They own it? Then they should have it, in their blood. Then we could discuss if we want to cure them or not, after all, we don't want to harm their intellectual property.

That the people that should represent the interests of the people of their country worry about profit and not the future of the country/people IS idiocy, either from the politician that gets it, or the people that elects him.

He was right. The workplace where one should have to be concerned about unscrupulous employees is the FBI, that don't have to pay anyone to have that info.

Don't attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity, idiocy, or politics. Unless lawyers are involved, then it is definately malice.

In the latest news around the mysql ecosystem, one thing that was mostly ignored was that TokuDB went open source, adding an important new storage engine to the table. And comparing TokuDB vs InnoDB performance it could matter a lot more (at least, for more kinds of workloads) than switching from MySQL to MariaDB or Percona Server.

Maybe is for that that NATO is now recomending the assessination of hackers, and is very easy to fall into their definition.

3D printers turns materials i,e, thermoplastic) into a shape. But you still need the base materials. We are far from CHON food syntetizers. They must have some input, and better to be nutrient complete (and not what they think is nutrient complete, but what our body effectively needs). What it will use? Insects?, Soylent green ?

Anyway, just giving shape to something that you already have don't seem so big breakthrough. Just making a smoothie with them should be pretty similar.

Need to have a gun, the very mentality that everyone should have a gun, is the first mistake. But if you really want to have one, either for kill or to avoid being killed, why have one that could decide to not fire because misidentified you somewhat? holding it wrong was already pretty bad for iphones, but at least your life wouldn't depended on that, and a blue screen will be of death with those guns too.

And maybe more important, adding intelligence to refuse to fire because one input is opening the door to refusing to fire because other kind of inputs. Would be bad that criminals owning guns fire at police or soldiers, after all, so maybe would be nice to add a provision to avoid all people shooting at them. But for a lot, one of the reasons of having guns is to protect themselves from the tyranny of the government, and that excuse would be nullified by this. And maybe more important, if police/soldiers can identify themselves somewhat to avoid this happens (i.e. with a radio signal or whatever simple but powerful enough approach) it could be used by criminals too.

So, after you got your gun, that you won't be able to use it against a tyrannic government, nor against criminals, against who you will use it?

Terry Pratchett's Small Gods should apply to the letter, You need to have a lot of believers to be "real". And if enough critical mass believes in you, even miracles could happen.

I already was aware of the OS, but the replaceable back cover took me by surprise. It have a lot of disruptive potential. Want keyboard? Better camera? Other sensors? Integrate it with bigger hardware? Could end being the raspberry pi of smartphones.

ANY signal that can be picked by the phone could be used by running malware to activate itself. It could trigger literally by holding it wrong, or being in the wrong place at the wrong time, is not something to particulary worry about, you have it running already, so the max damage they can do is not tied specifically to a random trigger.

Now, if we are talking about triggering the malware when it detects an open wifi, gets an internet connection, connect with a banking site, take a picture, or when you send a SMS, then the potential for doing something harmful is big.

Anyway, there are simpler approachs to carry your payload, i.e. doing a ripoff of a popular app, maybe offering it for free, having more or less the same functionality, but it also sends your personal or account information, or other apps private data, cookies and so on, qualifies as trojan, and the trigger will be the owner of the device, no sensors required.

What about software? Windows? Skype? iOS? Can't even say that Ubuntu won't include it, or be forced by this kind of law to be included in a blob in the linux kernel. They won't do a different version, no backdoor included, for EU, after all, it could enable people to install the EU version in other places. Also, a lot of your information resides in servers, that will or have that backdoors, even if not hosted in US. And any measure to disable or get around it will be treated as a crime, of course.

This is not about freedom. Is about creating a boogeyman to avoid you to stop buying from certain manufacturing industries. Is about not letting the rules change for manufactured objects, right at the start, as they did with digital media with internet.

Mandating that you will have a backdoor in every computer and device will be a boom for security surely, as in nuking it, not security software will tell you that you have that backdoor opened. If you choose to leave part of your data to facebook ot twitter is your option (but better don't try to be funny with your friends, is risky). If someone uses that backdoor to read the password for your bank, or enter effectively to that bank, and steal your money, that isn't your option anymore (maybe stealing from your bank account is a bad example).

You can install CyanogenMod in most android phones and restrict yourself to use only open source apps too. Or try Mer based ones (i.e. Sailfish), Tizen, Ubuntu Touch, or Firefox OS