Sure, happy to chat! What you're doing seems interesting, especially if you're not targeting the lawyer/case research market. My email address is in my HN profile. Though I am working nonstop on http://recent.io/ right now. :)
8,041 karma · joined July 10, 2012
I suspect you'll find pretty quickly that there's a limit to how far regular expressions or similar techniques can take you if you want to normalize and reference precedents and make sense of cases. That's why Lexis and Westlaw pay actual attorneys considerable sums to summarize cases, and why they can still command such princely subscription fees even in 2014. But analytics might be interesting. A family member is a judge, and her judicial office keeps track of how many cases she decides per month, how many reversals she receives, etc. I don't know if those are made public -- certainly I'm not aware of any project to do it across a large data set, and I wish you luck with it.
It would require that Jawbone perform a live intercept so FedGov agents can plant physical bugs or insert TURBINE-derived malware or attach a keystroke logger. The order would use existing legal authority to compel Jawbone to provide real-time data on the user’s precise geographical location and whether he or she is awake. Obviously if the target is at home and awake, the Feds would abort the black bag job.
The Google Play store listing shows that the Up app wants access to precise (GPS) and approximate (network) location, so the lat/long available for NSA perusal with compulsory process is likely pretty detailed. And the marketing literature on the Jawbone site uses “always-connected” and “real-time” language, which is perfect if you're in the real-time surveillance business.
The non-U.S. user targeted by FedGov may think he’s escaping surveillance because he’s using only local phone providers and local email providers. He’d be wrong; Jawbone is based in SF and subject to U.S. law… Another interesting use would be tracking physical movements of non-U.S. users and correlating them to see who’s meeting with whom; does Jawbone force SSL for its API usage? (The API web page only says “communication should be done over a secure channel,” not “must.”)
I’m joking above, of course, and I have no reason to believe the NSA has done this for a non-U.S. citizen or the FBI has for domestic surveillance. My point is to suggest that folks here at startups think in advance about how to respond to legal process, how to encrypt data in transit, and how to store user data in a way that minimizes your legal exposure and protects your users’ privacy.
Better to think about this early vs. after you get an early morning knock on the door with a very serious plainclothes guy with a badge serving you with some very serious papers demanding info. That happened to me in a different context years ago, but that’s a story for another time.
Well put. 80 percent of the developed water supply in California is used by agriculture. About 6 percent is industrial and commercial. That leaves 7 percent residential landscaping, and 7 percent residential non-landscaping (showers, washing machines, etc.). Source: http://www.kcet.org/updaily/socal_focus/commentary/where-we-...
Even if residential landscaping water usage dropped by a quarter immediately, which seems rather unlikely, that's close to a rounding error compared to the amount of water to turn our near-desert into an agricultural breadbasket. Put another way, more water is used for almond farming in California than all residential landscaping or residential non-landscaping: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/0...
But instead of addressing the 80% problem, and the fact that some cities like Sacramento still don't have everyone on metered water* (it's unlimited! flat rate! use as much as you like!), we'll have hydrotheater restrictions on drinking water at restaurants. Hydrotheater is, of course, a cousin of TSA-style security theater, and approximately as effective.
* Water meters won't even be fully installed by 2025. http://portal.cityofsacramento.org/%20Utilities/Conservation...
Also: desalination puts a floor on the cost of water for drinking purposes. Modern desalination techniques are very electricity-bound, though, in terms of cost.
I think routine tree removal and trimming around here is kind of cutthroat -- which I've used to my advantage when getting bids. But, on the other hand, who would trust the lowest bidder to take care of your Prized Live Oak That Is The Centerpiece Of Your Old Palo Alto Backyard?
An example in the form of a digression: I live in a town in a relatively rural area of the SF peninsula. I've recently received some bids for a small job involving heavy machinery, and -- at least in this area -- suspect that owning your own business in that "boring" market provides a more reliable source of revenue with a better quality of life than 95% of HN readers who work in cubicles at tech companies.
Owner A is a fellow who owns a bay area company that does grading work. He built his own house in the Woodside flatlands, where land costs tend to run in the millions of dollars, and the construction cost including permits of building a new house may be $2M-$3M alone. Neighbors include Larry Ellison and the Steve Jobs ex-Jackling estate. It's true he's driving around a lot for bids, but many folks would prefer that to staring at a screen. It's probably psychologically and physically healthier as well.
Owner B is a fellow who owns a bay area company that does excavation and sewer work. He owns a house in Portola Valley (another affluent community, for instance home to VC Vinod Khosla, who hosted Obama recently) and a second home in the Sierra foothills. Has a stable of Porsches and eight motorcycles. Is a pillar of the community, and sends his crew out to open roads closed by storms or downed trees when the town or fire department can't get to them quickly enough.
They may miss out on the upsides of billion-dollar IPOs, but a precious small percentage of startup founders or employees will get those anyway, especially post-Sarbanes-Oxley. I'm not saying I'm going to quit http://recent.io/ to dig septic tanks, but it does put bay area quality of life in perspective.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genocides_by_death_toll Mao Zedong is believed to be responsible for 34,300,000–63,784,000 deaths and Joseph Stalin for 23,000,000–60,000,000.
Um, when I'm flying a plane, I don't:
- have other 4,000-lb planes 3' away that I could collide with after a moment's distraction
- compose tweets by speaking aloud while staring at a screen, and then when the voice recognition system doesn't work properly, have to retry multiple times while staring at the screen
- talk on the phone to my mother
- play music while navigating through crowded airspace (some pilots do on longer cross-country trips, of course)
- need to have my airspeed projected in front of me (maybe on takeoff it would be useful)
- have apps pop up notifications directly in my field of vision when I'm trying to focus on one of those 4,000-lb objects that's about to collide with me
- have some of those other 4,000-lb objects near me controlled by people who are composing tweets, etc. rather than focusing on the task of flying
What I do want to be doing is scanning the airspace around me for other planes, scanning my instruments to make sure all is well, etc...
Navdy seems like a good HUD implementation from a technological standpoint, and unlike other folks here I don't think it should be banned. But assuring everyone it's safe because "pilots use it" seems like a statement made without, well, talking to pilots first.
I'd say the opposite: News shouldn't be a thing where other people can tell me what I am "allowed" to read or not.
I left my job at CNET/CBS earlier this year to found a bay area startup -- http://recent.io/ -- with a news recommendation engine and accompanying Android/iOS apps. You can choose to read personalized "Recommended for me" articles, or certain topics, or top news articles, etc. The Recommended category is unique to you; the other categories are common to everyone.
I've shipped the alpha to a few testers, and you're welcome to sign up for the beta. After using it for a bit, you might have a different opinion about whether you should be "allowed" to select what you're interested in, or delegate that in part to a recommendation engine.
If you give me a government-granted monopoly and a phalanx of federal agents empowered to put my competitors out of business, I'd have to be providing very poor service to be losing billions of dollars. Unfortunately, the USPS has managed to do just that.
In any case, congrats on the launch. I've only skimmed the white paper so far, but the filecoin.io concept looks promising.
There are other examples as well, like the Feds' subpoena for search logs that Google fought in court and mostly won. You may recall that Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft received the same subpoena but did not fight the Feds in court; they instead quietly complied.
My article on that: http://news.cnet.com/FAQ-What-does-the-Google-subpoena-mean/...
Yep, differences in design, approach, and implementation. It offers better recommendations and can do things Zite couldn't.
This is not to discount the groundbreaking work done by the Zite team at the time; the last CEO of Zite is a friend who managed the product well. It's always easier when you've been able to learn what other companies have done well and what they haven't. And we've been able to do things like using Google App Engine for the backend from the beginning, which wouldn't exactly have been possible when Zite was founded 9 years ago (and because of earlier GAE limitations and higher costs may not even have been practical even 2-3 years ago).
As a practical matter, Zite is about to be discontinued with some of its features, in theory, to be eventually incorporated into Flipboard. (The March 5 announcement of the acquisition said they'll be "shutting it down" as early as September 5: http://blog.zite.com/2014/03/05/zite-is-flipping-out/ ) So if you liked Zite, you might want to sign up at http://recent.io
An example: If our recommendation engine at http://recent.io/ concludes you’re interested in Barack Obama, it will (surprise!) recommend articles about Barack Obama. It doesn’t filter by political viewpoint. You’ll get articles from both lefty sources and right-leaning sources.
Also, of course, we offer “top news” if you prefer!
You might be interested in signing up for the beta at http://recent.io (disclaimer: I quit my job at CBS/CNET earlier this year to found this company). We released an alpha version to early testers last month, with the beta to come soon.
We recommend articles based on what we learn your interests to be, and that selection of recommended articles is the best I’ve ever seen.
Flytenow would make this a more attractive proposition by agreeing to pay my attorney fees if the FAA takes action against me because of a Flytenow flight. That would include representing me before the FAA in administrative proceedings and in federal court as far as I choose. (I'm a private pilot, not a commercial pilot.)
Better yet, because I'm not aware of the funding behind Flytenow, put the estimated maximum cost in escrow with a trusted third party such as a bank so it would be available even if Flytenow runs out of money and ceases operation in the middle of the litigation.
Then I'd be more likely to try it, and as an additional benefit the FAA would be less likely to pursue Flytenow-affiliated pilots. (FedGov agencies would rather try to make a test case, all else being equal, of citizens lacking aggressive legal representation.)
It's entirely unclear to me whether the results have any applicability to the types of technology jobs that the largely (I speculate) Silicon Valley HN audience holds.
For one, software engineering isn't exactly hard physical labor, where getting a promotion to foreman in your 40s may mean a lot less hauling concrete. Second, women are present in greater numbers in white-collar jobs than in construction. Third, relationships with your coworkers are likely going to be different in an office environment. Fourth, there may be cultural differences between Australian construction workers and the rest of the world, even U.S. construction workers. Fifth, there's likely not the same (alleged, at least) age discrimination in construction, where you gain more skills over time and aren't expected to know the latest inane web JSRubyPythonGolangMartiniNodeDjangoErlangLuaRailsExpressConnectHaskellRestMVCController framework du jour.
So in other words the NYMag.com article this HN thread links to could have been written exactly the opposite way -- by concluding that the study's results have no proven applicability except to, well, Australian male construction workers.
[1] http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2014/07/peoples-happ... [2] http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=search.displayRecord&id=...
Thanks, Albany! Well-done.
But the quantity of the resource (Uber drivers) is not fixed. If you allow a higher surge price, you get more drivers.
...I find that the preponderance of the literature points toward the conclusion that rent control introduces inefficiencies in housing markets. Moreover, the literature on the whole does not sustain any plausible redemption in terms of redistribution. The literature on the whole may be fairly said to show that rent control is bad, yet as of 2001, about 140 jurisdictions persist in some form of the intervention...
I'd say it skews heavily toward those with the greatest demand, as the previous post said.
If you have average financial resources and needed to get to the hospital in the middle of a snowstorm, you stood a better chance under Uber's previous model that allowed a market-clearing price. Now that some NY politicians have outlawed that process, the price that they permit will be below the market-clearing price and the likelihood of shortages will increase. Put another way, Uber drivers will (sensibly) venture out in snowstorms only if they can make significant $$$.
Hope you're well enough to walk to that hospital! Thanks, Albany!
(Note I'm not an interested party here: I own a late-model car, I don't live in NYC, and I've used Uber and similar services < 5 times this year. But someone was wrong on the Internet and clearly needed to be corrected.) :)
I don't pay close attention to the way HN does these things, but I recall that NSA was one of the terms that the HN moderators chose to penalize. Or they could have manually penalized it as well.
HN is a sandbox that YC created for folks to play in. Their sandbox, their rules. I'm not criticizing you for complaining about the Intercept article being buried on the fourth page or whatnot (I would have more liberal rules if it were my sandbox), but merely saying it's probably not that productive to complain about theirs.
(Hint: It's the other federal agency mentioned in the Intercept's headline. Second hint: This agency is home to the National Security Branch, created in 2005. Third hint: it's listed as one of the 17 "member agencies" of the intelligence community here: http://www.intelligence.gov/mission/member-agencies.html)
If you use that Corcoran link you provided and restrict your searches to townhouses in the $2.3-$2.7M range with 5br, you get only Harlem, not Manhattan: http://tinyurl.com/nvftwqm
San Jose, East Palo Alto, parts of Redwood City, Pacifica, etc...