A more parsimonious explanation would be that these guys simply made the whole thing up. Someone willing to break the law to that degree certainly wouldn't have any qualms about lying.

Depends on how they define winning. In budgetary terms, they're doing great...

In addition, and perhaps as important, why are his friends, relatives, and neighbors not shunning this guy? If his mission was to have unprotected sex in each state, spit in salad bars in each state, or slash tires in each state, I suspect we'd see some uproar. But for this much-more-dangerous lawbreaking, nothing. (And I *really* want to hear from the anti-immigration lobby here, who are constantly beating their drums about obeying laws...)

but can it mine bitcoins?!

I recently needed to change my Gmail account, which basically involves creating a new one and trying to migrate one's stuff across. While doing this, I realized that they other non-Google stuff (e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) was extremely easy to move: Switch email address and you're done. For Google stuff (e.g., Google+, Drive, etc.) the story is a lot more complicated, since each of these services is integrated into the Google universe, and in its own special way. For some, it's not clear that migration is practical, so I'll probably be spread across two accounts indefinitely. Word to the wise.

Everyone wants these for VR, but I want something I can code with. Anytime, anyplace. Maybe even laying in bed with a feeding tube snaked down my nose. :-) How close are these to being a replacement for a reasonable monitor? (Absolute minimum would be 24x80 text that's usable without headaches/etc for several hours at a stretch.)

There are a number of behaviors like tailgating and not washing your hands after using the restroom (esp in food service or medicine) that are simply not acceptable behavior. Surreptitious monitoring to catch and correct these transgressions isn't wrong in itself--it's a good thing. Might it be used as a pretext for more sinister behavior? Yes. So we will have to remain vigilant, but it was ever thus. This is no reason not to use these tools for good. Certainly there is no right to do wrong, just because we used to be able.

In the US at least, cyclists (and pedestrians) killed by motor vehicle operators are generally treated as freebies. To the degree that drivers avoid running over them, they're probably motivated more by an innate sense of decency and/or the annoyance value of having to stop for an hour or two until the police sweep up the bodies and then tell you not to do it again and send you on your way. Until this changes, cycling will not be a particularly safe activity here.

Fanboys, basically. People who see competition between languages as some sort of sport, want to root for their team, and who in other times and places might be setting cars on fire to vent their rage at not "winning". I have my favorite languages, but I can make long lists of the deficits of each, and I believe they should appear on the Wikipedia pages in question.

The mechanism may be different, but the result is just as pernicious. An encyclopedia article is a wholly appropriate place to list and briefly discuss the benefits of a computer language. And most of the drawbacks of C++ are not really controversial, except in the minds of fanboys. This is not mere pedantry. It really is useful for newbies to be able to go to a Wikipedia article and get a basic sense of the pluses and minuses of a language, versus other languages.

Not sure that this is really new. The page for C++, for example, is regularly scrubbed of any critical material. At the moment, there is just one negative sentence, indicating that "C++ is sometimes compared unfavorably to [some other languages]". Whether that is an unbiased and appropriately detailed statement of the totality of current objective C++ criticism is left as an exercise for the reader.

Without commenting on whether or not HFT is socially useful, I'll just point out that many (if not most) economic activities in the modern world have little obvious social value. I can assure you, however, that the direct customers/counterparts of HFTs very much want the service that HFTs provide. If they go dark for even a day, their customers get very, very unhappy. It's kind of like Facebook: Do we need it? Not really. Shall we shut them down? You first...

This might sound like a wisecrack, but it is in fact the answer. You can be a Michaelangelo of programming, but if your boss comes in and tells you that from now on everyone will be using six-letter variables names, programming in Visual Basic, and using nothing but Perforce for version control, the quality and power of your results will be so-limited. Some people imagine that a really good programmer can overcome any set of such constraints, but it's easy to see that that's not the case.

That was a truly awesome concern troll, but it worries me that people might not appreciate it if they discover that old BenEnglish still programs in COBOL and stores his excrement in baby food jars in his cellar...

Because horses can't be programmed to subdue (and maybe mulch) protesters.