The Obama Administration’s Frustrating NSA Week

While Congress and the nation at large have done little except talk and embark on preliminary legal skirmishes regarding the United States’ mass surveillance practices, the forces in favor of reform and change had a decent week. The Obama administration did not.

The president’s speech one week ago on proposed changes to NSA practices was met with skepticism. A sample headline detailing the response: “Jon Stewart skewers Obama’s vague, rambling NSA speech.” The Post was sedate but firm: “Obama goal for quick revamp of NSA program may be unworkable, some U.S. officials fear.”

If the president had hoped that his reform proposals — including mild curtailment of the phone metadata program, some sort of protection for the privacy of foreign citizens and the like — would placate those opposed to the NSA, he was certainly disappointed.

Praise could be found for the president, but in the form of a backhanded compliment. Republican Rep. Peter King was content with the speech, because it didn’t seem to propose meaningful change:

“I didn’t think any changes were called for, any so-called reforms, but the fact is the ones that the President made today are really minimal.

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The Frustrating, Impossible Beauty Of ‘The Perfect Setup’

Others with gadget addictions will know these feels: Most of my life is spent questing for the Perfect Setup. That means different things at different times to different people, of course, and especially when it comes to tech, the goal posts keep moving. But it can still happen, and when it does, it can make the whole frustrating journey seem worth it.

Recently, I achieved a kind of overarching, macro-level Perfect Setup, marking the first (and likely last) time I’ve ever done so. That means that it’s not just my office that’s ideally outfitted: the whole house, my car, everything about my tech life is exactly how I need it to accomplish everything I want to get done.

Hitting that kind of perfection is an odd thing – in many ways I’d come to accept that my quest was quixotic, and couldn’t actually culminate in anything resembling satisfaction. The gadget over will know that there’s a process of looking for product reviews on Amazon, The Wirecutter, and everywhere else on the web that arises for each new component or ingredient you find you need for your setup, and that new needs arise based on satisfying old ones, as each new piece of the puzzle opens up a new possibility tree with branches that themselves multiply when addressed and so on.

At least for a given person at a given time, however, I realized that it’s possible to answer all needs and not have any new ones, and at first of course it felt deflating: Pursuit of ever-better gadgets isn’t a quest taken lightly, and generally at best achieving perfection in one area (aka home office) just means refocusing on another (aka portable office). Also, it’s possible that the standards of the quester in this case changed, making perfection more achievable. But whatever the case, after the momentary panic of boredom, I took stock and found nothing lacking

It won’t last. Anything could upset the balance – a new product launch, a slight shift in job description and requirements, an unpleasant experience with some portion of my current setup. I’m okay with that, since the quest itself has been kind of the point for a long time. But I’m also increasingly comfortable with this new thing called satisfaction: Here’s hoping it sticks around for a while.

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Feedback Loop: frustrating applications, form factors vs. operating systems and more

BYDave Schumaker14 hours ago 0

Welcome to Feedback Loop, a weekly roundup of the most interesting discussions happening within the Engadget community. There's so much technology to talk about and so little time to enjoy it, but you have a lot of great ideas and opinions that need to be shared! Join us every Saturday as we highlight some of the most interesting discussions that happened during the past week.

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