Just hook it up to itself, like a digital centipede.

no you don't! have you thought about what a horrible idea that is? of course you haven't, because you need a brain to think!

and what the fuck is wrong with YELLING, SLASHDOT FILTER!??!!?

That's just the media's focus, not the law's.

Mostly framed so far as dealing with bulk collection of domestic telephone "metadata," the bipartisan USA Freedom Act addresses activities much broader than phone calls, said government officials and private experts.

Granted, I haven't been able to find more details than that (on a cursory read of the Wikipedia article, anyway).

What about a layered encryption system?

First, a random token is generated for your vote. This could be generated client side (with potential collisions) -- it's just a way for someone to verify their vote later. That, plus the vote(s) are encrypted with the Tallying Machine (TM) public key. Next, the output of that is combined with your identity information and encrypted with the Identity Machine public key. The whole thing is then sent to the IM, decrypted, identity is verified, voting record is made, and then the encrypted vote+token is sent to on to the tally machine, the vote and token are decrypted and logged. If necessary, the vote+token could be sent to a mixer to shuffle the order to defeat timing attacks.

It be much easier to whiteboard, but I don't see any immediate flaws -- at least none that would be unique to this method of voting. It's a lot how the current in-person voting works as well.

a dominant family member can be looking over the voter's shoulder, making sure the vote corresponds to the dominant family member's preferences.

There are assholes on both sides of the aisle, and as long as it balances out, it shouldn't matter to the outcome of the election.

Remember when it was claimed: "we'll have strong AI when computers can play chess?"

No.

Then it was: "We'll have AI when you can verbally tell a computer to do useful everyday tasks."

No it wasn't.

As we reach each milestone, we compare the state of the technology to our own human self-awareness and realize that it's time to move those goalposts agin.

It's completely the opposite, actually: Our expectations of AI exceeded the capabilities of even the most intelligent humans: "Understand what I mean, not what I say/write/do." We haven't had to move the goalposts because they're farther than anyone can kick.

There are worse things he could be doing with his money than philanthropy. Standardized testing may (or may not) be counterproductive, but I'm not going to fault someone for making a good faith effort, and the Gates Foundation has done a lot of other great work. It's more than can be said for Jeff Bezos, Rupert Murdoch, or the late Steve Jobs. There are plenty of billionaires who don't do shit except hoard huge piles of cash. There are plenty of things not to like about Bill Gates, but philanthropy is not one of them.

Surely there are businesses and political action committees in Europe. So why are US voters failing where European voters succeed?

Yes. Next question.

Look, I'm all for civil liberties, but we can't even begin to have a conversation about those if one agency is refusing to even be accountable to its overseers. This is/was a bigger deal. This is "dad beat me, and when I told mom, he killed her." You don't say "boo hoo" to that, you say "holy shit."

To be fair, one person was forced to retire.

Officials said a former CIA interrogator named Charlie Wise was forced to retire in 2003 after being suspected of abusing Abu Zubaida using a broomstick as a ballast while he was forced to kneel in a stress position. Wise was also implicated in the abuse at Salt Pit. He died of a heart attack shortly after retiring from the CIA, former U.S. intelligence officials said. http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

If a gang kills 6 rival gang members in one incident, does it count as 6 murders or 1? I'd argue that such a place would actually be "safer" than having 6 independent murders taking place.

And how exactly would you argue that? Please show me one place where gang violence is the dominant contributor to the death rate that's an otherwise great place to live.

If J-Pay is for sending money to prisoners, then what is J-Date?

Superheated steam lubrication and steam bubbles? Pretty sure all current theories hold that plates move over molten rock, aka magma, not steam. As far as steam bubbles, I think you're confusing earthquake activity with magma heating groundwater, aka volcanic activity.

Idiot or malicious person. Honestly I don't think that's even thinking far enough outside the box. Unmanned drones could be used to wreak all kinds of havoc with low risk of getting caught, especially as lifting capacity increases. They're already being used for smuggling operations, but I suspect they will be used for offensive capabilities in the near future, targeted or otherwise. Hell, they could use the devices themselves as a weapon, or drop heavy objects on unsuspecting persons below, where "heavy" is basically anything over a few ounces. Small meteorites still manage to crash through houses, and that's just at terminal velocity. IEDs would make them even deadlier.

I doubt we'll do anything until something actually happens, though, at which point we'll promptly freak the fuck out and probably invade some third world country.