p_monk

Neoliberals like PG love to pretend that their ideology - neoliberal capitalism - is not actually an ideology. It is ideological framework, just as much as Marxism.

The notion that neoliberals are above the fray of ideology and independently minded, might be comforting to them, but it's a lie. Across the globe, PG and his ilk fit squarely in the various right and centre-right parties.

"Some guy"

Moritz is one of the most esteemed partners at the most prestigious VC firm in the world. He's a multi-billionaire with immense power. He's not "some guy."

"has an opinion"

He wrote an op-ed in the most widely read international business journal. This isn't an opinion, it's a rallying cry.

For those people suggesting programmers shouldn't unionize, read the op-ed in Financial Times written by Sequoia's Michael Moritz this week to see why programmers should unionize ASAP:

https://www.ft.com/content/42daca9e-facc-11e7-9bfc-052cbba03...

In this article, he suggests Silicon Valley engineers should be worked to the bone like their Chinese counterparts. Some of the things he suggests in the articles:

1) End vacation days (he refers to taking a vacation day as "stealing")

2) Workers should get used to not seeing their kids

3) End the weekend (employees should work 14 hour days, 6-7 days a week)

4) Buildings should turn off the heat. Instead, employees can wear coats and scarves at their desks.

5) Physical fitness should be discouraged.

Adam Smith was making this same argument the only time he ever used the term "invisible hand." Smith assumed (incorrectly) that capitalists would always prefer their own domestic markets. For Smith, his conception of capitalism was good because it offered the best chance at achieving equality. However, globalization of capital has proven that his underlying assumptions were incorrect, so it may very well be that Smith today would have been seen alternatives to capitalism as better suited to provide equality. I believe Smith's beliefs would have led him to be something like what we call a "market socialist" these days.

The original passage from Wealth of Nations:

"He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention."

Yes. If you pause and click on any of the dots, you can also see details about that slave ship:

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_history_of_american_s...

The creation of the EPA, (and OSHA, Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act, Highway Safety Act, FOIA) was created because people demanded it, not because a Republican President was benevolent.

Ralph Nader, and the organizations who were influenced by his work, took advantage of the social upheaval in the late 60s/early 70s to make these laws pass.

Even though activist voices are as loud as they've ever been, we have a government that no longer fears movements. I've heard the Nader generation of activists make this point regularly. Power has been sharply shifting from people (activists organizations, labor unions) to business since the late 70s.

Mark Cuban: "In the tech bubble it was Broadcast.com, AOL, Netscape, etc. Today its, Uber, Twitter, Facebook, etc."

Broadcast.com wasn't Uber. It wasn't even a Groupon

According to a report that came out a few months ago, there has been a 12% rise in homelessness in LA in the last 2 years. [1]

I believe that number is way underreported.

I don't have any evidence to point to. I've lived in Los Angeles my whole life and have spent a lot of time in and around the skid row area since the late 90's.

All I can say is that in the last year, the population on skid row has exploded. I don't know if its due to people being corralled into the area because of development in the Arts District, LA Live, etc, but the radius of skid row has at least doubled in the last year.

A couple weeks ago I drove through the area on a hot Sunday afternoon and I had to pull over because I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Block after block after block of streets full of homeless people. Not just the sidewalks, but the streets were full of crowds too. I've been to plenty of third world countries around the world, large and small, but never once have I seen so much misery in one place as I saw in DTLA a couple weeks back.

1. http://circanews.com/news/us-homelessness-recession-1

Israel Hayom is indeed the largest paper daily in Israel. There's really no other paper that's even close at this point. Yediot Ahronot was a long-time incumbent, but they simply can't compete.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/08/opinion/rosner-how-to-sile...

I'm not arguing that we shouldn't take steps to take money out of politics. My argument is yes, let's do this, but let's be realistic about what it will achieve. At the same time, if we really care about eliminating the role money plays in politics, then we need to work towards a system with an equitable distribution of wealth.

If the problem is that monied interest control policy, "getting money out of politics" doesn't solve the problem.

Look as Israel as a cautionary tale of a country that did everything right according to the liberal prescriptions. Regardless of implementing everything that Lessig calls for, monied interests still control the political system.

How does it work?

Well, take a look at Sheldon Adelson's actions. In the US, he buys his influence by being one of the biggest GOP donors. In Israel, he buys his influence by operating the largest daily newspaper (Israel Hoyim), which he runs at a loss of 20+ million a year. Israel Hoyim is the mouthpiece of the Netanyahu government. The paper never strays from the party line, in the same way that Granma never strays from party line in Cuba. This gives Adelson a tremendous amount of influence over the government. Even moreso than he's able to buy in the US. Billionaires will always find creative ways skirt the rules and buy their influence.

Uber's "we need to meet demand" argument is true, but disingenuous. Uber needs to keep adding more drivers because they have such a high turnover rate.

Many drivers work for a few months, realize that after costs they're making minimum wage, if that, and then quit. Naturally, Uber needs constant access to fresh blood in order to keep the scheme going.

Brilliant.

I believe his exit was planned before the referendum, regardless of the outcome. He had already openly stated that he would step down if the result of the vote was YES, but the media never asked him what would happen in the event of a NO victory.

His exit, especially in the early AM before EU markets open, will give some confidence to the bankers and most likely prevent the markets from sinking. Furthermore, it will signal to the creditors that SYRIZA is serious about reaching a deal.

I've been following the evolution of Mr. Varoufakis's thinking for the last 5 years, through his many appearances on Doug Henwood's Behind the News podcast. Listening to him speak on the Euro-crisis, it's clear that there's no one in the media who has a better grasp of how we got into this mess and how we ought to get out of it.

http://lbo-news.com/2015/01/28/yanis-varoufakis-on-btn-16-ti...

I live on this street. For the last 2 years it was a restaurant called Gastronomico. They started as a food truck, which still is operating and tweeting here: https://mobile.twitter.com/thegastrobus . The couple who owned it are chill hippy type people and I'm sure they know what's behind this.

I have been several times and I have a lot of family there. Notice how I started my comment with "young people." I'm not familiar with the eastern part of the island, but in Havana, mobile phones are quite common amongst young people. Furthermore, you're wrong, the young people in Cuba DO miss facebook. This is because university students are allowed to use the (slow) internet more or less freely. The censorship is not as comprehensive as that of the chinese firewall. And after spending several years with access to gmail and facebook, they're thrown into the regular society, where access to internet more difficult to come by.

About a year ago, the young people in Cuba already knew that the cable was laid, but were already very skeptical that it would ever be in operation. It's disheartening to read that they were right, for now. A number of positive changes have taken place in Cuba over the last couple years, but none that might be as consequential as offering low-cost internet. I believe that the government overestimates the "danger" in this -- the people just want to use facebook on their phones.

What do they have to do with military dictatorship? They filled several important roles in Pinochet's government in Chile and Videla's government in Argentina. There are more examples in Latin America, but these were the most horrific.

My comment was unrelated to communism -- I don't need to be convinced that communism is bad.

Ref: Los Desaparecidos - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_War#The_Disappeared_held_...

The last time the Friedmanites tried to impose neoliberal economic doctrine in Latin America it resulted in wide-scale repression and murder [1]. It is tragic, yet not surprising, that it's happening again.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_War#The_Disappeared_held_...

Many cities, including Los Angeles and San Francisco, require bars to obtain a specific license for dancing.

Not mentioned in the article, but a now common feature of multi-level parking lots in LA tell drivers how many parking spots are open on every floor. I'd like to see the concept extended to indicate where on each floor the open spots are available. This can be done with switching on a colorful light above open spaces or by having an open spot counter in the entrance of each lane.

whoa, didn't know that. thanks for the info.

So it would only target cardio machines, correct? I haven't included any support for cardio machines yet, mostly because I didn't think a voice interface could improve the process of logging a cardio workout. One thing is that the type of cardio that you're doing would have to be provided some other way -- I think it'd be nearly impossible to extract the type of machine that you're using from a photo, although picking out the workout details from a photo of the display should be possible.

You don't have to count rep by rep. Here's an example of how it would work

You say "Bench Press." The app confirms with a beep.

You want to add the some weight to the bar and tell the app how much weight you are going to use. So you say "135 pounds". The app confirms with a beep.

You do your set, and you were able to squeeze out 9 reps. You say "9 reps." The app confirms with a beep.

Repeat.

It is 100% voice-controlled. I try to log my workout without taking my iPod out of my pocket the entire time I'm at the gym. At the end of the workout, I'll review all the sets because occasionally the voice recognition will get a few numbers wrong (ie, it might mistake 5 for 50).

1) I'm going to try and get a demo video added soon.

2) I primarily built it for myself, and I mostly do weight training at a gym. So there are a few features that may be helpful for interval training (superset support automatically advances forwards and backwards when you add a new set, rest timer buzzes when its time to get going again), but I'm not sure how helpful v1 would be for you. I want build on this to make it useful to as many people as possible. I'm not very familiar with Simple Fit, so if you have any ideas on how a voice controlled logger would ideally meet your needs, please let me know.

3) Sure. The idea came about pretty simply -- I tried out every possible workout app because I don't like carrying a pen and paper around with me. I found every one to have the same weakness -- they require you to take out your phone/ipod after every set to input data. I was already using a headset with a microphone to listen to my music while I exercised, so I figured why not put it to use? I didn't validate the idea at all. I figured that worst case scenario, I would build an app that allowed me to track my own workouts and manage my progress how I wanted it to be done. I did the development myself over the course of several long months. One of the features that I find most useful is that saying "skip track" will automatically skip to the next track in itunes. Because the iphone/ipod dont have hardware skip buttons, this is really helpful because I used to have to take out my ipod, unlock it, go to the music app, and tap skip. There are a few features like this and I don't think I would have been able to come up with them unless I was building it for myself and constantly testing it and finding its weaknesses.

You should remember you turn off NSZombies before submitting.

When I view the listings on the map, the markers need to display an infowindow when clicked.

This is great. I needed a asphalt-like texture for a project and I made one using a site like this one, except with textures from the real world. http://www.mayang.com/textures/

Yea, that sentence made me wonder -- what is so special about their "5.0 ... redesign" that makes it so interesting to google?

Clustering the markers will greatly improve performance: http://google-maps-utility-library-v3.googlecode.com/svn/tru...

I actually had this same idea a few months back. I'm the developer of truxmap.com, a real-time food truck map, and I wanted to export the concept to farmers markets. However, the USDA data set isn't sufficient because it doesn't include days of the week and times. Nevertheless a map i easier to read than a table.

This concept has already been very popular in Europe for many years. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/13/world/europe/13paris.html

What you lack is an understanding of the most common use case. I want to ride a bike 3 miles away from my home, but I don't want to worry about finding a place to lock my bike, take the risk of having it stolen, and I don't want to have to retrieve my bike before going home. I've been waiting for this system to migrate to LA since I saw how well it worked in barcelona 4 years ago. I think it's a great concept, and furthermore it would be impossible to implement without government approval because all the docking stations are on sidewalks.