Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who watches the watchmen?)
Who watches the watchmen? Apple vs. The FBI
The confrontation between the FBI and Apple over decrypting an Apple iPhone 5C used by Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the San Bernardino terrorists, who murdered fourteen and injured twenty two more on December 2, 2015, is a very interesting story. At first blush the story seems quite simple. The FBI clearly wants to know what is on Farook's phone, as it could potentially tell them if the terrorists had accomplices, as well as if they were in touch with other potential terrorists before the attack. Everyone involved (other than perhaps their accomplices if they exist) wants the FBI to get the information on the phone. In fact, Apple assisted the FBI in getting all the information backed up to iCloud, and offered advice on how to retrieve the data from the locked iPhone. That advice was simply to plug in the phone in the presence of a known WiFi network, which might have triggered an automatic backup to iCloud of the more recent data. This would not have been affective if Farook had disabled backups, but otherwise would have sent a backup to iCloud that Apple would have been able to provide the FBI. The reason this method didn't…
All men are, at times, influenced by inexplicable sentiments. Ideas haunt them in spite of all their efforts to discard them. Prepossessions are entertained, for which their reason is unable to discover any adequate cause. The strength of a belief, when it is destitute of any rational foundation, seems, of itself, to furnish a new ground for credulity. We first admit a powerful persuasion, and then, from reflecting on the insufficiency of the ground on which it is built, instead of being prompted to dismiss it, we become more forcibly attached to it.
An infographic for the keyboard-obsessed
The web site Go Mechanical Keyboard just released the results of their semi-annual keyboard survey in the form of a very nice infographic, which I've displayed below. You can view the raw data online if you want. 950 people responded from 49 different countries. You need to be a bit obsessed with keyboards to understand everything in the infographic, although if you've been following my other posts on keyboards you should get most of it. Form factor? See my post "How many keys are there on a keyboard?". Switch types? See my recent post "A keyboard with swappable switches" where I change the switches that came with the keyboard. What do you think about the infographic?