The price of a medical device has very little to do with the price of components. (Compare the price of a medical hearing aid to the price of a bluetooth headset.)
It's all in certification and testing. - And insurance against lawsuits.

If the NSA can break the encryption they will be able to recover your login credentials. Then they can send false tweets to your friends saying "Help, I'm in Nigeria and my wallet was stolen. Can you wire me $1000?" or "Vote for Jeb Bush in 2016!"

One difference would be that this works for every piece of software on every computer that you connect to the network after the box - not just one browser.

This can be good or bad. You may be doing something very secret on your secure, anonymous computer. Then an insecure app on your iPhone opens an unencrypted connection to some server and tells the tor exit node who you are.

I couldn't agree more. As an analogy, there have been tons of studies looking for a link between cellphones and cancer. Even before those studies were made, anyone who had an understainng of how electromagnetic radiation works would have said that cellphones can't cause cancer. Still, the studies were made, showed no link, and gave empiric support to something that was previously just a theoretical argument.

There are allready two or three lines going in to each building: telephone, electric, and sometimes also cable TV. Where I currently live (Germany) there is healthy competition beteween telephone-wire and TV-cable based ISPs.

Alternatively you can mandate that the company that has the monopoly on the last mile must share it with competitors. This model has been very successfull in Sweden, for example.

That would make you a Tea Party Republican.

After an error was corrected in TFA, the asteroid is now expected to kill well over 100 000 people. The trend is certainly worrying.

According to my own research, 53.7 % of them are.

I think the reason why GP is currently at "-1 Troll" is that the first line of the post says that US Treasury bonds have junk status. When you lead with an easily verifiable, factually incorrect statement like that, nobody will take you seriously.

But since there is, apparently, a large crowd (including several senators) who believe that the rest of what he wrote is "the truth". I will try to respond.

Yes, it is true that the US, like most other countries, will never pay off its debt. The way fiat currency works is that inflation continously transfers wealth from those who save to those who borrow. This means that if you have the credibiliity to be able to borrow, then you should do so. The federal government has this credibility, and therefore it is more profitable for it to invest in things like infrastructure and education than to pay off debt. (Even feeding the poor can be seen as an investment, because they will likely generate tax revenue in the future.)

I personally dislike the idea of fiat currency. I think it is deeply unfair the way we transfer wealth from those who cannot borrow to those who can. But since those are the rules we play by, I do the best of the situation and borrow to invest. The US government would be stupid not to do the same thing.

The idea that the US could keep paying interest on its debt, without raising the debt cieling (popularly known as "prioritization") is simply false. Even if it were legal (which it is not) it wouldn't work. If the federal government stopped paying any of its bills, then the credibilty that allows it to borrow cheaply would be destroyed. At that point, you get the equvalent of a run on the bank. It would not be a matter of paying $300 billion per year in interest, but instead repaying the principal at a rate of $5 000 billion per year, which would cause bankrupcy in a matter of weeks even if all other payments are halted.

Only if you live in the United States of America.

Exactly. I doubt very much that the store owners removed these books for ideological reasons. They are simply doing what they think is best for business, keeping the bulk of their customers happy. I would not be surprised if they now start up adult e-book stores under different brand names.

That vid is of a jailbroken phone.

And the iPhone BSoD is soo much cleaner-looking! No ugly fixed-font text to detract from the experience.

I wish it had rounded corners, though.

Where's the statistics that show this "brain drain"? Sure Israel has a high rate of emmigration, but that's because it also has a high rate of immigration, and a large fraction of dual citizenship holders. One of the Nobel Prize winners from TFS actually illustrates this perfectly. Dr. Levitt was born and raised outside of Israel, but is now a citizen and spends six months a year there (according to Wikipedia.) Counting people like him as "emmigrants" is very missledaing.

The cameras were cameras, but the weapons carried by other members of the group were wepons. The lessons to learn from this are:

If someone asks if you want to join the military (in a country which might invade other countries) just say "fuck you!" Otherwise you might soon find yourself in a situation where you either fire on what might be innocent civilians, or risk exposing your friends and colleages to an enemy assault.

If you ever find yourself organizing an armed resistance movement (because your country was invaded) make sure you wear uniforms, armbands, or some other kind of identifying marks whenever you operate. It may make you more of a target, but it may also save the lives of civilians around you.