I think that's less than constructive. We know that intelligence and law enforcement have significant issues with Tor [1] that mostly are overcome by people missing the point of what Tor does and having bad operational security in general.
Also, when parts of the government have attacked the security provided by Tor, it's been visible (and kind of hamhanded) [2].
I actually think the WIRED piece [1] to which OP refers does a good job of addressing this point. In particular, the WIRED article mentions PORTAL, a competing device called the SafePlug (which we did some research on to show that it does this job rather poorly), and something I'd never previously heard of called OnionPi.
Also, the article states very clearly states:
"If you use the same browser for your anonymous and normal Internet activities, for instance, websites can use “browser fingerprinting” techniques like cookies to identify you.", which is basically the point of this post.
The WIRED piece even goes further, offering the same solution as is offered in this piece:
"[an expert] suggests that even when routing traffic over Tor with Anonabox, users should use the Tor Browser, a hardened browser that avoids those fingerprinting techniques."
So while I understand the gripe that a transparent Torifying proxy doesn't necessarily do what you think it should, I would also praise WIRED for doing a pretty good job of handling these difficult and subtle issues in their article about the Anonabox.
I noticed this, too. I think it speaks less of spell checkers and more about Time's ability to do copy-editing.
If I submitted a piece to a major outlet such as this, I would do so in full faith that they would assign at least one person to read through it and copy-edit it before publication. Apparently, Time is not a sufficiently reputable institution of journalism to believe in doing this, or at least is unwilling to spend enough money to have it done by competent people.
EDIT: As for Janet's credibility, I can speak to it personally, having spent a year with her working down the hall from my office. Probably the coolest stuff she's done relates to how decisions are made in big teams of scientists (she studied the sociology of scientists running some Mars rover missions: http://janet.vertesi.com/projects/social-life-spacecraft).
I did not previously know that there was work suggesting that mining is naturally an oligopoly. People have suggested to me that mining may already be a monopoly and that this could have been going on for a long time, with a monopoly pool "laundering" its work through rented time on other pools. So there are definitely interesting questions to consider in this area, including questions about how a rational mining monopolist will want to behave.
Apparently, the hearing focused mostly on issues of the appropriateness of the venue and not much on the computer crime aspects. That means the appeals panel may not actually rule on the merits, but may dismiss the case on what amounts to "a technicality". That would leave the gray area of the form of the original ruling against Weev about what does or does not constitute a CFAA violation.
Chromebook owner here. I haven't been able to convince the data on my machine to function on the free plan yet this month, but I'd chalked it up to the 3g modem being mostly iffy anyway. Looking forward to watching this.
People keep telling me that research I'm doing with some friends overlaps with what these people are proposing, so I've spent a little time trying to figure out what they do and how they do it from their website. I haven't yet played with their client or anything like that.
I really can't see any substance here. The name is also sort of darkly humorous: they've clearly poured a lot of effort into (at least marketing) what they're doing, but have yet to realize that they're just tilting at windmills.
How about a simple antitrust argument: if Google wants to use their power in the browser market, where they have majority power, to dictate the shape of the online advertising market, I think DoJ would have a pretty slam dunk case. Especially since Microsoft would be happy to pay for the best lawyers out there to write all the briefs in the case.
