Is a system with no security defects known by anyone secure?

This might appear to be a philosophical maundering like "If a tree falls and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?", but it's not. It's a very serious question, with real implications... and the answer is yes.

Consider FakeID, a serious vulnerability in the Android app signing infrastructure that basically allowed any app to be claim to be from any provider -- including claiming to be signed by the OEM, to obtain system privileges. The bug was introduced in 2.2.1 in 2010 and existed in all versions of Android until 2014.

But no one knew.

Once the flaw was revealed Google was easily able to go back and examine the certificates of all apps uploaded to Google Play during the entire period of time between when the vulnerability was introduced and when it was fixed. Google also examine the contents of other app stores, and non-store app repositories. There wasn't a single instance of an app with a faked certificate chain, anywhere, until the public disclosure of the bug. Snowden's documents gave no hint that the NSA knew of it. Hacking team's archives had no hint of it. If anyone, anywhere, knew of the bug they were incredibly circumspect and careful with their usage. The more reasonable conclusion is that no one knew.

During those four years, all Android devices were vulnerable to this serious security hole, but none of them were exploited. So, the Android app signing architecture was effectively secure even while it was technically broken.

And as I said above, this is not just a semantic quibble. If your definition of "secure" (under some defined threat model) assumes that the system must have no security defects, then no system of any complexity ever has been or ever will be secure. Security is only meaningful within a defined context, and that context includes the knowledge of the adversaries. Of course, we can never know what the attackers do or do not know, but we can reasonably suppose that if they don't use a devastatingly effective attack it's because they don't know about it. This means that systems actually do get less secure over time, unless they're maintained.

(Note, BTW, that the mere existence of a known security defect also doesn't necessarily make the system insecure. That also depends on threat model and on whatever other mitigations may be in place. For example, take the libstagefright bug. 90% of Android devices in the world are running Ice Cream Sandwich or higher, and have ASLR enabled in their kernels which makes a bug like the one in libstagefright very hard to exploit.)

So, if we just disable all network interfaces and keep our phones physically secure behind locked doors, updates won't be needed.

Brilliant!

This is incorrect.

The rate at which heat enters a building from warmer outside air is proportional to the difference between the temperatures. If there's a five-degree difference half as much heat energy per unit of time enters the building than if there's a ten-degree difference. The amount of heat that must be removed Monday morning is the integral of that heat flow function. If you keep the office cool all weekend, you keep the interior/exterior temperature differential large and the heat flow high. If you allow the interior to warm up then the differential decreases and heat flow decreases. Less heat in means less to pump out.

This effect is maximized in the scenario you describe, where interior temperature rises to match exterior temperature, because when the temperatures are the same heat transfer ceases, but it's useful even if the difference never falls to zero. Actually, it's even better when the temperature differential goes negative and heat starts naturally flowing out of the building (e.g. interior temperature rises during the day and exterior temperature falls enough at night to be below the elevated interior temperature). Heat that flows out naturally is heat you don't have to remove. Smart buildings should be able to improve this effect by facilitating beneficial heat transfer (e.g. opening windows or pumping exterior air through the building) and impeding undesired heat transfer (e.g. insulation, keeping doors and windows closed).

You've changed your claim. You're now discussing not the majority of people but the majority of people who name their cars which as far as I can tell is a very, very small percentage of automobile owners. I find it believable that people who name their cars wouldn't like to rent one. Note that that's not the same as saying I believe it.

Your claim about ages rings hollow to me, though. I don't know anyone over the age of 25 who has named their car. Of course, I only know two people who have named their cars, period (one is 21 and one is 19).

However, my experience doesn't really matter. You're the one making the claim that no one will be willing to buy a car that doesn't perfectly fit all of their needs, so it's on you to support it, not on me to refute it.

Speak for yourself. I refuse to use Facebook, but quite like Google+. I also have a Twitter account, which I never use. But I dumped Facebook the second or third time they changed my privacy settings without asking me, and have no intention of every going back.

Assuming anyone even cares about minutes any more, Google Voice does the same. When GV answers your phone and takes voicemail it doesn't use your cell minutes. And users of GV rarely dial in to listen to their voicemails either; the transcription is so good they just glance at the e-mail/SMS/Hangout message and get what they need to from it.

Apple may indeed be able to find some way to innovate in this space, but simply transcribing voicemails isn't going to do it.

Well, my experience with my kids is that we stop every two hours. Not necessarily to eat. Granted that it's often for 15-20 minutes rather than 30, but it wouldn't be difficult to wait a few minutes more before heading out.

Cite? From what I see that ceases being true by about age 30 for the vast majority of people.

LEAF batteries are $6K.

There is no "refueling time" issue to "give up". Refueling time is a major advantage of EVs for everyday use... refueling my EV takes ten seconds. Five when I get out of the car and plug it in at night, and five more when I unplug it in the morning. I find my ICEV much, much more of a bother to keep fueled.

This is only true in the exceptional case of long-distance, non-stop travel. And even there, all it takes is enough range and fast-enough recharging to ensure that the car doens't need to spend any more time refueling than the people do.

Right, because what Microsoft and Facebook are looking for is entry-level coders for jobs that don't require much more than an if-then-else statement. I suppose it's remotely possible that flooding the entry-level market could reduce pressure on the higher end, but I highly doubt that the effect would be noticeable. The skills gap is just too large and the productivity difference between the top and bottom ends too large.

What's more likely is that they realize that good programmers are as much born as made, and that there is a percentage of the population who could be good but currently are never even exposed to it enough to find out how much they would like it. In other words, they aren't looking to pull in lots of little fish, they're looking to trawl a bigger part of the ocean for the big fish that they're trying to find.

I suspect there's also an element of "mainstreaming" involved. The programming culture can be offputting to many people, so by making it more normal they hope to interest more of the potentially-great software engineers who currently look at the culture and stay far away. Like women.

Property tax is still an indirect tax on economic activity, as I pointed out above, since the value of property is defined by economic activity (whether the property is actually used or not), and since property tax directly affects the cost of all economic activity involving property which, ultimately, is all economic activity or so close to all as makes no difference. There may be some business, somewhere, which requires no capital expenditures and takes place entirely on public land, but it certainly isn't the norm. It's true that some economic activity is more capital intensive than other economic activity, but I don't see how that implies that economic activity which is less capital-intensive necessarily makes fewer claims on government or should be taxed less.

And I still don't see that the Broken Window Fallacy is a counterexample. Perhaps I'm dense. Or perhaps we disagree on the meaning of "counterexamples". At best it seems to highlight that economic activity and property value aren't the same thing, but I don't think that was ever in dispute.

So for those several times per year, rent a car.

I lived in Colorado for three years, and regularly (almost monthly) made the 8-hour drive to my parents' home. Most of that time I had two vehicles, a Dodge Durango (needed to tow the camp trailer or boat, and to haul the whole family), and a Nissan LEAF, which was my commuter and the around-the-town vehicle when the whole family wasn't going. Given the amount of gas the Durango consumes I found it more economical (when all the kids weren't going) to rent a Prius or similar for the trips home. It worked great. Some unanticipated benefits were that the car tends to get pretty dirty when you drive it a thousand-plus miles in a short stretch, cluttered up with fast food containers and whatnot -- and there's an increased risk of spills and stains. So it's nice to just let Hertz deal with all of that.

Anyway, the point is that it's perfectly reasonable to choose a vehicle that is optimized for 95% of your driving, and rent one that is optimized for the other 5%. It can actually be very cost-effective. I've been looking into getting rid of the Durango and renting when I need a toy hauler, but so far it looks like the premiums charged for those sorts of vehicles make it a non-starter vs my paid-off SUV. Also, I haul the boat or trailer almost weekly during the summer, so the frequency of rentals would get annoying.

Nice assertion. I'll counter with one of my own: Battery swapping has negligible effect on the ability of EVs to compete with ICEVs for consumer travel. The only case where it's of use is in long-distance, non-stop travel, which is a miniscule percentage of road miles and which can in most cases be done with a rental vehicle. As long as the people in the car need to refuel every few hours, all you need is enough range to go as far as the people can, and a sufficiently-fast recharge time that by the time the people eat the car is ready to go again.

What's needed for EVs to compete isn't battery swapping, it's lower prices for vehicles with adequate range. The Model S has the range required, now. The Nissan LEAF and similar cars are in the ballpark on price. When we get a $25K (new) EV sedan with a 250-mile range, they'll sell like hotcakes in suburban middle-class America, and pollution levels in places like LA will decline dramatically in just a few years.

This isn't to say that battery swapping never makes sense, or that better highway and home charging infrastructure (particularly for apartment dwellers) doesn't matter, but solving the price/range problem will put EVs over the hump and the rest will follow naturally.

That's a completely different issue. Even without quick-recharge swaps, it's certainly possible to replace an old battery. But you're going to have to pay for that new battery (less a rebate for the value of the old one, I'm sure).