I refused to comment on YouTube because of the whole G+ thing, now I can go back to commenting on the many interesting YouTube videos I see :)

If you are writing software that takes in a password and you are hashing the password to compare it to a stored hash, there is no reason at all to restrict the maximum length of a password or prohibit certain characters from being used in it.

If you are writing software that takes in a password and you are NOT hashing the password (but instead storing it in the clear or otherwise doing something with it), you shouldn't be writing software involving passwords in the first place (I can't think of a single valid reason to do anything other than store a password hash. Even "lost password" features can easily be done via temporary passwords or email-me-a-password-reset-link features)

I would love to hear from the people behind software and web pages that limit the length of passwords or restrict what characters you can have in it why they do such a stupid thing.

Doesn't H.264 (aka MPEG4) which has much wider client support (browsers, hardware decoding, mobile etc) do a good enough job?

Whats left unsaid is how many ISPs (including those that dont yet exist except on paper or in someones head) would LIKE to offer super fast broadband but are unable to because local or state authorities have been convinced by dinosaur companies like Comcast and Time Warner to block alternative ISPs comming into the area and providing good access.

If governments at all levels stopped listening to the dinosaur ISPs and their friends in Hollywood and started listening to the people who elected them, the number of people able to get gigabit service (or even just super fast service) might start to be a meaningful percentage of the total population.

If you dont provide remote access to the car systems, how will systems like OnStar be able to start the car remotely (ala Die Hard 4.0)?

I have watched enough Top Gear to know that there are plenty of fancy cars (sports cars etc) out there where you use the infotainment system (or at least the screen for the infotainment system) to configure all the various settings for how the car will perform. So on those cars at least, there must be a 2-way link between the infotainment system and the car control systems.

Not sure whats more impressive, the fact that a 19 year old is able to get DARPA funding or the fact that a 19 year old (and his team presumably) is about to go into mass production with a fairly fancy looking custom microprocessor on a 28nm fab process.

It may well be possible to rig the spinning cage full of balls. But I bet its a LOT harder to do (and a LOT riskier in terms of getting caught or getting it wrong and not getting the numbers you thought you were going to get).

Maybe the Iranians want to build nuclear powered naval vessels like the US and Russia have...

Its a mid-range smartphone with some slightly-better-than-usual-for-the-specs audio hardware (but nothing you couldn't find on any number of fairly decent smartphones) and a fancy name attached to it.

Why would any sane admin use RC4 for SSL/TLS instead of using a more secure algorithm like AES?

More than likely they are a vehicle to allow the Chinese government to spend the $23bn without it looking like the Chinese government is the one spending the $23bn.

Thank you to whoever hacked Hacking Team. Because of your work leaking the big data dump, a number of fairly nasty security holes in commonly used computer software such as Flash and Internet Explorer have now been patched by their manufacturers.

Companies (or government agencies) who discover/collect/buy/obtain unpatched vulnerabilities in software and sit on them so they can use them for spying purposes are no better than criminal gangs who discover/collect/buy/obtain unpatched vulnerabilities and sit on them so they can use them for building malware.

IMO There is NEVER a valid reason for ANY entity to hold onto an unpatched vulnerability and exploit it, not even the arguments of "National Security" and "we need this to stop terrorists" that have been used by the NSA and other agencies to justify this practice.

There are several possible outcomes from this deal, none of which is worse than not doing a deal at all.

That said, if Iran is serious in its claim that it doesn't want nuclear weapons and only wants peaceful nuclear technology, it should sign and ratify the various nuclear test ban treaties.

Quite a few of the problems in the middle east today can be traced back to actions taken in the past by western nations.
The Palestinian problem wouldn't even be a problem if Palestine hadn't been taken away from the Palestinians and given to the Jews (first by the British at the end of WW1 when they created "Mandatory Palestine" and allowed the Jews in in big numbers then again at the end of WW2 when the country was split in two, then again when the Jews not only claimed independence for the Jewish part and called it Israel but proceeded to capture the Palestinian part and more land besides)

The current situation in Iran would likely not exist had the US and UK not kicked out Mohammad Mosaddegh in a coup (all because Mohammad Mosaddegh kicked out the British oil company and nationalized the oil industry)

Islamic State wouldn't be such a problem if the US had left things well enough alone in Iraq instead of launching a full-blown invasion just because some circumstantial intelligence suggested Iraq MIGHT have some WMDs somewhere (plus had the US and its allies not go into Iraq they would have been able to focus more on the war in Afghanistan and might not have taken 10 years to take out Osama bin Laden)