> But give someone enough time and money and they aren't. Some government agency with enough funds and talent (and motivation). If history has taught us anything - all encryption systems will be broken in due time.

> If history has taught us anything - all encryption systems will be broken in due time.
Properly generated one-time pads have not been broken and (at least at the moment), so history is a bit blurry on this point.

Someone with infinite time and resources (because having infinite money doesn't make sense) could break the AES-256, except it might take longer than universe-s lifetime.

How do you verify that iMessage is not sending your message to both the intended sender and someone else? How do you check whether the public key the message has been encrypted to is actually that one of your contact's? Oh, you trust the information that iMessage gives you...

"Remind me again why NFC is "better" than bar codes?"
Because it's shorter working range, ability to transfer more information and quicker, also eliminates differences introduced by different brightness/display sizes of phones.

"You can't remotely intercept a bar code very well or easily"
Interception device is called a camera.

"You can verify what you present to the register."
Majority of people doesn't decode barcodes quickly enough.

"You're phone can't be tricked, remotely, into thinking its paying for something while you sit on the bus next to the guy with the laptop."
It can't be tricked in either way. a) Android phones only enable NFC chips when screen is active b) Asking for a simple confirmation on-screen with details of transactions is just as simple.

"The imaging device needed to read them are cheaper than NFC transceivers."]
Sure, optical scanner is way cheaper than a 3-dollar chip.

This.

Same system in Estonia. What USA lacks for their SSN - is proper authorisation. Estonia, for example, has state-issued smartcards with assymetric cryptography keys generated on-die and then signed by central certification center, so that at any time you can verify whether ID is active, is not listed as stolen, etc. Software developed to work with the cards is opensourced and available for Win, Lin, Mac under BSD license and can be used to sign documents and encrypt documents for transit (public keys of all active IDs are stored on central certification server, much like GPG keyservers). Number in itself is in no way valid identification, only a valid signature by the private key is accepted as proof of identity. And guess what - identity theft problem solved in most part.

I'd say it's more of Microsoft's FUD. Ever since Munich has moved to open-source solutions they have been flooding the web with false news trying to discredit their decision. This article is no exception. Especially the title. A.) City of Munich doesn't struggle with anything, just a small percentage of conservative party is unhappy that the laptops they've been issued for work are not suitable for gaming B) about a year ago many sites have claimed that Munich council were planning to move away from linux to windows, but failed to publish a retraction after an official statement from head of council that said this was a regular revision and that results showed a lot of money were saved by using Linux. So, Fear, Unceartanty, Doubt.

"I remember when the grass was greener and water - wetter."

At least they've admitted that all sorts of "partnerships" should come as removable addons. As of right now, there is only one opensource browser that can compete. Microsoft's Edge, Google's Chrome are proprietary and don't even pretend to care about user privacy. Palemoon and other forks keep touting themselves as the "next big thing" and true open-source and privacy aware, but the truth is, most of the work they do is just cutting stuff out and disabling features that cause concern, main force that drives Gecko's development is Firefox, and I, for one, respect that. Mozilla's team is looking for funding in order to provide a truly opensource browser with a more transparent development model, then, say, Chromium that is 100% dependent on it's proprietary brother and Google's goodwill. The way Mozilla is now trying to attract additional funding may not be great, but it's far from a fiasco, and most of the features added are a painfull and delicate balance between non tech savvy user's needs and privacy and extensibility. And they need that to keep funding flowing, to create the codebase. If you are a purist and hate them for that, then imagine Firefox not exitsing. Opensource community would end up with Cromium, dependent on Google and a bunch of webkit browsers, that have a long way to go before they can compete.

Average users are plagued with malware and all sorts of addons that inject content into pages, display extra adds and such. Mozilla introduced addon signing and moderation. For those that need to add unsigned and unverified addons they still provide unbranded builds, that are an equivalent of signing "I know what I'm doing" waiver.

All in all, you might hate Mozilla's monetization model, but you have to admit, that they spend the money they earn to write the code and give to everyone for free with a libre license to boot.

Blob used to be stored in ROM part on the die, upgraded from time to time. Now they'll store in drivers directly and load it into the hardware on initialization. Intel didn't close anything, they just revealed the same blob that used to be hidden from the eyes and included it into driver. So, I'd say that's not Intel creating a problem, merely exposing it. Also, perhaps now that everyone has suddenly got their panties in a bunch over this issue, Intel might consider opensourcing the blob as well (in case publicity benefits will outweigh the work needed).

Well, since spying was illegal, then those contracts would have been fraud, so a catcher title would be: "US industry almost defrauded other companies of 35 billion dollars, but were foiled by Snowden's revelations".

Would be really nice if compensations would come out of NSA head's paychecks and anyone who signed off on the program. But that's not going to happen.

The problem is that Bell Media would want that money for themselves and could do with a little less competition from better services. But they can't prohibit VPNs, so they are just trying to convince people that it's socially unacceptable to watch Netflix if it's not available in your country.

Oooh, a reasonable gentleman. I have a rock that will guard you against Dune Worms and some oil, that will scare away the Ice Giants. For a measly 2000 dollars each. And if you have a question about their effectiveness - take a look around you, do you see even one Dune Worm or Ice Giant? So think of your children and do the right thing.

>> One thing I'll never understand is how it practically requires an IDE to do anything non-trivial, in contrast to any other language.

Hate to break it to you, but if you don't need IDE for specific language. You need IDE for large project. Regardless of the language used.

>> Because Chrome is turning Java off and they're trying to make sure other browsers don't follow suit.

>> Seriously, I see no NEED for Java any more. I probably have more Silverlight things I like to use than I do Java, and neither are vital any more.

It must so wonderfull to live in a world limited by your browser window. Wonder how it's like. Have you ever wondered what do the servers run? You know, the same servers that show you all sorts of pages? Banks, Twitter, Amazon, eBay, LinkedIn hundreds of other high load sites and countless numbers of proprietary in-house internal systems? Let me give you a hint: definitely not silverlight.

>> Java is dead

You need to grab a phone at tell all those sites above I mentioned, also, while you're at it, don't forget IBM and Oracle, they'll have a blast.

One studio failed at creating a pixel art game. That speaks more about this studio's professionalism, than about pixel art in itself, I feel they will fail the same way at providing a good Hi-Res game.

>> Reynolds says his studio is giving up on pixel art and embracing the new medium, and recommends other artists do the same.

Somehow android game titles like Pixel Dungeon, Gemini Rue, Sword and Socrecy and Anodyne managed to pull it off with pixel art and are feeling fine. Sour grapes and the fox, anyone?

Also this:
>> saying that games with great pixel art get needlessly marked down in reviews for their pixelation, while games that have awful — but high-res — art get glowing praise.

Sound very much like someone being bitter that very little people liked their style. Usually well drawn art draws praise, and poorly made stuff gets shunned. Be it pixel or high-def.

>> If the Special Agents involved had done their due diligence they could have easily obtained a warrant to seize the laptop rather than relying on the border search exception.

Well, if they could've, they would've. But it seems they didn't have substantial evidence to support a search warrant and they decided to get a sneak peek using border as an excuse. And yes, if it's not legal inside the US, then it's definitely without probable cause, at least legally speaking. Being involved in an investigation doesn't take much, you don't have to do anything besides being near or catching an eye of an investigator, and requirement for warrants is not baseless, it's to exclude the "hey, I don't like this guy, let's investigate him, search everything and then maybe we'll find something to accuse him of".

Well, fun fact, if some kid breaches the system and then gives the evidence that system is flawed to the company without demanding any money - than he's a criminal, if a large company does the same, only demanding a large payment for services rendered and subscription to future services - then it's business as usual.