Simple. They patch your OS with a rootkit. They can make information flow over the lines, so long as it isn't airgapped. And an airgap is only so useful, as stuxnet shows.

It's common knowledge that every object ever made has a weak point. A point where even the lightest feather touch causes the entire thing to fall to pieces. Ninjas train den mak, the skill of identifying that point on a live human. Naturally, engineers are highly aware of this. If a den mak master should see even a rough sketch of this aircraft carrier, they could locate the point. Then, a sniper could literally explode any aircraft in the world with a feather-filled hollow point round.

Don't you know anything about modern warfare? Geez. Nerds these days.

It works pretty well for the cops, too. (though the main character in the article barely escaped, his peers did not) Bottom line: the government is above the law. Where there are laws that say otherwise, the government reinterprets them.

They found a pair of primes that differ by two bits. If you find two billion-digit primes that differ by two bits, you'll get the same system of equations. And once you find those, you can claim that a quantum computer has factored their product. Ooooh, maaaaagic. Quaaaaaantum maaaaaagic. It sounds even more magical if you say that you're solving infinitely many biprime factorizations, but I suspect that proving such a claim is at least as hard as the prime gap conjecture.

The authors then go on to say that the D-Wave machine has 512 qubits. This is true. But those qubits are nothing like fully connected, so their insinuation that arbitrary systems of 512 variables are solvable is totally ludicrous. Assuming Moore's law works out for D-Wave for a while, we might see that... but it'll be years.

Until 1987, doctors didn't anaesthetize babies for surgery on the logic that "babies don't feel pain". In fact, they do. Yikes.

No no, the presence of a brass gear is all that is necessary to make something steampunk. The Antikythera mechanism is just as steampunk as a rolex watch or a hat with a gear hot-glued to it, which are much more steampunk than a steam locomotive since they produce way too much torque to transmit through brass years. Don't you know anything?

You missed the point.
Entirely.
As for snark, check the mirror.

you suck at haiku
four lines is too many
do you even count syllables?

What makes "the greatest system" depends entirely on what "great" means. If it means "fitting into 500 bytes" or "1ms boot time", etc., then flexibility might be the very last thing that you want.

I've intentionally let the world pass me by, and spent my career learning how to optimize for time & space in several proven stable languages, rather than learn every new widget and buzzword. The drawback is that I'm a little slow when it comes to new tech. But the new shit is way easier to learn than what I've been torturing myself with over the years, and "youngsters" won't catch up to my skill without a decade of practice. And I've never had trouble landing a job.

One has a right to not be abused in their place of work. Did you even read the fucking article? She doesn't want to feel special. She wants to go work, do her job, and go home without getting ostracized by her coworkers. When your JOB involves working with people, your success in doing your job depends crucially on how those people interact with you.

The predominance of black males in some sports is a byproduct of segregationist culture. Professional sports are like playing lottery. A long shot is significantly more attractive to those with the least to lose. Whites don't go into sports 'cause they are practically guaranteed to find good paying work elsewhere. Moreover, professional sports teams represents a few hundred jobs nationwide. Compare that to IT, offering tens of thousands of jobs, and ever-growing.

If you somehow think that white men are smarter, or more capable, than everybody else, then I'm willing to bet that you haven't spent much time as 'the token white guy'. If all your experience with other races is service oriented (restaurants, banks, etc) or with 'token non-(white guy)s', then you experientially have no reason to expect as much of them as you do of yourself. This is natural. Racism is natural, just like rape, theft, and murder.

Humans: more than just a lizard brain. Act like it!

In fact, people who are raised in different cultures think differently*. From a completely utilitarian viewpoint, diversity of ideas is the most critical ingredient to problem solving. Moreover, in terms of numbers, there are vastly more non-(white male)s than white males. By maintaining the status quo, we restrict the talent pool to a tiny margin, and homogeneous dev teams get stuck in groupthink. You're trapping yourself in a stuck mindset, and the competition will pass you by.

Without diversity of eye, hair, and skin color, think of the example you're setting. When white folk inevitably lose supremacy, who the fuck is going to hire your white ass? If we get diversity up & running nice and smooth, it'll seriously work out in our favor in the long run. Make people feel welcome, regardless of their coloring. They might return the favor... but slight them, and that'll surely come back to bite you.

* If it needs to be said, culture and pigment levels are strongly correlated. Also, sending white babies to be raised in different cultures so you can maintain a lily-white workforce with a diverse cultural footprint probably won't end well.

I'm a grad student with a patent. It's a pretty sweet deal for all involved parties. I can't afford to get a patent. The university can, though. They file for a patent in my name, and I keep a large percentage of the proceeds, should it ever get licensed. It's potential revenue for them, with nonzero costs -- did you know, you have to pay for patent renewal year to year? On the rare occasion that a google happens, the university wins big... but obviously Page isn't dead broke in a gutter somewhere. They helped him get off his feet in a number of ways; he'd have lost a much larger slice if he'd gotten private help starting his business.

Yes because time and time again it has been proven that lampooning conspiracy theorists is the same as buying into their theories. Thank you, lieutenant obvious. Hope you get that promotion you've been working towards.

I predict this turning into a "global conspiracy to push more vaccines (hence autism) on our kids". I, for one, welcome our viral overlords.