Teach users what entropy is? That is unpossible (as Ralph Wiggins would say).

I have a friend who is clearly quite intelligent, but can't remember how to do cut and paste -- though I bet he knows more people by name than anyone I have ever known. Even a poor quality password meter probably helps password quality more than any single attempt to teach how to make good passwords. After all we have been trying to teach this as an industry for decades without much success.

The problem is that ad-hoc password strength measurement is usually pretty bad because writing a good meter is hard, although again something is usually better than nothing. Best practice would suggest reusing code from someone else, perhaps just as Dropbox did according to the article -- apparently zxcvbn. I am not claiming zxcvbn is actually good, just that the researchers referred to Dropbox favorably in this regard.

Any company or website that can recover your password is plain text is clearly run by idiots with respect to security. Consider it a blessing that they chose to reveal that to you clearly so that you can avoid them.

The problem in this case is not that Comcast is incompetent. It is that they are flat out lying. This is breach of oral contract. IANAL and certainly don't know the penalties in this case, but I know that legal damages are quite limited in my state -- i.e.. $500 max. Why do you think they won't write out any guarantees?

Comcast screwed my over too as I had checked in advanced, was assured it was wired for cable and only required a phone call to turn it on, etc. Of course, when I made the call took several calls to determine that it was not in fact ready or had ever wired to their network. wired. Fortunately infrastructure was in place and I go service turned on only 10 tens late, but it was not pleasant for me either.

Of course they are incompetent. But they are also lying monopolistic crooks.

No military reason? US casualty estimates for a conventional invasion were typically around 500,000 US casualties (though some were much higher or lower) and estimated Japanese casualties were usually higher. Non-nuclear attacks are also devastating, the fire-bombing of Tokyo likely killed about twice as the attack on Hiroshima

The US considered simply demonstrating a bomb to convince the Japanese to surrender, but ultimately it was decided that this would be more likely to be ineffective. Considering that Japan did not surrender after the first bomb was used this assessment was very likely accurate.

The purpose of the military is to defeat the enemy. If you can drop 2 atomic bombs and end the war without US casualties you have accomplished a large military victory at very low military cost to the US.

Argue against the use of nuclear attacks on Japan on other factors if you like, but stating there was no military reason reveals ignorance or worse on your part.

Probably would not be useful to exonerate as it would only say where your car was, not where you were. For some reason, circumstantial incriminating evidence is is often more likely to be accepted than exculpatory evidence. Of course, it should be the other way around. A good defense lawyer flips this back in your favor.

Due to a project I've worked on I know that depending on the state, that most likely 20-30% of of vehicles do not have valid insurance. I've heard this both from high level BMV and law enforcement. Just because you pass a law does not mean that it will be obeyed.

The U.K. France and China have also openly tested hydrogen bombs. Israel is also thought to have them.

The TSA is bad you US citizens including those that don't fly.

1. Over 7 billion dollars in 2014 budget for TSA
2. Who know how many lost tourism dollars>
3. Long distance driving to avoid TSA.
4. Loss of freedom encouraging government to further encroachment of freedoms.

DES was approved by the FDA, so clearly the FDA was not helpful in preventing the drug from reaching the market.

Thalidomide was not approved by the FDA primarily due to bureaucratic delay. While the FDA doctors would not approve it as they were waiting for evidence it was safe and effective, they would have approved it eventually were it not for the birth defects that starting showing up in other countries. Drug testing protocols simply did not test pregnant women. I.e., the US was largely spared thalidomide babies because the approval process was slower than in other countries as there was nothing in the testing to date that would have prevented approval.

When you read a headline that FDA approves new drug able to prevent 10,000 deaths annually, rest assure this also means the FDA has been blocking a drug that would have prevented 10,000 annually, most likely for quite a few years.

The drug companies have considerable incentive to market new and expensive (non-generic) drugs. But the expense to bring new drugs to market is also very high, at least in part due to FDA rules. The very high costs tend to kill-off promising developments that would simply not be economical to develop. Real life can be a bit complicated.

The cop did not choke him -- this leaves a mark every time. He died of a heart attack. Were the cops guilty of brutality. Yes. Every takedown is brutal AFAIAC. I don't know if this met the legal definition of police brutality and neither do anyone else. But they did not choke him.

The law was brutal because NYC has to make sure they collect very high tobacco taxes

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War has never been the real way to depopulate the earth, grand total deaths through history due to war are likely less than 500 million. The bubonic plague aka black death is credited with killing off 1/3 to 1/2 of the population in Europe and Chine -- much more effective

Of course, we have better ways to kill lots people these days, just a few EMP's weapons could kill billions as civilization collapses. A single truly nasty bio-weapon release -- airborn smallpox or ebola could do the same with direct deaths as well as collapse.

You are not pulling heat out of the atmosphere. More accurately you are pulling heat out of the atmosphere then re-releasing the heat into the atmosphere as the generated electricity or mechanical energy is used. You are simply not introducing additional heat into the atmosphere by not burning coal or splitting atoms, etc.

However, heating the earth's atmosphere via energy generation is negligible. Total earth energy consumption is about 15 terawatts, total earth solar irradiance is about 173,000 terawatts. This raises the global mean temperature by about 0.0065 degrees C

Yes, but if you want to know how obese a city is you now have a new choice. A) Analyze at remains from the sewer B) Analyze photos from Facebook or C) Spend 5 minutes at the local Walmart.

The FCC is still changing their proposed regulation (reportedly over 300 pages worth). The link you reference is about 5 pages worth. The proposed regs have not been released to the public.

No shortage of stupid user interface choices. Some of the ones I've hated the most.

* Hiding menu options, aka personalized menus
* Wholesale rearranging and renaming of user interfaces between versions, esp. for infrequently used options
* Super secret hidden files.
* Windows 8