As an IT guy not currently fit enough for military service, I completely agree with basic combat training. I have a lot of respect for the military and wouldn't want to join if I couldn't physically back up fellow troops in a pinch.

If there are technicians important for military support and technology missions, they can be part of a civilian group or one of the various security services like the NSA or CIA which does not have operational combat requirements for all members.

Between TOR and Bitcoin, you would think these things were designed by security services like the NSA or GCHQ. TOR is slow, onerous, and never provided reliable anonymity. If anything, the low network throughput was part of the design to slow the dissemination of large files like government documents and child pornography.

Bitcoin is only anonymous while the exchanges hide your identity. Rather than actually anonymizing transfers, Bitcoin is the ultimate currency tracking tool, leaving a user identifiable trace on every transaction. It literally leaves a trace where law enforcement can say that a $20 drug purchase was funneled to buy guns for organized crime. Further, Bitcoin looks more like a large scale generator for encryption cracking rainbow tables.

Besides the darknet lurkers and delusionally paranoid journalists (ahem Dan Goodin), TOR never has found use for anything legitimate, it's all just drugs, porn, and bad tin foil hat literature. Even Bittorrent has reasonable use cases (works great for backing up very large files from point A to B on a one time basis).

This is because when Google first rolled out search of Google Videos and then YouTube (shortly post acquisition) the search keywords and phrases where only the title and keywords / phrases that Google search experts added by hand for top viewed and educational videos.

Since then, I understand that speech to text, author tags, and discussion comments all factor into the keyword pool. The pool is polluted as well as an active target for SEO schmucks. They also need to get rid of the thumbs up / down moderation and go to at least a 5 point scale. I wish more in meta-moderation was being done to identify "good evaluators" and let their scores and tagging carry stronger weight or be a sort criteria of it's own. The only usable system like this so far seems to be Rotten Tomatoes.

Another issue is the fact that view counts are all that matter for ad revenue to uploaders. This has left subject areas with few people producing video content as easy pickings for low production value tripe. About the only areas with enough competition and/or ethics to produce good production value seem to be gaming and hardware reviews and science education.

I've said it before, and I will say it again. Make people upload source video with separate audio tracks for original content, verbal commentary (over dubs), and added music / SFX. I am so f'ing sick of having to listen to some idiots crap choice in music to watch an instructional or useful video. Even worse when I can't hear the explanation over the music track.

I am almost completely fine with the MPAA / ASCAP / etc. pulling videos with music tracks under DMCA if it would teach amateurs to stop adding soundtracks to otherwise useful or entertaining content.

Privacy, copyright, resolution, and control issues aside, it seems like Facebook currently has the best software for collecting, cataloging, and tagging images. The facial recognition in Facebook is even excellent, automatically suggesting to tag friends accurately in poorly lit, blurry shots. The timeline, album, and geographical features are great, with the biggest weakness is usually bandwidth to sync a large bulk of photos in one go.

I am certainly not suggesting he use Facebook, quite the opposite. I'm saying that commercial standalone software should try to be as good and easy to use as Facebook and similar like Google+.

Android is an objectively bad OS. It's designed for mobile devices and commits the great sin of failing to be parsimonious with computing resources.

I am a current Android user (Galaxy S4) and have always championed it over iPhone due to the greater device control and options. I'm getting off that train with my next phone purchase. The last nail in the coffin was getting to see a heads up comparison of battery life of HTC One M8 Android vs WP 8. Previously it was easy to dismiss WP 8's battery life on underpowered CPUs and lots of crazy tweaks by Nokia engineers. Now the truth is out, that Android is just a sluggish OS due to poor optimization and the ignorant insistence of using scripting language / virtualized code everywhere instead of compiling for the target.

I have an earlier model G35, and as much as I would like to have the push button start option, I fear exactly that. So far I think only a couple members of a local club have had to deal with it, though I hear it is more prevalent with some of the SUVs.

This does coincide with the BMW and similar thefts due to remote hacking. It's unacceptable and either the manufactures should be footing the bill directly or paying an underwriter to take responsibility for security mistakes.

I should clarify that although all of my examples stem from the perspective of consumer devices in the home, they should equally apply to the implementation of industrial, infrastructure, and similar commercial systems.

This is all fine and dandy as long as a few simple requirements are well understood by the technology implementers.
1) Legal liability for appliances and their cock ups is handled in much the same way as it is now.
If my toaster starts a fire and burns down my house, the insurance cuts me a check immediately while they handle the legal battle with GE (toaster manufacturer) and UL (Underwriters Laboratory who signed off on the device safety). The same legal protections for technology in appliances should be in effect. If my dishwasher gets malware (or just includes it by default) and causes my refrigerator to stop working and spoil my food, the insurance cuts me a check for my losses and to replace the defective appliances, and handles the legal issues.
2) Device interoperability needs to be as easy as antiquated analog systems.
You could hook up a TV with RCA or coax connections and be watching off a VCR or DVD player in minutes. It's ridiculous that HDMI is rarely so straightforward (it occasionally works this simply). Resolution, aspect ratio, audio stream selection, and DRM phone home setup is retarded.
3) Pick a device class to be the central hub, management, and gatekeeper. I suggest home wifi routers or a cheap, simple network bridge device.
4) Full control of permissions and actions by devices with simple to understand language.
If I don't want my washing machine downloading ads for Tide and Purex, it better f---ing not download ads. Same goes for usage tracking uploads.
5) Power usage should not significantly go up. If anything, connected devices should be able to lend clues as to how little changes can make my home greener and/or lower utility bills. Example: washing machine suggests running wash cycle at 8 PM to get out of peak usage billing. It sends me an SMS if I select, to let me know to put the clothes into the dryer.
6) Device electronics / control should be isolated to prevent the additional complication from increasing failure rate.
It's stupid, bad engineering that the more features a home appliance has, i.e. the more premium it is, the more consumers see failures. If the toaster can't get online, it better still make my toast when I press the button.

Not to mention the frequency where customers realized they are / were getting way overcharged for the amount of code they essentially purchased.

It is interesting to see Agile + managed hosting / development / support become popular for software products in niche markets where a new version every 5 years would cover every use case. At the same time those niches are severely disrupted as soon as a competing product enters the marketplace.

One model which would work functionally but massively reduce the headcount most FOSS projects like to tout would be the Habitat for Humanity setup.

Tell people that to contribute, these are the days and times for which they can sign up. Tell them what scope knowledgeable leader they will be reporting to. Let the group leaders track down who showed up (physically or virtually) and hand out assignments.

It's hard enough to get software developers to fix a problem in a product for which one is paying. Nearly every issue I have run into with open source is a driver or compatibility issue which was previously documented years prior to my own stumbling upon it. The developers weren't interested enough back at that time to fix it, and it leaves me with little faith that it is worth my time to chime in with a "me too", not to mention the hate for resurrecting old threads or bug reports.

Part of the problem with open source is freedom. Not enough people sat down at their desk and told to fix it instead of working on what interests them.

I was less concerned with the issues of stereo depth perception. I am comfortable with people driving with only one eye. I have a pretty good understanding of how the fovea and periphery vision systems work and interact. One eye massively increases the peripheral blind spot on one side, but that is easy to compensate for with mirrors and moving your eyes / head.

Double vision where the two images don't overlap concerns me quite a bit more. I am sure her dominant eye takes over to the point that she might as well have just one eye, but there is a greater range for misinterpretation of perception with two images which don't agree.

Something about her driving sounds irresponsible.

Usually, I have found the culprit in large organizations with strong granular security to be the <proprietary single purpose business application> developers and support. The number of times I have watched a new person get onboard and have proper, restricted intranet access, and then the application support people have to open everything up to them to get that one proprietary app to work is astounding.