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A far as telepresence for Chinese / Indian factories goes, wouldn't it be cheaper / less awkward to hire a guy to walk around w/a laptop running iChat / google voice-vid? Labor in those countries is practically free.

Yes. I actually stopped reading "news" and I only read people's opinions. Opinions are much more concise and it's far more informative to read two opposing opinions than to read one long meandering piece that tries to avoid having an opinion. The recipe for "news" at the NYT is an exhausting example of this:

"Some decision was made. Someone important said it was good b/c of A but others say it is bad b/c of B. 10 years ago when a similar decision was made, A was the result. But on the other hand it is very hard to measure B, and it's effects can be mitigated by C. An expert acknowledged the risk of B but said that the benefits of A made it worth it."

Usually the reporter's actual opinion was whatever side he gave the last word. In this case A. I find it tedious to play this passive aggressive game. I would rather read two articles saying:

This decision is good b/c of A.

and

This decision is bad b/c of B.

Like Arrington said, at least I know where they stand and why.

The teachers unions hate school choice. They managed to kill the program in DC even though parents were really happy with the results.

Congrats Immad. To other HN'ers looking for a job talk to this guy. Besides technical expertise, he has a very crisp notion of what HeyZap is and is not and why. It's not surprising that they were able to raise this much money.

I didn't down-vote you but I was talking about the raw statistics used as input to the visualization engine. I had assumed you wanted to build some data-visualization software and was pointing out the places to get stats.

Many places. World Bank, Census, IMF etc. Do a text search on this page: http://uuorld.com/portal/ for "set:" Each set is free from its source but they require lots of tedious massaging to reformat.

Thx. Me and http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=martian wrote the software to make it. Martian made that particular map.

Yup: http://uuorld.com/gallery?image=89

Didn't know about it. The stuff will be there until tomorrow.

Our company moved into a larger office and threw a bunch of furniture away. There are a number of great desks and some chairs. Just come and pick it up. Location: http://bit.ly/cx4jkM

Looks like he's also in an upcoming documentary about the broken US public school system:

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/paramount_vantage/waiting...

Some of those scenes are from the lottery to get into the DC voucher program. DC is my hometown and the public schools are Cuisinarts for kids. Recently all future funding for the DC voucher program was pulled.

There are few places on earth with the natural, intellectual and creative abundance of California. It's absolutely inexcusable that we are in this situation.

Don't forget the 10% sales tax.

Not at all. This bill is notable for its complexity, scope and unpopularity. Day by day people disliked it more and more and everyone involved wanted to get it off the TV as soon as possible. When a bill is more popular there is less thrashing. People don't need to desperately alter things to appease individual politicians. Each of those patches is essentially a hack to cover one corner case. This bill is full of them. Popularity equates to a more stable code base. Politicians are also more productive when doing something popular. They are less likely to "grab what they can" and more likely to contribute to the bill's success and thus their re-election.

We've all been there... A few nights before a release we realize we have an unmaintainable mess and the deadline needs to be pushed so we can go back to square one. This is what happens when you release anyways.

Thousands of pages of barely parsable legalese, constantly changing in different places to keep different politicians on board, the final copy rammed through before the ink dried, what could possibly go wrong? From an engineering perspective the health bill was a QA nightmare.

I'm actually bummed they ditched the picture frames. I tried to order one from the first batch but they were out. My mom and dad would be stoked.

I've always read it pah-steer-eee-us. I know that's wrong but the word has always looked like posterior to me. Fun service though.

Wow. Thanks.

Interesting. Can you tell me which tools you use to work around Garmin? Mac compatible? Are their formats proprietary? Would be stoked for a solution.

Hahaha. I sympathize with your rant. I have been a developer in the GIS world for 7 years and I don't own a dedicated GPS. I've always wanted one but the software and data issues leave me face-palming. Why they don't just open the standard / create an API or both is beyond me. Weekend developers writing iPhone apps have created better interfaces than these jokers.

Garmin has been consistently clueless about how software should be developed and deployed. They are the Verizon of GIS. No surprise that they jettisoned one of their more promising projects.

I went to the same HS as Damien and knew him through sculpture class. Very smart, very funny and quite a gifted artist. He was also nice to me as a freshman when he was a senior. Most people were surprised when he broke out in the music industry b/c we thought he was going to be a painter or a sculptor. Then we saw the videos and said, "oh, yeah, that makes sense."

You're right that it's not a binary thing. Those seem like the two most likely outcomes to me.

I hope so too, and from what I know about Tufte, he will be true to the numbers. I would be less worried if the headline read, "Bi-partisan Commission Appoints Tufte etc..." From what I know about the stimulus, it's not something I'd want to brag about.

Did Obama just hire a very talented propagandist, or a guy who deftly presents the bill's inadequacies? I guess we'll find out. Either way, his presentation will certainly be the anchor point of the stimulus debate.

I wonder if Obama is going to like the result. I also wonder whether Tufte will visually tell the truth. It's heady stuff getting called in by the president and I could see him not wanting to make Obama look bad. Either way the result will be interesting.

corrected, thx.

I've lived in 3 different cities and shopped at many different stores. The Chiquita bananas that claim to be organic are huge and look exactly like the non-organic ones. I've always thought they were probably stretching the definition of organic so I've avoided those ones.

He touches on a lot of potential answers to PG's request for startups #1: http://ycombinator.com/rfs1.html

I've been buying organic produce for years and it definitely doesn't taste as good as non-organic produce. An organic banana is about half the size of a non organic banana, it is more mealy and it does not taste nearly as good. But if I bought food on taste alone I would live on Ben and Jerry's. I know the definitions of "Organic" are full of loopholes but I generally think that whatever they did to make the banana twice as big and twice as tasty is probably not good for me.

I've taken to using the realclearpolitics rss feeds b/c you can subscribe by writer rather than source. I get my news by following about a dozen or so writers who are syndicated all over the place.