There is absolutely no chance of the Green Party becoming part of the next British government, even in a coalition.
1,852 karma · joined October 25, 2012
If you perceive your time to be so valuable that you can't bear the five minutes it takes to order a pizza online or by phone, you probably should re-examine that valuation.
Especially when five minutes ordering exactly what you want directly from your preferred supplier is replaced by a fifteen minute exchange with a stranger who has to interprets vague inputs, has misaligned incentives, doesn't know any of your preferences beyond those you expressly state, etc. all of which you then pay a premium for...
[1] At least by an adversary with sufficient resources, leverage, and impunity (NSA, GCHQ, etc.)
That is incorrect and dangerous advice to give users.
As has been discussed before, as long as Apple controls the public key exchange process, they have the capability to intercept and decrypt your messages if they wish, or are compelled to do so.
Freedom of expression is also central to the hacker ethos, and even with the limited information we have at present, it is quite apparent this was an attack on that principle.
To your actual point, to tax someone out of a £10m home in London today the council tax rate would have to be increased many thousands of times over. That is not a realistic danger.
This policy is seeing a resurgence of popular support in the form of the 'Mansion tax', but really all we need is a more equitable council tax.
Note that, in theory, a secondary function of the council tax should be to prevent habitable properties being left unoccupied for extended periods of time.
Unfortunately when the tax amounts to a rounding error on the ROI for a property, it is completely ineffectual. Hence the large number of empty 'investment' properties in London, further inflating an already overheated property market.
You can own a £10m property in the borough, earning upwards of £1m per year in rental income and appreciation, and only have to pay £2k to the local council.
Meanwhile, those living in the absolute worst accommodation in the borough still have to pay £711.19.
The violence and suffering in the world, particularly overseas, feels more inescapable in the digital, high definition, always connected age.
This age has gifted us perception, but not perspective.
BitLocker is a full disk encryption system. Under the "device encryption" scheme discussed here, the recovery key is stored on Microsoft servers, but the content remains on the physical device.
I assume if a user was to backup their data using one of Microsoft's other services (e.g. OneDrive), that data would be encrypted under a different regime.
The BitLocker arrangement does provide users with some degree of security, in that an adversary would need access both to the physical device and the recovery keys on Microsoft servers to retrieve a user's data.
Alcoholism tends to have a far more damaging long-term effect on a person's health than most other hobbies.
Where is the market for a $600 handset that isn't an iPhone 6?
It could take more than a couple of weeks for many users to realize the service is shutting down (skip past the email in their inbox, etc.)
Even if a user receives notification with the full two weeks notice, they could be on vacation and unable to download the files.
They could figure "Oh, I'll make a note to download my stuff when I get home from work" then forget all about it.
The possibility of Scotland voting for independence had that in spades; nobody really knew what it would entail.
Thus the media persisted in presenting it as a realistic, likely prospect, even when it was quite apparent (as per bookmakers odds) that a 'yes' vote was very unlikely.
I don't think it's surprising that people are more risk-averse on polling day, when their vote actually matters.
On the contrary, the media insisted for weeks the referendum was "too close to call", citing endless polls that generally favored the 'no' vote, but were close to 50-50. Obviously people vote more conservatively when it matters.
Meanwhile, the bookmakers, who actually had skin in the game, knew a 'yes' vote was unlikely, and reflected that in their odds.