Fwiw, limited taxi medallions were initially demanded by non-taxi-drivers and resisted by the taxi drivers, not initiated as a protectionist measure by the taxi drivers. The first medallion system was instituted in London in the 17th century, because residents and other drivers complained there were too many goddamn taxis driving around in poorly maintained vehicles causing accidents and congestion. So they set a limit on how many taxis could be driving around London, and instituted an inspection & licensing regime to ensure they had maintained vehicles and knew how to drive.

That's the standard way of writing an app, but you can also write native-code apps, and therefore you can also use alternative frameworks (like Qt).

Indeed they don't even claim anything close to worldwide coverage themselves. Here are their estimated coverage maps.

Yeah, the prices are definitely more taxi-like than rideshare-like as well.

If you look at ride-sharing via places like Craigslist, payment is usually roughly on the order of the cost of gas, maybe rounded up. E.g. if you get a ride from SF to LA, a typical asking price is for you to pitch in $50.

But the prices on Lyft seem to be on the order of $15-20 for a short ride within SF, which is more like taxi prices. At that cost you're hiring a paid driver, not pitching in for gas in a rideshare.

External PR, at least, I believe used to be the turf of the U.S. Information Agency, but in 1999 it was split up, with the broadcasting functions (VoA radio, etc.) going into a separate agency, and everything else going to the State Department.

So why not discuss those places instead?

My guess: because this guy is interested in agitprop, not actual balanced budgets.

I suspect it's the people pushing this kind of populist story who fall into category (b). Let's say we have a $50 billion agency, and think it should save money. We could:

Option 1. Start by looking at the major expenses, and find some that can be cut down. Let's define "major expenses" here generously as anything that takes at least 1% of the State Department's budget. Are those all necessary? Can some of them, even if necessary, be done with less? Make these the main targets of your anti-waste campaign.

Option 2. Pick something down in the noise, under 0.01% of the budget. But find something that makes for a good evening-news scandal. Something populist having to do with the price of toilet seats, or Facebook, or something else that you can explain in under 10 seconds to idiots. Make this the main target of your "anti-waste" campaign.

The main difference is that Option 1 may actually save money, while Option 2 is just political grandstanding.

See also: idiots who think arguing over PBS funding is going to balance the federal budget.

When thinking of good models to emulate, are you thinking more of Egypt Revolution 1.0, which got taken over by the Muslim Brotherhood, or of Egypt Revolution 2.0, which got taken over by the military?

The state department's budget is about $50 billion annually. There is probably some waste in there, but shaving off $630k in Facebook marketing is not a very promising place to start (that'd be a savings of 0.00126%!).

Besides which, various PR nonsense is a big part of what the state department does; it's sort of the marketing/sales department of the U.S. government.

That's not a particularly strong guarantee that someone won't do so anyway.

It's funny to contrast Israel to identity politics, when identity politics is literally the foundation of the country. It's an oppressed minority that seceded and set up its own country where they dominate.

In addition to the specific technical inventions, he did a lot of great work from the 1960s laying out how computers could augment human intellect. Most of his papers are available online, not only open-access but in readable HTML versions.

Yeah, and it sounds like the GPU angle is really just a hook to get AMD funding. The more important improvements will be refactoring the representation so it doesn't suck in the first place.

Afaict Morales was flying in a business jet that didn't have enough fuel to go Russia-Bolivia nonstop, so the original plan was to refuel in Western Europe before continuing on. So that complicates the possibility of just overflying without permission and daring them to shoot him down, because he'd actually have to land and refuel at their airports, not just overfly.

I think this is particularly true because of how little progress has been made on making it easy for end users to design their own pieces that can be fabricated. Realistically, a non-savvy user who owns a 3d printer currently, even if the 3d printer works flawlessly and unattended, is limited to printing out widgets from files they downloaded on the internet. But that particular use-case doesn't provide much reason to have a 3d printer in your home at all. If you're downloading files from an online widget library like Shapeways, you might as well just order the already-synthesized part from them in the first place.