Actually, it is already illegal in many jurisdictions to hitchhike or pick up hitchhikers and has been for quite some time.

Skin of Evil was pretty bad too. That's the one where Tasha Yar was killed by an oil slick. I also wasn't too fond of Manhunt. Bloodlines was a real stinker too, especially disappointing since it came so near the end of the series.

End to end encryption doesn't give anywhere near the security many people think. If adversaries (including the government) have access to the communication lines, they can intercept software updates, or take advantage of other vulnerabilities to install software (such as keyloggers, memory sniffers with key extractors, etc.) on the endpoint machines. In fact, they need only compromise one of the computers participating in the communication. So, end to end encryption, although a great idea in theory, really doesn't give much security in practice.

True, but I think most people "forget" to declare most of their possessions. Unless you own a private jet or yacht, I don't think you'll have much trouble.

When the author wrote that part of the story, he or she seemed to be unaware of what he or she had just written:

By breaking SSL, the NSA has access to SQL queries whether or not they're encrypted.

Because the United States is not supposed to have a redistributionist government, but the figures seem to suggest that's exactly what it is.

This wasn't a corporate site nor was it a medical services site. This was a non-profit charitable organization. Suppose I set up a website of my own, not for profit, in which I provide information on where to get an abortion. Suppose I don't secure my web server enough and a hacker gets a copy of my access.log files and is thus able to determine who visited my site and suppose they publish that information. Would I be subject to big fines as well? What if it was a website about some other subject like building model trains? I understand in this case the hackers probably got more than just IP addresses, but where exactly is the line drawn? Is anyone who has a website in danger of running afoul of these laws?

I think you misread the parent's post. It said "I dare someone to prove the harm in possessing/viewing cold porn" [emphasis added]. By "this crime" you seem to mean the sex or the kids being forced into sex to be photographed. I agree that should definitely be a crime and the perpetrators should be punished. By your logic though, possessing photographs of someone being murdered should be a crime, since the victim clearly lost their life.

I still use a five year old book on CSS and a seven year old book on PHP, and they work just fine. Javascript has changed a bit since then, and newer tools like jquery evolve more rapidly, but the fundamentals change slowly enough that if someone gets a job in the field when they graduate, they should be able to keep up with changes throughout their career. This will be especially true if the professors teach it properly: encourage independent learning and discovery through projects and reading and not relying solely on lectures. In other words, teach the students how to learn web development, instead of just teaching web development.

Isn't Magic Lantern the name of an FBI spyware program designed to snarf passwords from suspects?

Actually, I think the people that are "talking down to people" are those that give incorrect explanations of things because they think they're simpler. Pointing out the problem with the molasses analogy is not fussing about a picky little detail, it is pointing out the analogy is wrong on a very fundamental level. It paints a picture of the pre-Michelson-Morley days of a stationary ether that permeates all space and defines a preferred frame of reference. As Einstein said, you should make things as simple as possible, but no simpler.

Yes! Absolutely. Let me second that recommendation. Best explanation of the Higgs I've ever come across as well. It is rather long (about an hour), but if you at all interested in what the Higgs is really all about, it more than repays your investment in time.

This explanation and comic are very good, but it makes the same fundamental mistake that so many physicists have made in trying to explain the Higgs field. It compares the field to molasses, slowing down particles by "sticking" to them, or providing some sort of friction to slow them down to sub-light speeds. This is fundamentally incorrect as molasses, or any other frictional medium, opposes the motion of particles, slowing them down until they eventually come to rest with respect to the frictional medium (molasses in this analogy). This is not at all how the Higgs field works. It doesn't oppose the motion of particles at all. In fact, Newton's law of inertia states that a body in motion will continue in motion at the same velocity until acted upon by an external force, and this is still true even in the presence of the Higgs field. There's nothing molasses-like about it at all. In fact, as a relativistic field the Higgs field has no rest frame. Put in other words, the Higgs field has no velocity of its own, zero or otherwise. If it did, it would break a fundamental symmetry law of special relativity: namely that all inertial frames of reference are equivalent. No field that behaves anything like molasses would be consistent with that principle.

But does the flushdns actually ERASE the contents of the cache or merely delete it? (By erase, I mean overwrite with zeros or something else so snooping software can't reconstruct the original cache contents.)

Tire chains are illegal in Wisconsin?!?!?!!! Wouldn't that be like outlawing air conditioners in Texas or umbrellas in Seattle? What is the rationale for that?