Tuesday Miscellany! (#Syria #NSA #FISA #Oil #Zimmerman #Spiri #Kickstarter)

• Syria has apparently agreed to Russia's deal and the United States is cautiously embracing it. Hopefully this means that we can avoid further American entanglement in the Syrian civil war.


• The NSA is, reportedly, going to release some of the secret FISA court opinions to the ACLU. I'm taking this with a grain of salt, since the NSA is apparently not obligated to disclose all the rulings, even in heavily redacted form. Meaning, the ACLU will probably end up with an incomplete and possibly misleading picture instead of no picture at all.


• The oil choke collar is asserting itself again.


• Why are the major news media so uninformative, and often seem so clueless? The depressing reason why is here.


• Shellie Zimmerman now claims that her husband George did not threaten her. Hence no charges will be filed. What remains unchanged is that he's still an idiot and the pro-gun side should still disavow him.


• The Spiri kickstarter has met its funding goal. I'm getting a robot! Yippie!

Dear #Apple, do you know what you can do with that fingerprint sensor? | #iPhone #LackOfSunshine

Quoting NBC News's coverage of Apple's unveiling of the latest iPhone:

This phone has had a massive overhaul inside the case, despite its cosmetic similarity to its predecessor: A new camera, core chipset, motion processing system, even a fingerprint scanner for security and ease of use.

Got that? They just want to store your fingerprints on their device. It's as secure as a passcode because you only leave them around every time you touch something and they're really hard to change. It's good security. Really. Trust them.