Curiously, it sometimes serves individuals better than states that do have citizens.

That, to be clear, is because (like the last Obama-Google+ copout that I remember hearing of (and seeing, in that case)) this is a mutual promotional vehicle for the President and Google's social network.

If it were an actual exercise in journalism or even executive-branch outreach, there'd be more tough questions from the people, more focused answers from POTUS, and less "Look at us, we're YouTube and this is a Google+ hangout! GOOGLE PLUS!!!"-ness. It's grand puffery all around, even by propaganda standards.

Perhaps that was the only way Obama and Larry Page would let YouTube get the former to say anything, but I suspect that I didn't miss much when I missed this.

Nope. They would still need a test of bucket and body physics.

"So...."? Not "Did you mean"?

Laser zombie coprocessor-cats.

(Like regular laser cats, except with less SNL and more lifespan and bra[aaaa]ins for Folding@home.)

Sounds like a plan! Just keep any bionically-enhanced commandos away from the guy and it should work.

Are you referring to DefDist or YouTube?

As soon as you saw (not clicked!) the Like button, for that matter.

Electrically-enhanced bubbles have been used as weapons for decades.

There are many oddities; not bugs really but oddities such as when you are using it and charging it the charge % doesn't go up but it does seem to be getting a charge.

No, I consider that a full-blown bug, even at best.

If the device is simply not telling you what it knows about the battery charge, then you'll leave it on your outlet too long and raise your energy bill. That's a minor bug, but still a bug and one conquered long ago on other devices (where their current worry is which sleek patented brittle design will help sell their walled garden).

Now, if the device itself doesn't know its own battery life, that's a straight drive past Minor Bug Township into VERY VERY BAD Land, and klaxons should be going off and black helicopters should be armed and airborne because do you really want your phone (and pant pocket) with a side of kersploded lithium or whatnot due to overcharge? (I do not, kthx.)

It looks and works great! Now they just need to fix the SafeSearch bug so I don't have to use Bing Images instead (which, as Microsoft as it is, even gives explicit suggestions when its safe setting is off).

One thing that the NBC Universal--Comcast thing taught me was that "inaccurate" != "false". (They said news about the merger was "inaccurate". They merged anyway.) Here we go again.

In short, I'm not convinced that either system will survive the axe, and you should probably just polish your HTML5-optimized-for-Metro-or-whatever-it's-called-now (or OpenGL?) skills if you still want to make games for Windows:

1. They never reversed the actual decision to retire the two from the award program.
2. They did not mention that XNA or its MVP award...status...program...thing would not be axed.
3. "Microsoft is actively investing in DirectX as the unified graphics foundation for our key platforms, including Xbox 360, Windows Phone and Windows. DirectX is evolving and will continue to evolve. For instance, right now we’re investing in some very cool graphics code authorizing [sic] technology in Visual Studio." - it's great that they're still developing it now, before April 1, 2014, but what about after?
4. "We have absolutely no intention of stopping innovation with DirectX, and you can quote me on that." - this didn't start because we thought would somehow "[stop] innovation with DirectX" (a concept as nebulous as fuck, because they could be taking it to mean that, e.g., they'd try to actively prevent people from using a newly-deprecated API, instead of just deprecating it). No, we wondered whether they'd stop developing, supporting, and maintaining the platform after the stated date, aaaaand *crickets and a coquí or two*.

So will both die on April 2014? In the words of $got_talent_judge, "I vote Yes."

What exactly are they going to be using the graphene for?

Hmm...let's start our fact-find quest by reading the summary...

...something something Nokia mumble mumble Graphene Flagship Consortium, grumble blahblah...

...ah, "Consortium"! Something that involves patent pooling and money exchanges and no-poach agreements (that never happened of course but we'll just agree to the settlement because no wrongdoing) and lots of nicely- (or less-so) worded requests for even more money from governments and end users. Also something about Nokia, so it'll probably ultimately be nothing of value or absurdly durable or, somehow, both. Now to the article...

Nokia is proud to be involved with this project, and we have deep roots in the field – we first started working with graphene already in 2006," said Henry Tirri, EVP, CTO of Nokia. "Since then, we have come to identify multiple areas where this material can be applied in modern computing environments. We’ve done some very promising work so far, but I believe the greatest innovations have yet to be discovered blahbitty blahblahblaaah... industrial value chains and other such megacrap."

...which I gather means that even Nokia's xVPs and CxOs have no idea what graphene stuff will appear in the public marketplace but it'll involve tech and research and stuff and maybe also phones because they're involved with that sort of thing but [yet another rant about the whole Windows Phone thing, with my opinions].

(I obviously hope for better on all those points but through Slashdot I've learned to feel depressed about the current state of tech-business affairs, even and especially wrt Slashdot. Yay! *buries head in hands*)

I for one smell a hint of YTMND.