Have some suggestions for the game name: VideoHead, or Lazy Eye Falling into Place, or Paranoid Eyedroid

You're missing two points:

PRISM is one program. There are many others out in the wild (as per Snowden leaks) that don't rely on bulk data collection. This dragnet you talk about is meant to do exploratory investigation, yet intelligence methods also apply to targeted data collection. Discriminating factors in this data (e.g. the fact the user is inclined to opt-in) make it the more interesting for targeted collection, although some might disagree and argue the contrary also holds true (people not encrypting data not to raise suspicion).

Secondly, encryption by default burdens the actual relevance of the data. In the statement I made, conspiracy theory, XKCD comic, name it what you will I am also implying PRISM becomes more effective, as enabling the collection of data that is decryptable in due time renders it usable. Add the fact that opting in is made post-flashing/initial setup so the phone is exponentially more likely to have a connection to the internet during the process of opting-in/encryption. Run-time generated key is thus more likely to be passed around the cloud like an Indian smoke pipe that agencies drag from middlemen (Google) whenever they feel like getting a proverbial high.

This has all the nuances of Android file system's own version of a warrant canary: it was there, by default, until it wasn't.

Makes it easy for the NSA to distinguish those that feel the need to encrypt their data, and those who don't. I'm betting this flag is passed to Google's server for some business logic reason (reason being "unspecified" due to non-disclosure of law enforcement requests).

He would have benefited a lot from a Genesis device. Would have saved his life from this horrendous disease caused by tobacco.

Woops, wrong article. Pls don't downvote/report !

It's been 17 years and nobody has managed to revive Aerith, and I'd bet a limb or 2 that there are people still attempting it today.

I like Pandora, and one of my greatest "web-disappointments" is not being able to use it without a proxy (Pandora is not available in my country), yet this really says a lot about how Pandora values their own music selection algorithms: you would expect a company that brags so loud about putting so much manpower and know-how in the topic to set a larger price tag on it, and give artists larger margins for each individual play of its songs. After all, Pandora never lets you pick a specific track for a specific artist and will always play what it thinks is best for you. Is this the real value the company translates to its services?

Now you have to tell us how you would force an entire medium/large business workforce that is keen on using the Office suite to switch to Docs... Or even let us know how to include no-to-exotic stuff like SGPS documents, Photoshop, Illustrator, XPTO and whatnot in that kind of version control. Docs is no silver bullet to kill Office, nor Dropbox, nor . It wasn't made for any of that, just like Google+ wasn't made to kill Facebook.

From a very superficial analysis, I'd say the fact that Dijkstra, among others, mentioning it back in the day really influenced the practice nowadays. That is yet another consequence of the enlightened influence the most knowledgeable imprint in society over the ages. The study is surely good science. Nonetheless, good science is only as good as the context it is applied, so the conclusions, even though interesting, must be made and taken with a grain of salt. This is because pretty much like testing human aggressiveness during primitive periods and testing it now would obviously provide the most disparate results in multiple orders of magnitude, and the same would have happened with this GOTO theme if there was this parallel universe we could compare - one where Dijkstra and co. hadn't chimed in about the subject, and nobody else stepped in to replace them. The greatest conclusion I personally take here is that such a large amount of code was influenced with the good practice evangelized by Dijkstra, and the pondered decisions that were made about the subject. Pretty much the same reason why IT is paying more and more attention to things like QA, agile, documentation, process, workflow and integration - we get these enlightened, experienced entities (individuals and companies alike) showing us just how important they are, and we apply those concepts with assurance that they will lead to better results.

This is exactly what I meant. They are allowing a fastlane with VPN's (which are usually paid), much like they don't want ISP's to force them to pay. But they will block proxies which are, unlike Guspaz said, usually free, and will only route part of the traffic. I think they are saving face with these comments: VPN's are usually associated with freedom rights and private internet usage in problematic countries, say China, while proxies are most commonly knwon for basic circumvention of commercial region locks, like most audio/video/digitally purchased content.

Despite being generic with "approximately zero", it's not exactly like that. There are some devices still in the making specifically targeting older builds of Android due to stability and their own lack of necessity for 4.3+ features. Sony's new walkman comes to mind

Note that they didn't deny proxy blocking also reported in the ./ article. As it stands now, per their own exclusion, Netflix allows PAID fastlanes such as VPNs for users who already have to pay subscription AND Internet service, but they will not allow the much more convenient and free neutrality circumvention that proxies allow. This reeks of hipocrisy and/or a media stunt to shunt their own mistakes, and of a very nice deal to cash in with popular VPN services. Or at the very least not to fall on their worst grace.

"there is a huge variation in ability between competent programmers and exceptional ones, and while you can train people to be competent, you can't train them to be exceptional"

This two sentences are the most blunt truths an IT professional has to cope with. 10x programmers just render us regular 1x programmers pretty much useless. If I lived in the US, and I had been raised as right-winged patriot, I would trust the local 10x are enough and some local 1x deserve to occupy 10x positions and salary slots.

But even if that's not the US picture, you don't want companies full of 10x's - it's proven to be hard to manage and to hinder company growth in the long run. Many will be headhunted, and many will leave.

If a company needs to be constantly looking for 10x programmers, it should be big enough to look for them locally. Unless it doesn't want to be paying the salary they deserve. This way you can fool a "foreign 10x" with the "El Silliconado" promise. Add some free housing, fast lane green card and a not-so-above-average salary, topped with the "I work for (e.g.) Google" factor. And that's how you're set for some long-term consequences when they to go back and fund their own 1B companies in Mumbai/Warsaw/Moscow/Beijing/Seoul, and start siphoning the local 10x and the local industry profits.

Oh and don't forget to thank GCHQ. Now that they disclosed they have reduced tapping into communications, they pretty much gave carte blanche to criminals. Just imagine: if they had disclosed illegal tapping before, they would have actually prevented a lot more crime than they actually detected with it secretively. Then again, they might be bluffing this time. In any case good job GCHQ...

So, (potentially) a quarter more class A narcotics entered the country due to (potentially) a quarter of the communications intercepted no longer being so. For one, I highly doubt those numbers translate to effective raise in class A narc. consumption or even availability. Let's not forget Snowden's actions also alerted the criminals, so they are EFFECTIVELY more aware, and thus LESS active since.

In any case, the number of drug addicts does not always increase with availability. Some studies actually indicate consumption is most influenced by other factors such as popularity/public opinion, novelty or ease of access (it's still socially difficult to contact dealers, thankfully). Some pioneer regions are proof availability is a deterrent for substance abuse, or induce more responsible use (Netherlands anyone?).

But even if I'm totally wrong, I'm personally happy with the trade off. I'll give in a few communications between criminals going undetected, for the assurance of private, universal communications any day.

Just spend the extra money on proven deterrents of narcotic use. Like prevention