The second article is indeed better, but it is an in-vitro study. While the in-vitro results are interesting and definitely an indicator as to how these substances might act in-vivo, it is not the whole story.
The slashdot headline and summary is a little misleading and alarmist, but the takeaway, that artificial sweeteners might not be good for our gut biome, is probably worth further investigation.
Yes, there are Thunderbolt cables that look like USB but don't pass USB data, but unless you're one of those rare people who actually uses Thunderbolt, you'll never encounter one, so that's not a meaningful reason to be concerned.
Thunder cables are a different story entirely and work great for devices that support it. The Lightening cables are a totally worthless unless you're in the Apple handheld ecosystem. They're also pretty awful in that they can't do more than about 12W due to the skinny wires Apple chooses to use. This means you're stuck with slow charging for no good reason other than a fat cable isn't svelte and sexy.
And yes, it is possible for a crappy cable to reduce your charging speed by limiting the current. Buy quality cables and you won't have this problem.
I'd love to, but other than shopping directly from the Benson Approved site, how can
anyone know it's a quality cable that is "quality?" Most folks won't ever even know there's a difference. The huge variety in quality indicates that something in the USB-C spec is difficult to meet. Either the spec is too rigorous, too expensive, or not clear enough for the average chinesium supplier to meet.
Having a clear, open standard that everyone can meet and that is mandated to all portable devices would be a huge boon for consumers. Yes, it might limit innovation, but with some proper collaboration with industry, it could be a very good thing and replace the current mess we have today.
Even among the non-Apple devices there are still issues. The USB-Micro standard is fragile, uni-directional and has skinny-ass wires that can't cary much current for fast charging. The USB-C standard is anything but standard with a mixed bag of features and compatibility from device to device.
Apple's Lightening charger is nice that it works for all of Apple's recent handhelds and is reversible, but is incompatible for all the new laptops (USB-C). The Listening cable is also only good for ~2A of current meaning that fast charging is right out. But what good is a charging cable that only works one line of devices?
USB-C *could* be great and last us for the next 10 years if only the industry could standardize the standard. It would also be great if you could count on USB-C cables actually being 100% compliant and not worry that your E-Bay special was going to toast your new phone, or burn down your house. Judging by the plethora of shitty cables out there, I would guess that the standard is simply too expensive or too difficult to comply with.
I would definitely welcome a standard that could do something about the giant box of standard, half-standard, and proprietary cables that I've accumulated. We can do it with headphones and lights and HDMI cables (sort of), why can't we do it with phone and laptop chargers?
Garmin's Forerunner series is great. Grab the DozenRun data field and monitor pace, distance, cadence and heart rate all from one screen. I also *love* the "back to start" option when I go for a run in an unfamiliar place. It gives a bearing arrow to help you find your way home. There's also some great features for creating speed workouts with audio and haptic notification. You can base the workout on distance, time, or time in zone (though I haven't figured this out yet).
I pay for content when I can get it, honestly these services are MORE CONVENIENT than fiddling around with torrents / content streaming sites
Does the industry make more money by blocking content than not?? If so how???
Why even create a pirate economy? To sell DRM which is expensive and easily circumvented??
I don't understand it and I probably never will...
Yes, the industry does make more by blocking content. They do this by selling the rights to a show in each market at a value they perceive to be fair for that market. The owners of "Myth Busters" lease the rights to show it in Norway and the Netherlands on Discovery. Discovery wants **exclusive** rights to show the new episodes and whatever rerun deal they've worked out. If viewers in these markets get the show on demand via Netflix that would dilute the audience that Discovery is counting on and thereby decreases the revenue they generate. They are expecting a certain number of eyeballs and sell their advertising slots based on that number.
The owners of a show can negotiate for larger sums for exclusive rights than diluted rights. Not only does Discovery **want** exclusive rights, but they've paid for those rights. It's in the contract somewhere.
I'm pretty sure that sites like FlixSearch will put an end to all this regional nonsense in the near future. Using FlixSearch along with UnoTelly it is possible to find a show in any region and then dynamically switch to that region to watch it. Unless Netflix works out a way around this reliably, I don't see exclusive deals lasting into the future. They just won't be worth it.
Voice search on the phone is natural. The phone is a device that historically is good at one thing, voice. Even though a modern phone has a decent keyboard input, t's still clumsy when on the go. When I'm out for a run or a ride and I want quick directions, or to dictate a note, send a text message, or check the train schedule, the voice interaction is vastly superior to wrestling my phone out of it's armband and typing something. The voice interaction isn't amazing, but it works about 80% of the time on the first try and that's good enough for me. I don't have to stop my workout and fumble around.
On the other hand, when I'm sitting at my desk I can, with two key strokes switch to my web browser and launch a new search tab. I can type about as fast as I can speak and my accuracy is probably around 95%; google makes up for the remaining 4% in spelling errors (searching for instead of ). I get better accuracy and less fumbling around if the room is loud. Also, in our quiet open-plan office I look like a total D-Bag talking to my monitor. That's a big plus. too.
The full-size keyboard isn't the end-all of interfaces, but for a desktop it's waaaay better than voice search. If voice search ever gets to the point where I can throw out a complex, natural language queries into the air a la ST-TNG, I'll switch. "Computer: Post a witty comment to SlashDot about voice interfaces and how bad they sucked in the naughties and teens"
I find it funny you think your vendors are somehow required to push updates to your device. They're not.
Next time before you buy, check the support list of a custom ROM.
Don't buy any no-name chinese crapware, then install some other custom Android OS, and be done with it.
Vendors are definitely not required to push updates, but they probably should be. It is pretty irresponsible for vendors to continue selling phones with known vulnerabilities, or ignoring vulnerabilities and not offering patches.
This is not unlike an automobile firm allwoing known safety related flaws in their cars to persist because it is too expensive to fix them. I'm looking at you GM. In this case the "safety" flaws are not life threatening, but are a threat to our privacy and security. The recent StageFright bug is a good example. This flaw not only compromised the usability of the device, but potentially compromised users banking and credit information. Plenty of phones will NEVER get patched and users will continue to use these shitty, vulnerable devices.
This is partially Google's fault for making Android so mutable; it's crazy hard and expensive for manufacturers to keep up with patches and there's no incentive for them to do so. That's not an excuse for us not to hold them responsible. We certainly expect our cars to not explode in our faces throwing metal shards into our eyes and thorax. We should hold phone makers to the same standard. We should expect that known security flaws will be patched and not ignored.
Will this increase the cost of phones? Probably. But would you rather have a slightly more expensive handset that gets security updates, or use a phone that's woefully out of date. If you are in the latter category, you're probably reading this in Internet Explorer 5 on Windows XP and in for a shock when you open your retirement account and find a balance of $0.00. Or worse -$53,000.99.
You're better off installing Facebook and just putting a bookmark to the web page on your launcher.
+1 For you sir! https://m.facebook.com/ is far superior to the shitey app. You can post pictures, message, and read all the wedding announcements and funny baby pictures without FailBook stealing your contact list, monitoring your location and generally being a douche. And to really put a cherry on top: it stops running when you're not using it! If you live and die by your FB messenger, this won't work for you, but if you actually want your phone to be a phone with some juice in the battery, this is the way forward!
This is all great, but it's not exactly news. The most recent commit to that project is over six months old and the majority of the commits are from two years ago. I doubt it will work properly with KitKat or Lollipop. An alternative is Amplify. It isn't smart, but it does give you the power to suppress wakelocks at will. You can seriously børk up your phone with it, but that's all easily fixed.
I got in early on google talk from the USA and can dial for FREE any number in the US from my web browser. This beats Skype hands down. Not only has google offered this service for at least 3 years, but it's FREE. FREE. Skype is just painful and expensive.
It's amazing it took this long for MS to put out a truly cross-platform solution of Skype.
Keep waiting. There's yet another needless and painful UI change. There's no dial pad so you can only call people who are in your contacts list. Living abroad from the US, 90% of my Skype use is to call landlines in North America to deal with banks, government agencies and the like.
It seems like with every minor update MS somehow manages to obfuscate the UI and make simple tasks such dialing an actual number or removing or adding contacts difficult. Why do they need to keep making this useful application akin to gargling razors?
The "article" is three paragraphs and a few quotes full of FUD. There's no real information in there; it contains no good suggestions as to how to check for or deal with bios infections. It takes three clicks to get to a site that actually has some of the research, but that's just a static page listing conference topics. Don't waste another minute on this nonsense.
I suppose not caring works, but it seems like this is a great vector to turn hardware players into Zombies. If I were a criminal, I could think of a lot of things that could be done with even 1% of the world's internet connected players. Do you really want your Blu-Ray player to be part of a botnet sending spam or participating in denial of service attacks?
If for no other reason, think of the impact on your bandwidth and electric bill. I certainly don't want a house full of hackable hardware. When (if) the internet of things arrives without security and 10% of the fridges, air conditioners, electricity meters, washing machines, pet doors, TVs and driers are all hacked because manufacturers couldn't be bothered to secure them, I think you'll probably care. It will bring the interwebs to its knees.
This highlights the one and only problem with Sony: It is always too expensive.
I think the product longevity issue that Sony has *might* be a slightly bigger problem. I don't have any real data other than my personal experience, but I have owned a slew of Sony products and with the exception of our two Sony CRT TVs growing up, they have all shat them selves within 18 months. The two TVs we had when I was growing up lasted for over 8 years each. I think the second one needed to have a transformer replaced at some point, but that was about $20 in the early 90's.
Other than those two products, my personal experience has been awful. I don't think I ever had a sony walkman that lasted more than 6 months due to stupid things like belt clips that were TOTALLY inadequate for doing anything other than standing still. My Sony amplifier shat itself the same month the warranty ran out. The display crapped out and was eventually repaired by re-soldering and bending the PCBs. My Sony car stereo crapped it's display about a year after I bought it. No amount of blowing, hitting, or poking around inside could fix it. The digitizer in m Sony Clie (late Palm Pilot clone) shat its self a few weeks after the rotary encoder at the base of the display filled with pocket lint and stopped working. After the Clie disaster, I have refused to buy a Sony electronic device. I'm not going to get burned again.
Adding RFID tags to equipment and encouraging people to swipe it out as it is used might be a good idea. But short of adding a supply clerk or using a badge system I don't see many other options. Maybe there's some work-study budget for a freshman to sit in the lab and check out equipment?
I heard on Freakonomics about putting up web cams and paying someone in a far-off land to ensure hand-washing compliance. Perhaps a system like that might work.
What the hell was that? They threatened to shut down the Guardian if the media wasn't handed over; it appears though that they didn't have the balls to go through with the threat. Instead they came up with this bizarre compromise that involved 'destroying' the data. Why do this? Was it just a way for the government to save face and not have to back down from some crazy ass redline that threw out there? They must know that the files were immediately duplicated and spread around the world.
That was by far one of the strangest things I've ever seen a newspaper do.
A trusted executor is really the way to go here. Store the passwords in an encrypted format and then give the key to a trusted party that will only unseal the encrypted database in the event that you are incapacitated. For added security, split the key into multiple parts and give it to multiple parties. It would probably be best to transport the key in a physical format and make it clear that the importance of the document.
In a work place setting, give the keys to supervisors that are mutually responsible for the systems in question. In a personal setting, give the keys to family members that are trusted. Be sure to provide step-by-step instructions as to how to decrypt your data. If you are so unfortunate to not have trusted family or friends, pay a law firm to administrate this service and act as your executor. For a fee, the law firm can be instructed to only unseal the data in the event that certain standards are met (such as a declaration of incompetence by N medical professionals).
Meh. ABS is an alright material and it's pretty tough. It's not unlike the stuff cafeteria trays are made out of. A 3D extruded-noodle case will never be as tough as a case made through injection molding due to the inherent sheer weakness between the fused layers. That being said, in my very unscientific and shoddy testing with vice grips, shop scissors and hammers applied to borked pieces, 3D prints are pretty tough to break. A rectangle of say 50x50x5 mm printed with an infill of 50% is surprisingly dense and difficult to crack by hand. I had to use a two pair of vice grips to snap it in half.
As far as protection, I wouldn't count on the ABS providing much in the way of fall protection. Fall protection is all about DV/DT (acceleration), or rather the change in velocity over time. A phone wrapped in a pillow dropped from 1 meter will experience a much lower acceleration than a phone wrapped in a rock when it hits the ground. ABS is definitely squishier than a rock, but it can't compete with something like silicone.
If you're just interested in surface protection, ABS is a pretty solid choice as it's relatively soft and won't bite into the phone finish too much and should offer a bit of protection from your pocket. A 3D printed case won't have quite the same finish that an extruded case has and definitely needs morem cleanup at the end.
I haven't worked much with PLA, but the little that i have worked with it, it appears to be stronger but more brittle (think glass versus steel). Probably not what you want in a case as Apple discovered with their magnificent glass backs...
Sorry to say, your part of the less than 1% of people that care about this. Nokia doesn't want 1%, they want a viable share of the world market. Making phones unlockable is not their priority and having it on Linux doesn't sell more phones than it being MS or Black Berry OS.
I love the fact that they released blue prints for 3d printers. This is without a doubt a marketing move but I have yet to see Apple do the same thing.
Though I'm not a fan of "the use it the way we intended, or die a death of 1,000 cuts through our inflexible configuration" mentality of Apple, they do make some awesome decisions when it comes to marketing. For quite some time they have been providing specs on their devices for case designers. I suspect this is to help encourage the whole Apple ecosystem. You can find all the specs over at the Apple Developers Page
A quick search over at The Thingiverse yields many printable cases based on these specs.
I wish other manufactuers such as Samsung, HTC and LG would release their designs specs. Instead I'm left here with my vernie calipers and a crapload of guessing.
CyanogenMod breathed a whole new life into my 2 year old Nexus one. It was snappier, appeared to get battery life and had a whole host of awesome new features. The only reason I finally upgraded to a newer phone was because the power button broke (again!) and the headphone jack wore out. If you're sitting on an older Android device, consider trying CM. It really turns your phone into a geeksphone.
Slashdot Mirror
The second article is indeed better, but it is an in-vitro study. While the in-vitro results are interesting and definitely an indicator as to how these substances might act in-vivo, it is not the whole story.
The slashdot headline and summary is a little misleading and alarmist, but the takeaway, that artificial sweeteners might not be good for our gut biome, is probably worth further investigation.
IMO, those problems are mostly overblown.
Yes, there are Thunderbolt cables that look like USB but don't pass USB data, but unless you're one of those rare people who actually uses Thunderbolt, you'll never encounter one, so that's not a meaningful reason to be concerned.
Thunder cables are a different story entirely and work great for devices that support it. The Lightening cables are a totally worthless unless you're in the Apple handheld ecosystem. They're also pretty awful in that they can't do more than about 12W due to the skinny wires Apple chooses to use. This means you're stuck with slow charging for no good reason other than a fat cable isn't svelte and sexy.
And yes, it is possible for a crappy cable to reduce your charging speed by limiting the current. Buy quality cables and you won't have this problem.
I'd love to, but other than shopping directly from the Benson Approved site, how can anyone know it's a quality cable that is "quality?" Most folks won't ever even know there's a difference. The huge variety in quality indicates that something in the USB-C spec is difficult to meet. Either the spec is too rigorous, too expensive, or not clear enough for the average chinesium supplier to meet.
Having a clear, open standard that everyone can meet and that is mandated to all portable devices would be a huge boon for consumers. Yes, it might limit innovation, but with some proper collaboration with industry, it could be a very good thing and replace the current mess we have today.
Because they're rightfully horrified by the massive piles of E-Waste gathering around the world.
Even among the non-Apple devices there are still issues. The USB-Micro standard is fragile, uni-directional and has skinny-ass wires that can't cary much current for fast charging. The USB-C standard is anything but standard with a mixed bag of features and compatibility from device to device.
Apple's Lightening charger is nice that it works for all of Apple's recent handhelds and is reversible, but is incompatible for all the new laptops (USB-C). The Listening cable is also only good for ~2A of current meaning that fast charging is right out. But what good is a charging cable that only works one line of devices?
USB-C *could* be great and last us for the next 10 years if only the industry could standardize the standard. It would also be great if you could count on USB-C cables actually being 100% compliant and not worry that your E-Bay special was going to toast your new phone, or burn down your house. Judging by the plethora of shitty cables out there, I would guess that the standard is simply too expensive or too difficult to comply with.
I would definitely welcome a standard that could do something about the giant box of standard, half-standard, and proprietary cables that I've accumulated. We can do it with headphones and lights and HDMI cables (sort of), why can't we do it with phone and laptop chargers?
Garmin's Forerunner series is great. Grab the DozenRun data field and monitor pace, distance, cadence and heart rate all from one screen. I also *love* the "back to start" option when I go for a run in an unfamiliar place. It gives a bearing arrow to help you find your way home. There's also some great features for creating speed workouts with audio and haptic notification. You can base the workout on distance, time, or time in zone (though I haven't figured this out yet).
I pay for content when I can get it, honestly these services are MORE CONVENIENT than fiddling around with torrents / content streaming sites
Does the industry make more money by blocking content than not?? If so how???
Why even create a pirate economy? To sell DRM which is expensive and easily circumvented??
I don't understand it and I probably never will...
Yes, the industry does make more by blocking content. They do this by selling the rights to a show in each market at a value they perceive to be fair for that market. The owners of "Myth Busters" lease the rights to show it in Norway and the Netherlands on Discovery. Discovery wants **exclusive** rights to show the new episodes and whatever rerun deal they've worked out. If viewers in these markets get the show on demand via Netflix that would dilute the audience that Discovery is counting on and thereby decreases the revenue they generate. They are expecting a certain number of eyeballs and sell their advertising slots based on that number.
The owners of a show can negotiate for larger sums for exclusive rights than diluted rights. Not only does Discovery **want** exclusive rights, but they've paid for those rights. It's in the contract somewhere.
I'm pretty sure that sites like FlixSearch will put an end to all this regional nonsense in the near future. Using FlixSearch along with UnoTelly it is possible to find a show in any region and then dynamically switch to that region to watch it. Unless Netflix works out a way around this reliably, I don't see exclusive deals lasting into the future. They just won't be worth it.
Voice search on the phone is natural. The phone is a device that historically is good at one thing, voice. Even though a modern phone has a decent keyboard input, t's still clumsy when on the go. When I'm out for a run or a ride and I want quick directions, or to dictate a note, send a text message, or check the train schedule, the voice interaction is vastly superior to wrestling my phone out of it's armband and typing something. The voice interaction isn't amazing, but it works about 80% of the time on the first try and that's good enough for me. I don't have to stop my workout and fumble around.
On the other hand, when I'm sitting at my desk I can, with two key strokes switch to my web browser and launch a new search tab. I can type about as fast as I can speak and my accuracy is probably around 95%; google makes up for the remaining 4% in spelling errors (searching for instead of ). I get better accuracy and less fumbling around if the room is loud. Also, in our quiet open-plan office I look like a total D-Bag talking to my monitor. That's a big plus. too.
The full-size keyboard isn't the end-all of interfaces, but for a desktop it's waaaay better than voice search. If voice search ever gets to the point where I can throw out a complex, natural language queries into the air a la ST-TNG, I'll switch. "Computer: Post a witty comment to SlashDot about voice interfaces and how bad they sucked in the naughties and teens"
I find it funny you think your vendors are somehow required to push updates to your device. They're not.
Next time before you buy, check the support list of a custom ROM.
Don't buy any no-name chinese crapware, then install some other custom Android OS, and be done with it.
Vendors are definitely not required to push updates, but they probably should be. It is pretty irresponsible for vendors to continue selling phones with known vulnerabilities, or ignoring vulnerabilities and not offering patches.
This is not unlike an automobile firm allwoing known safety related flaws in their cars to persist because it is too expensive to fix them. I'm looking at you GM. In this case the "safety" flaws are not life threatening, but are a threat to our privacy and security. The recent StageFright bug is a good example. This flaw not only compromised the usability of the device, but potentially compromised users banking and credit information. Plenty of phones will NEVER get patched and users will continue to use these shitty, vulnerable devices.
This is partially Google's fault for making Android so mutable; it's crazy hard and expensive for manufacturers to keep up with patches and there's no incentive for them to do so. That's not an excuse for us not to hold them responsible. We certainly expect our cars to not explode in our faces throwing metal shards into our eyes and thorax. We should hold phone makers to the same standard. We should expect that known security flaws will be patched and not ignored.
Will this increase the cost of phones? Probably. But would you rather have a slightly more expensive handset that gets security updates, or use a phone that's woefully out of date. If you are in the latter category, you're probably reading this in Internet Explorer 5 on Windows XP and in for a shock when you open your retirement account and find a balance of $0.00. Or worse -$53,000.99.
You're better off installing Facebook and just putting a bookmark to the web page on your launcher.
+1 For you sir! https://m.facebook.com/ is far superior to the shitey app. You can post pictures, message, and read all the wedding announcements and funny baby pictures without FailBook stealing your contact list, monitoring your location and generally being a douche. And to really put a cherry on top: it stops running when you're not using it! If you live and die by your FB messenger, this won't work for you, but if you actually want your phone to be a phone with some juice in the battery, this is the way forward!
This is all great, but it's not exactly news. The most recent commit to that project is over six months old and the majority of the commits are from two years ago. I doubt it will work properly with KitKat or Lollipop. An alternative is Amplify. It isn't smart, but it does give you the power to suppress wakelocks at will. You can seriously børk up your phone with it, but that's all easily fixed.
I got in early on google talk from the USA and can dial for FREE any number in the US from my web browser. This beats Skype hands down. Not only has google offered this service for at least 3 years, but it's FREE. FREE. Skype is just painful and expensive.
It's amazing it took this long for MS to put out a truly cross-platform solution of Skype.
Keep waiting. There's yet another needless and painful UI change. There's no dial pad so you can only call people who are in your contacts list. Living abroad from the US, 90% of my Skype use is to call landlines in North America to deal with banks, government agencies and the like.
It seems like with every minor update MS somehow manages to obfuscate the UI and make simple tasks such dialing an actual number or removing or adding contacts difficult. Why do they need to keep making this useful application akin to gargling razors?
The "article" is three paragraphs and a few quotes full of FUD. There's no real information in there; it contains no good suggestions as to how to check for or deal with bios infections. It takes three clicks to get to a site that actually has some of the research, but that's just a static page listing conference topics. Don't waste another minute on this nonsense.
I suppose not caring works, but it seems like this is a great vector to turn hardware players into Zombies. If I were a criminal, I could think of a lot of things that could be done with even 1% of the world's internet connected players. Do you really want your Blu-Ray player to be part of a botnet sending spam or participating in denial of service attacks?
If for no other reason, think of the impact on your bandwidth and electric bill. I certainly don't want a house full of hackable hardware. When (if) the internet of things arrives without security and 10% of the fridges, air conditioners, electricity meters, washing machines, pet doors, TVs and driers are all hacked because manufacturers couldn't be bothered to secure them, I think you'll probably care. It will bring the interwebs to its knees.
If there's a market, somebody will exploit it.
This highlights the one and only problem with Sony: It is always too expensive.
I think the product longevity issue that Sony has *might* be a slightly bigger problem. I don't have any real data other than my personal experience, but I have owned a slew of Sony products and with the exception of our two Sony CRT TVs growing up, they have all shat them selves within 18 months. The two TVs we had when I was growing up lasted for over 8 years each. I think the second one needed to have a transformer replaced at some point, but that was about $20 in the early 90's.
Other than those two products, my personal experience has been awful. I don't think I ever had a sony walkman that lasted more than 6 months due to stupid things like belt clips that were TOTALLY inadequate for doing anything other than standing still. My Sony amplifier shat itself the same month the warranty ran out. The display crapped out and was eventually repaired by re-soldering and bending the PCBs. My Sony car stereo crapped it's display about a year after I bought it. No amount of blowing, hitting, or poking around inside could fix it. The digitizer in m Sony Clie (late Palm Pilot clone) shat its self a few weeks after the rotary encoder at the base of the display filled with pocket lint and stopped working. After the Clie disaster, I have refused to buy a Sony electronic device. I'm not going to get burned again.
Adding RFID tags to equipment and encouraging people to swipe it out as it is used might be a good idea. But short of adding a supply clerk or using a badge system I don't see many other options. Maybe there's some work-study budget for a freshman to sit in the lab and check out equipment?
I heard on Freakonomics about putting up web cams and paying someone in a far-off land to ensure hand-washing compliance. Perhaps a system like that might work.
What the hell was that? They threatened to shut down the Guardian if the media wasn't handed over; it appears though that they didn't have the balls to go through with the threat. Instead they came up with this bizarre compromise that involved 'destroying' the data. Why do this? Was it just a way for the government to save face and not have to back down from some crazy ass redline that threw out there? They must know that the files were immediately duplicated and spread around the world. That was by far one of the strangest things I've ever seen a newspaper do.
A trusted executor is really the way to go here. Store the passwords in an encrypted format and then give the key to a trusted party that will only unseal the encrypted database in the event that you are incapacitated. For added security, split the key into multiple parts and give it to multiple parties. It would probably be best to transport the key in a physical format and make it clear that the importance of the document.
In a work place setting, give the keys to supervisors that are mutually responsible for the systems in question. In a personal setting, give the keys to family members that are trusted. Be sure to provide step-by-step instructions as to how to decrypt your data. If you are so unfortunate to not have trusted family or friends, pay a law firm to administrate this service and act as your executor. For a fee, the law firm can be instructed to only unseal the data in the event that certain standards are met (such as a declaration of incompetence by N medical professionals).
We're almost half way to having a working teleporter! Woot!
Meh. ABS is an alright material and it's pretty tough. It's not unlike the stuff cafeteria trays are made out of. A 3D extruded-noodle case will never be as tough as a case made through injection molding due to the inherent sheer weakness between the fused layers. That being said, in my very unscientific and shoddy testing with vice grips, shop scissors and hammers applied to borked pieces, 3D prints are pretty tough to break. A rectangle of say 50x50x5 mm printed with an infill of 50% is surprisingly dense and difficult to crack by hand. I had to use a two pair of vice grips to snap it in half.
As far as protection, I wouldn't count on the ABS providing much in the way of fall protection. Fall protection is all about DV/DT (acceleration), or rather the change in velocity over time. A phone wrapped in a pillow dropped from 1 meter will experience a much lower acceleration than a phone wrapped in a rock when it hits the ground. ABS is definitely squishier than a rock, but it can't compete with something like silicone.
If you're just interested in surface protection, ABS is a pretty solid choice as it's relatively soft and won't bite into the phone finish too much and should offer a bit of protection from your pocket. A 3D printed case won't have quite the same finish that an extruded case has and definitely needs morem cleanup at the end.
I haven't worked much with PLA, but the little that i have worked with it, it appears to be stronger but more brittle (think glass versus steel). Probably not what you want in a case as Apple discovered with their magnificent glass backs...
Sorry to say, your part of the less than 1% of people that care about this. Nokia doesn't want 1%, they want a viable share of the world market. Making phones unlockable is not their priority and having it on Linux doesn't sell more phones than it being MS or Black Berry OS.
I love the fact that they released blue prints for 3d printers. This is without a doubt a marketing move but I have yet to see Apple do the same thing.
Though I'm not a fan of "the use it the way we intended, or die a death of 1,000 cuts through our inflexible configuration" mentality of Apple, they do make some awesome decisions when it comes to marketing. For quite some time they have been providing specs on their devices for case designers. I suspect this is to help encourage the whole Apple ecosystem. You can find all the specs over at the Apple Developers Page
A quick search over at The Thingiverse yields many printable cases based on these specs.
I wish other manufactuers such as Samsung, HTC and LG would release their designs specs. Instead I'm left here with my vernie calipers and a crapload of guessing.
CyanogenMod breathed a whole new life into my 2 year old Nexus one. It was snappier, appeared to get battery life and had a whole host of awesome new features. The only reason I finally upgraded to a newer phone was because the power button broke (again!) and the headphone jack wore out. If you're sitting on an older Android device, consider trying CM. It really turns your phone into a geeksphone.
And martian shadow. Also cool!
AFRAID NOT! Touchdown Confirmed!!