Depends partly on how new the subject. If it has something to do with computers, I can probably learn it faster at my present mumble years of age than when I was 20. Something like music theory I'm not so sure about. I've lost a few mental steps, but I've learned a whole lot about how to learn.

There's a difference between chemistry and chemical engineering. If you don't care, and you're not independently wealthy, go the chemical engineering route.

Unlike lots of technology companies, Apple makes most of its money by selling stuff to customers. This gives it an incentive to pay attentions to the needs of their customers. And, unlike Google, the customers are actually the people who use the services.

Communications is a special legal case. Putting anything else in that category would require a new law.

Ever wondered why some places have strict policies on shredding documents and wiping email? It's because if they have these policies, they're not in legal trouble if they're asked for the material. (They are in trouble if they get rid of data they're legally ordered to collect.) It's perfectly legal to limit one's ability to comply with possible court orders.

Except that the US did a good deal of cryptanalytic work against the European Axis, including major help on four-rotor Enigma.

Sure. It's also legit to shoot at enemy soldiers on sight, or even on suspicion. LAPD to the contrary, this isn't acceptable police practice in peacetime.

IIRC, the US did a lot of good work in helping crack the four-rotor Enigma cipher, after other Allies had pretty well solved the three-rotor problem. There were other codes and ciphers the US cracked or helped crack.

(Of course, the US also supplied some vulnerabilities. For part of the North Africa campaign, a US military observer was filing excellent and comprehensive reports on the Allied forces in theater, using a code the Germans had a copy of. Once he was recalled, and the German signals intercept unit was destroyed in a chance encounter, Rommel's decision-making seemed less miraculous.)

(Can you find one country that didn't rewrite WWII history for popular consumption? If the rest of the Allies wanted to get their distortions out, they needed to create their own worldwide movie industry.)

Do you have case law to back up your interpretation? We won't know for sure unless and until the US Supreme Court rules, but there's indications that the courts will provide at least some password privacy.

IANAL, but the following is my understanding. A subpoena is for civil suits, not criminal. Most privacy fanatics are more afraid of criminal cases, in which case we're talking about search warrants. These usually involve LEOs showing up and collecting whatever is on the warrant, which may be paper files or hard disks or whatever. However, none of these require any cooperation from the defendant. If the defendant refuses to divulge a safe combination, the police can just break it open somehow (so it may be in the defendant's interest to hand over the combination, to avoid destruction of the safe). Requiring any sort of cooperation to collect evidence is getting awfully close to compelling self-incrimination.

Encryption keys are different from physical objects. As far as I know, in the US the only cases where the courts have held that a person must surrender the key is when there was definite knowledge of specific incriminating content. For example, the computer that the customs agent had seen child porn on. Things are different in the UK.

For a 256-bit key, I suspect that collecting the results from the necessary parallel universes would take longer than the expected lifespan of the universe.

Brute-forcing a 256-bit key (or even a 128-bit key) is not going to happen without changing the laws of physics. The old 56-bit DES key (actually 64 bits, but only 56 of entropy) was vulnerable to being brute-forced. Going from there to a 256-bit key is increasing the amount of work needed by a factor of about 10^60.

The other problem with this approach is that it requires having the owner in custody, and being willing to torture information out of the owner. This is a much higher bar than just having the phone available. LEOs would like to be able to stick a cable in your phone and suck everything out on the spot, or at least be able to confiscate the phone and send it in.

It's still impossible to break a 128-bit key by brute force, unless you're very, very, very, very,...,very, very lucky. The only reason to use more would be that you expect an attack on the cipher that will make it far easier to solve. I've read that, if we can ever make 128-qubit quantum computers (which may be impossible for us to actually implement), the effective key length might be halved, so I'd suggest 256-bit keys to be really future-proof.

This applies to any cipher where all possible numbers of the key length can be used as keys, which doesn't apply to the asymmetric ciphers I know of. Also, it assumes that there will be no tremendously effective break. (For the theoretically minded, note that all cipher systems are in NP, so a general solution of NP problems would include all crypto.)

I live in the center area of the biggest city in Minnesota, an easy walk to the main business area, and I'd love to be able to buy 100Mb/s fiber.

What subsidies can do is make it profitable to make extra food. Food production varies in ways not easily predictable, and aiming for more than enough is a lot more comfortable than aiming for enough. I don't know enough about the subsidies to know if they actually accomplish this, but it is a possible and desirable effect.