That's the problem with exponential functions, the human brain is too easily tricked. Doubling the bit length of a key doesn't just make it twice as hard to break.

Over the past 40-ish years, we've transitioned from 8-bit computing to 16-bit, 32 and now 64 bit is common. We might need pointers bigger than 64-bits eventually, but we will never need a pointer bigger than 256-bits in length.

The same is true of encryption, for the same reasons. We measure the strength of a crypto system based on the number of keys we would need to attempt in a brute force search. Sometimes we find mathematical short-cuts that weaken a crypto system, reducing the number of keys we need to try. But if we can't do that, we need to test every value.

Counting through all possible values of a 128-bit number would use enough energy to raise the oceans to 100 decrees Celsius and then convert all of the water to steam. This is an amount of energy that we might be able to do harness one day, if we could be bothered. Counting through all values in a 256-bit number would require capturing all of the energy released by every star we can see.

These are the only statistic that matters. Who cares how many people sign up and never do anything, maybe they decided it wasn't what they expected. Maybe they don't have the time. But if people are getting something out of it, and some are putting the effort in to complete it, it looks like a success in my book.

A couple hundred thousand course completions? I'd call that a success.

This season, in Australia, we're getting the latest Dr Who episode within 24 hours broadcast on ABC. Plus it's also available on iView. So there's no reason to pirate it.

However, the ABC doesn't run any advertising. So if you do pirate it, does anyone lose money?

... there goes that refuge then ;)

I have in the high thousands of bookmarks, that's another thing FF shines at with the bookmarks sidebar and search, Chrome sucks at finding bookmarks. But it's much easier and quicker to open a bunch of tabs (right-click), keep them open and topically-grouped in one window while needed, and close them after, than bookmarking things which might never be returned to or might not turn out ot be useful, and then trying to find them.

843 today, over about 20 windows ... each window to different purpose, yes. Session Manager to save them reliably. Mostly it's documentation and stuff-to-read relating to various projects in parallel. Firefox's tab handling is awesome compared to e.g. Chrome ...

A national credit limit of around 40% of GDP should be plenty to cover short to medium term shortfalls and entrepreneur activity. That would include all household, business and government debts. Why have we allowed the banking sector to convince us they are essential for the functioning of every part of the economy? They have a perverse incentive to encourage us to borrow, and over the last 50 years we've bought into their propaganda. Take away all of the interest payments we're currently making and our economy has a chance to thrive.

Where did the majority of your spending money begin its life? Bank loans. Remember that massive issue the banking sector had recently?

We need to get our economy off credit. We need to stop borrowing against every security we can find. Either we reduce our debts voluntarily, or we go bankrupt. Either way, we will reduce our debt level over the next 5-20 years. This is going to remove money from circulation. If the government runs a surplus, this will also remove money from circulation. If we stop deficit spending the economy will shrink and may falter.

Back in the 30's we were facing a similar (but much smaller) debt problem. The "new deal" in 1933(-ish) was a program of government spending that helped to reduce the impact of the Depression. When spending was cut in 1937, the economy dipped again. While the level of debt continued to drop, what finally eliminated the remaining debt was the massive spending and manufacturing to fight WWII.

Government deficit spending isn't the problem. It's the only thing that can save us from ruin as we inevitably reduce our debts.

But the limit is still 70. If they pull you over with a measurement of 80mph, but you take them to court with evidence that your GPS measured 75mph, you're still guilty.

Bored while camping, my family started spear fishing with garden forks in knee deep reeds. Caught about 40 carp, buried them in someone's garden for fertiliser.

I've talked with the developers before at conferences. They were (and probably still are...) using google contacts and messaging for the initial handshake in establishing connections. That may change in future.

They also weren't doing any kind of onion routing. So if they get big enough to be noticed, passive network monitoring may reveal the very social graph that lantern depends on.

Only if you assume;

When you actually dig into the assumptions of economic theories like that, they usually turn out to be completely absurd. Of course governments can create wealth. Running a deficit creates both income and money for the rest of the economy.

Banks have the same effect when they issue loans. But they can't do that forever, which is why we're having so much trouble returning the economy to "normal".

Could you place the stamps next to each other and focus behind them? Like looking at a 3d stereo-gram?

Obligatory

Personally I'd rather we used more government printed money. The alternative we have now is banks creating "money" by issuing loans. Society would be better off if we removed bank managers from their current privileged position.