Stannis, and now Davos, agree

Yes, I was going to bring this up. Astounding performance.

From TFA:

Encryption played a significant role in the killing of two people during a shooting in Garland, Texas, earlier this year, Comey said. One of the shooters, Comey said, exchanged 109 encrypted messages with an "overseas terrorist."

"We have no idea what was said because those messages were encrypted," he explained. "To this day, I cannot tell you what he said with that terrorist, 109 times the morning of that attack. That is a big problem."

What did LE do before the internet?? There are all kinds of things that are/were said and done in this world, Mr. FBI, that you did not, will not, and often should not know. Why is that difficult for you to understand? Guy eats breakfast in a diner every morning; two weeks later he kills people. You don't know what was said in that diner, either. Should all diners be required to record all conversations that take place in their establishment, and forward them to the FBI?

Wait, don't answer that, you probably think they should.

The headline is crap. Apple programs on a PC are not even close to being the biggest threat to PC security.
I'd be surprised, but this is Slashdot.

You should care about these "features"; it increases the surface area for attacks.

So here is my purple emu Ballantine Fellowship. Not in great shape, I read it a lot.

Get rid of all debt. Make sure my kids will be financially secure if I drop dead (though that's largely taken care of with life insurance). Among other things, that addresses making sure my kids will not have to worry about paying for college. Reno my condo. Buy a house in Princeton. Give money to close friends (you know, those I've had for decades) and family.

Retire, or seriously cut back the hours working for someone else. Write.

Volunteer time/money/expertise for anti-poverty; healthcare; and guys-not-getting-screwed-when-divorcing-a-crazy-person causes.

These guys are assholes. Short-sighted, incapable of rational thought, oblivious to the likely consequences of the drivel they spout, and unconcerned with anything other than their grab at power. Despicable.
This:
>The homicide remains unsolved. The killer remains at large.
>Until very recently, this situation would not have occurred.
Wow, what an unjustified leap! The implication is that if only the could unlock the phones, they would be able to solve the crime. How, exactly? Many earlier commenters have touched on this absurdity. And what situation would not have occurred? The kill wouldn't be at large? So, their were no unsolved homicides before these phone OSes?

Fucking tools.

"...so less apps..."
Stannis, you take this one

No one who knows Philly can be surprised that the robot died there.

I don't think you understand what the study is about. It is not about sponsored and unsponsored. RTFA, or at least the abstract.
Type "Where is the best burger near me" and you get google + results mapped, along with other hits using Google's algorithm. None of these results are sponsored. Google's algorithmic results, the study says (and this is true in my rudimentary testing), are NOT mapped. Consumers (and businesses) are hurt by this behavior.

This has always been what I understood, from http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Eagles

"As emissaries of the Valar, the Eagles may had been somehow limited in how they intervened to great events, which the Valar perhaps considered matters between the Elves and Sauron;[27] for example, they had sent the Wizards, who were prohibited to directly fight Sauron by physical or supernatural force, and the Eagles did aid the free peoples and even participated in battles. But otherwise, the Eagles would had been either afraid, unwilling, incapable, or (like the Wizards) forbidden to take any greater part."

I'll just go on record here -- I never said that.
Erich[sic] Schmidt

"But lest beer enthusiasts get too excited, it would require drinking 2,000 liters of beer a day (or 5,636 bottles of beer) to ingest the amount of xanthohumol used in the study."

There is a film (Resistance) about this. I think it will be free to view sometime soon, but I saw it in NYC at a theater and it has been previewing at various places around the country.