Where did the speed instruction come from? The driver's foot on the pedal?

The driver sets the maximum speed when they activate the autopilot, in much the same way as you set the speed when you use cruise control on any other car. Or are you saying speeding isn't the responsibility of any driver if they're using cruise control to break the limit?

Autopilot will slow down if there is traffic ahead, otherwise it travels at the speed set by the driver.

-- Pete.

I was interested to read in the article, "Medicare does not pay for them, nor do most insurers".

How is this even possible? You have overpriced healthcare in the USA, and then even if you have insurance, it won't pay for the treatment you need?!

Just for those people that think the NHS is a terrible thing, I'll just leave this here - hearing diagnosis, treatment, and aids are free on the NHS in the UK for people that need them...

-- Pete.

By "social engineering", I take it he's not planning to directly attack the hardware of the phone, which means he's planning to use the only other logical approach to breaking into this phone (and to me the only obvious attack vector open to him or anyone else as long as Apple stand their ground [correctly]).

Because this phone has a four digit passphrase, this means that the owner of the phone has hit the same four sections of screen at least hundreds, and more likely thousands of times. Maybe it is possible using very delicate and incredibly accurate equipment to detect some sort of impact print on the screen where it has been used in those four spots repeatedly. If it is possible to do this, then you have cut down the number of password from 10,000 to 24 different possibilities. From here you need to check everything you know about the phone owner to see if any of those combinations are personally significant in any way - even if the combination is entirely random, you'll still have a 41.5% to break the password with 10 attempts...

Meh - then again I'm not a half-million dollar a year hacker, so what do I know?

-- Pete.

I never played FreeCiv, but I knew Claus (virtually) as he was working on it. I was a player (known as "Mort") on AnotherMUD, which was another project Claus worked on.

Good to bring back memories, although MUDding could have easily cost me my degree... ;)

-- Pete

It's nice they've got an official box and all, but the service to send disks to Amazon has been there for a while (as a beta program).

Here is a blog post from 2009 explaining the service.

Of course, a nice official controlled and encrytped box is a far tidier way of doing things!

-- Pete.

Frankly, don't see the point of having separate bank accounts, it is both your money, but if it makes your life easier, go ahead. :)

We actually have a bunch of accounts, each serving different purposes. It helps for budgeting when you know that the X amount in your personal account is available for whatever personal expenditure, the Y amount in your general account is for bills, rent, etc, and the Z in the savings account is there for other purposes. As I am a freelance contractor, I also have a business account, and I need to be able to explain each transaction there for taxes etc.

-- Pete.

You let your wife have the money, but not the passwords?

Seriously, if you don't trust her with everything, why the hell are you married to her?

She has about the same access to the money as she does to the passwords actually...they're both in a vault (aka "bank") that she has access to if she absolutely needs it. Day to day access she has her own money and computer accounts that she can use, and she doesn't use the same ones that I do. Just because I'm the one who usually accesses the "main" bank account and my passwords, that doesn't mean she's not trusted to do it, and she's certainly not blocked in any way from either.

I see this as different from "sharing" passwords, she doesn't know my passwords because she doesn't need to look (need is different from capability here). She trusts me to have my own accounts, and I trust her to have hers.

-- Pete.

I answered, "... only if we're married or similarly situated", but even then it's not so cut and dried. I generally don't even let my wife have my passwords, but there is a paper note with the master password to my password vault that she can access if there's a dire need.

It doesn't help that whatever I do (including setting up her own password vaults), she keeps terrible passwords for herself, and forgets them on a regular basis. Whenever she needs to access files on the NAS even with her own ID, I need to reset her password etc. This is frustrating to say the least.

-- Pete.

Actually I see another reason to keep the base model at 16Gb. App development is crucial to the iPhone (and any other smartphone out there), and many developers don't like to do the extra work to keep their application sizes sane. However, as long as the base model is 16Gb, app developers need to keep this in mind when developing their apps.

If this encourages even only some developers to keep their applications down to a sensible size (knowing that anyone with a 16Gb device will either avoid their application, or delete it as soon as they run low on space) then I guess it's worth it.

I'm not saying the extra money in Apple's pocket isn't a factor, but I'm sure there are other factors at play here, this theory being just one of them.

-- Pete.

I was a backer of this project that was pretty much the same:
Packed Pixels

Nice screen at 2048 x 1536, but not yet delivered. They just about hit their funding goal of £60,000 on 29th November 2014, and they're now taking pre-orders. It would probably be better to just pre-order one of these than back a whole new Kickstarter - at least these are close to production.

-- Pete.

You appear to be mistaking someone who is stating the facts of the situation for someone who agrees with the situation.

Laws should be written simly, cleanly, and transparently, and the security forces of a nation should be working for the greater good of the nation rather than against the native citizens of that nation.

As an aside, I have spent most of my working life working (both as an employee, and as a contractor) with a company that is alleged to have been a direct target of GCHQ.

-- Pete.

From the Intelligence Services Act 1994 you will see that GCHQ's powers are quite well defined.

This involves giving advice and assistance "to any other organisation which is determined for the purposes of this section" - which includes MI5 (Security Service) as they are a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee. And the constraints are:

The functions referred to in subsection (1)(a) above shall be exercisable only—

(a)in the interests of national security, with particular reference to the defence and foreign policies of Her Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom; or

(b)in the interests of the economic well-being of the United Kingdom in relation to the actions or intentions of persons outside the British Islands; or

(c)in support of the prevention or detection of serious crime.

Although their powers to activate a warrant under section 3(2)(c) may not relate to property in the British Islands, that doesn't mean that they cannot work with, and provide assitance to the Security Service (MI5) under section 3(2)(a). Do note that only 3(2)(c) [and 1(2)(c), which is identical except in reference to SIS instead of GCHQ] is excluded for GCHQ to use as justification for a warrant to snoop on property within the UK.

Just because people don't like the idea or that they find it unpalatable, that doesn't make it less true.

-- Pete.

The OP states that GCHQ is, "purported by officials to be focused on foreign intelligence and counterterrorism". Since when?

My understanding has always been that there are 3 main "legs" to British Intelligence:

• MI5 for internal security within the country
• SIS (aka MI6) for international security outside the country
• GCHQ for providing communication intelligence and security towards both of the above, and for advice on protecting key national infrastructure (via CESG)

In this context, GCHQ should have always been providing internal communications intelligence for MI5, I'm not sure why this should be news to anyone?

-- Pete.

Sourceforge was always my go-to place for trusted original non-screwed files, and now I check the list of projects owned by sf-editor1, 2, and 3 and I see a lot of projects that I have used in the past.

Sometimes (particularly for older projects) it is very difficult to find a home-page or source that I can trust...and now it just became a lot harder.

-- Pete.

Some years ago when I was between contracts as a freelance contractor, I had an agent call me about a job that sounded interesting in a location that was a little more than inconvenient. He offered me a position dead on my field of excellence, and piqued my interest...until the rate came in. He was offering between 1/3 and 1/2 of my typical daily rate, I think I practically laughed in his face. From there he resorted to pleading that I accept something close to the rate, and that I'd "be doing them a huge favour" if I could work at that rate. I think maybe he misunderstood why I work, and how "doing people a favour" who I have never met, is not exactly high on my list of motivations.

I think he also tried the, "but this is better than you receive with no contract at all" line...that went down just as badly for him.

Some people will do anything just to try and find expertise on the cheap, and if you have the skills, it is your imperitive to know what those skills are worth.

-- Pete.