They used subtlety to find out where he was going to be and patiently waited until they were in a position to quietly sneak up behind him and grab the laptop before he had a chance to do anything about it.

You are correct that Ulbricht was rather arrogant and did not take necessary precautions. I am not a "typical American" that believes brute force beats subtlety. Had they attempted to use brute force, he would have been alerted and managed to do something to prevent them from getting into his laptop.

It seems to me that if he had managed to close the lid on his laptop, the prosecuters would have been completely screwed.

Encryption is great stuff, but the IBKAC loophole can get you every time.

IBKAC = Interface Between Keyboard and Chair

Like a lot of people, I listen to my music on the go on my phone. I don't have the ability to appreciate all this fancy new stuff.

The #1 thing Apple can do to improve my buying experience is to put lyrics in the USLT tags, so I don't have to hunt around the Internet or use some other tagging software.

The #2 thing Apple can do is offer songs in Apple Lossless. AAC was a good choice back when 128K was the bitrate of the day. But, in a world where everyone is selling 256K and 320K tracks, I'd rather get my music in a lossless format and convert down to VBR MP3.

I thought iTunesLP was a cool format. But, for the life of me I could never figure out why you couldn't get the full iTunesLP experience in on your iPad or even iPhone.

As someone who is into watches, one of the things I have learned is:

Watch glass is either mineral crystal or sapphire crystal.

Mineral crystal is prone to scratching (as compared to Sapphire), but handles a direct impact relatively well. Sapphire crystal is much harder and is extremely resistant to scratching, but is much more shatter-prone than mineral.

If you don't want something to leak on the Internet in the 21st century, DON'T DO IT!

Perhaps the NSA could have learned that lesson with Edward Snowden...

These really are just nude pictures, some with sex. But are we all shocked that are celebrities look hot when they're naked?

Far worse would have been for photos to leak showing criminal activity, such as torturing dogs, doing drugs, or acting like complete assholes by beating up and torturing people.