The UK has apparently ordered Apple to provide it a means of access to all cloud data they have -- including that of users outside the UK, such as in the United States.

Citing anonymous sources, the Post reported that the British government’s undisclosed order was issued last month. It reportedly requires Apple to give officials blanket capability to view fully encrypted material.

The error here is the claim that it is "fully encrypted" material.

As I have repeatedly noted over the years any encryption system in which other than you has the keying is not secure.  You are delegating that security to the other party (and they to you if it matters) each and every time you do that.

When you turn on a Google phone, for example, it does ask for a password.  But it boots without it, so the operating system itself will run without that and in addition forced updates can be taken.  Does this means the alleged "encryption" really is encryption with only you having the keying?

Not if it can be remotely unlocked, obviously; the keying is where the system can get to it.  Thus the "encryption" is in fact about as secure as a TSA-approved lock on a suitcase!

Now take something like Geli on a FreeBSD system.  If you attempt to boot such a machine you get a password prompt -- and there might be a second component required too (e.g. on a USB stick or "smart card.")  Without all the components there is no way to derive the key and that's that.

Now you can still presumably compromise the loader (e.g. when it asks for the password) since that has to load unencrypted, which is why systems implement various "secure boot" paradigms -- which attempt to detect tampering with the bootloader.  Those are not foolproof as if someone "with access" to sign a replacement bootloader does so you still get compromised -- when you key the password it can, of course, be stored.

Apple and Google have opted not to offer the choice to users of fully encrypted environments.  That is, the phone (or computer) won't boot without the password and there's no way to remotely -- or locally, via USB or otherwise, do anything about that because the entire storage other than, perhaps a signed loader, is encrypted.  That's still able to be compromised but its harder since now you have to get someone to run software that can grab and keep the keying information.

Modern encryption is very, very hard to actually break -- hard enough that for all intents and purposes the way you break it is by compromising the keying so you know what the key is.

Apple could have implemented their software in such a way that nobody other than you has the keying.  Of course if you lose the keying in that circumstance you're boned -- there's nothing you can do and all the data is irretrievably gone.  That's the price of such a decision of course, but its one users should have the capacity to make.

Had Apple done that then they could tell the UK "what you are ordering us to do is factually impossible as we don't have any of the keying nor can we acquire it -- this is intentional and we're not going to change said design."

That would leave the UK with only one option in that they could attempt to ban Apple from selling goods and services inside the UK but they cannot, as a nation, reach outside their territory with such an act since their sovereignty ends at their border.

This was the right choice originally before they got backed into a corner.

Well, maybe.

For decades, fusion researchers struggled with neutron isotropy, a key indicator of scalable plasma stability. Zap Energy’s latest results show its FuZE device avoids the pitfalls of past Z pinch failures, generating isotropic neutrons that confirm thermal fusion is occurring.

This is indeed a significant step forward.  This is sort of like the situation with fission in that there are two sorts of fission -- thermal and fast.  "Fast" reactors have no moderator and use the neutrons that are ejected by a fission event directly to cause the next fission.  "Thermal" reactors rely on a moderator; that thing (usually water or, in some designs graphite) slows down the neutrons into what is known as the "thermal" range.

The latter is much more effective at causing another fission than "fast" neutrons, thus you can make the core larger -- thus the usable size of the reactor goes up which is a good thing if you want to make lots of power or, in the alternative, you can make the entire thing smaller and more-stable if you don't need a really big one, but the minimum size goes up too (since you need the space for the moderator.)

Likewise with fusion; you want "thermal" fusion in that the neutrons emitted are coherent because that tells you the fusion that is occurring is due to the heat and pressure in the plasma rather than an isolated event from acceleration of the hydrogen (caused by, for example, striking it with a laser or injecting it via an accelerator.)

The problem is that they still generated the fusion using beam injection, so no, this isn't "imminent wildly-above unity" energy output.  That remains to be demonstrated; essentially to do so you have to show that what you're injecting is basically "make-up" for what is fusing rather than being the cause of the fusion.

Thus this is a step forward, but until you see demonstration of the latter imminent way-beyond-unity energy output (that is, much more than what you put in to cause the fusion) isn't on the immediate horizon.  Don't kid yourself on how far you have to go for that either; being "a bit" over unity is nowhere near useful fusion for (as an example) generating electricity -- you need to get wildly beyond the input power required for that to become practical.

But responsibility, ultimately, was the homeowner's.

The link is an interesting story of two people who bought what amount to nearly-identical value homes in the same place, and both were destroyed by the LA fires.

It is painted as a story of inequity and an insurance "crisis" -- but if you read carefully you'll discern an important difference:

There was another catch: Wilson said he couldn’t get comprehensive replacement cost coverage on the FAIR Plan because his roof was too old. Instead, he ended up with what is known as “actual cash value” coverage, which greatly limits the payout based on the physical depreciation of what was lost.

Rather than replace the roof he took the cheaper option, even though roofs are an item that wear out and insurance companies look very closely at that because water and wind damage from roof failures is one of the top causes of loss.

When I lived in Florida after Ivan we had the "pup company" and "secondary lines" issue already -- that is, there were many firm that wouldn't write on a home near the water at all, and those that did were typically smaller insurers.  I had an independent broker that shopped it on an annual basis and it had been stable for a fear years -- but suddenly, not.

This was the reason -- they were able to place it on the condition that I replaced my roof.  It was not leaking and on inspection it was considered serviceable, but to keep reasonable-cost coverage and not get forced into "actual cash value" my option was to replace it.

Was this "fair"?  Well, from my point of view perhaps not but the insurance company has data that is across their policy base that roofs that are older than "X" are more-likely to fail and if they do it will generate a large loss.  Therefore if you decide that your "30 year" roof must go 30 years because its not leaking now and the 30 years isn't up that's fine -- but the company is not going to take the risk without you paying for it.

I replaced the roof -- the difference in premium was recovered in three years.  Yeah, it was that large of a difference.

This guy didn't change the roof and instead made the decision to take the actual cash value policy, which sounded better at the time but now he's stuck with a large uninsured loss because the coverage is insufficient.

That's not the insurance company's fault, nor any result of a "crisis"; this was a gamble the homeowner took on his own initiative and made the decision, perhaps because he didn't have the funds to lay out for a roof replacement at the time.

Insurance companies are not charities.  If they have actuarial data and you try to force them to do things that will lead them to take losses across their policy base they'll go out of business and if that happens when there is a large disaster there's a risk you won't get paid in full.  That's far worse than paying higher premiums and of course that risk is most-evident not an individual claim (e.g. a fire in your home caused by an electrical defect) but rather when a widespread natural disaster, such as a hurricane or wildfire, occurs in your area.

This is one of the "gotchas" with rapidly-escalating values.  People seem to think that "higher home values are good!" but higher values mean higher payouts in the event of a total loss and of course that in turn is exactly reflected in insurance premiums.  All things being equal (e.g. same risk of the bad event) if your home value doubles, and that's in the building and not the land (which isn't destroyed if there's a fire) so will your homeowner's insurance price.  Note that when it comes to floods even the raw land value factors into that issue as well because there is a possibility that the land is worth much less or even an effective zero after a flood incident because rebuilding to current elevation requirements may be difficult or impossible -- and this is one of the reasons that floods are not covered by standard homeowner policies.

Incidentally the other "gotcha" in homeowner's policies -- particularly in areas such as LA -- is known as "Law and Ordinance."  That's usually rather small and cheap but if you live in an area with an activist legislature, whether it be at the state, county or local levels having modest limits there is extremely unwise; that is the coverage that pays out if code or other legal requirements mandate different materials or standards (e.g. solar must be on the roof) when rebuilding and, of course, the insurers are not stupid so that coverage is going to be pretty expensive if you live in a residence that does not already have these "newer" requirements and they get passed into law by your state or other officials.

So sayeth the BLS...

Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 143,000 in January, and the unemployment rate edged down to 4.0 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job gains occurred in health care, retail trade, and social assistance. Employment declined in the mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction industry.

Remember, this was before Trump's inauguration, so any impact from there forward is not in these numbers.  But also, as a serious confounder, is the "rebase" that occurs on the non-institutional working population every January.  And boy was that a whopper this time around, alleging more than three million not-counted people over the last 12 months were in fact present.

This has several impacts in the figures -- for one, it directly reduces the employment-population ratio, which means the previous ratios were wrong -- and looked better than they really were.  This is extremely important because of all the data in the labor report that is the single figure that tells you more about how sustainable the government's taxing and revenue structure is than anything else.  It was not just wrong, it was wildly inaccurate.

It also moves the unadjusted unemployment rate massively as well -- six full ticks from 3.8% to 4.4%.

But more to the point in addition to all that hours worked went down a tick and that directly resulted in negative changes in weekly check sizes across most of the subgroups in the report.

I won't bother ascribing motive; that's speculation and not the remit of this particular monthly column.  But this is a weak report both on its face and internally and in addition the UM consumer sentiment report was released which showed a full percentage point jump in inflation expectations in one month.  Unless my data set is wrong somewhere that has only happened once before -- simply put, people are expecting serious inflationary pressures in the economy -- and it is precisely that event that The Fed fears when attempting to provide "monetary stimulus" -- a disorderly change in perception of inflation over time.

Well, there it is, and this complicates the picture mightily on a forward basis.

PS: Don't expect more rate cuts.... not with this sort of set of reports.