"The secretive British spy agency GCHQ has developed covert tools to seed the internet with false information, including the ability to manipulate the results of online polls, artificially inflate pageview counts on web sites, ..."

Wow they have duplicated what 12 year old trolls do every day.

'The ability to manipulate online polls' is usually just called 'just refuse cookies'.

I predict they will be named Colbert1 to Colbert30.

Where you can drink the same water over and over again, like in a spaceship.

"why-I'll-be-a-smart-monkey's-uncle dept."

Ooooook!

"Finland is not Scandinavia you dumb yank."

That's what I said, she was Scandinavian, not Finnish.

And I'm Eurotrash no Yank.

Finnish TV sending money over the airwaves to their customers? :-)

BTW I had a Scandinavian girlfriend at some time, but I don't know exactly which country she was from, but definitely not from Finland, because each time when we were having sex, she yelled: No, no, I'm not Finnish!

Drone? It was a model airplane, a teleguided kiddie zeppelin, a weather balloon, a ...

So you can create a chip with a memory of having been waterboarded 176 times plus the usual amount of testicular electrification and use it on other prisoners?
Nice.

"What I cannot understand is how politicians fail to understand what a future Kenneth Starr is going to do with data like this."

A heating tax
A sleeping tax ...
and if you don't pay the sleeping tax more than 178 days in a year, you are living elsewhere and you need to pay a secondary habitation tax.

"The bible is not an accepted study. its more like arguing the Grimm fairytales could be used to support your scientific position - in other words, its a non-starter"

Fairy Tales? This is Science Fiction, it has clones, flying people, technology to walk on water, everything!

"I don't know where you're flying where you're getting to go for $29.95..."

From Germany to Ireland, from Northern France to Spain, from Belgium to Italy, everywhere where the low cost airlines fly.

I just checked Ryanair.com a minute ago and there are flights for 19.99€ (27.19$) from my nearest airport Frankfurt Hahn to Milano(italy) or London(GB) Montpellier(France) or Venice(italy)

"I will not have a job come tomorrow" who would probably toss what they think of as a $200 phone not understanding the subsidy prices."

Indeed. And those people also don't understand backups.

"This is far more common then you would imagine... The fact it's being applied to a subway system in this manner is pretty novel."

Every railway that deserves its name uses something like that.
Even if their 'underground' lines are shorter than a subway, which is the only distinction I can see.

Also usually when you make 'noise' at night, above-ground is usually more problematic than 20 feet below the street level in a tunnel.

"The TSA is probably thinking that if the battery in your gadget doesn't work, it might not actually be a battery...so, just to be on the safe side...."

Most people can show them the battery, that would be easier.
Let the power problem just be a matter for the iOS users.

"All those free phones, tablets, laptops, etc. - it is great to be working for TSA!"

Yeah, people will dump their 500-700$ 'precious' just to get on a 29.95$ flight.

They will renounce the flight and the airline will have to remove the baggage already on-board.
Same procedure with the other 5 people with that problem in the line.

It will be fun to watch.

It will be changed real soon now and some low level guy will be let go.