Fixating on 'gestures' and reducing the entire scope of the input device to them is where the Leap went wrong. And from the summary: "...respond to a set of pre-programmed gestures...", it's where this one will go wrong, too. Gestures are fine for making limited input devices more powerful (as is the case with trackpads) but there's nothing intuitive or compelling about a 'set of pre-programmed gestures' in itself.

There's a bunch cool stuff you could do with these sort of input devices, but everyone seems so compelled to turn them into clumsy trackpad replacements.

You got that backward, though. An IUD is considerably cheaper than the pill. The pill is popular in the US for the same reason that brand name drugs and freshly patented drugs are more popular than generics: pharmaceutical marketing and kickbacks to prescribing doctors.

The reasoning for the poor getting the pill is a gift to the pharma companies. Relative effectiveness was never even considered when making the decision.

Augmented reality glasses sound awesome, and these look much more interesting than Google Glass, but I'm not sure spies are the market here.

From the article: "Admittedly, for spy glasses, they lack a certain subtlety." A bit of an understatement, I'd say.

On what basis are they entitled to this?

It really doesn't, though. The validity of our entire government hinges on the support of the governed and the idea that understanding the basis of government (which is a short document in plain English) is beyond the capability of ordinary citizens abuses that validity.

If a simple and straightforward statement like, "No person... shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself..." can be twisted to mean that a person can be compelled to do so, then the changes that history has made to the document are much greater than "nuance".

To further clarify my point: the key, as a physical object, can be seized if it can be found. The safe can also be seized and its lock forced, but none of that requires the cooperation of the defendant.

You actually don't have to provide anything other than to identify yourself. As a defendant, you don't have to cooperate in the investigation against you. It may help you to cooperate (if you're innocent and can prove it), but you aren't required to do so.

In what circumstances are you compelled to produce physical objects? If this was the case, wouldn't murder trials always start by compelling the defendant to produce the murder weapon and the body?

This is what you take advantage of. Crack the drive open and rewire the drive so that attaching it to a normal power supply destroys the drive. This may be as easy as just swapping around the 12V, 3.3V, and 5V pins. Make the corresponding modifications to your computer.

There's all sorts of empty space inside of modern SSD drives, so you could add an extra circuit to boost the voltage and apply it directly to the memory chips or fill the case with thermite or whatever. If you go this route, you don't even need to worry about strong encryption methods because the analysis will never get that far. If the failure is not catastrophic (say, melting into a puddle or bursting into flames), there might not even be any suspicion of foul play. Electronics die all of the time and SSDs have no outward feedback to indicate whether they're failing or not...

It's great if you're a cheapskate who feels like you've won if you got a $5/yr service free for five years. If your time is worth anything at all to you, or you're trying to establish some sort of reliable process that you don't have to fuck with on short notice, it's not such a great deal.

What good is Google as an industry giant who will be around indefinitely if they have the attention span of a gnat?

Yeah. Using mysterious black box software and making/trusting claims about its security is a bit naive.

In all aspects of education, from primary school to university, the growing swarms of administrators soak up the budget. In some school systems, they vastly outnumber the actual teachers, have better pay, and yet contribute nothing to the operation of the schools.

Of course the Chinese can manufacture good quality products. The fact that they very often don't has less to do with Chinese capabilities and more to do with their customers. When a company is uprooting its entire manufacturing capability and moving it overseas, they are in a serious cost-cutting mindset. Shipping the manufacturing to China and maintaining the current quality will save a little bit of money, but shipping the manufacturing to China and cutting quality to the bone will save so much more.

Doing something like this is a big sale for the top executives and it may not pan out in the long term. If they're going to tank the company, they need to cash out now, while there's still something left of the brand name.

Maybe on the moon, but not on this planet.

It really wouldn't, though. Just like the case with health-tracking apps and baby monitors, if the target of the monitoring is interested in being monitored there are cheaper and more reliable methods than this. The prime applications for this involve involuntary monitoring, probably law enforcement for the most part.

There are many many people in Texas named "Jody Williams". If you consider that Jody can be short for Joseph, there are even more. Nutjob, indeed.