This would be a wonderful deal for Comcast if they could get it. They give up a few million subscribers in one city and get a nation-wide monopoly on cable TV and broadband over cable. What's not to like from their POV?

All a terrorist had to do was create the AP on a phone, wait until somebody noticed and reported it, then delete the AP and watch the fun as everybody runs around trying to find it. All the disruption of a bombing without the inconvenience of getting yourself killed or arrested. If that's not what happened this time, it soon will be.

In most parts of the world, having a local volcano erupting is a major problem. In Hawaii, most of the eruptions are either confined to the volcano's crater or the upper slopes, meaning that most of the time it's just an unexpected tourist attraction. (I remember being at Pearl Harbor in '72; there was an eruption of Mauna Loa that caused a bright yellow fountain that could be seen at night from Honolulu, but all it resulted in was a dome inside the crater. Having a lava flow go far enough to threaten homes is quite rare now, and that very rarity is what makes it news. Yes, Ebola is frightening, and potentially more dangerous, but that doesn't make it what's happening in Hawaii less newsworthy.

It's very rare, now, that you download binaries and run them on Linux to install something. Most of the time, what you get is an rpm, a deb or whatever the equivalent is for your distro. Adding malware to such a package without making it uninstallable is not as easy as it is with a Windows executable. I won't say it can't be done, because I'm sure that it can, but I will say it's more work especially as the exact technique depends on what type of package you're working with. And, of course, that gets even more tricky if you're using this service to download updates from your distro's repositories, as you not only have to gimmick the files itself, you have to get the GPG signature to match.

Does the malware run under Linux? Unless they're able to infect Linux software, I really don't care because that's all I run.

None, because I don't use a smartphone. I use an old-style dumb phone and don't even do texting. My phone is for making and receiving phone calls and nothing else.

Let me guess: either you don't have access to a full-length mirror or you never bother to look at yourself in one. Granted, you can't get a good look at your backside that way, but you should have a fairly good idea of what you'd see if you did.

Anyway, since when was it necessary to study brain patterns to establish if someone is a compulsive gambler?

If you have to ask that question, you've not understood what the study was about. It's not about trying to find out if people are compulsive gamblers, it's about why they are.

My connection is on a dynamic IP address. The best any of those services can do is tell you what city my ISP's router is in, and one of the three services tested by iplocation.net (the service pointed to by TFA) managed to get it wrong. And, I'm not the least bit impressed by the claim that the author's location was correct withing 5 miles, as that still leaves anybody looking for you with just over 78.5 square miles to search.

I'm 50 now, which makes me a decrepit old man by Slashdot standards...

I'm 65, and by my standards you're still a kid. I have a number of chronic medical conditions, including osteoporosis, but I still stand straight and don't need a walker, or even a cane. You don't have to be decrepit by the time you're ready to retire unless you don't try to take care of yourself or your health is considerably worse than mine. (Until recently, I was taking 33 pills/day, all but four by prescription.) Yes, it's nice to know that these devices may soon be available for those who need them, but it's even nicer to know that for now, at least, I'm not one of them.

In order to be useful to people using walkers or in wheelchairs, buildings need to have ramps instead of, or along with stairs. I don't know about the rest of Europe, but there's a good reason you don't find ramps in England: until recently, adding ramps meant that the Daleks could get in. Of course, now that Daleks can levitate, that's no longer an issue.

Whenever I see, "You'll never believe what ..." I respond with, "You're right; I wont."

No, Who's on First.

The idea of a chimp, or other primate being intelligent enough to be considered human isn't new. Heinlein covered it back in 1947 in Jerry Was a Man. If you haven't read it yet, you really need to before discussing this article any further.

More monetary penalties, yes. However, if she hits them with Identity Theft, there's a very good chance they'll be spending time in the Graybar Hotel.