"...but I was dashed if I could see why he couldn't do it with a bright and cheerful smile."

(Nice to encounter another Bertie Wooster fan!)

I agree that fingerprint sensors are nowhere near reliable enough to use on a device that you are depending on to save your life. Since a significant percentage of slashdotters are hardware and/or software folks, does anyone here have an idea as to how the reliability of these sensors could be improved?

Welcome! The future is here! That is exactly what happens when I sit down at my locked Macbook (running Sierra) while wearing my Apple Watch; the laptop and watch exchange a key, and my laptop unlocks.

Actually, that is now past tense; thanks to this story (and others I've read recently), I have turned this feature off. It's clever and convenient, but not worth the risk of getting inadvertently swept up in some overzealous search warrant issued by a lazy and/or technologically-ignorant judge.

(The next generations of Macbooks will have the fingerprint sensor, and I will be unwilling to use that, too. Sigh.)

I hope Apple cares as much about privacy as they claim to, and figures out a solution to this problem. I am afraid to use these cool features of my devices, which makes these features no longer a selling point.

Oh, I have no interest in excusing it. Comey apparently did, however. So either he had a personal/political/job security reason to not pursue (very possible), or he honestly believed HRC's actions didn't rise to the level of criminal behavior that you describe. I have no idea which, and we may never know.

But the Constitution (that thing they all claim they're defending and protecting) says "innocent until proven guilty"; so, like it or not, she is guilty of nothing, at this time.

Am I not bothered by this? I should be, but I'm not. Cynically, I assume that similar levels of rule-stretching, rule-breaking, and illegal actions have been going on since about 12 minutes after the founding of the Republic, and is just part of the grease that keeps the machinery of government running. Then too, I also suspect that much of what is marked "Classified" gets that way merely to hide things people want buried.

My understanding is that FBI director Comey decided that a prosecutor would not be able to persuade a jury that she intentionally did anything illegal. (That's not the same as saying she didn't do it; just that they'd never get a conviction, and probably not even an indictment.)

Your next four points seem to be concerns over what may come to light upon further investigation. That's reasonable. I appreciate your saying that no "smoking gun" has yet been found.

Diplomacy...Our enemy today is our friend tomorrow...England, Spain, Germany, Japan, Viet Nam, Iraq...

I agree, stupid decisions. I wonder why nobody managed to talk her out of all this.

Thanks for those links. (I have to say that the NYT article seems much more reliable that anything I saw on Infowars.) I read the NYT article; man, was that byzantine! Hard for me to tell whether anything illegal happened; if so, by whom; and if HRC was directly involved. But, definitely bad optics. I can see your point on this one.

What I've never quite understood is: what, specifically, bothers people about this email issue? The worst case scenario is, of course, that one or more of the deleted emails shows some sort of criminal activity (separate from the act of having an unauthorized email server, that is-- granting, arguendo that having such an email server is in fact illegal). Nothing I've read has suggested that such an email has been found, or exists. Absent that, then the most it shows, as far as I can see, is that she felt she was above the rules, that the rules applied to everyone else but not to her. That's bad, but I'm not sure it's worse than what most of us put up with from our managers every day.

I've read several stories about people emailing requests for access to Hillary, or to her staff; a prominent example was the Crown Prince of Bahrain ( http://www.politico.com/story/... ). Admitting up front that I don't really know that much about what the State Department does, or is supposed to do; but the crown prince of Bahrain sounds exactly like the sort of person who could access the State Department, who should get a response from the State Department. And, the linked story doesn't indicate any favors or quid pro quo, as far as I could tell.

Let's further grant (for the sake of argument) that she lied about what emails she had, what emails she released, what emails she deleted. Perhaps I'm cynical, but I have the impression that lying is half of a politician's job; just to get through the day; A necessary evil just to get anything accomplished.

So again, my question is: what, specifically, about this email issue bothers you?

To learn how to do it for the next space station. To learn what works well, what works poorly, and what doesn't work at all.

And perhaps this capability will extend the life of this station.

I'm one of the two submitters. I submitted this story because I am intrigued by his methodology, and not because of the political angle.

In my submission, I included a reference to the fact that he coded up his analysis in R, and that his code is right there on his website for all of us to inspect. I was hoping that that was what would catch Slashdotters' eyes. The editor deleted that part, unfortunately; oh, well.

I know a little about statistical analysis, a little bit about coding, but nothing about R. Can anyone knowledgeable about R comment on his code, and/or his analysis? Thanks!

I started clicking around, and Google popped up a malware warning for the "Astrophysics Abstracts" link at http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/... .

Anyone know of a way to confirm or deny this warning, other than letting my computer get infected?

"Peace is not part of their vocabulary. Only Hate Israel, Destroy Israel."

And this is an example of the harm done by generalizations and pre-judging people based on the group they a part of.

In 2005, a Palestinian 12-year old boy was shot by an Israeli soldier who mistook his toy gun for a real weapon. Despite the best efforts of the Israeli physicians, he was declared brain dead a few days later. His parents--who had just lost their son to an Israeli soldier's mistake--decided against riot and anger; instead, they donated all of the boy's organs. The recipients were Israelis--with the parents' blessing.

"I donâ(TM)t mind seeing the organs in an Israeli or a Palestinian. In our religion, God allows us to give organs to another person and it doesnâ(TM)t matter who the person is,â(TM) said Jamal al-Khatib, the boyâ(TM)s father, who added that he hoped the donations would send a message of peace to Israelis and Palestinians."

http://imemc.org/article/14861...

Thanks, both you and orev.

I expect that, in the (vast?) majority of cases, RunKeeper is doing this without the user's knowledge or permission; I inferred from the articles that it may be doing that by somehow overriding the user's tracking settings in Android. (But, that was an inference only.) I didn't think there was a way to do that in iOS, so glad to have my understanding affirmed.

The first link goes to a website named "Android Authority"; the article in the second link includes the phrase "...the Android version of the app...". Anyone know if the iOS version is doing this also?

(Yes, this is a serious, non-sarcastic post.)

Yikes, that scenario had never occurred to me. I just turned TouchID off on all my devices. Entering my (>4 character) passcode isn't really that hard.

This sort of story is why I like Slashdot. This was interesting and useful. Thanks to the submitter and the editor.