Yay! If we could squash HIV maybe we can finally stop using it as a weak excuse for circumcision. (Don't get me wrong, obviously HIV is a bigger problem than circumcision but it'd be a nice side effect)

What's next for slashdot? Will we have breaking news stories about Nigerian princes, forced to flee their homes, who just need a bank account to store their millions?

Microsurgery. Suuuure... that's why they were researching "soft tentacle" technology. I can't think of any other use.

The way youtube suggests videos very much generates an echo chamber (in my personal experience based entirely on anecdotal evidence). Perhaps facebook story selection has a similar effect but, to me, it's far less visible than it is on youtube.

Can anyone comment intelligently on how this law compares with the laws that apply to existing, traditional taxi services? I'm a fan of Uber but I don't want to be an ignoramus up in arms about laws which may compare fairly with laws applying to other people in the same industry.

...the answer isn't bitches?

Buy your kid a cheap robot like a Sphero or Ollie. These are adorable rolling robots. You can program simple macros with a drag and drop interface. If you want to go a little farther you can write BASIC programs as well. Both of these languages have access to all the good sensor information and motor/light controls. Something about actual physical feedback makes programming seem a lot more real to kids.

That's just not true. Much of the "new right" including the libertarians are very concerned about privacy. They are at least as concerned as the left. In fact, many of them seem to frequent this site.

Privacy is NOT largely a concern of the left. Yes, the left is concerned. So are the libertarians and much of the "new right". In fact, quite a few them seem to spend time on this site.

Correction StringBuilder performance would be amortized O(n log n)

Concatenating strings one character at a time in Java has QUADRATIC performance (i.e. O(n^2)). If they used the StringBuilder class instead I bet most of their bottlenecks would disappeared. With that class it should be amortized O(n).

I'm not allowed to do my own laundry because my girlfriend thinks I'll screw it up and I write computer vision algorithms for a living.

This sounds positive, but it won't capture what happened before the tazing. I'll be impressed when the apply it to handguns so you can see, for instance, if a cop who claims he is "defending himself" actually was taking pot shots from 150 ft at someone running the other way.

Transparency is nice. Will ordinary people have any access to these records? For instance, if a cop runs into me, can I use those records as evidence or will they be conveniently erased? The head-mounted cams on California police officers had an incredible effect on police brutality (claims went down ~75% if I recall correctly). Maybe this could have a similarly behavior-improving effect.