Yes. With ease. I'm assuming that their local ISP will gladly hand over information. We have seen in the past how willing ISPs are to work with the RIAA/MPAA, so why wouldn't they work with law enforcement or the FBI?

Google does not default to https. It only does that if you are signed in with an account. If these people weren't, then anybody could have seen their searches with relative ease.

Since when does flashing a new image actually require root? We have several devices at work that are used for testing. None of them are rooted and yet we can upgrade / downgrade because the bootloaders are unlocked.

As an Android developer I can tell you that switching versions on a device is not provided by root access. Root gives you access to all of the system while the phone is running. Getting a different version running requires an unlocked bootloader. For example, on my Nexus devices I first do a "fastboot oem unlock" to unlock the bootloader, then I can use fastboot to send any version of the OS I want to the device. It gets tricky on more locked down devices, but the same basic idea still applies. You need to get past the bootloader to get a different OS running.

I think it makes it easier to back, since indiegogo uses paypal over amazon payments.

It could still be very useful for compositing 3D effects or actors into another scene. I think that is the use case that they are targeting here.

Obviously Randi is psychic, too. He probably uses his psychic abilities to prevent others from being able to use theirs.

How many boxes do you want to go through before you get to the solution? Sure, he could write it as a shader, but that hardly requires pulling in something like Unity or XNA to build the project.

This. OpenCL is C based so it shouldn't be that hard to pick up. The efficient algorithms will be basically the same no matter what language or bindings you use.

Those are game engines. They will do nothing to help him use the GPGPU capabilities of his graphics card.

Minecraft.

The big issue with games on Android vs iOS is that Apple typically have very powerful hardware while Android devices for the most part don't. Then you have different GPU architectures, so what runs well on lets say a Adreno chip won't necessarily work on a Tegra one and vice versa. It really isn't all that different from what PC development is like if you are actually supporting Laptops & Desktops with varying chips and capabilities. I think you hear a lot of complaints from game developers because they are using prebuilt engines and those aren't always easily patched. They are great to put content together quickly but you are pretty helpless if you run into some technical issue. For example, I've seen issues with Unity and z-buffer fighting on some of my Android devices while my own custom built scene-graph renders content without issue. Inheriting other people's bugs sucks but I don't think it has anything to do specifically with the Android platform.

It sure is. He says that it supposedly isn't and is basically stock Android, but after quickly looking at a review of the device it is running some form of Motoblur. It might not be as bad as other Motorola devices were but it is definitely not stock.

The CIA is not associated with the NSA. The CIA is an independent organization while the NSA is part of the Department of Defense. So no, Amazon did not bite the hand that feeds it. If anything, based on how the various government bureaucracies view each other, the CIA loves Amazon even more.