LOL ... thanks for that ... I haven't heard anyone else use that one in years.

I actually heard it for the first time from people who were in the business of aircraft maintenance. I still think it's hilarious.

In what way should anybody be surprised that a wearable, wireless device has implemented security in a completely incompetent way?

These are products which are intended to be cool, shiny, and pretty ... but secure? Not even a little.

I continue to be unsurprised by this crap, and I continue fairly firm in my indifference to owning any of this stuff ... and the same goes the for "Interweb of Stuff"; I assume that out of the gate it's going to be insecure and stupid.

Unless companies have actual legal liability for shit security, you'll continue to see shit security.

So just don't buy it if you value security or privacy -- because they're all pretty much designed to upload your information to analytics companies anyway.

Flourish.

Your example just demonstrates that Google really did allow Motorola to operate as a separate OEM, not directly influenced by the Android team. It's also possible that Motorola didn't have the option of releasing the specs because of agreements with the camera manufacturer. (Note that I don't know anything about that specific incident, and hadn't even heard of it until you mentioned it. I do know that Google would like its Nexus devices to be much more open than they are, but can't get there without becoming a hardware manufacturer.)

If that were an even remotely-likely outcome, it would have happened. Life is extraordinarily good at surviving and evolving new equilibria.

Meh, the history of life on this planet is one long series of massive, unexpected perturbations, ranging from ice ages so severe that the equatorial seas are covered with several meters of ice, to massive volcanic eruptions that block most global insolation for years, to massive meteor strikes. In addition, the ice core records show that the planet has undergone radical climate change (much faster and more extreme than what we're currently seeing) without any cause at all as far as we can detect, as recent as 60K years ago.

Certainly. Equally, we shouldn't ignore the fact that doing nothing at all (assuming we could) will also have disastrous consequences on our own habitat. Earth changes all the time, in all sorts of ways. If we want stability we need to learn to actively engineer the planet.

Okay, but the issue you're complaining about (pocket muting or hanging up) should be impossible on proper hardware regardless of the screen lock status. So with that out of the way, you just disagree with the screen lock behavior. That's your prerogative, but I don't think it's clearly wrong.

Ah, okay. Thanks for the clarification. Yes, there are good reasons that stock Android doesn't use swap, and I can see that people who change that could cause themselves lots of problems :-)

As I recall it was about not making it easy for users to download copies of videos. I could be wrong.

The wireless industry estimates that for every 10 Megahertz of spectrum licensed for wireless broadband, 7,000 American jobs are created and U.S. gross domestic product increases by $1.7 billion.

And more importantly, this correlates to a 5% increase in executive compensation, and a 2% increase in the hookers and cocaine fund.

This will also increase the pool for bribing politicians by an additional 1.5%, ensuring the best opportunities to purchase favorable legislation.

CEOs are said to be pleased with the forecasted pillaging of the American public, and look forward to raising your rates and finding new and creative ways to give you less for your money, while optimizing long-term executive compensation.

Suckers.

Funny how the country that talks the loudest about free market is so crap at actually implementing it...

That's the economic system that was used in the USSR.

"We are showing that the privacy we are told that we have isn't real"

Of course it's not bloody real.

For us to believe this data has been 'anonymized', we have to assume that a) the company is qualified to do what is required to anonymize the data, b) that they actually give a shit, and c) that they bear any penalty if they do a terrible job.

Entrusting these companies with this data in the first place is the problem. Allowing them to share it all over the place for profit and with no restriction is a terrible idea.

This is precisely why sane countries have data protection and privacy laws -- because corporations are greedy, self serving entities, who won't give a crap if the collateral damage of their stuff is to damage the privacy of everybody they deal with.

And this is precisely why all of those analytics companies in web pages are just parasites and not to be trusted.

Slight? It has to be either local, maintainable local, spare-parts generally available or from an ally so close that if you ever break up you are pretty much fucked anyway.