Many kinds of computer components have processors which contain nonfree preinstalled firmware that can be altered maliciously by anyone with bad intentions.

Some require the firmware to be signed with a particular key. In those, to alter the firmware maliciously requires the aid (willing or unwilling) of the manufacturer. Still not secure.

Real security requires that the device not allow modification of the firmware through the connectors for normal use of the device.

In Fiji, large trees protected crops from the wind and waves of a hurricane — in farms that had not cut the trees down.

(For reasons of tradition, the term "hurricane" is not used for storms in the South Pacific, but it's the same kind of storm.)

The US has blocked Eyal Weizman from visiting Miami to open an exhibit about his work. He leads Forensic Architecture, which investigates human rights violations world-wide.

The border thugs said that a computer program suggested he was a security threat. However, it was the humans who decided to heed that suggestion. They demand a list of all citizens of Syria, Iran, Iraq, Yemen or Somalia that he has met, and invite him to volunteer names of everyone else he knows who might perhaps be somehow suspect. In effect, "conduct a fishing expedition on yourself."

In the course of investigating human rights violations he has talked with witnesses from those countries, people of various political affiliations. To turn him into a US spy on all of them could benefit the US government, both by getting more information for its giant data bases, and by getting a lever with which to ruin his career at any time. It could use that lever to stop him from investigating human rights violations committed by the US.

He was wise to this danger, and refused to give the information.

In the past, being caught doing this would have chastened the US. The bullshitter will boast of having damaged two birds (human rights investigation, and justice) with one lie.

After the UK's exit from the European Union, Google plans to move the data about UK residents to the US. It will be able to do this because the GDPR will no longer apply

The GDPR are inherently weak, because they aim at "protection of data" already collected, rather than at preventing the collection of data about people's activities.

There is no time to wait for more data before taking action to prevent the insect apocalypse. The danger is desperately urgent.

When you need to stop the train before it runs off the broken bridge, you can't afford to spend a minute calculating precisely how hard to push the brakes.