This is the bi-weekly visible open thread. There are hidden threads every few days here. Post about anything you want, ask random questions, whatever. Also:

1. Many comments worthy of highlighting this week. First this thread on why banning encryption won’t prevent terrorism, since sufficiently smart terrorists could use steganography – especially Izaak’s demonstration of such. Second, baconbacon discusses different ways people he knows do or don’t save money, but see also Jeysiec notes that all of this discussion savings can be moot when poor people don’t get significant amounts of money in the first place. Finally, Patjab gives more details on the background of Ken Livingstone and British anti-Semitism, and Dan Simon has an unusual theory of scandal.

2. There is a new ad on the sidebar this week: apply to work for Qualia. Or maybe you already work for Qualia and don’t know it yet. Maybe you have no private knowledge about whether you work for Qualia or not. Maybe you think that all of your friends work for Qualia, but they don’t work for Qualia at all and only say that they do. Maybe there is no difference even in principle between working for Qualia and not working for Qualia. Maybe working for Qualia is just a complicated way of describing the fact that you work for certain mechanical and biology companies – or was that information processing companies? I don’t know. Perhaps checking out their jobs page will shed light on some of these mysteries.