It can't be fake! This is from the same country that's gonna launch a lunar mission from a supersonic seaplane

CM11 nightlies starting with cm-11-20131210-NIGHTLY also include WhisperPush according to the changelog. I'm still on 20131208 on Nexus S so I can't check how it actually behaves.

The point of the matter is not whether the power is real or not, strong enough to become noticeably undemocratic or not. The point is al those seats are not elected. Kudos to the House of Commons for trying to reform the upper chamber, but the fact remains you have a structure that is anchored in a deeply undemocratic past. Even if all the Lords Spiritual had a purely formal role (which they don't - they have the right to vote) this would still be unacceptable in a democracy. The members of the parliament are all supposed to be elected officials whose function should be to serve the society. They are paid officials and their seats cost money in ways that go well beyond their salaries. Having a guaranteed seat in the parliament is not only an issue of power, it's also an issue of guaranteed social status, monetary benefits and indirect political influence.

The very fact that you take such a lax attitude towards this reminiscent historical injustice speaks volumes, and I'm not just talking about you, this is an attitude prevalent in the UK (I travel for business a lot there, more than half my business is with the UK). I'm sure it's not a pressing need to rectify it because the size of the issue has been diminished over time. Here's hoping it goes away completely, but I believe you can't get rid of such an injustice completely as long as you cling to the image of a hereditary monarchy as being something good; monarchy is a huge injustice in and of itself, even if you somehow manage to isolate it from political power completely.

You'd think you're reasonably OK, but may I remind you that a significant number of positions held in the upper chamber of your parliament are granted for life; and another significant portion to the clergy. A certain church's clergy.

Combine that little fact with the following: a) the monarch bestows lordship; b) the monarch is also the head of the little church whose clergy has granted seats in the house for which lordship is required.

Now tell me, what has that got to do with democracy, because I for one cannot determine anything even remotely democratic about any of the above. I will believe your monarch has no powers (now or ever) when the whole House of Lords has been abolished.

Yes. And, I repeat, this is not what the article is about. It's also conceivable (I'll leave plausibility aside) for a hard disk controller manufacturer to embed firmware code that activates when a block of data containing a pre-defined byte sequence is written or read, and bricks the hard disk. Useful? Maybe, if we're paranoid enough then all vendors are evil, all ISPs cooperate with NSA, all computer repair shops are in the government's pockets. The article is not about any of this however, and it's claims seem far more serious (and now, upon reading some really useful comments here, I also think it's mostly BS)

I think you misread what the author is saying. The problem is not the fact that communications originating from your phone are potentially insecure (the situation you're trying to compare with the DSL modem and the myriad routers). The problem is that, the author alleges, the smartphones are primarily controlled by the baseband processor firmware; according to the author this piece of code is the governor of everything that happens on your phone. That means, with the appropriate base station changes, anyone can access your phone while sitting in your pocket, can activate the cam, the microphone, can access the contents of it's memory card, etc.

I do not fully trust the author because as far as I understand the baseband processor is supposed to control only the radio and nothing else. That means wifi, gsm and bluetooth. I don't understand why the baseband would have to deal with anything else, and why it would be the master processor and not just a blackbox "device" that the main OS sees and communicates with, in a properly isolated fashion. But then again I'm not knowledgeable enough to be certain about any of this.

If the article is correct then this is one of the scariest things I've read in a long time.

I don't understand why he can't be born in Canada and a Romanian ethnic at the same time.

Agreed. It's way too ambiguous. Are you a rocket scientist that's mad or are you studying mad rockets?

only insofar as one could argue that owning and distributing pornographic material involving minors is should be legal because it's "posting evidence of a crime"

Is there any case where a beheading is NOT a crime??? Not only should any decent human being consider such videos way outside any TOS for any website, but posting them should be a crime too. How come the same standard apply here as in the case of pedophilia? If owning a pornographic image/video involving minors is a major crime, how can there possibly be any argument that distributing beheading videos should be legal, tolerated, encouraged, anything really...

You're talking about quantum tunneling. Quantum teleportation is about teleportation of information in quantum entangled particles.

If you redefine the creationist "theory" then yes, you probably can accommodate both. However this is not what creationists claim.

For the record, most christians are not creationists. Even the catholic church accepts evolution as a fact.

You cannot postulate that and immediately create an exceptional clause for your god. Either everything had to come from something, therefore time is infinite and the fundamentals of matter and energy have always existed, or you accept that something can arise out of nothing, in which case it's either one or more creator gods or (you can cut out the middle man here) the whole universe.

If you cannot see the problem here, then don't worry. This should not concern your everyday life. But also take this into account: if you were to prove by logic alone that at least one god has to exist (which you did not prove, trust me), that does not say anything about the nature of that god, let alone that it's your god and not one of the hindu gods, greek gods, etc. Also doesn't prove anything about it's morality, it's intent (or even capacity for intent), it's concern with everyday life of humans.

In the everlasting words of Mr. Hitchens, you still got all your work ahead of you.

But then again, why should anyone be concerned with proving a god's existence in a rational, logical matter, when they've got faith to replace that?

Imagining the sun goes round the earth just seemed obvious to the pope too. Do you take your obviousness over scientific evidence with all your everyday experiences? Sometimes common sense is not as trustworthy as people take it to be.

Oh yes, indeed. Showing your boobs in public in the US is treated the same as it is in Iran, isn't it.

I heard they have naturist clubs about 5 miles outside Tehran too. Not to mention Iran's Mardi Gras. Wow, it was a blast last year.

Pentagon: Hey there Mahmoud, how's it going? Dude, look over there, see that nuclear plant? We totally infiltrated that.
Tehran: No you did not! We have strict security protocols, no spy would ever get access to that facility?
Pentagon: Oh yeah? Are you sure about that? Coz my boys over here beg to differ. See, we have all these documents...
Tehran: Let me take a look...
Pentagon: Here.
Tehran: Oh... you know what? These things are real... we'd better execute the chief of security. Oh, by the way. Barack, thanks for disclosing this. We wouldn't have spotted it without your help.
Pentagon: Don't mention it dude.

Sex crime?? Did she rape anybody? How on earth is having consensual sex with an adult considered a crime... Of course, in Islam everything a woman does can be construed as a crime.