discardorama

"Most" requires some hard data; and whether the fraction is higher or lower than the neighboring areas. Prop 13 is California-wide, so it's not specific to Cupertino.

What's forgotten in this discussion are the property taxes in Cupertino. The property values in Cupertino are among the highest in the Bay Area, and with that comes more property taxes. I doubt Cupertino would be this desirable were it not for Apple (and the school district). So once again Apple, albeit indirectly, helps pad city coffers.

Or, a list of those who couldn't afford the right lawyers.

My guess: looking at the curve, and when they'll actually have to purchase the PV panels (a few years from not), things will be actually cheaper.

> This is all WhatsApp's and the US's problem, not Brazil's.

So you're saying it's OK for Brazil to send a SWAT team to raid a house in the US? The judge's order has no validity outside his jurisdiction; just like a US judge's order has no validity in Brazil.

> But the problem is: Whatsapp have no offices or operations in Brazil.

No, the problems is that with encryption, whatsapp cannot satisfy the judge's order anyways! Instead of showing such colossal ignorance, the judge needs to ask some CS/crypto experts if it's possible or not.

This is like the judge handing a company a 2048-bit number and ordering it to factor it! Now!

OK, so you introduce UBI. Yay! Now what happens to all the social workers employed by the city (say, SF)? Remember: SF spends ~$35K/homeless/year. Who pays when a homeless guy ODs and needs hospitalization? Right now government housing is subsidized for the poor (some people in SF pay $35/mo for a 2BR government apartment). Do we still have these subsidies after UBI? What about food stamps? And the 10M+ illegal immigrants?

Simple. Satoshi owns millions of BTC. Anyone claiming to be Satoshi should just spend a small chunk of BTC from that initial block as a challenge response.

> I believe that Feinstein is a genuinely bad person, and we would be better off without her

As a Californian, I am constantly ashamed at calling her "my" senator. Why the fuck can't someone reasonable run against her? I guess for the same reason that Bernie is having so much trouble: the Democratic Party is sorta like the Communist Party in USSR; you have to be an insider to get anywhere.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who doesn't like how these things are bolted on and shoehorned into the existing constructs, resulting in some ugly-ass syntax. Consider:

  auto triple = std::make_tuple(5, 6, 7);
  std::cout << std::get<0>(triple);

Ugh. And don't even get me started on "myList.push_back(5)" . "push" usually means "add to the front"; why not use "append" ?

Often they're the same. But once in a while a director like Stone will go his own way, luckily for us.

I'm sure the nerds here will find ample opportunities to tear this movie apart, but keep in mind that the "average American" (a) doesn't know much about Snowden, other than "he stole secrets and hid in commie Russia, so he must've been working for them", and (b) just believes what the government says. To counter the powerful voice of the government, you need an equally powerful voice like Hollywood. Maybe this movie will make the average American think more about the issue, and it might even cause some to change their views about Snowden. If it does, this movie has served its purpose, and kudos to Stone.

How is it that a bunch of elected people without much military knowledge "know" more about these things than the men/women in uniform, with decades of experience?

Of course he will. If they didn't have his backing, they would not be putting up such a fight.

Anecdata, size 2, from India:

My uncle (who had a device implanted 4 years ago to regulate his heartbeat) went into the ER one of the premium hospitals in our city (Fortis). He was having some weird symptoms, and his blood sugar was off. They strongly recommended that they upgrade his device to a pacemaker! (A highly expensive procedure). When my cousins refused, the hospital pumped him full of insulin and discharged him. He came home and relapsed again. This time he was taken to another hospital, and the problem was some infection in his kidney.

Another cousin: had a severe pain in his stomach area. Went to a hospital, they injected him with a painkiller and let him go. Pain continued: he went to another, same deal. Finally he got to a third hospital, and they diagnosed the problem: kidney stone.

There's caveat emptor for Indian hospitals. Be careful.

And that is what, 0.1% of their revenue??

Just because Mozilla started Firefox, does not mean we can't question it. I have felt for a while that Mozilla isn't totally aligned with its user's interests.

For example: finding and deleting tracking cookies is still laborious in Firefox. You have to select domains one by one, hitting "Remove selected" each time. Why can't you select multiple domains at once and nuke them? Why can't it tell you which tab is using up CPU resources, so you can close it? And in "private browsing" mode: why are cookies still carried over? That's not so "private", is it??

The whole FirefoxOS thing sounded just like a solution looking for a problem. I have been in situations (Govt grants) where the grantees have too much money and will just throw it at random proposals which have no hope of working. This sounded just like that.

Since they have so much money to burn, why don't they support worthwhile OSS efforts (like SSL, for example)? There are tons of little tools and libraries that we use in *nix land, that could benefit from some $$. Mozilla should offer "Mozilla fellowships" or "Mozilla sabbaticals", where they support a developer for a year or two fulltime to work on their projects.

Most of Mozilla's work is done by volunteers anyways. Why should the execs get paid so much?

> And ban outsourcing companies from India from getting H1-Bs.

You don't have to; the market will take care of it. They severely underpay their workers, so they'll never be able to compete.

> The idea behind Free Basics is to offer a stripped-down version of the mobile web so people can access parts of the Internet without it counting against their data plans.

I hate it when people lie like this. The "Free Basics" would force all websites accessible on this scheme to go through FaceBook, including encrypted ones, so FaceBook can then log and analyze your data. This is not some generous scheme which just gives you free access to the Internet; it gives you free access to FaceBook, which then in turn gives you what it thinks is right.

A solution to this wholesale import of cheap labor is to rank all the H-1B applications in order of salary, and take the top N. Presto: problem of low-wage imports solved; companies will now be able to find local talent, since they'll have to pay more, and tech workers will make more money. Win, win, win for all.

> Forcing him how? If he came back with nothing, that's his answer.

It's amazing how many people don't get this. The Congress makes laws, which are the tools at the FBI's disposal. If they didn't give them this particular tool, then too bad: they have to figure out how to do their job without this tool.

And the DFBI did not address the gross incompetence shown by them, when they asked the County to reset the phone. If they didn't even know the consequences of that request, how can they predict the (supposed no) consequences of their request to Apple?

> No tinfoil intended here, but it strikes me as very unfortunate that the Supreme Court Justice most likely to be opposed to this recently passed away last weekend.

I know Scalia fans like to believe this, but you are dead wrong. It would all depend on how the Republican/Conservative establishment feels. If the Republicans agreed with the Feds, you can bet your ass Scalia would side with them.

The man had no principles, he was just an anti-Democrat and anti-Liberal.

I think the Federales have enough money to compensate Apple above and beyond what it costs them.

> They need to employ people to manage the program as well as run shelters, pay rents, etc. $4444 is not so high that it's obviously too much.

Who will they pay rent to? The pier belongs to the City.

That much money gets a homeless basically a cot in a large warehouse. How is that worth $4K/month? And which other city spends $50K/homeless person?

I think he does have a point... but he could have put it better.

I live in SF too; for ~10 years. I have never seen it this bad. The City passed a "sit/lie" law a couple of years ago.. but it's never enforced. The City is spending $1M/month ... for housing 225 people[1]. Do the math, and you'll see how ridiculous is that. At that rate, how much do you think the City can spend on the homeless? It has 7000 homeless, and counting.

Many of the homeless used to live in City housing, but got kicked out due to drug and alcohol habits. What's the solution here? You can't incarcerate them. You can't force them to use detox clinics, etc.

If the person refuses help, and refuses to follow the rules of whichever shelter they're in, then s/he has no more right to live in SF! As a last resort, the City is within rights to just kick you out. No one is entitled to live in SF. You can't just show up and setup tent in a public space; that public space belongs to the rest of us too!

[1] http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/02/10/san-franciscos-p...

AKA, ".... with one simple trick!"

I wish Firefox had an ability to see which tab was hogging resources.

> And it does. Some people are worried enough to think that is worth the price.

That's a broad claim. From everything I've read, there has not been much real success. Can you point me to some news reports where the spying actually helped catch real terrorists? The only case I know of is a Somali expat sending money home, which ended up in Al Shabab's hands.

I was there when she cancelled the year-end party.

FTA: "While a single dose of ketamine is cheaper than a $2 bottle of water, the cost to the consumer varies wildly, running anywhere between $500 and $1,500 per treatment."

Sigh.... why? Why must we turn any opportunity into a money grab?

I was at Yahoo when Carol Bartz came in and did exactly that. And guess what? Morale plummeted.

"The beatings will continue until the morale improves" .... ever heard of that?