means "compliant" and "loyal". Of course, "smart" in any context is nothing more than a measure of conformity to a particular culture's belief structure. Even here.

"the protection and preservation of existing power inequalities"

Those of us who actually make boards are quite happy to have scopes. Or those of us who work with analog circuits (YES! you CAN still buy REAL OP-AMPS in SO-8 packages OMGWTFBBQ!) or, say, power supplies, or any sort of signal processing. A scope is quite a bit more than a nice-to-have. You may as well tell a machinist a Bridgeport is a "nice thing to have".

Oracle v. Google was about a nine-line range checking routine, written by the same guy at different jobs. The jury found it copyrightable, I seem to remember. (WAT)

Fair Use still exists, but so too does everything short of barratry.

*shrug* Samsung Electronics has some tempting little eight-ARMed chips that would feel great on a Mini-ITX motherboard. Still not FOSS, but if that's really important to you, there's lowRISC (Berkeley RISC-V including development toolchain and Linux image) and just now Parallax's Propeller for your I/O needs...

is anti-American. Stop that.

but, hi, there's something called Android that's well over 90% permissively licensed.

encourage everyone to hack the pages their browser shows to make them their own. Stop being consumers.

3.6: "It is easier to move a problem around (for example, by moving the problem to a different part of the overall network architecture) than it is to solve it."

Because the Holy Bourgeois Aesthetic demands we only allow people with Strong, Stout Hearts to rule over us.

I think the Eich coup was about where I gave up on "social justice", as the game is presently played, being any more than a fashion accessory for the upper middle class.

Because JavaScript Cryptography Considered Harmful. Which, of course, depends on whether CAs, and the authorities that govern them, are part of your threat model.

If FireFox took a stand against stupid bullshit that costs more than it benefits, they could kill it. They're big enough to do so.

Raise your hand if you really thought firing Brendan Eich was about LGBT rights and not corporate control over the window to the web...

Maybe better to just start calling them Netscape again.

DUAL_EC_DRBG was a random number generation algorithm that only its mother could love. It's slow, complex not provably more random than other algos, and comes with magic, unexplained constants, which are the last thing you want to see in an ostensible entropy generator based on asymmetric crypto... and if you want FIPS certification you have to use the given constants. Why did NSA want it in there so badly? Why, after a potential flaw was found and corrected, did NSA personnel "suggest" a change that, in retrospect, only made that putative flaw more reliably exploitable? Cryptologists explain.

On the hardware side, Theodore T'so observed that Intel was very eager to have RDRAND be the exclusive source of entropy for the kernel's RNG, as was one goofball at Red Hat who tried to introduce a kernel parameter to do the same thing. He fought them both off, thankfully.

In general, see also ProPublica on the SIGINT Enabling Project.

I Hunt Sysadmins discusses why sysadmins are high-value targets. In short, sysadmins are often softer targets than the high-value Linux systems they might be paid to secure or administer. They probably use webmail or social networking services from PRISM partners, and the things they look up often reveal information about their projects and methods. The thrust of it is how to look at haystacks with CT technology instead of boring old flat radiographs, and as odious as the ends are, the means are the stuff of a fascinating, occasionally scintillating read. They are, after all, just a very large IT shop with a one-of-a-kind data set to play with.

Of course the haystack analogy breaks down before it starts as there is no +1 Needle of Revealed Wisdom to locate and extract. Is Russia fomenting a "color revolution" in the US as payback for the two we gave them in Ukraine? Is China building a fifth column inside the US to ensure their trillions in dollar holdings will hold value? Is French heavy industry spying on major US political patrons and stealing intellectual "property" or business information? Does Germany still believe the USA is faithfully holding all their gold on deposit at Fort Knox? Is Elizabeth Warren really a danger to foreign investors favored by the ruling class? etc.

If you think situational awareness is a waste, you're probably forgetting that government organizations can provide good service to customers iff the government thinks it's important. City hall treats you with hostility not because they're the government, but because you're not.

as a means of keeping the working class obedient and docile and paying for the middle class. They are also rational from a safety perspective. The devil (or the intent to exploit, if you prefer) is in the details.

The mistake is assuming that the ancien regime exists to serve you, which is not only laughably ahistorical, but nauseatingly consumerist. Unless you're part of the gentry, you exist to serve them.