Wait... People actually pay to read the BS Apple rumors that digitimes is constantly reporting?

Can't speak for the AC you're replying to, but indeed, I don't care. Because I neither watch nor click that Ad, and I'd rather the web page load faster without it.

Err...

1. Session cookies are key in allowing Google to track and store more data than it should.

2. In France at least, the EC expressed concerns about the French government storing too much, not too little. So, not sure where you get the idea of the EU promoting police states.

3. Historically, the EU has always progressed in times of crisis. The US got federalism more or less right two centuries ago. We'll get it more or less right soon enough.

4. Unless the Euro breaks up (which I think is unlikely), rebalancing will likely occur through fiscal union, pan-EU projects (à la Ariane or Airbus), and increased (some already exist) subsidies from more competitive regions to less competitive ones.

5. Actually, Iceland recently made news because it was at the EU's door, almost begging to enter, and rather eager to adopt the Euro. The part they got right, which neither you nor we did, is to lock up their bankers in jail after clawing their wages back. (And I'm confident we'll get it right too, eventually.)

TFA also forgets an equally important links to prior security material released by Apple, which discusses the technical details and architecture contrary to what TFA suggests.

The oddest part, to me, is that they kind of admit to the same issues in TFA:

Surely a disgruntled employee can be do a better job at keeping disgruntled users in check, than a community of volunteers...

[citation needed]

The truth is simple: people won't pay for trash.

Trouble is, the content today invariably sucks, and there invariably is a better source, free, somewhere. Newspapers are toast.

For starters, you've tweeters, bloggers and social networks. Nevermind Joes and Janes posting cat videos. I mean citizen journalists who tweet, blog, connect and react through Facebook on local events, etc. who provide grassroot coverage. Muslim revolutions would never have occurred where it not for them. And we'd barely know what's going on in Syria if not for them.

Next, you've aggregator sites like Google News, Facebook in some ways, Slashdot, Reddit, Twitter trends, buzz monitors of all sorts, the list is innumerable. These must stay free to retain eyeballs, and attract eyeballs they do.

One might want to argue at this point that the journalist adds value over the latter channels, in the form of story background, fact checking, and good analysis. If anyone needs convincing that the contrary is more often true, consider reading a few pieces by the Macalope. Or think about this study from last year, that showed that people who regularly followed Fox News tended to be less well informed than people who didn't follow the news at all. The situation will likely get worse, since revenues are low, eyes are fickle, advertisers demand eyeballs, and click-baiting requires sensationalist garbage. It would help the journalists' case, too, if they actually broke news every now and then, and if they reported news on a same- or next-day basis when they don't.

Last week was quite illustrative of how journalists do everything wrong. A backdoor was identified on ZTE Android phones. It got posted on Pastebin, picked up on Reddit the same day, by ZDNet shortly after. (ZDNet presumably reads Reddit or its reader tips, contrary to the few IT sites I sent the story to; I learned about the backdoor the same day on a finance blog, of all places.) And then... nothing. The story eventually went mainstream 5 days later. Don't even get me started on the analysis part: the above-mentioned finance blog is the only place that chopped through ZTE's BS autoupdater excuse and mentioned the obvious, i.e. that having root access on your dissidents' or ennemies' phones must be convenient indeed.

In the end, I suspect the real problem is that you can get the fact reporting from all kinds of places; the only question is then how much analysis you want with the facts. Just about raw is good enough for the bulk of users, which the Internet allowed to become fickle. For these, any place goes, including raw news feeds on Yahoo or Facebook. So forget trying to make them pay. What remains are the more sophisticated readers. Most are sharp and, to put it mildly, underwhelmed by journalists. Some eventually turn to a few blogs run by sharp engineers and don't look back. So, on the one side you need to go full blast delivering garbage; on the other, you need to attract the best columnists, bloggers and commentators (who take their readers with them).

Take a dozen sharp minds, then place them on the same site, make part of the content exclusive. That, I think, is tomorrow's "newspaper". For everything else, there are computerized news and social networks.

I can already picture hackers drooling at the idea of turning Google's cloud into the ultimate zombie network.

Er, no. Funding FDA trials is a non-issue: public funding is there already. It funds almost all drugs from A to Y.

By the time a drug company actually take part in trials, drug R&D is at Z: the drug is demonstrably not a placebo, its side effects are identified and benign, and the only real questions are securing the FDA's approval and any IP claims (both involve arcane paperwork),

The drug companies, to defend their entitlements, would like you to believe they funded the whole thing and deserve proper compensation for taking outsized risks. But the truth is, they seldom fund anything besides the paperwork and the marketing. When they do fund drug research, it invariably is about iterating on an existing drug whose IP is about to enter the public domain.

And where does that $20-something valuation come from?

I'd say it's worth $0.01 because it's the next MySpace, but I'm admittedly not ashamed to say that this figure is pulled out of my arse. The fact is I've no idea, and neither do you.