Isaiah Berlin:

If these ultimate human values by which we live are to be pursued, then compromises, trade-offs, arrangements have to be made if the worst is not to happen.

You must believe me, one cannot have everything one wants -- not only in practice, but even in theory. The denial of this, the search for a single, overarching ideal because it is the one and only true one for humanity, invariably leads to coercion. And then to destruction, blood -- eggs are broken, but the omelette is not in sight, there is only an infinite number of eggs, human lives, ready for the breaking. And in the end the passionate idealists forget the omelette, and just go on breaking eggs.

Joshua Green on President Obama:

The crisis required more of him than he seemed to recognize. But he was hampered by the same things that have plagued him all along: a liberal technocrat's excess of faith in government's ability to solve problems and an unwillingness or inability to demonstrate the forcefulness Americans expect of their president in an emergency.

Frank Chimero:

Continually attempting to manage too much isn't the mark of grace, it's the sign of a dumbass.

Steve Jobs:

How many things have you said no to?

Rory Stewart:

"Transparent, predictable, and accountable financial practices" were not a solution to corruption; they were simply a description of what was lacking. But policymakers never realized how far from the mark they were. This is partly because most of them were unaware of even a fraction of the reality described in Anand Gopal's book. But it was partly also that they couldn't absorb the truth, and didn't want to. The jargon of state-building, "capacity-building," "civil society," and "sustainable livelihoods" seemed conveniently ethical, practical, and irrefutable. And because of fears about lost lives, and fears about future terrorist attacks, they had no interest in detailed descriptions of failure: something had to be done, and failure was simply "not an option."

We invested $100 billion a year, deployed 130,000 international troops, and funded hundreds of thousands of Sunni Arab militiamen. And the problem has returned, six years later, larger and nastier.

Adam Piore:

About 57 percent of Americans reported buying lottery tickets in the last 12 months, according to a recent Gallup study.

Misha Lepetic:

And so we have turned a full circle of cartographic irony: from speculative maps that included places that never existed, to objective maps that show us places that no longer exist, but pretend as if they do.

Dexter Filkins:

At a meeting in early October, 2001, the lead Iranian negotiator stood up and slammed a sheaf of papers on the table. "If you guys don't stop building these fairy-tale governments in the sky, and actually start doing some shooting on the ground, none of this is ever going to happen!" he shouted. "When you're ready to talk about serious fighting, you know where to find me." He stomped out of the room.

At one point, the lead negotiator handed Crocker a map detailing the disposition of Taliban forces. "Here's our advice: hit them here first, and then hit them over here. And here's the logic." Stunned, Crocker asked, "Can I take notes?" The negotiator replied, "You can keep the map."

Azan Ahmed:

The Taliban are back, but the cavalry will not be coming.

In new figures released this week, the Defense Ministry said that 950 soldiers had been killed from March to August, the worst rate of the 13-year war. The police, the first line of defense against most attacks, have registered even more devastating numbers: 2,200 dead during the same period, also a record.

David Bromwich:

We have acquired an irrepressible eagerness to watch the lives of others. We pay to be the spectators of our own loss of privacy.

Decius:

One must assume that all garbage is monitored by the state. Anything less would be a pre-9/11 mentality.

Paul Lewis and Dominic Rushe:

The trend toward anonymity in social media has some privacy experts concerned about security.

Ajit Pai:

Hmm. A government-funded initiative is going to "assist in the preservation of open debate" by monitoring social media for "subversive propaganda" and combating what it considers to be "the diffusion of false and misleading ideas"?

Anna Sauerbrey:

The German voter-consumer will always trust the state more than he will any private company, no matter how ardently it insists on being a good guy.

Landon Fuller:

If you've upgraded to Mac OS X Yosemite (10.10) and you're using the default settings, each time you start typing in Spotlight (to open an application or search for a file on your computer), your local search terms and location are sent to Apple and third parties (including Microsoft).

Craig Timberg:

Apple has chosen to not alert users when the [Yosemite] operating system itself transmits their locations, as Spotlight now does. Apple officials said that too many notifications could de-sensitize users.

Cora Currier:

The simplest way to avoid physical tracking of your cellphone by ad networks is to turn off your Wi-Fi and Bluetooth when out walking around.

Evgeny Morozov:

When, in 1975, Stafford Beer argued that "information is a national resource," he was ahead of his time in treating the question of ownership -- just who gets to own the means of data production, not to mention the data? -- as a political issue that cannot be reduced to its technological dimensions.

Taylor Swift:

I have to stop myself from thinking about how many aspects of technology I don't understand.

Evgeny Morozov:

Now any aspiring startup can rely on Verizon's infrastructure of ubiquitous connectivity and geolocational tracking to match supply and demand, with Verizon itself providing lucrative verification and locking services. Verizon hopes to eventually extend this model far beyond cars, making it possible to swap any other items fitted with an electronic lock: power drills, laptops, apartments. Verizon -- hardly a Silicon Valley pioneer -- thus joins many other champions of the "sharing economy" in insisting that "people today are embracing a sharing society -- the one that allows them to get what they want on demand". Gone are the burdens of ownership!

Katie Hetter:

A federal investigation of the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center in Nashville found that Marriott employees had used "containment features of a Wi-Fi monitoring system" at the hotel to prevent people from accessing their own personal Wi-Fi networks.

Eric Schmidt:

If your strategy is to prevent your customer from leaving you, you probably shouldn't have had those customers in the first place.

B. Lynn Ingram, a professor of earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Berkeley:

We are on track for having the worst drought in 500 years.

James Hamblin:

Eighty-two percent of the world's almonds come from California.

Each almond requires 1.1 gallons of water to produce.

Despite the severe drought, as of June 30, California's Department of Agriculture projected that almond farmers will have their largest harvest to date.

Eduardo Porter:

Despite California's distress, about half of the homes in the capital, Sacramento, still don't have water meters, paying a flat fee no matter how much water they consume. Farmers in California's Imperial Irrigation District pay $20 per acre-foot, less than a tenth of what it can cost in San Diego. San Diego is building the nation's biggest desalination plant to produce fresh water at a cost of about $2,000 per acre-foot. But alfalfa growers in Southern California last year used hundreds of billions of gallons growing alfalfa that might fetch at best $340 a ton, or $920 per acre-foot of water.

Rory Stewart:

"It's like they're coming in and saying to you, 'I'm going to drive my car off a cliff. Should I or should I not wear a seatbelt?' And you say, 'I don't think you should drive your car off the cliff.' And they say, 'No, no, that bit's already been decided -- the question is whether to wear a seatbelt.' And you say, 'Well, you might as well wear a seatbelt.' And then they say, 'We've consulted with policy expert Rory Stewart and he says ...'"

Decius:

Sometimes the market drives off a cliff.

Maciej Ceglowski:

If you've ever wondered why Facebook is such a joyless place, even though we've theoretically surrounded ourselves with friends and loved ones, it's because of this need to constantly be wearing our public face. Facebook is about as much fun as a zoning board hearing.

Mike Isaac:

Facebook is working on a stand-alone mobile application that allows users to interact inside of it without having to use their real names, according to two people briefed on Facebook's plans, who spoke on the condition of anonymity ...

America's finest news source:

Facebook also confirmed that the company would begin covering the costs of a procedure that involves freezing a female employee's husband until he is emotionally prepared to be a father.

Matt Levine:

A bank is a collection of reasonable guesses about valuation. It is a purely statistical process. There is no objective reality. Did Bank of America make money last quarter? Maybe! It's an ever-so-slightly biased coin flip. Banks are magic, and if you look too hard at how the magic happens, you might stop believing in it.

James Kwak:

For the banks, of course, this is the most advanced and effective regulatory capture possible. No one has to be paid off, no one has to break the law, and no one asks too many questions.

Nolan McCarty:

Goldman Sachs is a large and complex firm that makes large and complex deals and investments in a large number of complex markets. A partial solution to this problem is to increase the number of [Fed] examiners and pay the premium needed to attract talent and expertise to the Fed. But the better solution is to make banks smaller and less complex. The increase in transparency will lead to better regulation all around.

David Sanger:

JPMorgan's security team, which first discovered the attack in late July, managed to block the hackers before they could compromise the most sensitive information about tens of millions of JPMorgan customers. The attack was not completely halted until the middle of August and it was only in recent days that the bank began to tally its full extent.

The attack came after a recent turnover within JPMorgan's information security group.

Maria Konnikova:

Humans are highly fallible; systems, much less so. Yet, as automation has increased, human error has not gone away.

Andrea Peterson and Craig Timberg:

In an era of soaring national investment in cyber-security, the weakest link often involves the inherent fallibility of humans.

James Comey:

My goal is to urge our fellow citizens to participate in a conversation as a country about where we are, and where we want to be, with respect to the authority of law enforcement.

Ali Winston and Darwin Bond Graham:

Across the nation, private foundations are increasingly being tapped to provide police with technology and weaponry that -- were it purchased with public money -- would come under far closer scrutiny. In Atlanta, the police foundation has bankrolled the surveillance cameras that now blanket the city, as well as the center where police officers monitor live video feeds.

Police boosters say there's no need for public debate over these types of acquisitions.

Dan Geer:

Things that need no appropriations are outside the system of checks and balances.

James Comey:

I want to make sure I have every lawful tool available to keep you safe ...

Steve Jobs:

How many things have you said no to?

Frank Chimero:

Remember your reasons, so your noes mean no and your yeses mean yes. If yes, understand the cost, accept it, and go forth. This is the antidote to the whiplash of modern life, to automatic and unchecked desire, to the anxiety created by spinelessness. A person must know what's enough, and stand beside the choice.

Paul Ford:

You could connect to other computers on the Internet and use them as if you were right in front of them. I remember finding out about this and being incredibly freaked out. I remain freaked out.

Derek Brink:

Very much like the thin blue line of law enforcement or the thin red line of firefighters, the thin digital line of cybersecurity professionals will increasingly be recognized and appreciated as an important and meaningful vocation.

Evgeny Morozov:

While cybernetic feedback loops do allow us to use scarce resources more effectively, the easy availability of fancy thermostats shouldn't prevent us from asking if the walls of our houses are too flimsy or if the windows are broken ...

Jessy Irwin:

By preying on the absolute worst fears of administrators and parents across the country, technology companies are earning millions of dollars selling security "solutions" that do not accurately address the threat model these tools claim to dispel.

Symantec:

Managed security services is projected to be a $10 billion market by 2018 growing at a 30% CAGR from 2013 to 2018.