John McAfee says a lot of things and does a lot of things that seem pretty 'remarkable'. Either he is having one hell of a interesting life, or he is a pathological liar. It seems pretty convenient that he cannot even give this mystery group a name.

North Korea has a well established history of aggressive, belligerent behavior, and this sort of thing sounds right up their alley. John is going have to cough up a lot more evidence than his good word that an agency with thousands of people and billions of dollars in hardware devoted keeping an eye on a rouge nation is wrong.

One thing that is going to likely cause some real problems: I think that many large cities rely on water supplies that are refilled via melting snow packs, providing a steady and predictable clean water supply. If snow packs and glaciers are radically reduced or eliminated, the water supply becomes much more seasonal, and supplying potable water for large numbers of people becomes...problematic.

Just one question for the deniers....When the mean temperature is up ten degrees globally and humanity is tanking it because of massive environmental change and crop failure, you won't be upset when we lynch you for being the liars and shills who prevented proactive fixes from being implemented, will you?

Ten years out? As a veteran programmer and AI enthusiast, I'd say it was more like a century. We cannot build a computer that can model a bug's brain activity, let alone something a million times more complicated like a human brain. And that doesn't even get us to the 'superhuman intelligence' category that people are afraid of.

Worrying about Killer AI is like worrying about the Sun burning out. Yeah, it might happen eventually, but it isn't even worth considering right now...

HOA to homeowners: ELIMINATE!

The device is claiming it can alter your mood by attaching to your head.

I'm pretty sure you'll find that meets the definition of 'medical device'.

I think that the thread is getting lost because nerds are arguing over what is or isn't a medical device, which seems sort of tangential to the real question: Is the mood altering effect anything more than the placebo effect? I am a little dubious about the benefits of running a low voltage current into the side of your skull. Wait, lets go back one step further, is there even any medical theory that would suggest that adding additional current to a person's brain would do something positive?

This whole thing sounds like some decided to lick a 9 volt battery and stick it to the side of your head for a healthy mark up charge....

I agree that more diversity in the software ecosystem will cause critical bugs to have less impact to the world overall, and will hopefully drive competition to make the offerings more efficient and stable. However I think that this is a straw-man and the real conclusion we should draw is this:

When you write code, you are going to screw up. If you aren't writing bugs that people notice, you aren't working on anything worthwhile. While the bugs that were found were costly and dangerous, the question is were these found quicker than a closed source solution? Were they fixed faster than a closed source solution? Is there anything that can be done to allow quicker roll back or disabling of vulnerable features? When you write code, you need to design for failure, because it will happen and plan so that the recovery will be as quick as possible.

Adding additional software library offerings will only add stability in the sense that one particular vector wont affect as much of the Internet, but you introduce more surface area for attackers to poke at, and more vulnerabilities overall. Given the challenges to write really solid code, I think I'd like to have fewer, but really well vetted open source software solutions. Of course, I am not correct in this opinion, as there are no 'right' decisions here.

Scalzi sounds like a moron who should stay away from game theory - selling books has always been a zero sum game. He just doesn't understand that for the old method the sum was the sum of all money that all readers spent on all books. It was a unknowable total to be sure, but it was still a finite sum.

The interesting thing is that, if they are using outsourced servers strategically located in Asia to avoid the long arm of the law, that people should be able attack those same servers and do pretty much anything they want to them without fear of consequences. Being beyond the law is a double edged sword, and I personally would not bet against all the hackers on the Internet in that fight...

You yourself agree that they are nothing more than a directory, yet you are suggesting that they are responsible for the content that is posted. If I can use an analogy to demonstrate how crazy that is, You might also suggest that the yellow pages is responsible if any business that advertises using their directory deals in stolen goods.

I don't care if they call themselves, 'The throwing nuns and puppies in wood chippers bay', linking to content is not a crime, and that is all they do. Should Google be responsible for indexing and linking illegal content?

Moreover, this sort of legal action is just stupid, for purely practical reasons. TPB users aren't breaking copyright law for financial reasons, so even if you could completely stomp out this sort of behavior, organized crime would pick up the slack. This is a grey goods market, and good luck trying to shut it down.

If the DoJ was smart, they would just focus anti-piracy operations on organized crime where they can do some real good, and just let sites like TPB slide.

Spoken like a selfish right wing ass hat, good on you sir!

Companies are using infrastructure and resources that were paid for or are the property of the people. They have to follow the laws set down by the people, and in exchange they get to set up and do business. If they start to cheat the system and break the spirit of the law by using all sorts of legal tricks to avoid paying their legally mandated share of the taxes, don't be surprised if the government imposes new taxes to remove loopholes and punish dishonest behavior.

Companies are shifting assets out of the country because they are being run by dishonest ass stains that want to maximize profits by letting others pay taxes to support government and maintain infrastructure. Roads, bridges, laws and stability have a cost that someone has to pay. You want to keep 100% of your profits without paying taxes? Move to Somalia or some other anarchy ridden shit hole and do business there.

'Taxes == slavery' is just a selfish person's way of saying they want the benefits of a modern society without paying the costs.

This is correct. Essentially we have the equivalent of hydraulic despotism going on. These companies have created a choke point in a resource critical to 21st century life, and artificially limited it to make money off the populace.

I for one, welcome our Data Despot Overlords.

As a middle aged coder with many years of experience under his belt, I can make the following generalizations based on my experiences:

The first five years after college are the hardest, many people only want to hire coders with experience. If this is where you are now, stick to it if you love it and things will work out. If you are a 'casual coder' who got into the field because you think that its easy money, quit now.

As the years pass, I am finding no end of people who want to hire senior coders that can work 'full stack' and can manage projects and small teams independently. The money is quite good, and the work almost comes to find you. You have to be willing to work to keep up with tech and keep your skills sharp. The only managers that are making twice what I make are going to be c-level, so I if you want to jump ship to management for better money you had better be really good at it. I can promise you these people are not doing half the work I do though. Pay is usually equitable to responsibility, and they have their fair share of that.

I find this to be rather Ironic, as RR wasn't that great of a republican leader. If people are going to idolize a former conservative president, why aim low? Ike was the last great conservative. Reagan with a numb witted twit in comparison. If you look at the republican presidents since Ike, it has been a steady slide into the gutter.

Why bother? Do you really think that if the federal government wanted to scoop you up, they couldn't? The NSA has spent billions on their Internet Big Brother project, and has every message your IP address has sent or received cataloged. Don't delude yourself into thinking that posting AC does anything but keep your karma from being hammered when you are posting dickish comments.