Fotoshop by Adobé from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.

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This story is another example of the central complaint against financial companies. They occupy a place in society in which they are a trusted part of our infrastructure. We allow many of our creditors to debit our bank accounts freely because we trust them not to simply steal our money without justification…

Nobody minds banks and creditors being greedy. But we can’t live with big firms simply taking money out of bank accounts for no reason, and daring people to sue to get the money back. That’s theft by bureaucratic force, not mere greed.

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And this is a bit subjective, but isn’t it awesome how Romney’s lack of empathy shines through? He evidently has no sense of what it’s like NOT to be the very wealthy son of an already wealthy father; no idea how the fear of unemployment or medical bills afflicts ordinary Americans.

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Mike Cardwell claims that T-Mobile UK are silently disrupting VPNs and secure connections to mail-servers, using packet-injection techniques more often found in the Great Firewall of China. He documents his findings in detail, and has found someone on the T-Mobile customer forums who claims that a senior technician there stated that it was a deliberate policy decision at T-Mobile to keep mail from being sent through any servers apart from their own.

The consequence of this is that you must communicate over T-Mobile’s 3G network in a way that allows them to snoop on you and read your email. And since 3G security has been compromised for years, it also means anyone within range of your cell tower can also snoop on you. Mike borrowed techniques from those who fight the Great Firewall of China to build a system that lets him tunnel securely and keep his sensitive data secret, but unless you run your own servers, you’re screwed if you’re a T-Mobile customer.

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Apple and RIM have denied providing the Indian government with backdoor access to customers’ data, after the release of a memo that appears to suggest that they and Nokia did a deal in exchange for access to the Indian smartphone market.

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When John McCain joined Mitt Romney on the campaign trail this week, he brought with him something unfamiliar in this year’s race: laughter. Following former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu at a rally on Wednesday, McCain said it reminded him of his favorite joke about governors: “There were two inmates in the chow line in the state prison and one of them turned to the other and said the food was a lot better in here when you were governor.”

A remarkable fact about the 2012 Republican presidential campaign is that it is not funny. Republican candidates give speech after speech and draw only a handful of chuckles, and the occasional wry smile. This makes for boring politics, but it also makes for bad politics. People want to like politicians they vote for and a smile helps with that. Laughter is also an effective tool for undermining your opponents and spreading your message with voters.

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Am I helping myself by using three numbers in a four-digit code?

There are 4! = 24 possible ways a password can be formed from four distinct and known numbers. Will using just three numbers increase the number of possibilities?

The surprising answer is that yes, it does.