Hmm... That would be good news, but it is not how I read that footnote. *fingers crossed*

The only sad thing I see is that there is no retina display for a 13" :( It might indicate that they are getting ready to have only one Pro model, the 15". Perhaps next year they will decide they have gotten the 13" Air powerful enough to drop the 13" Pro. It would be an interesting move, but it might make sense.

Did not see that until now. That kind of stings. Looks like I won't be seeing any native turn-by-turn directions for a long time (I have no good reason to replace my perfectly functional iPhone 4).

I am quite excited about a proper do not disturb setting. I do not get interrupted at night very often, but I am quite unhappy when I do.

This lets you use pre-written texts, which should cut down on time-to-reply quite a bit. It should be useful if you are in a position where you cannot spend time looking at your phone, but do not want a call to go completely unanswered.

Another addition: The Apple Store now shows a backlit keyboard for the 11" model. I am pretty sure they did not have that before (although I could be misremembering).

I'm not saying it isn't done (i actually mentioned a case of it being done), but it does seem that the organization as a whole puts very little focus on such skills, and many people get through time in the Girl Scouts without encountering them.

I am with you on that. The problem is Girl Scouts (the organization), not the article. I was a Boy Scout, and my mother was a Girl Scout leader. She would regularly have me come in and teach her girls things like knife use, knots, and fire starting. It turns out that Girl Scouting generally just does not see these as…

What is wrong with the birthday thank you? Someone took polite, but not particularly personal, action of wishing you a happy birthday. You return with the polite, but not particularly personal, action of thanking them for the consideration. If you get bent out of shape because someone thanks others for wishing them…

Yeah, so what we are now being told is that is is not right to post meaningful, life-changing information that others would like to know. Good to know the internet has actual value in our lives...

So it is safe for him to drunkenly take a motorized vehicle of some sort into the path of bicycle traffic? He is more likely to kill or injure cyclist than a driver.

Ah, I am wrong then. I moved to CA recently and have not gotten all the traffic rules straight yet (Not that I feel compelled to ride my bike around here drunk... Seems like a good way to lose my head.)

At first I was impressed that MI6 is one big Faraday cage. Then I thought about all the buildings I have been in that seem to be Faraday cages by no one's intention, and it stopped seeming so incredible.

It's a weird state thing. In NY you cannot get a DUI on a bicycle, but you can in CA (although I am pretty sure it does not effect your license). I think in some states it depends on the definition of "vehicle" or "motor vehicle" so they might be able to count a motorized wheelchair in the normal law.

I suppose. It might depend on what we are discussing specifically. The view of my yard from the air is not something I care so much about. For other people, it might be a more serious invasion of privacy. Privacy itself is a bit of a tricky constitutional right, not being defined explicitly, but being created by…

Insect and bacteria breeding experiments allow for very rapid development of traits, more on the order of months instead of years. Add in direct genetic modification to guide these developments and an organism like a sponge that is extremely simple and you are likely to look at relatively short time frames to develop…

Evolution is the modification of traits in a population through natural selection. While I agree with you that breeding is a more accurate term for the mosquito example, speciation is in no way equivalent to evolution. It would be more accurate to consider speciation to be one of the long term effects of evolutionary…

Sure, but domestication takes very little time. The changes that have occurred to cows, dogs, and other domesticated animals over the course of a few thousand years would have taken hundreds of thousands naturally, and that is not even using modern techniques.

I am not saying it is write or wrong, I am just saying the drones are nothing new: We already are subject to observation from the sky without a warrant. The X-ray goggles notion would likely be treading new territory, because it would run afoul to the discussion of "reasonable expectation of privacy".

The cases you just described are perfectly legal and currently in use. A quick Google search turned up the following supreme court case, in which observation from public airspace was considered legal without a warrant: