I find R's syntax really annoying for actually doing anything. So I do all the data acquisition, manipulation, etc. in Python and use the RPy2 bridge to just run the actual analysis in R. Best of both worlds.

Human experimentation without review board approval and informed consent violates a number of national and international laws. It doesn't matter whether anyone gets hurt.

Learn to sleep on planes. It changes your life.

I pretty much automatically fall asleep when I sit down now. Usually open my eyes for the takeoff, then fall asleep again well before cruising altitude.

It's actually a challenge staying awake part of the flight while flying west to prevent jet lag.

I've gone out scanning for APs. Recording SSIDs and data packets are COMPLETELY different things. You don't "inadvertently" do the second while doing the first. In fact, actually connecting to the APs just slows your entire operation down.

And there are laws specifically against recording unencrypted signals emanating from someone's house (the wiretap laws in question). What's your point? The taking pictures through your window analogy is pretty much exactly what happened.

Google didn't just scan SSIDs like a regular war driver would, they connected to the APs and recorded traffic. That's not just "oopsie, it was an accident."

The next one will be automated "city cars" built by Google, that will pickup and drop off people at work and take them shopping and whatnot.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves, such a car has yet to be demonstrated. Google's demo vehicles are incapable of taking riders anywhere apart from a set track of stops, like a Disneyworld people-mover ride.

There's still probably a need in some cities for street-hail livery, which is what classic yellow cabs are -- in NY you can wait 5-10 minutes for the Uber or hail a cab in 30 seconds, and frankly the cabbie will be less of a pain -- my experience with Uber drivers in Manhattan has been a pretty mixed bag. As long as humans are doing the driving it might still be advisable for the drivers to get background checks and have commercial licensing and insurance, such things are prudent and won't kill the magic free market pixies that flutter about e-hailed car services.

As I understand it, city governments have a few simple problems with Uber-

1) Ubers can avoid poor neighborhoods at will, and there's really nothing the city can do about it. I live in LA, and if you live in, say, Watts, you must call a cab if you want a car, no Uber will find you there, because it's "the ghetto" and there's never an Uber within 20 minutes. Taxis can be and are required to pick up from all parts of the city, and their statistics are closely monitored by regulators to make sure they do.

2) Uber's trip pricing structure is very free-markety but it conflicts with most city's basic taxi regs, wherein a trip's price is a fixed formula of distance and time, no special charge for time of day or pickup/destination location. Uber can't provide this, because they use rate premiums to recruit drivers. Again the system is completely open to various kinds of discrimination, and the pricing process is completely private and not open to any sort of public accountability or scrutiny -- even they drivers, who are nominally the service providers ("Uber is not a transportation company"), can't control it.

3) These of course lead to the more philosophical dispute, namely, Uber handles the hailing, transaction processing, driver and rider ratings, and branding of the interaction, but whenever there's any sort of trouble, Uber can vehemently claim they have nothing to do with the driver or the ride, that it's none of their business, and governments and harmed parties must direct all their laws and lawsuits at little sole proprietors. This is a little too clever by half for some people and while following the letter of the law tends to skirt the equities a little too close.

All of this is totally fine as long as e-hail livery is a "premium" service, but some cities rely on taxis as a critical part of the transport infrastructure, and that's when price disparities and availability blackouts start to be problematic, politically.

Also, what problems does it solve exactly?

It is yet another attempt by Rails developers to construct a web app IDE that squares with their idealism.

We used to think something like a simple text web search was "too impercise" and you needed a hierarchical organization or semantic web to organize information on the Internet...

When the domain is restricted natural language can be quite sufficient- SHRDLU had a workable natural language system in the 1960s, and the relevant Siri/Android solutions today are quite up to the task of creating and copying logical objects, selection by attribute, transformation...

And, this will do nothing at all to fight addiction.

Nope, but it will save lives from overdoses.

There's a line of reasoning that's somewhat common, it goes: "We should never do anything altruistic ever, because it will create a moral hazard, and the mere potential of moral hazard is always worse than concrete good." Similar arguments are used against drugs that treat opiate overdoses, and relatedly, drugs used to fight alcoholism. Some of this is bound up in the idea that addiction is a moral or character failing, or strictly a psychological disorder that can only be treated with therapy and "getting to the real problem," and anything else we do is simply palliative and forestalls treating the "real" problem.

To your point, what needs to be done is a real epidemiological study, to see if people really end up taking more drugs, or if the trauma of OD'ing, being revived by the paramedics and spending a week in the ER with heroic interventions isn't sufficient to make some people hit bottom and scare them straight.

What's a secretary?

He is confirming that he is a self-absorbed narcissist with an inflated sense of self-confidence who has no remorse.

So basically he's just a Wall Street bankster, but with Bitcoins.

Americans don't seem to like independents. They usually don't vote for them, and there seem to be laws to try to discourage them. Perhaps the ones in power want to stay that way so they pass whatever laws they think they can get away with to keep challengers at bay.

Actually, research suggests that once you have enough basic funds to get yourself on the radar, more doesn't make much difference at all. The biggest factor in swaying elections is the candidate's personal attractiveness. Mostly visual.

I'm going to cherry pick a bit on your absentee list. Domestic spying? Your republic will boldly march on. Wait, you don't like the idea of being spied upon in America, land of the free? Is it really that different to propose laws (from an extreme religious motivation) that control women's fertility and ban stem cell research? Or the biggest one of all, put a discriminatory, rights-removing amendment in the constitution of the United States itself?

Sure, nobody actually runs a Turing test. It's too hard. If a real Turing test were ever passed there wouldn't be any dispute. They're ALL restricted versions where the judges go easy on the computers.

The 13 year old gambit isn't the problem though (it's the judges). In fact, it suggests all sorts of strategies for the judges to trip up the computer. I just had a quick conversation with Eugene where I told him a story about a pretty girl asking a guy to go to the movies, and the two of them sitting right at the back. He changed the subject. Obviously not a 13 year old boy.

I agree with you, a proper Turing test is the best, possibly the only way we currently have to assess an AI. But if you have a computer that you think is at the level of a five year old, for example, find some child psychologists and let them talk to it and some real five year olds. Or thirteen year olds. Or adults. Age doesn't matter.