I've wondered if aliens might be using some sort of advanced communication method we haven't discovered yet... say a subspace radio, and once we discover the tech and turn in on and discover planet foobar public radio. You have to imagine that even in highly advanced civilizations they'd still need a way to broadcast news to everywhere their race exists.

This is the crux of the issue, someone needs to step up and accept the fact they are going to deliberately kill three people rather than let 300 people die. I'd equate it to whistle blowers like Snodwen. Unfortunately a country government cannot operate without some secrets (though they should be few and far between) and there should be prosecution for whistle blowers. However principled individuals should risk imprisonment when the cause is just. Sure it sucks but the court of public opinion does help somewhat. In relation to the original post, this is what will prevent drive less cars. Any company that attempts to mass produce driver less cars will have to face a possible avalanche of wrongful death lawsuits which will scare the bejesus out of it's stock holders and kill the idea. The only way this can move forward in any sort of scale is laws limiting liability (which I doubt the inept US government can create), and a decently sized case history showing the laws can stand court scrutiny. So unfortunately even though they will be safer I feel it's unlikely we'll see driver less cars at the consumer level for several decades if ever.

The original intent of the 2nd amendment was to give people the power to fight their own government should the need arise. If you look at the Bill of Rights and what was going on under British rule many of the Rights were added specifically to address issues they experienced. The British were limiting the ability of the people to report on what was going on, was preventing organized demonstrations, was confiscating weapons and forcing private citizens to harbor troops. Without the 2nd amendment the people of the US would have zero chance of overthrowing the government should the need arise. Of course with the technological advances in military weaponry it'd be very difficult to due with personal weapons, but that may be more justification to broaden the weapons allowed by private citizens.

It doesn't matter either way. If they want data on US citizens they can just give the tech to the English who aren't restricted against spying on US citizens and then they'll share the data on each other's citizens. What we need is a Snowden in England to see if they are monitoring US citizens. Unfortunately we're pretty much screwed at this point. To the best of my knowledge no government has ever given up this level of power willingly.

I'm not sure what dropping $3.6 Million in bitcoin on the open market would do but it probably wouldn't be good for bitcoin. I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to exchange them just to collapse the market. Perhaps they'll just wait until they've accumulated even more to ensure they collapse the market and kill the currency.

You may not have as much "metal on metal" but the big issue with used electric cars is battery life. If I remember right the batteries are only suppose to be good 5 years or so with significant performance degradation after that. Unfortunately the batteries are one of the most expensive parts of hybrid and electric cars. With my wife's hybrid replacing the batteries which we'll likely have to do in the next couple of years would cost about half what we paid for the car (we bought it used at about a year old).

I've been wondering if there is a way to break the face tag feature, was curious what everyone else things. Basically the system as I understand it works by users tagging you in photos they take. If that step isn't done facebook has no way to know your face. So what would happen if you seed it with conflicting information. For example find a picture of some random model (or alternatively another person with a dislike of being tagged) and have as many friends as possible tag the individual as you. Repeat this with several other faces and facebook should be adequately confused. Thoughts?

There's a more likely reason he hasn't be identified. I'd bet Avunit was caught first and outed or helped out Sabu and the others in exchange for no jail time and not being publicly named. If you think about it Sabu doesn't appear to have gotten much of a break for helping the FBI, the best offers would go to the first turncoat... Avunit. But maybe I'm wrong, perhaps he really is that good.

Even though phone as in iphone isn't written correctly in Spanish they still pronounce it the same way. My sister in law, who was born and lives outside Mexico City says IPhone the exact same way we Americans do. In fact the the word telephone pronounced in Spanish is exactly the same with the addition of an "o" at the end.

That begs another question, was the GPS on his car while he drove the car into Mexico. If so then I bet the government broke some laws. I can't imagine it's legal for them to track people across borders like this. I imagine Mexico would have some opinions about the US government monitoring people in Mexico, probably wouldn't do anything about it though.

I think he was making a Somalia Pirate joke.

I think we've learned that nuclear power has risks but is still much safer and efficient than most of the other possibilities.

On a related note do nuclear plants have the capability to shutdown cleanly? Otherwise the upcoming zombie apocalypse means I need to get the fuck away from any nuclear plants since zombies usually don't make good nuclear engineers.

I don't know, I looked at buying a motorcycle for commuting everyday and decided against it due to safety factors. This looks like it would get better MPG and be almost as safe as a regular car.

The letter was sent to him, and specifically told him he couldn't share it's contents with anyone. So unless he could prove the letter was stolen or his lawyer posted it he'd be screwed. And if the lawyer posted it he'd probably be disbarred unless he said the client approved the posting in which case where back to him sharing the contents. No matter which way you cut it if it got out he's more than likely going to jail.

Unfortunately they do enhance security a little, although I strongly believe the enhanced security doesn't actually make anyone safer. I look at this way I could hire a virtual army of body guards to patrol outside my house and I'll be pretty safe from a break in. But that level of protection against something that's extremely unlikely to happen is just retarded. Terrorist some day will probably succeed in killing more Americans in our home country... however spending billions of dollars and completely destroying our privacy isn't justified by the possible death of even a couple of thousand people.

Oh and what these devices are really meant to detect are deadly things that a metal detector or sniffer can't detect. Such as broken glass, a true ceramic knife (most of them have metal in them purely to be detectable by metal detectors), or even a sharp stick (or pencil... wonder when they'll be banned). Keep in mind that any of these items could have been used by the 911 terrorist and would have been almost effective (if not as effective) as the box cutters they used.

The feds and specifically TSA are really just trying to see how much they can get away with before the public complains. I fully expect, (if these things are allowed to stay) that in five years you won't be allowed to have any liquids (acid can be really dangerous), batteries, pencils, pens or, shoelaces (can be very effective to strangle someone with). What we'll be left with eventually will be a plane full of people in their underware reading books... oh wait... I've had some nasty paper cuts before :-)