I like the idea of digital chaff: publishing huge amounts of completely erroneous information about yourself and everyone else means that no one knows what to believe anymore.

Shouldn't a service like this exist?

What would this look like? Maybe a bot that went to dodgy sites, and signed up for accounts in your name, with random-but-valid data?

Maybe it would go into comment threads, Google the title, and post a blurb paragraph from a top result? Use karma and elastic search to machine learn which sites and topics to post?

It might even respond to questions with the specific random data for that site from when it signed up, to keep it consistent.

I mean, what you describe is most comments on Youtube or anywhere really. Can't we just pay a measly sum to some troll and let them run loose with a bot network conditioned on the fever-rants of 4chan/b/? Would this make the net worse? Could we tell?

What happened to "Don't be Evil"?

The article seems to suggest that low interest rates are the cause of high house prices: it argues that house price inflation is out-of-control, but could be brought under control with higher rates.

This would certainly deter buy-to-let landlords. But, given that the world generally is doing quantitative-easing and 0% rates or lower, this would be a very contrary position for the UK to adopt.

What would be the implications of that policy? I can't believe it hasn't already be considered. So why has it been dismissed?

Indeed. Interest rates affect (a) asset prices and (b) business investment.

Low rates are supposed to affect the economy to increase inflation through (b): businesses buying inventory, building factories, developing new products, etc. This "transmission mechanism" is now broken because there is a shortage of suitable demand. Businesses do not want to borrow to expand because there is no good prospect of a return on the expansion. So we can't push on that rope.

Low rates caused a property boom which resulted in a temporary economic boost to several European countries (especially Spain and Ireland): the cheap money ended up in the pockets of construction workers, who spent it.

We need some means of diverting the cheap money from (a) to (b). Possibly a tax on leverage, if that's feasible.

In the short term, the UK should get a proper property tax and apply punitive rates to property owned by non-EU individuals or companies.

Is there literally no other way that the FBI could get the data off the phone?

I'm sure they could download the memory, stick it all in some kind of iOS VM and try every 4-digit PIN in no time, all without worrying that the phone would self-destruct.

Couldn't they?

No. Flash memory is encrypted with a key that is derived not only from the PIN but also an ID that is fused into the device when it is manufactured. If we exclude the possibility of a backdoor there is no way to retrieve this ID expect from the silicon itself.

Encryption keys are stored unencrypted in RAM, but only as long as the device is active. RAM loses it's content quickly when it is not refreshed every few micro seconds. Moreover the RAM in the iPhone is a package on package design which makes it hard to connect to it.

This reminds me a lot of Lotus Notes. Which I guess is no bad thing: it was an amazing environment to work in.

Would it be fair to characterize this as a re-invention of that, or are there significant differences I'm overlooking?

Notes wasn't without it's problems though: version control and data typing being two important ones.

Yes the value of notional sizes of derivative trades have little to do with either their actual values (which net to zero for all the parties involved), their risk or the amount of capital actually involved.