My current laptop, a Dell Precision M3800 has it all: light weight, powerful, reasonable (if not fantastic) battery life, 4K screen, and native support for Linux, out of the box but it's hard to figure out what something the same size would be like at 1/4 the weight.

But I'm agreeing with other comments: I'd rather have this exact weight laptop with 3 days of battery life.

A few years back, I bought the phone with the very best battery life and I don't regret it one minute. Now on its third year, the phone still easily powers through a day with 50% or so battery life, and never leaves me high and dry when flying commercially which is when battery life is most important.

My next phone will be the phone with the best battery life Now that I finally have a powerful laptop that isn't also dreadfully heavy, battery life will once again be #1 for my next purchase.

The phrase "they hate us for our freedom" is finally true.

Well, if they make it a sequel and make the torture scene where he gets disassembled, burned, etc. 90% of the total length, I am all for it...

Bug: no, bird: no, scrap of paper: no. And how many plastic bags do you see "floating" around at altitude? Seriously, you have no clue.

You obviously never held a drone or a lithium battery.

€144,000 annually is comfortable living by any metric.

Getting deeper into bed with them is not a sensible decision either. It may be necessary in the short term but what's the exit strategy? The most sensible decision would be to avoid putting yourself in the position where you have to make that choice. Failing that, I would personally take my chances with the authorities. Caving to blackmail is never a winning move in the long term.

If you don't want to get fleas don't lay down with dogs. The "mob" (a misleading title, given that TFA doesn't mention Cosa Nostra or any other organized crime syndicate....) didn't pick these two at random and hold guns to their head. They got involved with them willingly; one of the two was seeking start up capital for a business venture and quite likely ignored the little voice inside of his head because of greed. An old adage comes to mind, "If it sounds too good to be true....."

Incidentally, the "mob" as traditionally discussed in the United States doesn't tend to go after random citizens. They typically get hooks into their victims because of the victim's own bad judgment. Loansharking, gambling, prostitution, drugs, and so forth. At the street level the vast majority of violent crime is common criminal on common criminal. There aren't too many places in the First World where taxpaying citizens have to really worry about becoming a statistic. Common sense goes a long way....

Plus these days Twitter gives you 140 characters and an animated GIF, which ought to be more than enough for any political soundbite.

Read TFA. Specifically these paragraphs:

To his surprise, Adibelli agreed. “If you wanted out, why didn’t you let us know?” he said. Maertens was too scared to bring up the beating and the kidnapping and death threats. “Obviously, you know we’re not in a legal business,” Adibelli added. “So if you talk to anyone, we know where you and your family live.”

Adibelli brought Van De Moere down next and asked him if he wanted out, too. Van De Moere said yes.

There was only one condition of the release: Van De Moere had to give Okul an intensive training session on Linux, the operating system on which Metasploit, the hacking software, is based. A few weeks later, according to police and interviews, he did so over one weekend at a Holiday Inn in Ghent. In November, Van De Moere returned two antennas and had a couple of beers with Okul. That was the last either man would see of the Turks.

Something doesn't jive here. The type of people that are willing to actually hold a gun to your head are not the type of people that are willing to let you walk away simply by giving your notice. I don't doubt that there was some level of intimidation at play but there were apparently limits to how far the bad guys were willing to go. Which begs the question of why these two didn't go to the authorities after they "got out." Perhaps they didn't wish to part with the €25,000 in cash they had previously received?

Certainly. But what you DON'T do is look at the extreme, pick a single attribute, and extrapolate to the rest of the population. You also don't look at a single outlier and do more than say, "hm, that's interesting, I wonder if" and then validate in a bigger group.

These two were making €12,000 and €20,000 per month, before their involvement with the criminal element. One of them was seeking start up capital for a business venture and allowed himself to get roped in that way. If you give them the benefit of the doubt the best you can say about them is they were naive. In the worst reading they were greedy and willfully complicit. I suspect reality falls between those two extremes.

New York State limits you to carrying no more than seven condoms at a time. It's a bit of common sense legislation; there's no legitimate reason why a non-rapist would need more than seven condoms. :)