I think that unfortunately that's ultimately what's going to happen. The latency between approval of road-going self-driving cars and ban on human driving is going to be a few years at most. In the name of safety we will lose whatever freedoms we still have.

I sympathize with your view, but I hope you're not fooling yourself that someone who actually wants to stand up for the little guy has any chance of being nominated. Warren is demonized as a left-wing nut, and the most extreme thing she tried to do was to lower the student loan rate to match that the Fed is giving to the banks. Someone should import a few real left-wing nuts, put them up in some reality TV show, just so people get some sense as to what that really means.

One of my favorite aviation stories!

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Yes, if there's any activity that promotes critical thinking it's painstaking and systematic reproduction and of pre-defined letter shapes.

Will they have a linux client?

Except most speed limits are complete bullshit, at least in the US.

There are highways in NYC that have a 40mph minimum and a 45 mph maximum. Think that has anything to do with the ability to fine pretty much anyone at any time?

Roads have pretty natural speed limits regardless of the imposed limit, and it would be trivial to figure them out by simply taking an average over the course of a few days. I would venture a guess for the majority of the highways it would be substantially higher than the posted limit.

Remember - speed doesn't kill... a line of courteous drivers, observing correct leading distance and allowing free merges can probably go 100+ on a modern road in modern cars. Recklessness, carelessness, and needless maneuvers is what kills, not to mention distraction and intoxication. Observe Germany's autobahns for an example,

I've been routinely photographing my rental cars pre- and post- rental. Haven't had the scam tried on me yet, but looking forward to suing the shit out of them when they do.

Yes, like keeping a fellow who illegally downloaded your copyrighted work locked up in jail for 10 years. Sure as hell will cost taxpayer a pretty penny.

I never understood the whole 'take your passport' thing. I was under impression that if I show up at the US embassy, say that I am a US citizen, that my passport was forcefully taken from me, and I want to go home, they'll go through some checks and give me the documents I need to go back. No?

Glad you're keeping things in perspective!

Actually, we'll just outlaw hobby drones. We can add that to outlawed real chemistry kits and outlawed lasers.

Remind me again, why doing this crazy rocket landing is better than using a parachute recovery like the shuttle boosters did?

RTFA please.
The description does indeed try to imply that the above is the case. But it's far from the truth, as much as internet armchair experts would like to believe.

The article itself appears to state that the problem was that 1) the initial advice was to wait, which after (appropriately) consulting with a number of experts they had done, and a followup showed progression. Even the first advice was not totally misplaced. Then what happened was that he suggested that the neurosurgeons basically invent a procedure specifically for him, and used 3D printing to create a model for them. The result was he did find someone willing to try (my guess is they refused the conventional approach) a less invasive procedure that removed 95% of the tumor. Now that may sound revolutionary, but neurosurgery is a tricky business, and depending on the tumor 95% may be equivalent to buying a little time while doing nothing at all, especially since they already knew that the tumor was growing aggressively. If the conventional approach would have had more of a chance of removing more of the tumor, possibly all of it with negative margins, that would be a far more definitive approach. Doctors aren't always right, but if you get a sufficiently experienced expert opinion, it'll usually reflect what is possible to do currently, with a reasonable margin of both safety and success.

Here's a link to the actual paper, and a pretty nice editorial from Science (as opposed to CBC).