I'd argue that Slashdot is a website with a national presence and has better topics to cover than a hack in some parent's basement, but apparently not.

68000? Easier than 8086, absolutely, but probably not easier than ARM. People should be learning assembler on an RPi, or clone, or arduino.

Its probably just as cheap as buying a Raspberry Pi or clone. Its probably more useful to start out on assembler with a fully functional computer unit like the RPi. I would see doing assembler on a 6502 more like "embedded" programming, and that's going to be a lost art at some point in the next decade. (The low end with the FPGAs/ASICs and the high end with Artificial Intelligence will eat up most of the market.)

lower prices on anything is always a positive.

So you'd prefer Iran to have been able to afford the price of acquiring weapons-grade plutonium? Or perhaps you'd celebrate a pay cut for yourself?

Don't forget the Russians and ISIS as well.

See how many days it takes for a colonist to die on Mars. Will it be from lack of oxygen? Run out of supplies before he/she can get a successful harvest? Blow their brains out? Add a deathpool component to it, and that will fund the mission right there.

The payoff of the A+ board is not the price. Its supposed to use significantly less power, which would make it more desirable if you needed to leave a remote device alone for a longer period of time, or place it on a drone, where the battery would need to be lighter, or needed to solar power the device on a small cell, and have it run overnight on the rechargeable battery. Still can't beat the power consumption of an arduino, but there's probably applications (drive a webcam) which the arduino can't meet with its CPU.

They prop up the value of our currency, and then expect us to go out and die for their interests.

But there's currently only a finite number of people who can properly devise data models and interpret statistical data. There will always be a limit to how "reliable" derived information can be.

Why would you be opposed to big data finding out when you take a dump in the morning, as long as its voluntary?

If you do all your internet activity through tor, and don't subscribe to cable TV, and find non-identifiable ways to obtain your video entertainment, the only thing big data can work with is your bank account, credit card, library card, and social security number. (And cash payments can limit what your credit card can say about you.)

It won't keep you safe from the NSA, but big business isn't holding a gun to your head (yet).

Diesel is a viable strategy, but not gasoline. It degrades over time; you're not going to get 1 year storage life with gasoline. You'll also have to buy "pure" gasoline, not the stuff that's cut with 15% ethanol.

It's an effort headed by an aid worker in Africa (Alex Weir). Basically, he wanted to produce a compendium of useful information which could be applied by developing nations; topics like agriculture, engineering, construction, sanitation, medicine, etc. . Much of the source material comes from UN publications, so its more current and applicable than "turn of the century" techniques. Among the interesting items, it includes an html, hypertext expert system for medical diagnostics. You go to the start page, click relevant symptoms, and eventually it leads you to a guestimate of what's ailing you. Its not remotely as competent as an actual doctor, but its better than nothing when you're stuck "in the Bush".

Besides the information being indexed and organized, Weir had a vision of burning the collection on DVDs and distributing them to the third world. (At one point, it appeared he was reorganizing the material as pdf pages which could be viewed by a DVD player, using DVD menus. That would remove the need for a conventional computer or tablet to access the material. I don't know if it ever got finished.) About a year or two ago, he decided to reorganize the collection in a hybrid wiki form, which he calls "microdownloads". Its now updated more frequently, and the DVD collection will probably not be revised.

Unfortunately, it looks like the Facebook page hasn't been updated since 4/11/14, and Google has a link hinting that the site was "hacked". Finally, going to the website pops up a login window. I'm not sure if that's a new development in response to the hacking, or that the hacker still "controls" the site. Perhaps Mr. Weir is still in Africa and can't address the situation until he's returned to civilization. Its pretty unusable in its current state, but there's probably a way to find a previous working mirror of the site.

In any case, I'll leave links for people who wish to investigate the issue further, and more important, a magnet link to pickup the 2012 cd3wd 6 DVD collection by torrent.

facebook

cd3wd site

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:7AEE811F0E802B29C1F2E4C785CE866F94AA2084&dn=cd3wd%202012%206%20dvds&tr=udp%3a%2f%2ftracker.ccc.de%3a80&tr=http%3a%2f%2f64.244.102.71%2fannounce&tr=udp%3a%2f%2ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3a80&tr=udp%3a%2f%2ftracker.istole.it%3a80&tr=udp%3a%2f%2ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3a80%2fannounce&tr=udp%3a%2f%2ftracker.publicbt.com%3a80%2fannounce

Don't think so. The torrent indicated it was 110 Gb in size.

Not once Assange is in Swedish custody.

Do you even read what you cite???

That doesn't mean Assange is safe from extradition; it means a single, politically connected Swedish judge can hand over Assange to the US. Good luck fighting the interpretation, or appealing after Assange is flying to Gitmo.

Simple. Assange is no exemplar of free speech. He's a political anarchist with delusions of relevance who wanted to kick the US power establishment in the nads, and then get away with it.

1) Your assurances are meaningless.

2) Look at what happened to Kevin Mitnick. Because the American public had such a poor understanding of hacking and the level of threat posed by hacking, people though Mitnick had to be placed behind bars to keep America (corporations) safe. Because the American legal system is much more complex and byzantine than the simplified mythology propagated to its citizens, Kevin had to spend many years in a medium security jail before even going to trial, to optimize his chances of either beating the conviction, or reducing the maximum penalty. What actually happened was that the technology moved so fast, and the public's miniscule understanding of hacking was modified ("Why worry about some jerk that went on a computer joyride, when hackers are stealing American intellectual property and money from the safety of Russia or China"), it eventually became cost effective for the US DOJ to deescalate the witchhunt they were making over Mitnick.

The point being that as long as organizations exist to reveal information the US government prefers to conceal, the security apparatus of the US will treat those organizations as national security threats. This even sort of includes legitimate news organizations like the NY Times, UK Guardian, etc. They are captive to the US government. As long as they operate within the laws defined by the judicial branch, and "play ball", they aren't going to get the Assange treatment. No one like Assange or Snowden can assume they are beyond the reach or interest of the US government.