The article says Greylock can access "fully up-to-date IPhones".

Can Greylock access Iphones that don't allow automatic updating? If Greylock can't, then Apple has given out an update that allows outsiders to access your IPhone. So much for the Apple claim to be a privacy good-guy. Even more interesting is the possibility that Apple has pushed an OS update to phones which have automatic update turned off, something we usually associate with Microsoft.

Is there anyone out there capable of looking at the stream of bits coming-and-going and reading the flash memory that holds the updated code? And if Apple can push an update, what does that mean for the validity of the phone log when the IPhone shows up as a court exhibit? And do IPhones in Europe and China get the same treatment?

And what exactly is a passive shooter?

The logic of this ia that If we connect people they will interact; If they interact it can be good or bad; examples of good branch are they fall in love and feed the poor- examples of bad branch are they kill each other. Who is responsible?

The logic applies to Slashdot, Facebook, the NYT, every radio playlist... and you and I in our daily activities. I'm glad Facebook is at least thinking about it

So the tension is between those who believe the connecting agency is responsible and those who believe the individuals being connected are responsible. Most of us believe both

Quite appropriate on Good Friday, don't you think?

Advertisements for hemorrhoid treatments; Amber Alerts; "Happy Birthday!" messages; strobe lights to accompany music streams; political adds; soft core porn; hard core porn; racial slurs; state laws deciding which slurs are traffic offenses; biblical verses; prohibitions on Arabic language headlight messages in Alabama; being fired for headlight crimes; going to court and claiming that your headlights were hacked by neo-Nazis..... and... Trump tweets.

I think I'll just drive in daylight and take Uber wearing a blindfold

The first purpose-built American aircraft carriers, the Lexington and Saratoga, had the same lean-to-the-side issue. They were laid down during WW I as battle cruisers, which were the size of battleships with less armor and higher speed. They were designed as scouts.

When the hulls were converted to carriers in the 1920s they were designed to be part of the scouting force that screened the main fleet. So they carried
8 x 8" guns (the same battery as a heavy cruiser) near the superstructure on the right (starboard) side of the ship plus, if I remember correctly, the superstructure was partly armored. Adding 2,000 tons to one side made them tilt so the fuel tanks on the left side of the ship were basically ballast, only usable in an emergency.

During the civil war West Virginia was removed from Virginia and made a separate state. The Constitution didn't matter. Lincoln could either save constitutional government or the union and he choose to save the union. Technically, the suspension of civil rights during the civil war was based on marshall law during an insurrection. That has never been revoked.

Having said "the southern states are still in the union" the federal government was faced with a problem. The 1866 election, based on the 1864 election results, with the southern states now voting, would have led to a Democratic victory. That would have overturned the verdict of the bloodiest war in our nation's history. The Republicans, understandably were not going to let that happen. Thus what we usually call "reconstruction" which was only ended when the 1980 census limited the likelyhood of a Democratic victory. The north with the aid of huge immigrant flows, had now won the war, and got to write the history books.

In any case, West Virginia was removed from Virginia without the concurrence of the state of Virginia in direct violation of the constitution but the post civil war era was also the post constitutional era.

Wonderful term. And like most modern terms tries to disguise the actors.

In this case we have a subject (the "Bros"- meaning guys who want to pay money for sex with cute girls) a verb ("trafficking"), an indirect object (pimp) and a direct object (victim, girl). Who is doing the acting here? Trying to illuminate the agency of the girls is like the old Victorian crusades- the girls were all lured into a life of prostitution by guys with long mustaches and were perfectly innocent. No. Sometimes the bed seems like a better choice than the sweatshop.

Sorry; they are whores. They are not victims. They would prefer to not spend 10hours/day working in a sweatshop back in Thailand or Vietnam so they sign up to rent out their bodies to guys with money. Most of the action in south Asia is now Chinese and Japanese guys but the local U.S. non-profits "doing good" could never get that posted on Slashdot. If the girls were really being lied to and thought they would be cleaning houses in the U.S. the first thing they would do is run to the police. They don't. The whole business may be pretty sad (poor 19 year-old girls from rural Asia; middle-aged guys from the first world who don't want to put up with nagging western women) but the girls are not passive objects being "trafficked".

And the economics? High end Caucasian college girls in the U.S. willing to work as prostitutes are in short supply and are quite expensive. Most of their clients are rich guys looking for "the girlfriend experience", 40 year-old ex-nerds and successful blue-collar entrepreneurs trying to live out the dating experience they never had with the cute cheerleader. I've know the girls; I've known the guys. Both groups are surprisingly likable.

And so are the Asian whores and the guys having sex with them. I know guys who go to Thailand twice a year and I even know something about some of the American guys who run those operations. Human needs are not pretty. But the illegal immigrant girls are no different from the Mexicans working on the construction crews in Austin; upper middle class people want cheap labor and if they have to break a few laws to get it, that's OK. After all, this is one crime the prosecutors will never prosecute.

When I call the police here in Austin, TX they automatically know from my cell phone number who I am and where I live. I assume that all police have the same ability.

If for whatever reason the police can't verify the caller's identity it should be a standard procedure for the police to ask for the number and call it back to verify the caller's ID. If it turns out to be the phone of an Indian telemarketer, a spoofed number or for whatever reason is untraceable it is a phony call. All this can be done in the first 30 seconds after a call is received while the police are responding and before they arrive.

If every pizza delivery service in the U.S. can detect phony phone calls and ignore then why can't the police?

Thought experiment: if the address was for the town's mayor do you think the police would have treated this as a real call?

I'm not saying the police should ignore these calls. But the organizations that represent police departments should be developing best practices, operator training and phone call checking procedures to at least get the first responders up to the skill level of Dominos.

Six people developed COBAL during a set of 1959 allnighters in a NYC hotel room. One was a woman. Did any of the men get a NYT obit?

They were all important figures in their day but only one gets the Times treatment because the NYT is on a "Women in technology" kick. Death as newshook for an editorial.

They did the same thing with Grace Hopper. Now Grace was a shrewd, funny lady. I used to drive her to Mensa meeting in the 1970s. She lived in a high-rise in Arlington, Va and I lived nearby. One time, with rain pouring through a hole in my convertible's roof, I apologized for getting her soaked and we talked about her elderly, leaky, model A Ford, which somehow made it through WWII via a couple of engine rebuilds she did on her kitchen table. She liked guys- they helped her drag the motor up the stairs.

Grace and Miss Sammet did share one thing; they never married and never had children or grandchildren. Making that whole thing work - the relationship; the long, intellectually challenging hours; the reality of raising children- is easier now but, take my word for it, the young tech girls here in Austin still talk about it, especially in private among themselves.

All I can say is "So long Jean. So long Grace.", dying alone in a nursing home. It all makes me a little sad.

To say that the U.S. is "historically" the biggest contributor to CO2 production is true but misleading. It is like saying "China is historically the leading cause of overpopulation" even though China has had a one-child policy for almost 40 years.

Kyoto (1992), Cancun (2010) and Paris (2015) are valid attempts to slow down and end CO2 increase using an international treaty. The problem is in this map:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Today's biggest and fastest growing emitters (China and soon India) are in the third world and are developing countries, which are given a pass by the treaty. Russia, Japan, New Zealand and Canada either never signed up or have dropped out because of the developing world loophole.

The issue is per capita emissions (high in first world and energy producers) and total emissions (high in third world). See http://www.ucsusa.org/global_w...,

CO2 is a real problem but the NYT is filling the knowledge hole with junk and propaganda, which is too bad.

As anybody with even a slight familiarity with Uber and Lyft knows, this argument about criminal checks vs fingerprinting is really about illegals trying to earn a living.

Illegal immigrants and people on student and tourist visas with no U.S. work permit go to Uber, undergo a "criminal check"and drive for a living. A criminal check finds nothing because the person has no record at all. A fingerprint check to NCIS would show the person doesn't match the ID or is a visa-overstayer.

None of these companies use the Federal secure ID system to see if the prospective "contractor" has a right to work in the U.S. They already know the answer. Cheap illegal labor is at the core of the Uber business model.

Either the Texas legislature is full of really dumb people or they are the usual country club Republicans who want cheap, docile servants. I live in Texas. They may be lazy but they aren't dumb. Illegal are dirt cheap and don't talk back like American Blacks do.

If Uber had to depend on American drivers they would be so short of drivers they would have to raise driver payments and prices- which would drive them out of business in short order..

For the record I know people working for Uber on the "sign up new drivers" end and they live on bonuses and commissions. They know the score and that the drivers are not legally allowed to contract with Uber. This is just like the Wells Fargo scandal- employees are given financial incentives to get results and management looks the other way.

Also the number of Uber "drivers" who seem to be working 23 hours/day would suggest they are "hot bunking" the cars and IDs- three guys using one car and one ID.

This is a scam. Yo, Justice Department; subpoena the "criminal check" records from Uber in one city as a test and see how many of the drivers are using real names and are here working legally. Then use the usual conspiracy charges to work your way up the Uber chain to see how far the scam goes.

If any outsider can install and run a program on your computer it is no longer your computer. Javascript is such a program. So is the permission to open a Microsoft docx document. In a corporate environment there is usually a guard dog to protect you. In a home Windows, Apple or Unix-based system you are on your own. If you leave the keys to your car in the ignition don't be surprised if someone takes it for a ride.

Make your own decision.

The Slashdot PieDiePie article says: "In the video, PewDiePie discusses the recent actions of the Wall Street Journal, whose reporters sent nine cherry-picked and edited videos to Disney, which led directly to Disney's decision to terminate their relationship with him. These video clips and others used to "prove" PewDiePie's guilt have been edited (he claims) to remove all context, to the extent of using a pose of him pointing at something as a Nazi salute and using a clip where other players are creating swastikas in a game and editing out the part where he is asking them to stop."

PewDiePie is either correct (the WSJ reporters did what he said) or he is wrong. Has the WSJ denied his account? Apparently not. So, absent such a denial, I'll assume that WSJ reporters actually created an edited version of the PewDiePie videos and passed them (before publication) to Disney officials asking for comments? If PewDiePie's version is accurate, we have the WSJ (or a rogue operation in the news room) creating fake news. Then instead of publishing the supposed scoop the WSJ reporters showed the excerpts in advance to Disney and used the threat of publication as a way to demand (or extort) instant action by Disney. Disney knew when to fold; the WSJ project stampeded the frightened company into terminating the contract with PieDiePie.

To me it sounds like China, Russia and much of the Third World. Except that in the U.S. the real story oozes out through the cracks because PewDiePie can still hold a press conference and Slashdot can still report PewDiePie's actual words. So a vigilant reader can put together the timeline and make his or her own judgement. With the court-ordered virtual elimination of slander and libel laws in the U.S, PieDiePie has no legal recourse against the WSJ or the reporters. In every other civilized democracy (England, Canada, Japan, all of the EU, Australia, etc) you have a right to your good name and anyone who publishes a lie about you is held responsible. Our Supreme Court eliminated our traditional rights in a mid-60s decision dealing with- no surprise- a misrepresentation by the NYT.

As word spreads of this sort of WSJ article, the WSJ may begin to have the same credibility problem the NYT has. A newspaper can either represent an ideological movement or it can report the news. It can't do both. Traditionally the WSJ editorial page (libertarian and rightist) was totally separate from the news pages (fact-based, professional and sober). The two sections would routinely attack each other.. This PieDiePie report appears to me to be a successful attempt by WSJ news people to create editorial content in the news section; basically "How can we engineer an article on neo-Nazis with an implicit message about the Trump administration?" . All reporting and editing introduces a bias, but when the bias-content overwhelms the news-content the paper quietly begins to die. I usually trust the WSJ to report stories not manufacture them. Is my faith misplaced?

I have an IPhone 4S using wifi and a Consumer Cellular account. Last summer in France I encountered an Apple software problem that locked my phone. The Apple store in Paris fixed it but I turned off automatic updates to stop the problem from repeating while I'm in the lovely French countryside. Apple ignore my "Don't update" instructions; they downloaded the update anyway and installed nagware that "reminds me" every evening that updates are off and I should install the new OS update..

The end result is that Apple Inc. via the nagware blocks me from making a 911 calls for critical seconds in an emergency. Let's say I'm in bed and hear the burglar in the living room. There is an "emergency" icon on the main screen but I'm used to entering my four-digit pass code so I groggily punch it in and go to the "phone" icon to make a 911 call.

But the Apple nagware is linked to the phone button. Suddenly nagware fills my full screen and offers to install the new operating system I've explicitly rejected. It gives me three choices in 3/8" tall letters- "Install now"; "Install later"; "Details" (which is an add). I'm blocked by Apple Inc. from using the phone until I lie and click on "install later". As soon as I click on it a SECOND Apple nag-add pops up and asked if I'm really, really, really sure I don't want them to install the software later tonight. I'm still locked out of making the 911 call until I click the "leave me alone you bastards" icon. FINALLY I can call 911- after fumbling with my phone for 10-15 precious seconds and having to read the fine print in the dark (I'm 72- Where in hell are my glasses?)..

Now am I missing something; I thought blocking 911 calls was a crime? How do I fix this and delete the nagware and the copy of the update? And of course I will NEVER update the OS to fix the nagware problem unless the update is something I can have looked at (uncompiled code) to make sure it does one thing only- delete the nagware.

I hesitate to post this. Last week I was at a small meeting here in Austin, TX. The speaker was a former senior U.S. intelligence official. The meeting was open and I heard nothing that I thought was classified or very surprising.

In the question period a person asked if the Podesta email leak was done by the Russians and was Putin trying to elect Trump. The speaker's answer was that the intelligence community consensus is that the Podesta leak was probably Russian in origin (I’m not sure he said “Russian government”, which is an important distinction). To the “Elect Trump?” question, he said he thought electing Trump was probably not the goal. More likely the aim was to further reduce the American public’s already limited trust in U.S. governmental institutions.

Again, the meeting took place a week ago, I took no contemporaneous notes and I’m paraphrasing what the speaker said from memory, so take it for what it’s worth