There are human beings with severe learning difficulties who have a similar legal status. They have basic rights but can't, for example, enter contracts or be held accountable for certain illegal actions that they cannot comprehend. Others make important decisions for them because they are incapable of doing so.

There is a long history of returning zoo animals to the wild. They are not simply dumped in a habitat, they are released and monitored, given assistance and helped to adapt. Eventually they become independent.

While a zoo may seem like a comfy environment some animals just don't do well in captivity. It puts psychological stress on them and causes all sorts of issues. Pandas won't mate or carry their children to term, whales become violent... Release is the best of a bad set of options, but it is possible to do while improving the animal's life.

Who is "we"? If it's the US government then they might have started a war, but I doubt they would openly admit it. More likely it's individuals, maybe associated with Anonymous who seem to love DDOSing things and were upset over the movie not getting a release. In which case, if private individuals are willing to support the US in this way it adds credibility to North Korea's claims that it was individuals who hacked Sony to support them.

I'm not a parent, but I have observed Japanese parents with young children and they tend to recognize that 2 year olds are not really responsible for many of their actions. Maybe he lost his grip on the toy, maybe he didn't understand that the car can't catch it or doesn't like having things thrown at it. They tend not to shout anyway, and I've noticed that Japanese children tend to be a lot quieter and calmer which may be related.

Instead they will calmly explain that the cat doesn't like that. Play stops, the child is faced with their parent and even if they don't understand exactly what is being said they understand the tone of voice and facial expressions. They might try to explain that only dogs like to catch things, making it a teachable moment.

So, kinda like what you do but without the need for shouting and time-out. I see the logic - punishing a 2 year old for not understanding seems somewhat unreasonable, since being a 2 year old you can't really expect them to have understood. For repeated behaviour it goes to loss of privileges, like taking the toy away.

It seems to work pretty well. Japanese kids seem quite mature, and some of the toys they get are kinda surprising for a westerner... Fairly sharp woodworking tools, for example. I dunno, I'm not an expert, but I think I'd like to at least understand what they are saying before making a judgement and unfortunately TFA doesn't really explain it, as you pointed out.

Once again, you are assuming that the rest of the world is like America. Actually most people have a reasonable idea of what the US has been up to, since they have probably been affected by it in some way. In any case, it's hard not to have noticed it on the news lately. Most of the world has far more international news than the US networks do.

I wish they offered it in a hand-soldering friendly format, or that the evaluation boards were not really expensive.

From what I can fathom TFA is about using what we know of psychology, instead of just trying to beat the desired behaviour into our kids. I thought geeks were supposed to be all about science driven solutions and hacking to get the desired result.

The thing about winners is that there is only one. The guy who came second might only be 0.01 seconds slower, but he's still a loser. Sometimes the world works like that, and it's bad because we waste a lot of talent. Sometimes it doesn't work like that and we are all better off for it, since clearly 99.9% of us are not the best but rather somewhere on the bell curve and with something valuable to contribute.

TFA was TL;DR, and TFS doesn't explain anything. Apparently I'm not disciplined enough to even understand what the hell this is about.

The whole thing is odd. If you want really low power why not offer 1.8V? Most devices use a lot less energy at that voltage.

But yes, they should specify power in watts. Without that it's hard to get an sense of what you can actually run from these things. They illustrate a CC110L radio module which uses around 35mA when transmitting, but can be lower if you reduce the power (and range). Unfortunately they don't give any sort of time frame, so are we talking having the receiver always on at say 20mA or just doing one 0.1 second transmit per day?

You can run an LCD clock from a set-top TV antenna and a simple Dickson doubler or three to boost the voltage to a usable level. The main issue is the size of the antenna required. This Texas part could potentially be quite interesting.

It's not just that they spy on everyone, it's that they actively abuse these powers for their own benefit. For example, in the recent "Plebgate" scandal a police officer was shown to have lied, and was convicted. The police responded by using their RIPA powers to get the phone records of the journalists who exposed them, in order to find out who their confidential sources were.

I'm afraid that human nature being what it is the security services can't be trusted with these powers. No amount of oversight will fix it, they just can't have them.

Terrorists, paedophiles, organized crime, bad drivers... Any of the usual suspects can be used interchangeably to justify more powers and surveillance.

I remember the bad old days, before criminals used the internet for communication and we were unable to spy on them. You could hardly walk down the street without being blown up by a terrorist, and every child was molested by at least two paedophiles on a typical day. It wasn't until GCHQ started monitoring everyone that we could live our lives in relative peace.

Well, they are right that serious criminals have gone unpunished in the last year, i.e. the ones working at GCHQ.

You are agreeing with me, supporting my point. Both sides are as bad as each other, and the US is hypocritical for calling out the DPRK for it.

Well, actually the US is worse, because Struxnet did real damage to Iran's nuclear programme. All NK might have done is hack Sony and make a few threats. You can try to justify it any way you like, but the simple fact is that the US has deployed cyber weapons against another nation state and then denied it, so is at best on the same level as North Korea in moral terms.

The only legitimate way to attack another country is to declare war in self defence. The law is quite clear on that, anything else is illegal aggression.

If it's a moonless night and presumably the target you are aiming for is unlit (so you can see the beam reflecting off it) then you are firing blind. There could be someone stood there, or in the 5km (3 miles) or more to the target.