skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
So you're saying that local governments have less funds to spend today than they did 15 years ago? I don't think so.

Relative to costs, yes. Their funding has gone up, in general, by less than inflation[1]. Then account for the fact that their costs involve a lot of healthcare benefits that suffer 15% inflation, and relatively few things like electronics that get cheaper over time.

When you talk about things like 'ballooned in size', you're really missing the picture. Money that goes straight out of our coffers to the health fund isn't bigger government. It's more money, same amount of government.

[1] In my case in Massachusetts, it was strictly 2.5% revenue growth a year, a figure that's less than inflation in most years, certainly in the early 2000s which is the time period I'm talking. Commenters below illustrate a similar picture for California, your favored example.
Ah, I think you may be right on that one. Perhaps more accurately we could say he was just acting Scandinavian. :)
Not beyond the studies that come up when you Google it.
>California is perhaps the greatest - and most well documented - example of this, both at the state and local level.

California's problem is mostly because of their ballot propositions, especially the effects of prop 13, which limits property taxes to 1% of the original sale price.

There are many additional propositions which have passed that increase spending(especially for schools and other services), which make it pretty much impossible for the budget to be balanced, because the state and municipalities have almost no way of increasing taxes, nor can they realistically cut spending.
Neat. I know it from looking at her commits.
They're playing this smart. Among the plaintiffs are three religious groups and three gun-related organizations.

The standing issue is going to be a little challenging for Count I (1st amendment). The EFF's argument is basically that these organizations' expression has been chilled by the general knowledge that their communications are being collected. Laird v. Tatum seems like challenging precedent to overcome: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laird_v._Tatum (Court held that the fear that the army might cause some harm in the future with information collected pursuant to surveillance was an insufficiently concrete injury to support standing).

The Due Process claim is iffy because it does not seem that any plaintiff has actually been prosecuted pursuant to a vague legal interpretation. If some poor sap got prosecuted in a case involving that legal interpretation, that would be a much better basis for a lawsuit.

I hope they make some progress with this, but I'm not optimistic because of the standing issues.

As an aside:

I personally don't think litigation is the best way to approach privacy issues. I strongly recommend watching this documentary on Prohibition: http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Ken_Burns_Prohibition/7019.... Carefully pay attention to the section describing the Anti-Saloon league, and specifically this guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne_Wheeler.

When you think about it, the 18th amendment is a marvel. Prior to the 18th amendment, the federal government derived 30-40% of its revenues from liquor taxes. The beer barons had paid off plenty of political types. The nation was full of Irish and German immigrants who loved to drink. Yet, in 1919, the Anti-Saloon league and associated lobbyists got the 18th amendment passed to ban liquor. It was an incredible political maneuver.

They didn't accomplish this via litigation. They accomplished it via single-minded politics: Wayne Wheeler would lend the League's support to anyone who was in favor of Prohibition, regardless of their stances on other issues. He drew on the Protestant community, anti-Catholic sentiment, and the womens' vote (the suffrage movement in the U.S. was heavily driven by the desire of womens' groups to ban alcohol). They had a singular, clear, if ambitious, end-goal: the banning of alcohol.

If people are interested in electronic privacy, I think there is a lot to be learned from the success and methods of the Anti-Saloon league.
Marriott Rewards Users Urged to Change Passwords
It's counterintuitive, but now Russia is drifting away from its soviet past. Meanwhile western leaders start to understand that there is a good strategy with uniform democracy: play with envy (all this stuff "reach people should pay more, in order to keep compensation for unemployed, etc"). In some sense, this is motion towards socialism.
I tried getting the client to do it when I started last year and it was a pain getting data/details etc from them. Now I charge it at cost + 10% admin fee, invoiced with the project they're paying me for (and will then be invoiced at yearly intervals in future; I use freshbooks.) I'm not in the business to make money from hosting so don't see the point over-charging.
Assuming they lean heavily on the current flavor of the Apple TV OS, they have a lot of work ahead to improve it.

The number of channels to deal with using a bare-bones remote isn't cutting it.

I for one hope this means I'll finally be able to edit down the 'channel' list
I find that coming in early doesn't produce the same social effect as staying late. I'm still not sure why. Maybe it has something to do with the perception of personal sacrifice? Coming in early doesn't impact your social schedule, while staying late says you're willing to sacrifice your evenings for the company. Coming in early just means you're willing to wake up earlier.
Data Schemas and Data Structures 1
I can't stand it when fanboy'ish trumps the point being made around here, especially with regard to jobs and torvalds and their unprofessionalism toward their employees. nobody is saying linux isn't a major contribution to the world. linus is an unprofessional asshole. bottom line.
It's not about terrorism anymore, but instead these broad-sweeping and baseless spying programs are integrated in their regular intelligence briefings regardless of whether they're terrorism-related.

I wouldn't be surprised if they can cut a significant amount of their intelligence infrastructure because of the operational efficiency, I'd even go a step further and say that the DHS has been coaxing all of the state local law enforcement to pool all of their data centrally to the NSA -- so now all levels of law enforcement rely entirely on the NSA's data processing capabilities.

The amount of data-gathering by the local and state law enforcement agencies is massive and they likely have very little/no infrastructure to handle this data, so they'd pass it off to the federal government.
Startupland: A documentary series
I have to agree with the "Linus isn't perfect" assessment. What's got him this far is in the results - much of his abuse is accompanied with "this is bad for userland" and a specific indication of where the patch went wrong.

But criticism of developers is apparently too difficult for him. He doesn't distiguish between "this code is bad" and "YOUR code is bad" - indeed, he seems to enjoy pinning the perp and assuming they are an idiot and not just ignorant.
"I see a lot of confirmation bias in these kinds of threads." and I see yet again, another apologist for the herd mindset.
I remember reading in MAKE about a gumball machine that only dispenses gumballs when a secret knock is performed. I'm sure something like that can be adapted for this purpose.

http://grathio.com/2010/05/secret_knock_detecting_gumball_ma...
Alike is a versatile light-weight kNN/similarity library that can be useful for many Machine Learning projects. Whether you are building a recommendation system, or an optimization model, comparing objects is pervasive -- feedback welcome!
Are the existing DAWs really hurting since Apple dropped their price? Live, Pro Tools, Reason, etc. seem to be doing well.

Are many independent developers really in the business of creating DAWs anyway? There seem to be far more developing instrument/effect plugins. The more people that use DAWs, the larger the market for plugins becomes. The net effect for independent developers could be positive.

Besides, if independent developers cannot find a way to compete, perhaps they should reconsider their business. It's not like they're competing with Microsoft's monopoly in the 80s and 90s. There are many other platforms (some much more popular than Apple desktop) on which they can develop, and Apple won't compete with them there. That's still a huge potential market share.
This is truly baffling! I had to run it on my machine, and it really works as advertised.
For the curious who can't (or don't want to) install the compilers for all those languages, here's a zip file with all the intermediate files generated https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2683925/bigquine.zip
If you don't like working with Linus, the answer is simple: Fork his repository and work without him. He encourages you to do this. He publicly states that people give his fork of the Linux kernel far too much authority, and he even designed a version control system to make it extremely easy for anyone to fork his work.

However, contributing to Linus's git repository is not the same as working for an "equal opportunity employer."

I think it's unfortunate that, being a dad, and with all that he's given to the world, he doesn't show a little more kindness and empathy. I think this would benefit everyone.

Maybe the linux community could just try being super extra nice to Linus, and see if it wears off on him? Every time he says something mean, we try even harder to respond with polite and kind language. I'd like to see that.
Very interesting. That's what we're also doing to human populations.
can we please get paredit? I would probably use it if it had that feature, but until it does, it's basically useless for my day-to-day work.
I still don't get why this has to be a full-sized TV. What if the AppleTV (sized as it is) had the sensors in it to detect motion?

(Of course, I still don't see the appeal in using motion to control my TV, after using a Kinect on-and-off since it was released. But, there's more to the market than just me, so, who knows.)
Linus Torvalds not withstanding, I've never understood the "I can't be bothered with your idiotic questions because I'm so Goddamned smart" bullshit. I remember in the nineties if you had a question about Oracle or Unix and ran a search on most message boards all you'd find were snarky comments pissing on people for not following the posting rules or not reading some obscure documentation. It was completely counterproductive and one of the reasons I began to lose interest in development after college.

I give a ton of credit to dhh and Joel Spolsky for bringing development to the masses by speaking in terms people not completely socially inept would respond to.

As an aside, most developers I've worked with who put on the dickhole computer prodigy facade were just unhappy shitty programmers with zero communication skills.

Obviously Linus is not who I'm referring to, but I think buffoonery displayed in abusive emails is emblematic of that attitude and sets a terrible example for developers who aren't Linus Torvalds. I can just picture a thousand mid level managers running around yelling at their reports thinking they're the next Steve Jobs.
Just spent a few minutes reading through your comment history.

"I suggest you try reading anything written by anyone, which would be certain to improve your existing knowledge."

"Please, leave the US."

"This is absolutely, without any doubt, the stupidest, least intelligent and most ridiculous and sensationalist comment ever to appear on the internet, or to be expressed in any other form."

"I can't believe this thought was formed in a human brain."

"No. Can we please stop this adolescent drama? If you think there's a better country, please, leave the US and go there. Do the rest of us a favor."

How about doing the rest of us a favor and ratchet down the hostility and melodrama a notch, mkay? You're not as witty as you think you are.
It's not a PR coup, they want to discourage possible whistleblowers by telling them: "if you reveal big stuff about us, we'll hunt you anywhere you go and eventually we'll find you and you'll pay".
If you think OS X offers better dictation/accessibility support than Ubuntu does you can also virtualize OS X on OS X using VMWare Fusion. I'm sure there are other ways of doing this but I know that VMWare Fusion supports this [1]. I don't believe that you will even have to pay for licensing OS X since it is already on an Apple manufactured hardware.

[1] http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=di...
A friend and I, on a whim, spent a fair amount of time looking into how to create an ISP using our own hardware. The hardware is cheap, right? How hard can it really be?

But we ended up exactly as you'd expect from reading the article: trying to figure out how companies get pole attachment rights. If I wanted to pay a contractor to string a line between our houses, that should be doable right? Well, no. For our local government, there was no clear way to get approved to use the public utility lines. Once you find the office that manages pole attachments, if you ask them about the approval process, I guarantee you'll get blank stares.

I think it's possible that it's been so long since any new companies have been granted attachment rights, the people in city government don't even know what to do with you if you ask to apply. This leads you only one route: lobbying the city council, which is where our little experiment ground to a halt.

(Btw, if you want to see the positive aspect of having regulatory hurdles to run communications lines, check out this old picture of New York: http://www.baltimoresun.com/media/photo/2012-07/71033655.jpg and http://www.nwhistorycourse.org/ttcourse/Year2/unit2/week9/im...)
The EFF is doing some great work... here's a reminder to setup a monthly donation, even if small, to help them keep it up.

https://supporters.eff.org/donate
D provides some very appetizing features for meta and generic programming. You can get some insight from questions like this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7300298/metaprogramming-i...
And in states like PA, the state government takes bribes from Comcast and slaps down municipalities that try to shake the boat. The Feds (if the corporatists continue to entrench power)

It will take big players like Google - and the increasing importance of access to data - to pry open this decades-old corruption scheme.
Haptic information has been utilized for military pilots for at least a decade now. I know early research was focused on the same types of information Ms. Jones is gathering.

I never read any of the research results, but the resultant information passed on to me was that there are key areas (e.g. each shoulder, lower spine, etc) that were easily interpreted and did not cognitively overload pilots.
Regulation and Innovation
I'd rather have people express how they feel directly instead of "professionally" backstab or marginalize me.

And the military doesn't breed "aggressiveness" outside of specific services and roles that require it. It does demand an inordinate "attention to detail" due to the fact lives are on the line, whether that be on ships, planes or just normal activities.

This "attention to detail" is also seen among other professions, but seldom in software outside of NASA/avionics/medical/etc...

Linus has laid out guidelines and expectations which while demanding, can be followed. If you can't test your code nor follow a checklist, then maybe you shouldn't submit patches to him. It's the military equivalent of passing barracks/quarters inspections, it should be elementary for professionals.
One other lesson that they haven't learned yet: when you announce you're closing the business on your blog, you should probably put some kind of notice that you're closing the business on that business's front page. There's absolutely nothing at http://path.to/ that even suggests that they're going to be shutting the doors. If I was to sign up today, and they're shutting down in three days (rather, not accepting any more job postings) I'd be annoyed.
I was just going to say that
Elance has some good designers.
that doesn't work for me. they love my blood too much to stop at the hair!
I think what he saying is that large cable corporations are significantly wealthier than most local governments, and the stats would agree.
It seems that people mistook the "tone" of my post.
I didn't post it in an attempt to say that OS X is somehow superior, I just thought that people might find it interesting that this is the same feature that was shown in the last WWDC keynote -- and now Linux has it too!
(I'm not a Mac user, by the way.)
it has to be said - if non-sterile mosquitos are having a hard time surviving because sterile mosquitos drank up all the blood - we're probably going to suffer more than they will
It seems likely that capturing cats, sterilizing them, and releasing them would have a larger impact than simply releasing a large number of sterile cats. It's also much easier to do in appreciable numbers, relative to the wild population, and it doesn't actually lead to extinction, just some additional population control. I don't think it is a good fit for mosquitos.

I once heard a modified version of the plan, where you release male mosquitos with a "driving Y chromisome" - that is, a Y chromisome with a mutation that leads to male offspring. Supposedly this should spread in a population even when but eventually leads to extinction.
I can't find the article discussing it, but this reminds me of "Beyond sensory substitution--learning the sixth sense." [1] which is one of my favourite studies on neuroplasticity.

Basically, hook up a load of cell phone vibrators to a belt, add GPS, make the vibrator closest to north vibrate so that you have a constant haptic compass.

People wore them constantly and became better at navigational tasks: were better at finding their way around in new areas, were much more conscious of subtle curves in roads and could more reliably point in a direction and say "My house is over there". The haptic compass became a new sense for them.

Interestingly, once the compass was removed, people also reported a sense of being lost without it that subsided after a few days, because they had come to depend on it.

[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16317228
Ableton's not just about flat/cool/design. It's about providing proper UI controls. Why waste half your screen with gigantic knobs that make input a pain? Instead, a label and a value is all you need. Why have a long selector switch if a dropdown suffices? If you want hardware, then buy a hardware controller with little displays so you can get all hands-on.

When setting up really complex sounds and devices, I can't imagine any other approach. How do you represent a device that contains, say, 10 sub-devices? Ableton makes it super clear to setup and inspect.

Unfortunately, it seems like few other companies agree with this approach and spend lots of effort drawing backgrounds and rendering knobs and switches.

I think it's a hold over from the days when to experiment with sounds, you actually did have to go plugging various cables in and playing with knobs.
It has some minor overlap with jQuery but literally it is built to provide a unified solution to all the "other" challenges that an WEB/MOBILE WEB APP developer faces. Such as:

Reusable tools - Q comes with a lot of reusable tools you can just drop onto a page, many with their own back end and they "just work" when you Q.activate the page

Not refreshing the whole page - Q has virtual pages loaded with AJAX and slots (content areas) to fill on the page. Q.handle(url) simply loads the url for example and activates all the tools for you.

Event system - you nee to be able to remove event handlers when the page is unloaded or a tool is removed

Integration with PhoneGap, jQuery, touch vs non touch environments, etc.

But the coolest stuff is the middleware. You can literally write apps that get objects like this:

Users.byId(uid, function(err, user) { ... } );

and not care how it gets the user object. If it already cached it then it uses the cached version. If it already requested it, it puts your callback on a waitlist instead of sending again. When response comes back it calls all callbacks on the list. It also can do throttling, and batching of requests. And all the while you just have to use the construction above to get objects.

Oh and Q supports socket.io so if you have node running you can update caches via a push so they are almost NEVER out of date!

Furthermore a lot of the time your JS code has a functional programming character, such as "wait until these objects are fetched, then do this". So just use this:

var p = new Q.Pipe(["user", "stream"], callback);
Users.byId(uid, p.fill("user"));
Streams.get(publisherId, streamName, p.fill("stream"))

You can even use it with any unsuspecting library since it produces callbacks you pass to this library.

So basically:

Virtual pages and tools you drop on them, set and forget

Model done via caching and realtime updates, query and no worries. Use Q.pipe to wait for some objects then do what you wanted to do

Connect everything together with event handlers

Boom your app coming together quickly. Other libraries (like jQuery) are for manipulating DOM and other stuff. This library helps you build rich web APPS.
Yes. It works.

documentData is your project file. It includes the "code" needed to make your project go. This can be diffed, merged and branched with almost no effort. You will see the effects in Logic. You have to save & close Logic before doing the Git stuff, then reopen it to see your changes.

Everything else is pretty much binary WAV files. Logic is nice about creating new WAVs for every change you make, so while all the files do take up a bit of space it makes diffing a bit easier (manually, you can't `git diff` audio files).

BTW some friends and I are working on an service that does this, using Git and everything, and allowing you to use any DAW you wish: http://notepunch.com
We thought we did pretty well, double dipping by hitting up both comcast and verizon.

Maybe we could have played hardball and refused to renew the contracts, but who do you think wins there? Take away people's TV? You crazy? Then we'd have gotten the same people lambasting us here (because they're shills) killing us for driving too hard a bargain (because they're shills).
Are you suspecting any particular analytic error, or are you just expressing an unwillingness to believe in the conclusion without regard for the strength of the evidence?
> If you don't like it don't volunteer.

People are trying to say that Linux could be better if it didn't have bullying in its community. "Go away if you don't like it" isn't really an answer to that, regardless of which side you're on.
I'm not sure I'll do it, but that's my answer for almost everything at this point. Ultimately this is why I'm taking the strategy I am - plugins will be able to do anything I can do quickly and efficiently. Integrating a step-wise debugger won't be a completely trivial amount of work, but I'd be surprised if it took more than a few days and it's something anyone should be able to do :)

After 0.5, my goal is to remove us as a bottleneck as quickly as possible and then who knows what'll happen :D