In all seriousness, I was thinking the exact same thing.
As others here have pointed out, the premise of a BIOS-flashing piece of malware seems tenuous, and even laughable to those familiar with the subject. So why would the NSA make such a claim? One strong possibility in my mind is that they really have produced such a piece of malware (keylogger, packet sniffer, whatever) and are afraid of the public backlash and/or damage claims (my motherboard failed! it must be the NSA!) that would arise when its existence is made clear by a Snowden release. As such, they are desperately trying to spin it off on China before said release can be made.

I've been using Kensington trackballs since the early '90s. I actually prefer the old mechanical Turbo Mouse line over the current optical Expert Mouse design. The Turbo's large stainless steel rollers didn't collect nearly as much gunk as the little plastic beads in the Expert Mouse.

While I generally agree with your statements, the article is discussing the authorities' abuse of power. Pointing to the victim's lack of preparation for such abuse as some form of wrong-doing in the context of discussing the abuse itself is pretty solidly an ad hominem attack.

Provided they settle on a deuterium/tritium fuel mix, yes.

The trouble is that the greatest damage done by rape is often a matter of emotional trauma. As people grow and develop at different paces (physically, intellectually and emotionally), one can't point to a particular age and claim adulthood once it has been exceeded. There may be individuals capable of making a sound decision and coping with the results at age 12, and those that can't at age 35. Thus, the "age of consent" laws may seem rather contrived at times.

Where is that? Which of the two articles, and in what paragraph? I see no reference to gas turbines what so ever. In fact, the WSJ article has quoted the deceased's post that he was "breaking in some new packs i just got", referring to LiPo main battery packs.

That's interesting. I wonder if it has something to do with CA air quality regulations or perhaps economic demographic? I have seen a grand total of two turbine engines at our club's airfield (very likely the location of the DE event mentioned in the article), one of which was in a heli (at said event no less).

This.
As much a tragedy as it was, he was asking for it. None of the heli fliers in our club (likely the one that hosted the DE event mentioned in the article) take those sorts of risks with personal safety. Risk the heli? Sure... You need to push yourself in order to improve, and it gives the crowd a thrill. However, the thrills and entertainment come to a screeching halt when someone gets hurt.
My best guess is this kid was a budding adrenaline junky, and got his jollies by putting himself in harm's way. Unfortunately, it seems the overstepping of his limits overlapped with his adrenaline habit.

I highly doubt that. Gas turbine engines are very rare in the RC hobby, and quite expensive. The cost of such an engine would exceed the media's quoted price tag of the entire helicopter. Given the expense and typical time invested by the hobbyist, gas turbine helis almost never see 3D flight (acrobatic flight, as the articles describe).
The most common power system in modern high performance helis is the brushless electric motor, powered by a high-discharge rate 6-10 cell lithium polymer battery pack (30-40 VDC and up to around 300 A). After that, it's 2-stroke piston engines running on glow/nitro fuel (a mixture of methanol, nitromethane and lubricating oil).

Not even reading the summary, now? It says right there "the nonmetallic fraction of waste circuit boards". So were talking about a ground-up mixture of fiberglas and epoxy resin here.

Interesting. Good call.

Yes, it probably does have a melting point. However, this amorphous alloy's melting point is apparently below room temperature.
Similarly, glass (the regular transparent stuff) is technically a liquid at room temperature. Its viscosity is high enough that visible sag doesn't occur within a window's (for example) typical life span. As glass is heated, its viscosity progressively decreases until it flows and can be formed as one would expect of a liquid.
Same deal with this alloy.

I would blame it on the control system and the engineering of the vehicle. I don't think the number of rotors is a big issue... each cluster of 4 props could be operated in unison, making the control system see it as a quad-copter.
Smaller electric multi-rotor aircraft run into the same stability limitations to a lesser degree, but it can be compensated for with an appropriate set of PID variables. The issue is the mass of the rotating assembly vs. the torque available to accelerate it. Electric motors have gobs of torque, so it's not as big an issue.
Internal combustion engines have 3 methods of boosting torque. Increase piston stroke (the length of the crankshaft throw, increasing leverage), increase piston bore (the diameter of the piston, which increases surface area on which the expanding air/fuel mixture presses) - both of which increase the displacement and overall size & weight of the engine - and finally, increase the pressure of the expanding air/fuel mixture by increasing the compression ratio of the engine and/or moving to forced induction. All of those options have tradeoffs in terms of weight, reliability, mechanical complexity and cost.
The best solution would probably be to use an engine tuned to operate at a specific RPM and move to variable-pitch props. Rather than change the speed of the props and face the associated acceleration lag, simply increase or decrease the pitch of the prop to achieve the desired level of thrust.

In which case, the only option is to not buy the spyware-infested product. Since the spyware is secret, there's no way to tell which disks are infected and which are not. The only safe alternative is to avoid buying any official content what so ever. The industry will drive any previously paying customers that give two s**** about their privacy to turn to the "piracy" avenue of acquiring content.
The contortions the industry goes through to reach out and nail their own coffin shut are quite impressive.

Correct. As an example, the displays used in the e-ink magazine cover that Esquire released in 2008 were quite flexible. The cover as a whole was pretty rigid, but that was more due to the controller/battery PCB.
This is the first flexible pixel-matrix type display I've seen, but claiming it's the first flexible e-ink display ever is hype.