It doesn't work with checked luggage. It doesn't work with route trip tickets either. The airlines fixed that a long time ago. If you don't get on the second leg, they cancel your return flight.

What really the trick doesn't work for the kinds of flights most people actually take.

Actually, this is useful from a law enforcement perspective. Much in the way that Al Capone was convicted of tax evasion rather than racketeering, anybody caught using illegal encryption could be arrested and convicted for that without having to prove that they were doing anything else nefarious.

Bad idea for other reasons but definitely useful.

I would expect the whole surface of the (dwarf) planet to be ice, much like all the other outer system objects too small to be gas giants. It would not necessarily be water ice and TFA did not suggest that it was water. In a region where methane and co2 freeze there are lots of options and water ice would not be favorite for a polar cap.

Actually, the only information so far is: "There is a spot that is brighter than the rest. We don't know why."

While "really useful" is not the word I would use to describe them, Hinge and Tinder are mobile only. Neither has a web site that does more than point to a mobile app.

As I recall, some Craiglist scraping apps had features unavailable on any web site or desktop application.

Waze finally has a useful web interface after years of only being able to check routes on the mobile app.

That's a share-taxi. A ride share would be if the UberDude dropped you off at the terminal, then parked the car and got on a plane.

to free up the name name for the inevitable 7" smart phone.

Microcomputer and "personal computer" (no caps) were used almost interchangeably. They did not mean the same thing though. A personal computer was simply a computer dedicated to a single person. A microcomputer was a computer built around a microprocessor. In principle a microcomputer could be a multi-user and a personal computer could have a multi-chip processor. In this era, though, both were rare.

What you did not encounter was the acronym. Any machine could be a "personal computer" but "PC" was shorthand first for IBM PC and later for "IBM PC clone".

Maybe there is only one bug and the remaining 29 are just trivial exploit variations of a single error. Of course, if that were true, it would help if Groupon actually explained that rather than hiding behind generalized and opaque "policy" reasons.

All monetary transactions are like that. Yet we don't negotiate for toothpaste, gas, etc.

Negotiations helps both sides find the middle ground that is acceptable in transactions where the stakes are high enough to be worth the trouble. Which side of that middle band the deal lands on depends on the skill of the negotiators. In the case of hiring, "no negotiation" means the employer needs to make a better first offer than with negotiation because there is plan B if the candidate refuses the first offer.

If there is only one way to do it, then it is a fact of nature and can not be patented. Also, if the standard has been published, that counts as prior art so no new patents can be applied there. However if I choose to create a standard that requires your existing patent, why should that give me the power to invalidate your patent?

Standards bodies usually try to avoid patents but this is often not practical because there are so many patents and the best solution is often patented.

A perplexing one for those who know anything about Oklahoma. Oklahoma is not known for heavy tree cover. Most of it is naturally grass land with quite few trees. According to Wikipedia, forest covers 24% of Oklahoma in the present day. I've heard it claimed (having difficulty finding authoritative sources) that this is consequences of numerous artificial lakes changing the climate and that originally there were fewer trees.

It is excellent tech but they can't stack the cells indefinitely. The approach uses pillars of cells with no cross wiring. All the control circuitry is in one plane at the bottom. This makes it cheap because they only have to mask and etch once: all the way down to the planer circuitry on the bottom. The downside is you can only go so high before the control circuitry can no longer detect the signal from the top layers They could add another layer of control circuitry but the principle cost of making a chip is the masking and etching so it may be just as cheap (and definitely easier) to just make two chips.

It does, but not where you would expect. Siberia is on the North American Plate. The plate crossing happens on dry land.

Strong AI and uploading are nearly orthogonal. Some possibilities:

1) Strong AI happens but no practical method of extracting a mind from a biological brain is found. The only machine intelligences are purely artificial.
2) Strong AI and a practical method of extracting a mind from a biological brain is found but technologies are incompatible. At best, the machine can emulate a biological mind very slowly.
3) A practical method of uploading a human intelligence onto a machine is found but strong AI is not solved. The only machine hosted intelligences are uploads.
4) Strong AI is not solved. Uploading is available but uploads are slower or otherwise inferior to running on a biological brain.
5) Neither strong AI or uploading are solved. The discussion continues until the end of days.

Switch your deflector shields on -- double front!

Deflector shields are mentioned often in Star Wars. I don't recall any visuals, though.