Anybody who's really looked at security around X11 has known for decades that it isn't that great.

I even remember that as recently as a year ago, ATI's drivers specifically tell you to use "xhost +" to enable GPU compute jobs using ATI devices, which resulted in a lot of "LOL NOPE" in the HPC industry. (It's trivial to root a machine that has had "xhost +" executed inside an X11 session.)

X11 having critical security holes should surprise no one. There's a reason internet-facing servers don't have X11, and it's not just because you don't need a GUI sucking up resources.

On the other hand, I'm thoroughly grateful that somebody decided to do something about it.

Citation, please? Where are you getting the idea that exit nodes have huge bandwidth bills?

For example: run a mac mini colo as an exit node, with unmetered bandwidth. $55/month, with 100 Mb of bandwidth, 24x7.

Or some guy in Korea with 3-5 gigabits of bandwidth at their home for ~$40 USD/month?

Or a university club running an exit point using approved university resources? (I know my alma matter does)

Tor exit nodes are often just people hosting them on their own nickel, often at home. You can throttle the tor server to 56 Kib/s, and leave the rest for your own usage.

There's a difference between a honey pot and a dedicated search.

Honey pots exist to collect all traffic that hits them. Were Tor a honey pot, the Silk road would have never exited in the first place.

The analogy I like to use when discussing the Art vs. Engineering paradigm in programming is architecture (the wood & steel building sort, not hardware chip instructions) design. Every architect, whether building a private home or an office complex, needs to know certain fundamental facts about the materials they use (load bearing capacity, for instance) and the choice of what materials are used is (typically) dictated by the intended purpose of a building. Brick and wood framing is pretty universal, but you don't generally see homes being built out of little more than tin siding and steel frames like factory warehouses, or giant glass walls like skyscrapers.

That part -- mating the materials with the intended purpose -- is the "art" in architecture. The "art" in programming (aside from some limited domains like UX or AI) is less immediately describable except by effect (e.g. "How quickly do new team members get up to speed?") but should be no less important to any project manager. I don't really think that programming has been around long enough for us to have our Frank Lloyd Wright moment, but that is no reason to ignore the "intangibles" and immeasurable aspects to quality code.

Pretty thin considering the article talks about observed planets exceeded one expected number of planets model and also discusses *other sources* of planets...

Clearly the median planets per star for stars with at least 1 planet is a lot higher than the "avg" per all stars.... lies damn lies and statistics.

Sheesh. So is this the simple explanation to "dark matter" problems in cosmology?

Given the liberalness with which Apple has wielded the Ban Hammer in the past, it's telling that they haven't used it now.

Stop bragging. Anybody who cares is keenly aware of the corporation-sized enema we're taking every day.

And it's not even lowering our colon cancer rates...

In fairness, some people do feel better when they see something being done by some sort of authority figure. Even a scrawny 19-year old rent-a-cop armed with a radio can make a substantial difference to people's feeling of well being (in one way or the other...)

If they had just stated the truth, that Ebola is hard to spread with proper controls, and can be contained...

For the public, notions of safety went out the window after the clusterfsck in Texas.

- A patient went to the ER with symptoms, and was sent home
- People in government-mandated quarantine didn't honor the quarantine, and went to public places. It took armed guards to enforce the quarantine.
- Two nurses, wearing the recommended protective equipment became infected, and are being treated now.
- One of the nurses went on an airline flight after treating the Ebola patient, in violation of a number of CDC policies
- Personnel treating the first ebola patient were in constant contact with hundreds of others, including other hospital patients

Restated facts (or "truth") about how difficult it is to transmit can no longer combat the fear that has brewed up.

A pattern of mistake after mistake has emerged - things that should have never happened did. People who knew better didn't do the right thing, over and over.

It's a PR disaster, pure and simple. Any goodwill or trust the public had was burned up in Texas.

I'm pretty sure this guy's network ISN'T a common carrier. (read he's on a private network, which requires credentials and is for a specific, likely corporate or campus, purpose)

This.

Pottering comes off as an arrogant jerk, but the guy's trying to make Linux better.

Sure, many disagree with his vision, and he definitely could have been less of an ass in a number of documented situations... But he hasn't done anything to warrant the sort of things he's describing.

Some people carry on like he's demanding primae noctis.

It's just a toilet seat that reports when somebody's on it. Everybody poops! There's nothing to worry about!

Until you realize that it's able to find usage patterns, and your insurance rates go up because they think you may be getting colon cancer.

Everything's connected, and I don't want every facet of my life being reported to some corporate overlord.

Does it have to be soda, and does it have to be in the head?

What about a nice, hot cup of McDonalds Coffee in the crotch?

OK, fine... But I'm going to pick a soda with the stickiest ingredients available.