The complication here is that supplying that data may well breech Irish law. The Irish employees probably couldn't supply it themselves legally, but it isn't clear what happens if they simply take no action to prevent US employees accessing it. The EU has fairly strong data protection rules that include a responsibility to protect data from authorized or illegal access.

I imagine the Irish subsidiary of Microsoft has already consulted their lawyers on this very point.

What good would nukes have done Ukraine? They could threaten to nuke Moscow, but only if they themselves were willing to be utterly obliterated. Moscow has a fairly advanced missile shield too, so it might not even work.

I really doubt they would have pushed that button over Crimea, or over the current low level conflict. Considering how fractured the country is and that the government was recently overthrown in a coup it isn't even clear if they could have launched if their leader wanted to. If they had had nukes chances are Russia would have moved on them much earlier anyway, to neutralize that threat. WMD are always a good excuse for attacking an unstable country, and unlike Iraq they wouldn't even have been imaginary.

What's it like, being the bad guys?

While I agree with your sentiment, it's a false dichotomy. There are ways of preventing and handling bullying that don't require the banning of anonymity.

In any case it is hard to see how a requirement to provide ID would work. Aside from the difficulty of validating any ID, how would children sign up? They typically don't have things like a National Insurance Number, household bills, bank statements or a driving licence. To implement the rule we would have to ban children from all services that allow messaging.

The other big danger is that just like DNA it will make the police lazy. Rather than bothering to investigate properly they will just ask for the name on the account, which is likely to be easy to fake. Framing people will be trivial, and even if it doesn't lead to a conviction merely being brought in for questioning is pretty damaging.

It's worth complaining to the BBC about this. They do make changes sometimes. It's the very least we can do.

There are much worse threats. Thunderbolt and Firewire give the device full access to RAM, with no protection at all. For over a decade companies have been making Firewire and now Thunderbolt devices that dump a running PC's memory for forensic analysis, complete with any encryption keys and passwords that happen to be there. Law enforcement loves them because even if the computer is locked or the user logged out when they get there most operating systems auto-configure newly plugged in devices. Thunderbolt allows pre-boot attacks as well (including cold boot key recovery).

The only way to solve this problem is to train people not plug random stuff into their computers, and to disable Thunderbolt and Firewire ports. Plugging in a random USB memory stick is a risk and many people are starting to understand that, so we just need to extend it to cover all USB devices.

Go on AliExpress, there are loads of cheap air purifiers with HEPA filters. TFA says "up to $1000", and actually even high end Japanese models are usually much less than that. Chinese manufacturers sell many models that are basically the same as what this guy invented - a HEPA filter strapped to a fan - for $30-40.

Manufacturers of high quality colour LCD/AMOLED displays will laugh at you if you ask for a custom design in quantities of less than 1,000,000. Even for the final version it will be hard for them to justify signing a contract for 1 million displays up front, not being certain of sales volume. Off-the-shelf displays are pretty much their only choice.

Yes they are. They regularly appear in the top selling apps on Android.

Exactly. The best search engines tend to rank pages by reputation, so if software is just a copy of something else and lots of people point that out it usually becomes apparent to anyone searching. The Play store uses a similar system where apps that are recommended on web sites often get promoted in the store, where as the App Store isn't quite that sophisticated. The result is that people like Zynga can steal other people's ideas and SEO their way to the top, where as it is much harder to do on Play.

Essentially Play has a better spam filter.

Statistically speaking there are more very tall black African Americans than white Americans. I'm not sure that statistically African Americans are dumber though, if you were to somehow measure raw intelligence and potential rather than academic results.

The NBA values physical ability. Tech companies value mental ability. Are you saying that black people are inherently less intelligent than white people? It's a theory that has been researched and mostly rejected.

I suppose you could argue for a programme to help stretch young white kids on some kind of medieval rack so that they are more competitive at basketball, in exchange for better schools and learning opportunities for young black kids.

The owner will need insurance, but it will be much lower for self driving cars without any manual controls. Even self driving cars with a manual mode will be cheaper, on the assumption that people will drive on auto much of the time.

I hate being a passenger because I can't read in cars without feeling sick. All I can do is listen to the radio or audio books. The seats are too uncomfortable to sleep in... But perhaps if someone made a car with seats that folded flat like a bed it would work.

Do you ever fly? All modern aircraft use fly-by-wire, so you are trusting the programmers. Most modern cars have some kind of drive-by-wire system, especially performance models that often do things like braking force distribution and traction control.

No he isn't. He is saying that black people need more opportunities to get those jobs, i.e. more access to training that is lacking in the areas where many black people live. Rather than going after H1B visas the tech companies should be trying to bring better education to parts of America that are not well served, but there is a lot of stigma associated with them that prevents it happening.

You are projecting your own feeling of persecution onto what it he says, rather than paying attention to what he actually said.