Turing's imitation game was a thought experiment. To explain it simply to an audience unfamiliar with the idea, he started with man against woman, then proceded to man against machine. The specific genders were not important or significant in the thought experiment, just the existence of some difference between the contestants that could potentially be spoofed over a teletype. There was nothing gender-specific or weird about it.

That is always true. The longer you wait, the cheaper it gets. If you wait forever, it costs nothing.

If you need a job done now then get the cheapest equipment that can do the job. If you don't need it now then wait; the price of computer equipment only goes down.

Conversely, the people who *do* have access to the bigger picture stuff, have no vested interest in giving us the unfiltered truth (or any truth at all),

Of course not. If we knew everything they know, then they wouldn't be special any more.

There's nothing in TFA that hasn't been speculated in great detail already.

No explanation totally makes sense. Here's my working model of what happened (all speculation of course):

The project has been gradually disintegrating over the last few years -- developers leaving and not being replaced, remaining developers having less time to spend on the project for whatever reason, and the perceived reward for fixing increasingly difficult bugs is not enough to keep people interested. It's just not fun any more.

The to-do list has some really nasty bugs that are difficult to fix and could potentially compromise all TC containers. The remaining developers in the project have been grinding away at these bugs, but haven't made much progress for reasons outlined above. They realized that the project was going to fizzle out before they got anything fixed. A cursory look at the 7.2 code suggests that they had committed to some major rewriting of the code, and bit off more than they could chew.

At this point, what can they do? Reporting the vulnerabilities would be irresponsible since no fixes are forthcoming. Lives depend on some of the secrets their software keeps. Best to push people gently away from TC until the problems can be fixed, if ever, while keeping the details of the vulnerabilities as secret as possible, and giving people realistic expectations about the future of TC development (i.e. none).

They probably had a plan for creating a migration plan that actually made sense, but ran out of resources before finishing, and decided to go with what they had on hand. At this point they were probably down to one very part-time developer and maybe a few unreliable volunteers. ("Hey Jim, where's that page you were writing about Linux FDE? Jim? Hello? Anybody there?")

There was really no good way forward with the resources remaining, so they did the best they could.

Why didn't they find someone else to take over the project? I guess they tried, but couldn't find anyone in their immediate circle of trust who was willing and able. Perhaps they felt that expanding their circle of trust would jeopardize their anonymity.

On the other hand....

"WARNING: Using TrueCrypt is *not *secure *as ..."

Reading Rainbow is an American children's television series that aired on PBS from June 6, 1983, until November 10, 2006, that encouraged reading by children. As of 2012, it is an iPad and Kindle Fire educational interactive book reading and video field trip app.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Remember that Edward Snowden was a contractor with Booz Allen Hamilton, and has proven to the world his unimaginable and extraordinary access to the most senstive of NSA programs --- and who owns Booz Allen?

I give up. Who owns Booz Allen?

Wow, that's ten tons of crazy piled into a half-ton pickup.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Your inability to imagine something is not proof of its non-existence; it's only proof of your limited imagination.

As far as the case in Germany goes... It sort of makes sense to prohibit someone from publishing compromising photos of their ex, but requiring that certain photos be deleted is impractical, unreasonable, unenforceable, and just plain dumb. Are they also going to demand that he forgets what she looked like naked? As long as he keeps the photo to himself, what's the difference between that and a memory? Nothing.

Keeping a photo as a reminder of a pleasant experience in your past is by no means crazy or immoral. That's exactly what photo albums are for, and why everybody keeps them! Just because you have a picture of someone (naked or otherwise) doesn't mean you obsess or masturbate to it. My shoebox of old travel photos (including various ex-girlfriends) just sits in the closet until I get nostalgic once every year or five and have a look through it. No obsession, no masturbation, no reputations smeared.

This is EXACTLY what the NSA is supposed to be doing.

The JOB of the NSA is to violate the US Constitution and local laws in other countries? No wonder it's always been so secretive.

If Snowden has a problem with these actions from the NSA, why did he take a job there in the first place?

According to him, he took the job so he could gather evidence and expose the NSA's illegal activities.

The rights of the Constitution only apply to US citizens.

False. The Bill of Rights limits the power of the US government, justifying those limitations by referencing inalienable human rights. The US government is prohibited from violating anybody's human rights, anywhere in the world.

It is US law, it's not natural law.

It's US law, and it applies to the US government everywhere. Even Afghanistan.

I'm gonna need some of this gene after reading the articles on alien encounters and noncomputable consciousness. Me dumber now.

The human race is incapable of being second fiddle to any other life form,

Nonsense. Look back at history and see the millions of humans who allowed themselves to be enslaved, subjugated, or otherwise oppressed. Humans are excellent at playing second fiddle.

And much of that oppression / subjugation / slavery was based on race or religion, so it doesn't particularly matter if the new overlords are some new kind of "alien", and it doesn't matter what our gods tell us about them. If they stomp their boots on our necks hard enough we will kneel before them.

Snowden basically walked out of the NSA with all their secrets; who's to say a few dozen or hundred other contractors didn't do the same thing before him? Everything the NSA knew or had access to before 2013 was most likely available in blackhat circles through clandestine leaks.

Any backdoors in TrueCrypt would be a security disaster, and the NSA has already proven itself willing and able to put backdoors in highly trusted security software. It's also proven itself incapable of keeping secrets.

Worrying about NSA-planted vulnerabilities is not the same thing as worrying about a direct attack from the NSA itself.