Really? "The company tried to get clearance to fly balloons over Venezuela, which would have made it easier to travel to other parts of South America, but the country's authoritarian government would not allow Loon to do so, one former employee said" First of all, how is the assertion that Venezuela has an "authoritarian" government even relevant? First of all, it's a false assertion since Venezuela is a democratic republic with elected officials. The lack of context comes down to the fact that Venezuela has been the victim of illegal unilateral US sanctions and open attempts at overthrowing the government or decapitating its duly elected leaders. Can we agree that they have a reason to be careful? So tell me, why would Venezuela allow overflights of their territory when they know the US military will be collecting information in order to attack it militarily?

Why does it seem that dinosaur and senator are pretty much the same beast, only one is not yet extinct?

Once we learned, from the Wikileaks Vault 7 release, that the NSA has developed and continues to develop hacking programs that can mimic and implicate third parties, none of these reports are believable. Yes, I'm sure there are hacking groups in Russia and China and no doubt some are linked to their respective governments, but no one spies like the Five Eyes. The US (allied with Australia, the UK, Canada, and New Zealand) does the most snooping and the most hacking. Why do you think our bloated war department receives a budget equal to the next 10 countries? To hack and post and snoop -- plus we're paying tons of consultants to do the same. How do they keep their budget so high? By "discovering" hacks all over the place and blaming foreign actors, that's how. The ice cream just licks itself!

They should ask the CEO of a small, competing software company whether big is bad. My guess is big is not bad if you're already big.

I am sick of 4 years being assaulted by a media landscape where speculation and lies are reported as news. The retractions come later, but the original articles containing lies and insinuation remain posted and are continuously used to buttress claims of a pattern. Opinion is not new and speculation belongs on the opinion page. Did the scientists go to Cuba and measure electromagnetic frequencies at the sites of the alleged attacks in order to determine their nature? Doubt it and even if we demanded the measurements be taken, they would state that obviously the Cubans/Russians/Chinese/Iranians would know better that to aim and operate their weapon during the investigation for fear of discovery. Did they train microwave radiation at test subjects at various power levels and frequencies in order to replicate the symptoms? In the sordid past of America's CIA and Pentagon Cold War experiments, I'm sure they did far worse and have either already destroyed the reports or are not willing to fess up to their crimes. I suspect no such thing was done in a controlled environment in order to prepare this breathlessly-reported study. So how is this science? Get back to me when they get beyond the hypothesis stage and come up with a theory based upon reproducible results. Then it could be reported as news.

In the walls of the cubicle there were three orifices. To the right of the speakwrite, a small pneumatic tube for written messages, to the left, a larger one for newspapers; and in the side wall, within easy reach of Winston's arm, a large oblong slit protected by a wire grating. This last was for the disposal of waste paper. Similar slits existed in thousands or tens of thousands throughout the building, not only in every room but at short intervals in every corridor. For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building.

There will certainly be no carbon dioxide-spewing drivers in their transportation vehicles.

However, I just today deleted my Facebook account again for the third time.

I watched the Watergate hearing in real-time (rather than going to class) back in 1973 and admired Woodward and Bernstein for a long time. However, that was back in the day that people thought that if you caught the government breaking the law, one call to the New York Times and the malfeasance would be plastered all over. That was before the mainstream media sucked like it does today or at least before it became so obvious. I wouldn't believe anything Woodward says. That having been said, why would anyone post such drivel on a site like /. where members are more technically savvy than the average muggle? Ever since the Vault 7 release of the NSA's spy tool by Wikileaks, we know that the United States and her allies possess tools that allow ingress to secured systems while at the same time leaving false tracks to lead to any other state actor they wish. That leads me to believe nearly every "attack" is a false-flag attack from the one well-known possessor of the tools, the know-how, and a record (proven fact) of committing online break-ins and eavesdropping on phone conversations -- the United States. Especially this one -- what would a foreign power gain? A list of registered voters that is public information anyway? In the 2016 election, it was the DNC and local Democratic party operatives who were changing voters' registrations, denying citizens the correct ballots, and dropping voters from the roles. Maybe Woodward would do better to investigate the real reasons behind the US's broken election system.

I don't know. You got a guy, Joe Biden, who has been in politics his entire life and has run for president twice before and has NEVER won a Democratic presidential primary in his entire career. Then, in 2020 he loses Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada -- badly and the media is talking about whether the mistakes Biden makes are gaffes or if is he losing it. You have Democratic operatives and their buddies in print and television media exclaiming that the front-runner must be stopped and musing who can stop him. Then... a miracle occurs. Biden gets a boost from James Clyburn who endorses him and he wins South Carolina. That was expected, but the win is big and according to exit polls 40% of those who voted for Biden did so because of the Clyburn endorsement. The media immediately declares Biden the new front-runner and suddenly all the Super Tuesday polls turn in Biden's favor. Now... miracle number 2 occurs. Obama swoops in to take a meeting with the remaining candidates and they begin to drop out. Not all at once, mind you, but in a strategic order such that it overwhelmingly favors Biden and hurts the former presumptive nominee. Super Tuesday arrives and Biden win states all across the nation, some in which he never campaigned and, in some cases, had not even set up an office. I'm 66 years old and I've been watching Democratic primaries my entire adult life and I've never seen anything quite like that.

The NSA had already developed tools that can hack a server while leaving clues that point to an adversary of the United States. It was the United States who bugged Angela Merkel's phone during the debate over Iraq in the United Nations. The question, of course, should be, "Has the United Nations Security Council approved these sanctions?" If not, they would be illegal acts of war. In any case, the EU should be welcoming Russia as a trade partner, not following the United States into another useless and expensive cold war with the Russians.

For myself, I will never support sharing roads as a driver with those autos without. There is an imbalance of responsibility for accidents.In addition, there is what is popularly known as the human factor in both the control of the manually-driven vehicles and the the programming that must react to that factor. I suppose if we legislated that autos communicate with one another, similar to the convoy experiments done in Europe for trucks, the playing field could be leveled. I don't see the political will in the US to force manufacturers to include such options and that doesn't include self-driving cars' interactions with pedestrians. Otherwise, I believe separate roads should be built for self-driving cars. Why can't we all just try to drive our own cars?

What a great opportunity to split these gigantic airline corporations into smaller, competitive units. Isn't this the magic of entrepreneurship? Once the big carriers go down, their stocks of aircraft can be sold at bargain-basement prices to new airline startups. Those small. efficient companies can take advantage of the drop in fuel prices and revitalize the airline industry. LET 'EM FAIL!

There is no Russian meddling in US elections or anywhere else. There has been no evidence presented showing that Russian interfered in the 2016 election -- none. Since the United States is the leading country in the world overthrowing legitimate governments around the world and having the ability to hack anyone (the REAL evidence of election interference, hacking, regime changes, and illegal invasions where the United States is involved is overwhelming) and leave fake evidence implicating a third-party. That is what the Vault 7 archive revealed. How much longer should we allow the corperate-owned and controlled mainstream media to spread these lies? Unfortunately it's hopeless because the US media has no interest in publishing evidence of US crimes (just ask Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, and Edward Snowden) and the American people have no interest in hearing about them. Unfortunately, that does not make America exceptional, just like every other society that wants to believe they are superior to the rest.

We are now learning (clued by evidence from our prehistoric past) the effects of excess carbon in the atmosphere and the changes it is making to weather events on Earth. Are we now going to experiment to see how reducing sunlight can affect the world's climate and weather patterns? It is an easy bet that, in fact, nothing will be done to lower carbon emissions, so hair-brained ideas to close the barn door after the horse is gone will be bandied about in the near future. I can only hope that Google's new quantum processor can simulate the effects of some of these band-aids before they exacerbate the damage already done to the planet.