If somebody was ordering assassinations of children just for the lulz and for minor economic gain , then yes, they'd be insane.

I think each individual involved in the decision to pick wars with strangers the other end of the world has his own justifications (rationalizations), but the fundamental rational is major financial gain for those involved in the defense industry. For the average American (let alone the poor inhabitants of the countries chosen as battlefields) spending of about $700,000,000,000 a year (an average of about $7,000 for each payer of federal taxes) to build the capability to blow people up at will makes no sense. However, for a small minority, wars are an amazing opportunity to profit.

Most likely, it was suicide. Here are the most obvious alternatives:

1. Government sanctioned assassination: possible, but unlikely. Certainly, under sufficiently important conditions, the government is willing to resort to this. It would need to be something like Aaron stumbling across evidence of a 9-11 cover-up as part of his Wkileaks activities. Nothing we already know about would be sufficient reason.
2. Non-government murder: possible, but very unlikely. There is no indication that he was in serious conflict with anyone.
3. Auto erotic accident: in his case, almost impossible. He would have been aware of the risks and too smart to suffer this.

If it was suicide, then what was the ultimate trigger? Bear in mind that suicide (at least, in modern Western societies) is rarely the result of the single event.

1. Acute depression with no particular cause: most probable. It would be interesting to know if his long-standing problems with episodes of depression were being treated, and (if so) how. Drug treatments are usually effective against acute depression, though this varies from person to person and relief of symptoms is usually not immediate, and long term drug use often subject to side effects and reduced effectiveness. Cognitive therapies are usually only effective against mild to moderate depression.
2. Legal problems: unlikely as a major cause. I personally believe he would have relished fighting his legal persecution. Any suicide as a reaction to the prospect of a long prison sentence would have needed the case to be much further advanced.
3. Blackmail (by the government): very possible. Many people have secrets (often not illegal) that they desperately want to keep from others. Given his involvement with Wikileaks, the government would definitely have tried to blackmail him if they had anything they could use for that purpose.
4. Personal relationship problems: possible, but no evidence to support that theory.

Really, there is nothing except supposition to support foul play. Without something concrete to go on, his family and close friends should be left to grieve in peace.

RIP, Aaron. I only know you through your Internet freedom advocacy, but regret your passing.

[1]The sole exception I am aware of is Forth. That is truly a write-only language.

You have obviously never seen Brainfuck or any large program written in APL. They both make figuring out Forth programs seem like a breeze.

TFA says it runs Ubuntu -- "a full desktop OS."

This means that it is possible to install Ubuntu (and several other Linux distributions) not that it is sold with Ubuntu already installed. For most buyers, the experience out of the box is what counts. Fwiiw, I think this will be perfectly acceptable for most bearing in mind the price tag.

While the hardware challenges are undoubtedly substantial, the basic idea is just a variation on time division multiplexing, which has been extensively used since the days of the telegraph, well before 1900. If this receives a patent, I hope it is for some hardware advance and not just because of the sharing of the fibre.

Can an expert on modern English comment on the summary's use of the word "moxie" as presumably meaning "capable". I have always thought "moxie" to be something only a person could have and mean "strength of character" or similar. Is there a difference in American versus British English?

I strongly suspect that few of the posters have actually shipped stuff by sea to the tropics, or viewed the typical handling of containers in a container yard.

As others have stated, the main risk of total loss is through pilferage. However, ships cargo gets much rougher handling than your checked baggage when traveling by air. The posters who say that lots of electronics gets shipped from the Far East to the US and Europe are correct. To get an idea of why most of it arrives undamaged, take a good look at the packaging your last Chinese made monitor arrived in. You could drop it from 20 feet and leave it for several hours in a sauna with no ill effects. If you want to just pack your stuff securely so it is not rolling around, then maybe you will get lucky, but I would not count on it.

The first use of the name X was for X1 in June 1984. It originated at MIT. The name X was used to distinguish it from the earlier and rather different W (now you know why a Window system was abbreviate as "X": it was basically "W" mark 2). The obvious follow up question is when was W released? I cannot remember (perhaps never knew) and am too lazy to search the Internet to find out.

Perhaps, the most fun use of an old smart phone is the mobile phone throwing contest

It is clear the reopening of Sweden's investigation into Assange, and the extradition proceedings, were at the behest of the Americans, but I am puzzled. Why does the US want to eventually extradite Assange from Sweden rather than more quickly from the UK? In this kind of political case, the UK is likely to be at least as cooperative as Sweden. Who has a good theory?

what I'm curious about is how long a reverse-terrorist attack will take to happen (enough westerners are so pissed off at islam that I do wonder how long it will be before some christian crashes a plane into a mosque or equiv).

I think an interesting example of this is the Anders Brevick affair: a middle class, white Christian male murders 77 mostly teenage victims to protest the increased acceptance of Islam in his country. A small proportion of the population anywhere that (i) feels irrationally strongly about some issue; and (ii) is powerless to fight it in any other way will convince themselves that it is helpful to protest the perceived (often real) wrong by attacking innocent third parties. Demonizing groups that are already extremely angry will make them even more unhappy and possibly turn 0.001% of them into terrorists.

The only valid reasons an airline employee might have to refuse boarding to a passenger with a damaged passport are:

• It is being proffered as proof of identity and is so badly damaged (for instance, the photograph is unrecognizable) as to be inadequate for that purpose. Or
• (Only if boarding an international flight) the employee has a reasonable concern that the immigration official at the destination might refuse entry based on the condition of the passport. This is because the airline becomes responsible for returning you to your starting point should this occur. Airlines (and individual airline staff) vary in their strictness over this kind of issue. I strongly suspect that this was the real reason for refusing boarding, and the statements about the passport being a privilege was just a gratuitous (and rude and insensitive) comment.

First, unless you are an expert debater, recognize that others can argue this better than you can. I suggest you ask him to spend 10 minutes watching the educational video on SOPA/PIPA put together by the folks at Khan Academy. Next suggest that he browse Doc Searl's (Harvard Law School) blog post on why SOPA/PIPA is a disaster waiting to happen. You might casually ask why he thinks even the sponsors of SOPA (once educated on the issues) have withdrawn their support.

Since the Oracle take over, it seems all Sun's products have been degraded. The likely consequences of allowing Oracle monopoly control of Sun were clear from the beginning. The interference with Java, OpenOffice and MySQL was bad enough, but they are now allowing Sun to emit dangerous plasma clouds. When are the responsible authorities going to take action to prevent Oracle from inconveniencing us all in this way.

Perhaps, you would care to reread Judges 21. Here are some selected highlights:

10 So the assembly sent twelve thousand fighting men with instructions to go to Jabesh Gilead and put to the sword those living there, including the women and children.
11 “This is what you are to do,” they said. “Kill every male and every woman who is not a virgin.”
12 They found among the people living in Jabesh Gilead four hundred young women who had never slept with a man, and they took them to the camp at Shiloh in Canaan.
...
20 So they instructed the Benjamites, saying, “Go and hide in the vineyards
21 and watch. When the young women of Shiloh come out to join in the dancing, rush from the vineyards and each of you seize one of them to be your wife.
...
23 So that is what the Benjamites did. While the young women were dancing, each man caught one and carried her off to be his wife. Then they returned to their inheritance and rebuilt the towns and settled in them.

This is according to the most recent translations. Trust me, the older translations are worse.