m -- oh there it is! I was looking all over for that.

Jay-Z's app wasn't hacked at all. The story states that McAfee (the antivirus company, not the insane founder of that company) "found" an app that purports to be Jay-Z's app but does these things. It doesn't say where they found the app, nor if anyone has even been affected by this at all - it mainly seems to be a weird "Hey can we turn this whole Snowden story into a way to get our company so e attention" thing.

We rail about the Slashdot editors all the time; but come on. Shouldn't you guys at least make sure the title isn't out and out WRONG?

It makes it easier for you to recognize jokes than the default hosts file does.

It is quite funny how some people, such as the guy you're responding to, honestly seem to believe if they just wish something hard enough it'll become the truth. There also seems to be a Wikiality component involved.

I know, that sounds like the lead-in to a joke - but not this time.

In the US, anyway, Congress established quite some time ago that companies had more rights to our personal information than most of us would want them to have. So it's not surprising when we find out the NSA (or whoever) has carte blanche to our information - and also that Congress doesn't grok why we get upset about it.

Europeans ostensibly have much stronger protections in this regard; but it seems to me there's a lot of "wink, wink, nudge nudge" going on over there, and those "protections" are mainly in place so their officials can posture indignantly whenever news like this comes out. In practice I don't think there's much of a difference on either side of the Atlantic.

So what's the big deal about yet another large entity slurping our personal information? Whether they're public or private - according to the folks elected to represent us, we shouldn't be upset about it...

I realize my opinion on this isn't shared by everyone, but I have a strong suspicion ALL of the new consoles are going to have disappointing sales because gaming has largely moved on (hard-core gamers to PCs, casual gamers to Android/iOS phones and iPads). But, now, if XBox One doesn't do well, it will be seen as Ballmer's fault by many people - even if he had little to do with this particular failure.

Basically we keep looking for "green" alternatives that don't require us to be even slightly inconvenienced or to change our lifestyles at all - and it's probably not possible.

She could do what my mom did - decide to switch to a Mac.

Bug report: On my Slashdot phone, I will often receive a duplicate phone call a couple days after I receive the first one.

That's one of the most ludicrous statements I've seen on Slashdot in a long time - and that's saying something.

Speaking as a 52-year-old...

My personal experience has been that the most egregious offenders in this regard are middle-aged women. Followed by men in the 25-40 demographic.

The young'uns are mostly texting. It's annoying if you're attempting to converse with one of them, but otherwise it's not a big deal.

And you can go to the bathroom without missing that crucial plot twist...

If you're using a mobile browser, be aware that the linked article will spawn a full-screen ad whose "close" button does not appear to consistently work on a touch device.

But back to the story... Okay, so a e-wallet startup got some venture capital. Why is this news, exactly?

No it isn't - WA is the official US Post Office abbreviation for the State of Washington, which incidentally is where I live (so I've written or typed it thousands of times in my life).

You are making an unwarranted assumption here. Even during the "Room 641A" controversy, the claim was made that the FBI has black rooms directly on premises with multiple content providers.

The classified slides that are being leaked show something different. Assuming those interception points are CALEA-related doesn't really make sense - do you really think, with regards to CALEA, the FBI only started slurping Apple traffic in October 2012?