Do you actually know this, or is this your guess? Because my understanding is that iMessage encryption was designed explicitly to avoid having Apple hold the kind of private keys that can decrypt the message. I thought there was some scheme where each device got its own decryption key, and that those keys never left the device.

Well, not entirely "silently". Messages sent via SMS turn green, so you know whether they were sent via iMessage. You don't necessarily know ahead of time whether, when you hit "Send", your message will be sent via SMS or iMessage, but I believe that can also be turned off on the device itself, so that it won't fall back to SMS.

This is actually a very important technical difference, even if it's not a big practical difference. Essentially, the NSA was already collecting all of the data first, and just saying, "we promise we won't look at it unless we have a warrant." If the procedure is now to have telecoms (who inherently have access to that information) turn over records when they're presented with a warrant, then this falls back into something resembling normal law enforcement procedures. The police can get your phone records if they have a warrant.

It's like this: The police can search your home if they can get a search warrant. It's as though the NSA was performing a warrant-less search your home on a regular basis, collecting photos, samples for analysis, fingerprints, and anything else they wanted, then running it all through analysis looking for crimes, and then saying, "But that's not an illegal search because we promise not to use that evidence against you unless we can get a warrant first."

So if now there's reform that says, "No, you can't collect that evidence until you have a warrant," then it's a big step towards solving the problem. I feel like the whole "secret court" thing is still a problem. The records should be made public at some point, even if it's somewhat delayed and with some information redacted. You can't have a democracy while having secret courts devoid of public oversight.

You're implying that Apple's music service will be so good that it's addictive. If so, good for Apple.

Oh no! Businesses trying to have a successful business venture!

Royalties don't always mean a percentage of money earned. I forget what all the deals are, but for example, I believe songwriters often get a set amount of money (not a percentage) every time a song is played publicly, even if no money is earned from the playing of the song. There are lots of different deals, depending on whether it's a specific negotiated contract or an ASCAP thing....?

Like I said, I don't remember. That was never my field. But I believe Pandora, for example, has to pay for every time a song is streamed, regardless of whether they are charging the listener or whether ads are being played alongside.

Because they negotiated it in advance. It's not really that Apple "refused to pay royalties", but that they negotiated licensing terms such that they aren't required to pay royalties under specific circumstances.

The summary is poorly worded.

When they say, Apple "refused to pay royalties", they're giving a false impression that Apple is supposed to pay royalties, but they refused. In fact, they negotiated a deal with record labels so that they wouldn't have to pay royalties during their "free trial" period. Customers aren't paying Apple during that period, and Apple isn't going to pay record labels, but that was all negotiated with record labels in advance.

Sure it can. Seatbelts, airbags, crumple zones, windshield wipers, and whatever else, there are lots of safety precautions that were added on later. In fact, that's pretty much inherent in the way these things work. First, you build it. Then you see how it's likely to fail. Then you build protections against those failures. When it seems safe, you start using it, but over the next few years, or the next few decades, or the next few hundred years, you keep finding new risks, new things that could go wrong, and you figure out ways to make it more safe.

Cars kill something like 30-40k people in the United States every year. We keep finding ways to make them safer.

These seem like they may be valid complaints, I don't know. But you're complaining about something in the prototype/proof-of-concept phase. If it works, then they can go about trying to turn it into a practical method of transportation, but at this point, we may as well be complaining about what color it is.

My impression was that Carmack wasn't particularly great at designing games, but his real genius was in developing the game engines. In fact, I'd say that's my general impression of id Software for the last couple of decades.

On the other hand, I feel like I've seen a flood of Fallout 4 hype, so much so that I completely missed that Dishonored 2 was announced. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of the Fallout series, but I don't mind that there's at least some attention paid to news other than Fallout 4.

I'm disappointed for entirely different reasons. I read, "An AI Learned Magic..." and thought, "Wow! What could that mean? Did it learn how illusionists perform their tricks? Are they claiming it somehow learned real magic? This should be interesting!"

And then I continued reading.

Well there's a pretty obvious reason why, and I don't see any reason to discount it. It's a feature that users will like, and Apple is in the business of trying to make devices that people like. Even more specifically, Apple's general approach to making "devices that people like" tends to be to try to take the hassle out of using the product, as much as is possible. Ads are a big hassle.

It seems like a pretty obvious answer, so much so that I don't see a reason to go hunting for another one without some kind of additional information that there's some other reason.

Good. It is malware. I can't think of a browser toolbar that I wouldn't consider to be malware to some degree. Has anyone in the past 5 years intentionally installed one of those things? My impression is that they only ever get installed because someone wasn't paying enough attention when they installed some crappy piece of software, and it was bundled in.

Regarding your examples: Is NoSQL bad? I've never dealt with it, but was under the impression that it was pretty good for particular things, but perhaps being implemented too widely by people who are overenthusiastic. Significant whitespace is just dumb. The concept of binary log files don't necessarily seem bad to me, if we have a universal format with high-quality tools to access them.

And I actually tend to favor the "flat mystery-meat UIs" when executed well rather than trying to make everything look like some kind of gem, bubble, or fisher-price toy. Most of the old Windows design philosophy reminds me of a kid playing with Photoshop for the first time. You get bevels, gradients, lens flares, partial transparencies, and drop shadows put everywhere. IMO, good UI design is about using those kinds of effects (as well as animation) where they help the user understand the interface, or otherwise make the interface more pleasant to deal with, and using them pretty much nowhere else.

You do know I was joking, right?