As far as I could tell, the main reason people were annoyed about Google Glass (besides the ostentatious bragging of wearing $1500 glasses) was that somebody wearing them could be taking your picture at any time, without obviously holding up a camera or a phone or wearing a lapel-pin camera or having a pen-sized camera in their shirt pocket or something clipped to their backpack straps or whatever else. These glasses still do that, just not as well as a cheap camera or phone.

But the display inside the glasses, which made Google Glass more useful than a camera thing, isn't in these, and it's also missing the potential Google functionality of doing face recognition and telling you the name of the person you're looking at, which you forgot. Sure, somebody wearing Google Glasses could look like they're looking at you but really be watching cat videos or talking to somebody else, but cellphone headsets had given us those a decade earlier, and now there's Pokemon Go or whatever follows it.

Also, social views of always-connected cameras are changing, as a result of Black Lives Matter and other episodes of people recording cops behaving badly and the near-ubiquity of cellphone video. Yes, there are privacy tradeoffs we need to figure out (e.g. secure recording for your pictures doesn't have to also mean that Google or Apple iCloud has access to your data.)

Of course Obama should pardon Snowden, but we all know that ain't gonna happen. The real question is whether some EU country like Germany or some other country besides Russia will offer Snowden asylum. So far, none of them have had the guts, even Ecuador which is giving Julian Assange some slack, though most Latin American governments are too tightly tied to the US to offer protection against kidnapping as well as against official extradition or look-the-other-way rendition.

Russia's currently some protection for Snowden, but only while he's politically useful to Putin, and Putin's still in power. If anything happens to Putin, or to Snowden's usefulness (e.g. Putin wants to do a favor for President Trump), he's in trouble.

Telling people what the trruth is at the butt of a gun, or destroying their careers or countries because someone proclaims they have found it, never works.

The reason why these people have to study this historical fact says quite a lot about western science to begin with.

Proofpoint is studying election related phishing attacks, not generic spam. The ratio may be an indicator that the attackers expect Trump supporters to be far more gullible than Clinton supporters.

Apparently, you don't understand anything about the physical security of dignitaries and top officials.

Travel plans, routes, and details about the stops of heads of state are always considered highly sensitive security information. This country is full of extremely stupid, gullible, and ridiculously-overarmed people, and a small subset of whom probably thinks it would be a good thing to bring harm to the First Lady. The Secret Service plans the routes, the stops, provides decoy vehicles, and secures each of those locations to an incredible degree; but no amount of effort can secure every location against a patient, well-camouflaged, entrenched sniper. Uncertainty in the travel routes is one of the best ways to keep the lone wolves from being able to plant themselves along the route.

So yes, it is highly sensitive information.

I remember I also had to change passwords on Yahoo! about two years ago.

I believe there's a clue in their "Breach FAQ" where they state "the vast majority of passwords were hashed with bcrypt". It could be that their old passwords were protected with a less-secure older salting-and-hashing system, (maybe something like the original crypt() ) and by 2014 they had replaced it with bcrypt.

But even an old crypt() hash can't simply be broken on demand without a lot of CPU grinding for every password recovered. Because the old passwords were hashed, there would have been no easy way for Yahoo! to automatically migrate them into bcrypt. So after the system conversion was complete, they prompted all users to change their old passwords so they would migrate themselves to the new bcrypt-based system. People who haven't logged in since 2014 probably still have the old original hashed passwords on file somewhere at Yahoo HQ..

None that weren't some derivative of "what can we sell off this year?" or "Who can we find with that kind of money?"

According to their breach FAQ, the stolen data included "hashed passwords (the vast majority with bcrypt) ". I don't know what "the vast majority" means, nor do I know what alternate form of hashing may have been done prior to their adoption of bcrypt that they're still hanging on to.

I do know that the only reason I still have an active Yahoo! account is because of their OAuth support. Well that's pretty much in the crapper now, isn't it?

Yeah, there's an option I disabled before even knowing what it was: "Power saving: off".

If I'm spending coin on a shiny thing to be watched, I don't want to be continually fighting it over the one task I bought it for.

First, congratulations on dropping 100 pounds! That is a remarkable achievement for anyone.

Next, I think our stories sound somewhat similar. I, too, look at data and outcomes, and as I know I'm lazy, I'm constantly turning to technology to make the mundane business of data logging as painless as possible. I have a wifi connected scale that also measures body fat, and logs every reading automatically. I weigh myself daily. And yes, I also recognized that lots of people get discouraged by the daily up and down fluctuations in weight. My motivation there is to look at the three month chart, and to see the weight line steadily descending into a healthier range. It doesn't matter that this morning I was up a pound over the previous day when the overall trend line is still on a good trajectory. Every individual measurement shows a bump up or down from the previous day; the insignificance of any one day's measurement is obvious to anyone when looking at the data in aggregation.

I also have logged everything (well, everything except for a few days while on a vacation) I have eaten since I started this journey. What helps me there is a smartphone app that scans barcodes, looks up foods in a crowdsourced database, and populates the day's journal with the data. Yes, I do have to evaluate and select the data more carefully than I'd like, but it's still easier than typing in a pile of numbers. Knowing what went in enables me to stop before I reach the day's limit. Being honest with the data is critical there. So far it seems that I could maintain this pace indefinitely, but I do see how it occasionally requires returning to the touchstone of motivation.

I know that nutrition info is always an average; so I don't get all worried about exact portion sizes, or logging a few carrots or lettuce unless they exceed a reasonable threshold. I'm interested only in a good outcome, not precision in data measurements. Along with this I do know that I have to either carefully log or avoid certain types of foods entirely - sweets and snacks are not something I can write off as not worth logging.

The activity tracker study was a bit odd. I am interested and motivated to use technology and data to drive positive changes, but I ironically ended up in their control group. So I wore their tracker, but did not have access to their step counts. I continued to wear the personal tracker I've worn for the past three years, but in the interest of the study I deliberately ignored it. After the study ended, I looked and could see that my daily counts were averaging much lower than they were when I was actively trying to meet a daily step goal. Incidentally, I also discovered that the wrist-worn tracker is far less accurate in step-counting than the hip-worn tracker.

One of the biggest hurdles I had to overcome at the beginning of this was entrusting my personal health data to random companies operating cloud services. How do I know that my data won't be used against me in some way? But I decided that my long-term health concerns had to trump the fears of unknown (and possibly imaginary) consequences.

Another thing that is important to me is that I don't have a plan, but a goal. I didn't start with an artificial "drop 60 pounds by New Years" resolution; instead I know I have to continue to lose weight until I reach the target weight my doctor and I agreed to. So far, I've lost 50 pounds in the past 7 months, with about 15 to go. And as long as the one month slope of the weight line remains negative, I have high confidence I'll get there.

Finally, buying new clothes was not nearly as motivating as afterwards when I emptied my closet and donated every single stitch of old clothes to a local charity. Now I know that if I gain weight, it's going to cost me a fortune to buy a size larger! :-)

As much as this explanation appears to make sense, like anything in a social study, the results are likely virtually meaningless at the individual level. How any one person reacts to a tracker will not be predictable.

Success at improving someone's health will always be based entirely on the motivation of the person, not on which electronic toys they wear or which brand of granola they gnaw upon. Perhaps they'll find a correlation where buying Garmin branded devices is indicative of people who are more motivated than people who buy Apple branded devices, but that certainly doesn't mean buying a Garmin or an Apple will alter your chances of success.

I participated in a clinical activity tracker study earlier this year. There were so many holes in the testing methodology that I'm not sure the results will be worth the PDF they'll be printed on. Yet they'll be publishing results soon enough, and no doubt will contribute to the collective misinformation already encompassing the 'get healthy' rackets.

It appears to be tied to a word count. I think that if I had cut back to one instance of the T-word, it would have been fine.

But it appears to be following the same pattern as any authoritarian's response to criticism: whether it be Chinese citizens talking about Falun Gong, or slashdotters complaining about trolls, those in charge trot out the Great Firewall and censor them.

[ Sorry in advance for the stupid l33t spelling, but the lameness filter won't let me write the word tr0ll.]

I wonder about "patent tr0lls". The inventor patents Invention X, then wants to monetize their invention. They can build a business (slow and risky) or they can sell their patent to someone else, such as a manufacturer, in exchange for money. Whether or not they get a lot of money or a little money is not important; what is important is that they agreed to the sale. The patent now belongs to Company Y. Company Y makes a warehouse full of Xs, but realizes they aren't selling. They now own a warehouse of valueless junk, plus the rights to X. They need money, so they sell the rights to X to "Patent Tr0ll Z". Again, the amount isn't important as long as they voluntarily agreed to the sale.

So now Z has no boxes of X, no real way to make more Xs, but they have the patent and want to monetize it. Companies A, B, and C start making widgets W, which have a tiny little sliver of concept that coincides with patent X. Tr0ll Z recognizes the concept and sues them. They invested in patent X in order to make money. They did not steal the patent from the inventor. They did not steal products from the warehouse of company Y. So why are the patent tr0lls evil in all of this?

If the tr0lls were stealing innovations, or tricking people into surrendering their rights, then they'd be guilty of fraud. But when everyone involved in the invention agreed to the terms of the sale of the rights, it seems like a legitimate way to execute a business transaction. They may be sleazy and undercut inventors or manufacturers, but those are all governed by contracts, voluntarily entered into by all parties. So I'm asking: what are the tr0lls doing that is unethical?

It's a conspiracy, I tells ya. They put GPS and tracking in it.

Of course, emacs has had GPS support for 15 years now...

Only as long as you know which transmitter to measure. In a cell system, the subscribers aren't transmitting the phone's IMEI or the SIM card's IMSI, nor are they sending out the owner's name and number. They just send a temporary mobile ID, which is a randomly generated number that changes frequently. So which signal do you lock on to? Since 90+% of the population is carrying a cell phone, your $40 directional finder would point at everyone. Even a $40,000 direction finder would point at everyone if it can't tel them apart.

No, you need to know exactly which signal belongs to the subscriber you're tracking. How? The StingRay works by transmitting like a cell tower so it can trick the suspect's phone into giving up its true identity. Once you can identify a response as coming from the subscriber you're following, those responses can then be measured using a traditional DF. (The StingRay says "ping", and the subscriber's phone replies "pong".) Harris sells the 'AmberJack' DF antenna accessory for use with the StingRay line. It pings the phone for a while, as it rotates the DF antenna. It then shows the average bearing to the strongest received signal, and the approximate distance in meters.