Is it MARVELous this SHIELD?

No matter how stupid Apple was to fall for this, and how much they disregarded good practice, this is still definitely fraud.

Why wouldn't they call the police?

No kidding, any system which comes down to "I have a number, trust me" is pretty flawed.

Obviously, Apple was doing something wrong since they're on the hook for it, but you'd really think there would have to be some validation inherent to this.

This sounds like it boiled down to "declined, declined, declined, OK, go ahead". That's crazy.

But that's the problem with this system: as long as the number of digits is correct, the override code itself doesn't matter.

Who the hell came up with that idea?

That's no security in any meaningful sense of the word.

I'm betting some lobbyist made it so that the banks didn't really need to do anything concrete, just look like they were.

If that's all that's required, the banks deserve to be getting ripped off.

Do the DHS seriously believe they have any credibility in this area?

At this point, I assume if they find any exploits they'll keep them secret and use them themselves.

Sorry guys, but once you became the enforcement arm for copyright, you lost all credibility.

No, this is EA, assume malice, because EA are assholes who don't give a rats ass about their customers or what they do to them.

You know, after the Sony rootkit issue, I do kind of expect vendors to be up front about this.

Because, "hey, here's our software, oh, it might wreck your computer" is kind of a big deal.

These companies feel entitled to install all sorts of crap on your machine. But, this being EA, it's already crap.

They really should be required to tell you the extra crap they're installing, because it has the potential to really fsck up your computer.

Being a cryptocurrency rather than a physical one also means that they can vanish your money with the click of a button instead of having to personally visit you.

So, tell me again, how is this different from most money these days?

Anything you have on deposit is pretty much just electrons. The vast majority of 'real' money is pretty much just as virtual these days.

With the inherent irony that you can then use that hidden data specifically to find "sensitive" areas you might not have known about

People have been using the internet to find out more about 'sensitive areas' for a long time now. ;-)

By treating it like currency and passing laws about what you can do it?

They make not be able to regulate the entire currency, but they can certainly pass laws regarding their own people and what they are required to do.

Did anybody really think that you could simply say you have a form of currency which isn't regulated and expect governments to just say "well, they've beaten us"?

That would be a neat trick.

no, it's because most of them crack their nuts with their beaks.

LOL, once again, I am going to have to invoke rule #34.

Somewhere, in a dark and nasty corner of the interwebs is the human analog to this.

Now, excuse my, I have to go apply brain bleach.

Nowhere did they say they had a battery ready for market. Moron.

No, but the GPs point remains valid -- we keep hearing about all of these breakthroughs in batteries, but they don't ever actually ever seem to materialize.

It certainly seems like all of this research never actually turns into anything you can actually buy.

So either these advances aren't trickling down to consumer stuff, or companies are doing a lousy job of telling us about it. If they're not trickling down to consumers, why?

Except, I'm pretty sure there are plenty of places which are also censored or blurred from Google maps and the like.

India is hardly the first country to do this, and there's a few US installations which are blurred out.

Governments censor data, film at 11.

Right, because no technology is good or useful until it has been perfected and extended to all possible corner cases.