While I agree not everything should last forever, it should still be the goal, at least until the things we get are perfectly recyclable.

I just purchased a Nexus 6p. I was upgrading from an HTC One M7 GPE. I did not want to get a new phone, but the battery life of my HTC one had dropped to the point where it was barely usable. It went from lasting all day without a charge to needing multiple charges per day. The HTC One is the first phone I've owned that I had to retire because it failed. My wife had one that also died "early".

I don't have a problem if you decide you need or want a new phone & abandon a working phone to move on. However, I absolutely HATE being forced off a phone that does everything I need just because the manufacturer wants to be able to sell me another one.

Planned obsolescence should never be permitted for anything that can't be completely recycled. Accidental obsolescence should be good enough.

Actually, anyone who pays attention will know. The food will be more consistently prepared.

If they calibrate everything properly, and set it up correctly, every burger, every fry, every shake will be perfect. If you set it up so that the customer enters their own order, you will eliminate the multitude of errors that are introduced into the process by the quality of humans that are currently involved in the process.

Of course, if they fail to set it up the way it should be, every burger will have half the cheese stuck to the wrapper, the fries will be burnt and over-salted every time, the sodas will be handed to the customer with too much ice... ...actually, that describes every experience at a couple fast food joints in Lansdale, PA. They need to re-calibrate their robots.

As someone who rarely flies, I still pay for the TSA. I don't care about who they inconvenience, but I do care about the colossal corruption and waste of money that the organization represents.

My opinion is that the people in power (Congress, Bush, Obama, et al) have done far more damage than the terrorists did, and they are in fact doing the terrorists work for them. The founders of the USA would be disgusted by what we've become.

Ultimately, I'm not frightened of the terrorists. I'm frightened by the people in power who are using the threat of terrorism to frighten cowardly Americans into giving up our rights for the perception of safety. I'm frightened by the huge number of Americans who seem to be willing to abandon their principles because they think it will let them live a longer life.

But how will the TSA randomly decide who should go through different screening. Oh yeah, now I remember:

http://loweringthebar.net/2016...

Was in New Orleans recently. My wife has some neck problems so I was carrying a reusable ice bag that we could fill with ice at the hotel and use throughout the day. When the ice melted, it had probably about 20 ounces of water in it.

Before we came home I forgot to empty it and forgot to take it out of the bag. Went right through security with no problem. When I discovered it was there (while on the plane), it was squished against the back of the bag. Probably no part of it was more than 1/2" thick except the cap. I'm not sure what it looked like on the xray...or even if anyone was looking.

I imagine them getting into trouble every edition, with Steve Wozniak secretly swooping in, saving the day, and rescuing them each time. They would, of course, believe that they were the true heroes.

Seems pretty good to me. More entertaining than C-SPAN.

I would point out that the gullible trump supporters are somewhat more complex than that. They believe that Trump means the things he says that they agree with, and they believe that he does not really mean the things he says that they disagree with. They are absolutely convinced of his dishonesty, yet they somehow think he's on their side.

NPR's This American Life did a segment about Alex Chalgren, an african-american, gay Trump supporter. In the segment, Alex explained that he supported Trump because Trump supported gay rights. Later when confronted by a statement from Trump saying that he would try to appoint judges to overrule the decision on same-sex marriage, he continued to defend Trump. He said that Trump only made the statement to get votes.

Trump rejected the one issue that Alex chose him for, and Alex continued to support him.

http://www.thisamericanlife.or...

Of course, if he has managed to find a way to roll back time and uncreate things, we should probably work on uncreating nuclear weapons. Once we've done that, we can uncreate a bunch of other things, and perhaps encryption might become one of those, but I doubt it.

Wouldn't it be better to uncreate all crime? I mean, as long as we are going to start implementing impossible solutions to problems, we should aim high.

It's something in between the two.

Am I the only person still using spamgourmet.com?

I think he was referring to personal satellites.

I don't see paypal manipulating the government. The government passed a law, paypal said we can't move to a state who passed that law. No different than if the state passed a law raising corporate taxes.

Actually, if this is manipulation of the government, this is the way corporations *should* be doing it. Clear and out in the open.

Ford raising its wages did put pressure on other companies to do the same. Otherwise Ford ends up luring away all your best employees & you're left with the mouth breathers that Ford didn't want. That was part of Ford's intent. He didn't just want his employees as customers, he wanted everyone's employees as costumers. For that to happen, he needed as many people as possible to make more money.

Ford is a great example of a heartless capitalist treating employees well not because it was the right thing to do, but because he was able to make more money by doing it. Unfortunately, that sort of wisdom seems rare today, but it isn't completely absent:

https://www.ted.com/talks/nick...

> Could you elaborate, why this makes a difference?

I have to admit that the difference I mentioned was more of a feeling I have, but let me try to figure out why I feel that way.

If Apple had the data, they could hand it over without suggesting any vulnerability that wasn't already known to exist. In this case, they no longer had access to the data. They had to create access to the data. For me, that active creation of a vulnerability where none existed before is the core of the distinction.

I'd also like to mention that there are other aspects of the San Bernadino case that make me uncomfortable.

The idea that any private citizen of the U.S. should just roll over for the government is ridiculous. Apple wasn't acting illegally. All Apple wanted was to legally respond to the warrant. They believed that the law was on their side, and they were willing to argue that point. They have the right to do so. The government seemed to want to make the case that Apple should just obey. I applaud Apple for telling the government that they would not submit without a fight.

Based on what I've read, the goal was not merely to get the data off that phone. I don't believe the FBI needed or cared about what was on that phone. If there was anything useful on it, the terrorists would have attempted to destroy it as they did with the other two (everything I've seen said they didn't bother). I think the only thing the FBI was interested in was setting a precedent for breaking or weakening encryption.

I believe that the FBI was always going to come back for more. I don't think they would have kept the lock pick. Instead they would have just kept coming back to Apple to recreate it. I think the ultimate goal was to try to prevent tech companies from coming up with encryption that the government couldn't break.

If the government can break the encryption, so can other groups. Unfriendly governments, criminal organizations, and even terrorists could discover the means to break encryption. Once that happens, we all become even more vulnerable.

Of course, all those groups are already breaking our security, but I think the goal should be to make it stronger not weaker.

In the interests of full disclosure, I also believe that the FBI & US government in general have used the terrorist attacks to unnecessarily limit the rights of citizens. I believe accounts which state that the USA PATRIOT act was written well before the 9/11 attack, and the government was just waiting for the appropriate justification to get it enacted. I think they play on the fears of weak minded Americans to increase what we'll put up with and distract us from their true goal of keeping a docile, cooperative populace. Personally, I'd rather die at the hands of a terrorist than give up my freedoms to ensure a longer enslavement.

Also, the history of the FBI tells us we shouldn't trust them. Too many abuses have occured. The only thing that can prevent future abuses is vigilance on the part of the citizens and an active defense of our civil rights.