this is the idea of the API.

I have the Sony PRS-T2 and it was really good for its time. However, Sony really fluffed PRS-T3 by not having a front light.

However, I think rather than Sony's hardware, it was the software that was better, esp for pdf in this generation. Kobo hardware was better - the aura and aura hd are one step ahead of kindles in hardware but one step behind everyone else.

Finally Sony was the only one with actual buttons. I was really hoping Sony would bring a new reader with frontlight and page turn buttons.

The real money to be made is in selling books and media rather than hardware. So, makes sense Sony bowed out because they aren't in the business of selling books.

You think enough work and enough oversight creates efficiency? No wonder you have a distraction problem.

Except that efficiency does not work that way.

People screwing around at work is not the cause of inefficiency but a symptom of a hidden larger problem that is causing inefficiency.

If you're so impressed by their research building, you should check out their advertising building. They are better funded and have more influence in making their products sound better.

Modern patents are completely different than what people think patents are.

They are not necessarily clever inventions or designs anymore. They are just a way of laying stake to a field or method of doing things.

As an example, people think a better mouse trap would be what you'd file a patent for. No, actually, a company would file a patent for method of eliminating rodents. This would cover all forms of mouse traps that could ever be designed.

A few years ago, I thought I could learn how things are done by reading patents in a hardware/software field. All the patents were overly general, without any useful information and filled with language that only lawyers would use. On the other hand, I couldn't really design anything without "violating" patents because all the patents were so general that it could covered most general ideas that could be used. In fact, before I had read the patents I had some designs and those designs violated patents.

Well, it was really surprising that people who get STEM degrees don't go on to become musicians, actors and entertainers.

I thought the Brian May, Tom Scholz and Msai Oka was pretty common. Thanks to this study I now am more informed.

The whole STEM stars was a lie!

In order to give the deauth command, you have to be in the same network as the Chromecast.

So, you can't rick roll a chromecast unless you find a way to get into the network that has the chromecast.

I can see this being a problem in offices and other places where a large number of people connect to the same wifi hotspot but this is not a problem at home.

An easier way to rick roll would be to just pull out your youtube app and then start rick roll on the chromecast. This will stop whatever it is playing before and play the rick roll video.

Doesn't this first require that you can get into the chromecast's wireless network first?

If you can get on someone's wireless network, there is a lot of things you can do.

Can't this be easily solved by making the process of jumping to a different wireless router in the configuration mode more secure.

After the hacker leaves the range, then the chromecast will not connect to the original network. I don't know if the chormecast installation tool can reconnect to it and reconfigure the network it connects to.

All that counts is that Snowden has the balls and integrity that is so lacking in the "uber-hacker" department. You can't threaten Snowden, you can't bribe him. An uber-hacker, you can buy him out or scare him.

Anyways, you don't uber-hackers to develop security software. The encryption algorithms are university research level stuff and as long as you understand the basics of it, you're fine. The rest is just writing code around it that a decent programmer should be able to handle well.

I read the article and I can't tell if this is a real problem that is really affecting thousands of users and companies, or a fantasy that the author wrote up in 30 minutes after having a discussion with an old IBM engineer.

Sure, IBM has all these resource prioritization in mainframes because mainframes cost a lot of money. Nowadays, hardware is so cheap you don't have to do all that stuff.

If some young programmer undertook the challenge and created the framework, would anyone use it and test it? Will there be an actual need for something like this?

My point is that an insider information to what is really going on in the cutting edge usage of linux or just some smoke being blown around to an obligated write up.

They are asking a question that is heavily dependent on the number of children in the household.

I think the correlation here is electricity usage and children in the household.

Every minute spent training for a marathon is useless because we have cars. A $50 junker can beat the fastest marathon runner.

Why is learning about algorithms useful? For every algorithm you learn, there are at least a dozen implementation of the said algorithm.

I was reading some books published in the 2008 and 2009. NSA was viewed as the stalwart of the security aspect of the internet, valiantly contributing to security software and keeping things organized and secure in that front.

I think NSA should have done the opposite of what they did. Instead of spying, they should have created anti-spying tools and issued alerts on spying and privacy aspects of modern technology.

Even if they created spying technology, it should have been created to prevent such spying by putting those tools out in public and letting security researchers figure out methods to solve these security and privacy problems. US software would then be seen as solid and trustworthy, and the whole world would have no problem using US software knowing that it is constantly monitored for security and privacy.