It annoys me that the journalists didn't include this aspect in their story. It is easy to understand, interesting, and relevant.

Even some thirty years ago my experience was that journalists would write the story first, then try to find sound bytes etc. that supported the pre-written story. I never knew a journalist to investigate first, then figure out a good story to write from it. Not that that doesn't ever happen, but why waste time investigating first when you run the risk of finding out there was no story? Time is money,

I don't know about angels, but it is fear that gives men wings.

I was just grousing the other day about commercials for games. Who cares about the cutscenes? Why would anyone make a purchase decision based on how cool the cutscene looked?

Now, printed ON an ant's forehead, that would be a story.

Or perhaps a discussion about making TLS mandatory on all TCP sockets. We're heading that way anyway, eventually, or so it seems to me.

Why is the summary being coy about the first thing anyone will ask upon reading it? That is pointless. Here:

I'm not so sure that armoring POS systems is the cheaper option. Sure there are a myriad of things that can be done, but how effective are they likely to be? Even a company like RSA got breached, and their seed database was armored pretty well until reality pried it open. Ultimately the underlying issue will remain, which is that "shared secret" is an oxymoron. As long as the payment is verified by shared information someone will find a way to steal and use the shared information. After all, retailers can't just seal the information in a box and never access it, they need to use it. And thieves will just access it the same way the retailer does.

Just think of all the death threats and so on we wouldn't have to deal with without anonymity. And of course all the other sorts of attacks. The problem is, 'no anonymity' depends on the government being completely trustworthy. Which of course it isn't, even in Canada. If this plan were enacted, its main use would no doubt be to suppress criticism of the police.

Sorry this should say "Amazon doesn't have a lot of [net profit]"

Loses money? AMZN had $274 million in net profit last year.

There's a huge difference between net profit, which Amazon doesn't have, and gross profit, which Amazon has tons of. It is what they are doing with that profit that makes the difference. Mom and Pop can only dream of the sort of profit that Amazon has.

OK fair enough, let me take a stab at it. TFA was a piece of junk. Much like a Facebook post, it is a series of assertions without any substance. The author claims "customers have been pushing back" and provides no details. He says the hardware and software are crappy and 'unfashionable', and again provides no details. For all I can tell he is the only one who thinks so. "No one makes money selling media for consumption anymore. That market is quickly and brutally dying." is another example. Again, no details. Now, if the author were someone with an established reputation or a track record, or had a lot of karma, we might accept it on that basis.

This desperately needs a citation.

No specific biological etiology is not the same thing as 'not biological in origin.' All that means is no specific set of genes or whatever have been identified. Since homosexuality has been documented in hundreds of animal species, I think there is sufficient evidence for a biological origin. Perhaps there are cases where it is choice rather than nurture, humans can be pretty diverse, but it beggars the imagination to think all those animals are choosing to be homosexual.