devx

Canonical has an OS for tablets that will be released soon, and they can support any tablet they want, if they order large amounts.

Making these technologies open source would be a good improvement.

Just know that if you're approached by NSA or similar, after a course like this, you have a 90+ percent chance to be doing "cyber-hacking" of other nations (allies or "rivals") rather than "cyber-security" for US.

Governments should use as much open source software as possible, both because of cost reasons, but also in principle (especially now about the NSA scandals, instead of buying proprietary software from American companies).

Probably, but it would still be a huge win, if we could make it so they could only get e-mails with a normal warrant, from a normal Court (none of that secret courts/"millions of records-are-relevant nonsense).

Also, I don't know if it's currently "legal" or not to demand companies to keep encryption keys of what they're encrypting, but I'm pretty sure it's unconstitutional. So encrypting communications end to end should be constitutional/legal. The companies can still do that (if they have the will/customer pressure).

As for coerced backdoors, like they tried with Lavabit, that's just disgustingly immoral, and definitely unconstitutional.

If this ends up happening, does it mean SpaceX will have single-handedly drop the price of commercial space transportation by about 2 orders of magnitude during its first decade of life?

I know they were saying initially when they came out with the first one that it costs about an order of magnitude less than competition, and if they can re-use the same rocket, that should reduce costs by at least an order of magnitude again.

After this they "only" need to make one with a fusion reactor, to reduce transportation (to Mars or asteroids) by another order of magnitude [1]. That's when the true space (or rather solar system) era will begin.

1 - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/10/nasa_fusion_engine_f...

Maybe it would be acceptable to do something like that "in a time of war". The problem with today's government is that it seems to define everything in terms of an endless war. Cyber-attacks? "We're at cyberwar". Terrorism? "We're at war with all the nations harboring terrorists". Domestic terrorism? Well there's already the "war on drugs", so they probably don't care that much about that one, as long as they still get all the powers they need inside the country, too. 9 in 10 NSL's are used for drug cases, actually. Surprised?

Such sustained surveillance - indefinitely - is simply unacceptable, and people need to fight back against it. If the nation really is at some sort of "long term war" with multiple enemies, then maybe the nation is doing something very wrong, and should look at the root cause of what's causing those enemies to react, rather than trying to fix the problem later with surveillance.

The problem is maintaining the war status quo is so very profitable for certain people and companies.

Open source firmware?

NSA will be all over stuff like this when it will happen. I can already see them saying "We've got to know what the terrorists are thinking, to protect the nation."

Could this take advantage of Google's new QUIC protocol, or get any benefits from it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QUIC

I hope we see this in smartphones soon.

This always seems to happen. They do stuff that is illegal for about 5-10 years prior to even lobbying to make it a law, and then Congress makes it a law, and nobody ever punishes them for doing it illegally before.

From the people that admitted themselves. Also, let's not forget that Snowden managed to get all sorts of data they didn't even know he took until he went public with it - and they still don't know exactly what he took in full. How many actual spies could've done that and then sell that info? Even CIA admitted that there are a lot of people trying to become double agents at CIA, and that's just for people they find out about. It can probably happen at NSA, too, especially with 3rd party companies having access to that much data.

“The difference between screwing around and science is writing it down.”

- Adam Savage

I'm sure a lot will say now that "It was inevitable. Android is made up of multiple OEM's, yadda, yadda...".

But I seem to remember not too long ago that "iPad was the iPod of tablets" or something, and therefore will always have 80+ percent market share. I guess that didn't turn out true.

Throw her in a federal prison for "hurting national security" and for being a "spy and traitor". Fortunately, she didn't manage to "defect" to some of US' enemies - like Russia - so it should be easy enough to arrest her and keep her there for a year before we come up with a solid list of charges.

Oh - what say you? She's a Senator that has immunity and can't be imprisoned for leaking NSA's classified information? Well, that's great news! I expect a lot more senators to come forward with other juicy classified NSA information then...

I don't have that problem myself, but just watching the videos of iOS7 made me think I'd be very frustrated to see all those 1 second animations long everytime I do something. I don't think I could handle seeing those animations hundreds of times every day, and for a couple of years of owning the device.

I want my phone to do stuff fast, especially if it has a benchmark-breaking chip inside. What's the point of having such a fast chip, if you can't feel it's fast in everyday use?

Whoever is in charge of the design of iOS7 clearly had no coherent vision about what iOS should do, like Scott Forestall (and Steve Jobs) did. The UI is all over the place, and it seems filled with random design gimmicks of the 2005-era (translucency, parallax, zooming in and out, very bright colors, etc) to make it "feel cool" or whatever. Reminds me of Vista and all of those crazy Linux environments.

I want my OS to help me do stuff fast, and productively, not show me a circus on the screen, with everything I do.

This is a great series about how innovation and creativity happens, too (hint: through remixes):

http://everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/

You can have a laid back, more clutter-free experience with a controller in front of a TV - and the TV experience is meant to be laid back, anyway.

Why didn't ARM call it ARM64? It's hard to believe it didn't cross their minds and decided AArch64 is the better name, so it could be another reason.

Good. Google shouldn't be able to even "analyze" private communications and data, at the very least not without the user's explicit consent (opt-in). Being in the ToS doesn't count since nobody reads those.

Maybe if they aren't allowed to do it anymore, they'll finally take requests to encrypt their services end-to-end seriously. Because right now they probably aren't even considering encrypting Hangouts if that means they can't analyze it for ads anymore, which is just sad and frustrating.

If they make their next-gen browser using Rust, I hope they make it 64-bit-only, and optimize it as much as possible for x64 and ARMv8. None of that "support back to Windows XP!" stuff. It wouldn't be necessary (will still have Firefox a few years longer for that), and it would just hold them back in terms development time, maintenance, performance and security.

Then it would be not just great PR for their "highly-optimized no legacy cruft 64-bit browser", but would also give people a reason to switch from Firefox to it. It would also give Mozilla an excuse to not make a 64-bit Firefox anymore.

I assume it's going to take them at least 2-3 years to do it (if they ever plan to release it), and by then Microsoft will probably release a 64-bit only Windows 9, iOS will be 64-only, too (probably not relevant to Mozilla, but could be in the future), and at least half of all Android smartphone users will have ARMv8-based devices.

Mozilla should take full advantage of this, and really push for performance (and security), and they should only make it available from Android 5.0 (probably the first 64-bit Android version) and Windows 7 x64. Support for Linux kernel should probably start with no lower than 3.10 LTS (contains all the ARMv8 support).

This just goes to show that companies will put as many DRM restrictions as possible on their devices and content, if there's no backlash, just because they "think" it would be a good idea to do it. I wish the general public would fight more against DRM, instead of simply accepting it by saying stuff like "but that's the only way I can use X". It sends companies the wrong message.

First off, Elon Musk has more than a "profit incentive" to go to Mars. He just wants to do it for himself and for human kind. As soon as his SpaceX profits and technology will allow him to do that, he will do it.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is lumping him together with all the other corporations that only follow their profit incentive. I get that, but I don't think it's a fair characterization of SpaceX and Elon Musk, too.

Second, I do think there will be a profit incentive for companies to do that eventually, anyway. I don't know how or why exactly, and it may not happen during the first few flights, but it will happen eventually, even if the only money they could make is from the government, by doing the government's missions.

You probably should've stopped doing that after the PRISM revelations anyway.

Yeah, can we get OTR in Hangouts already, Google? (no, not that "we're not archiving it - promise!" OTR)

It seems to open faster on Windows, too.

When is the VP9 support coming?

Two years old article basically talking about this:

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2011/03/16/farewel...

I'd love to see Valve have the "defacto OS/console" for Oculus Rift. Oculus Rift will enable truly "next-gen" gaming, and Valve would be very smart to ride that trend, and grow with it.