Each time an order comes in, Modi rolls physical dice and looks up the words in a printed copy of the Diceware word list. She writes—by hand—the corresponding password string onto a piece of paper and sends it by postal mail to the customer.

"People are worried that I will take your passwords, but in reality I won’t be able to remember them," she told Ars. "But I don’t store them on any computer anywhere. As far as I know there is only one copy of your password."

He had collapsed and was lying unconscious in aisle A-215, beneath shelves stocked with Tupperware and heating pads.

In the years since Amazon became the symbol of the online retail economy, horror stories have periodically emerged about the conditions at its warehouses—workers faced with near-impossible targets, people dropping on the job from heat or extreme fatigue.

In the event of a health issue, Amazon instructs workers to notify security before calling emergency services. An employee brochure from a facility in Tennessee, obtained through a public records request, reads: “In the event of a medical emergency, contact Security. Do Not call 911! Tell Security the nature of the medical emergency and location. Security and/or Amcare will provide emergency response."

Less than 24 hours after Ahmed met President Obama at the White House, the family issued a news release saying, "After careful consideration of all the generous offers received, we would like to announce that we have accepted a kind offer from Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development (QF) for Ahmed to join the prestigious QF Young Innovators Program, which reflects the organization's on-going dedication to empowering young people and fostering a culture of innovation and creativity."

The reason for the change is threads like this one, in which posters suggest that “'bro' has a gender problem” and “comes of[f] misogynistic and unprofessional due to the world it lives in.”

To many, “bro”, just means brother. To others, the word's been adopted as a prefix in the term ““brogrammer” that denotes macho programmers who bring sexist attitudes into the workplace and make life difficult for women in technology-heavy workplaces.

Other major American tech firms—including Cisco, Google, Hewlett-Packard, and Oracle—are among the largest companies that are using legal but questionable tax tricks to keep money overseas and effectively pay little to no American federal corporate taxes.

"Losing $90 billion of potential tax revenues every year is a very big deal," Neil Buchanan, a professor at George Washington University, said by e-mail.

In July 2014, Ars also reported that Google Ireland Limited paid an effective tax rate of just 0.16 percent on €17 billion ($22.8 billion) revenue in 2013.

Smartphone users can do "very little" to stop security services getting "total control" over their devices, US whistleblower Edward Snowden has said.

Mr Snowden also explained that the SMS message sent by the agency to gain access to the phone would pass unnoticed by the handset's owner.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the UK government said: "It is long-standing policy that we do not comment on intelligence matters.

Artists in Helsinki will hit play on a 1000-year-long animated GIF loop in an homage to Cage’s piece. Titled “AS Long As Possible,” the work features 48,140,288 frames, and unlike Cage’s it has a designated speed and no end: each frame will last for about 10 minutes, so the file will reach its end only in the year 3017 — until it loops back to frame number one.

No matter its display method, however, the artists will store a mother file somewhere and create many iterations of the loop in various locations — and if one fails, it may be easily synchronized with, and replaced by, another.

Newspapers in Germany are reporting that Bosch (the company that supplies electronics to the auto industry) warned VW only to use the cheat mode internally back in 2007, and that a whistleblower tried to raise the alarm internally in 2011.

VW has lost its chairman, a big chunk of market value, and probably the trust of many customers.

Here was a simple aim at the heart of the top-secret program: Record the website browsing habits of “every visible user on the Internet.”

The mass surveillance operation — code-named KARMA POLICE — was launched by British spies about seven years ago without any public debate or scrutiny.

One system builds profiles showing people’s web browsing histories. Another analyzes instant messenger communications, emails, Skype calls, text messages, cell phone locations, and social media interactions. Separate programs were built to keep tabs on “suspicious” Google searches and usage of Google Maps.

Other websites listed as “sources” of cookies in the 2009 document (see below) are Hotmail, YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, WordPress, Amazon, and sites operated by the broadcasters CNN, BBC, and the U.K.’s Channel 4.

A sophisticated software algorithm on certain Volkswagen vehicles detects when the car is undergoing official emissions testing, and turns full emissions controls on only during the test.

This results in cars that meet emissions standards in the laboratory or testing station, but during normal operation, emit nitrogen oxides, or NOx, at up to 40 times the standard.