Right then, when was the public vote for Junker?

In 2014 EP election, party groups declared their candidates for Commission Presidents. Juncker was EPP candidate, Martin Schulz was PES candidate and Guy Verhofstadt was ALDE candidate. EPP won the election, so Juncker was nominated by EC and elected by EP.

and they can overrule parliament.

Not in codecision procedure, which is used in most areas since the Lisbon Treaty.

although it can fire the entire commission via unanimous vote.

That is not true. EP can dismiss the commission by two-thirds majority vote of no-confidence. See article 234 of the Lisbon Treaty.

Also note that in the past, EP was able to force resignation of Santer commission even without legal right to for that.

Santer Commission was forced by EP to resign even in time when EP did not have legal power to do so. Since Lisbon Treaty, EP has explicit power to vote of no-confidence for Commission.

It is not really much different from national governments. EU commission has to be elected by EU parliament, president of EU commission (Juncker) is the leader of the winning party group in the last EU parliament elections. Individual commissioners cannot be dismissed by EP, but neither individual ministers in national governments. Whole commission may be dismissed by vote of no-confidence by EP (and there is no unanimous requirement), like national governments. Horse-trading between governement and parliament and pressing parliament to accept government legislation is IMHO worse on national level, because there is a tighter bond between government and MPs based on party lines.

The only significant difference is that EP cannot propose new legislation, but even in national systems, most legislative is proposed by governments and MP-proposed legislation is seldom approved.

area after the state passed a controversial law targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) citizens

I see how the law is targeting transgender people, but how the law is targeting lesbian, gay or bisexual people?

When i wrote about encryption, i don't mean just the symmetric cipher, but the whole cryptographic chain. AFAIK, there is a randomly generated 256-bit key stored in some HSM (hardware security module) inside iPhone and user just enters passcode to open it. The limitation of password attempts is likely enforced by HSM, not by iOS (that would be lame). HSMs are supposted to be tamper-proof even from the OS.

If Apple can force OS update and that update could either extract real key from memory or from the HSM, or cripple HSM's ability to protect the key, then it is sham encryption.

Either the encryption is done properly and Apple is not able to decrypt it regardless of any court decision, or it is sham encryption, Apple is able to decrypt it (by say hacking the TPM containing the key) Apple knows it and it avoids the court decision as acknowledging ability do decrypt it would mean confessing to deceiving users about security of Iphones.

That is the reason why competitors are silent - either the court decision is irrelevant, or Apple is cheater.

Well, in IP there is also cost in distributing, esp. when local connectivity (exchanged at local peering point like LINX in London) to users in UK is probably much cheaper than international connectivity to users in rest of Europe.

It is nothing new:

"Paul Erdös (1913-1996), "the man who loved only numbers", was one of the most brilliant and prolific mathematicians of the twentieth century. Erdös spent much of his restless life on psychostimulants. As he once remarked, "A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems."

But Erdös liked stronger medicine too. After his mother's death in 1971, Erdös became quite depressed. His physician prescribed amphetamines. Erdös took Benzedrine or Ritalin almost every day for the last twenty five years of his life. Sometimes he took both. ...

Colleagues worried that Erdös might have become addicted. In 1979, he accepted a $500 bet from his friend Ronald Graham. Graham challenged Erdös to abstain from speed for 30 days. Erdös met the challenge, but his output sank dramatically. Erdös felt the progress of mathematics had been held up by a stupid wager."

http://www.amphetamines.org/paul-erdos.html

There is a difference between amphetamine and methamphetamine.

Sapho juice was in the original Dune:

"Paul looked at his father, back to Hawat, suddenly conscious of the Mentat's great age, aware that the old man had served three generations of Atreides. Aged. It showed in the rheumy shine of the brown eyes, in the cheeks cracked and burned by exotic weathers, in the rounded curve of the shoulders and the thin set of his lips with the cranberry-colored stain of sapho juice."

"SAPHO: high-energy liquid extracted from barrier roots of Ecaz. Commonly used by Mentats who claim it amplifies mental powers. Users develop deep ruby stains on mouth and lips."

Note that there is no or just very limited plea bargain in most continental Europe.

How about instead of setting the time to 23:59:60, the value 23:59:59 happens twice.

This is how is leap second handled in POSIX systems, with the small different that it is not 23:59:59 but (following) 00:00:00 that happens twice.

> My favorite time scale is POSIX. They define a day as precisely 86400 "seconds". Obviously a POSIX second is not the same as an SI second.

That is not correct. POSIX speaks about SI seconds, it just specifies that 'unix time' is *approximate* number of (SI) seconds from the start of the epoch computed by a formula from date/time. When a leap second happens, the difference of this approximation from the exact number changes by one second and unix time experiences discontinuity (leap backwards).

Well, i hope DST would be abandoned sooner.

There is a better way. Just wait several thousand years and then add one leap hour.