jmccree

What's hilarious here, is that Level3 played the exact same game Verizon is playing now. Back in 2005 they dropped their peering entirely for several days with Cogent due to "Unbalanced Traffic Ratios" as cogent was sending L3 more traffic than L3 was sending them.

It's always historically been the case that settlement free peering required balanced traffic ratios. The difference is L3 used to have far more consumer networks buying transit from them. Before, level3 was needed to connect a bunch of different regional ISPs together who each purchased IP transit. Now, every consumer ISP of any size can orderup a nationwide backbone network (from level3 ironically, yes despite being in a peering war for ip transit, comcast's nationwide fiber network is leased from level3.)

Many of the old Ma Bells that were broken up used to be clients of level3. Through the mergers, many of them now own Tier 1 backbone networks. Verizon, ATT, and CenturyLink all are now also competing backbone providers with Level3 as well as being consumer ISPs. This leaves Level3 in the position Cogent was in when L3 depeered them.

Level3 will now gladly split the costs for unbalanced traffic ratios now that it benefits them. 10 years ago they would have tried to extract transit/paid peering from the same situation from someone else.

Perhaps the whole balanced traffic ratios requirement doesn't work in a time when every consumer ISP has their own nationwide fiber network and many also own Tier 1 IP networks. Or perhaps expect Level3 to start looking to get bought/merge by Time Warner cable or Cox to even the playing field.

Uber now includes Uber X, "rideshare" type service with drivers in their own personal cars. Where I am, a 2 mile cab ride to the grocery store will be $12 without tip, the same on Uber X is ~$6. It's far cheaper and less hassle, and uber x actually shows up unlike cabs. The introduction of uber(x) has let me postpone buying a car for a few more years.

You do realize that all the officers that are on the LEC SWAT team are employed by local police agencies, none work for NEMLEC. Mutual aid emergency services teams comprised of members of multiple agencies are common all over the country. "Northwest Regional SWAT" just sounds less scary than NEMLEC. All the individual police agencies that are members of nemlec would still fall under whatever open records laws apply in that state. You can see which dept chiefs lead which units here: http://nemlec.com/units.htm

If you assume they had no pressing need for any VPC specific functionality, you can get similar security by locking your security group/s down to only ELB for public service ports and having one instance in another security group with ssh/vpn allowed (to specific ips) as a jump box/vpn. Spending weeks of multiple teams engineering time to move to VPC without a pressing need would seem to me to make little business sense.

I believe their argument is the LECs are private non-profit corporations that merely provide coordination and equipment to law enforcement agencies. The police officers are never working for the LEC, and I'm sure any police-only equipment is only ever 'in possession' by member departments. The LEC is basically a more formalized mutual aid agreement among multiple agencies.

I would assume you could query each individual agency as to how often their officers participate in swat operations, but without knowing how often the LEC was called, I don't see how you could get an accurate count of the total raids. Perhaps each jurisdiction would have to report how often they called the LEC into their jurisdiction.

They may be actually be legally right due to basically a technicality. Perfect for time for the state legislature to reign in the LECs and make open records apply to mutual aid agencies/agreements. I'm sure their representatives are jumping on that right now...

I'm pretty sure the poor child's situation is a direct result of a flash bang 'distractionary device' being thrown into his crib by law enforcement. The suspect was NOT in the house, and they found NO DRUGS in the house. As for having a semi-auto firearm, um every other single house in Habersham county probably has one or more semi-autos, big deal. This was a poor family in a bad situation, that the poorly trained sheriff's office "swat team" made worse.

It must be nice to never associate with criminals. For many poor families, this is not an option as the only uncle who will let you stay for free with him after your house burns down, just happens to sell some meth on the side. Is one grenaded baby worth finding even 100lbs of meth? Not to me. It's certainly not worth mauling a baby to find no drugs.

I can't argue with that, just felt the need to defend APD a bit, as a lot of people are confusing them with the redneck swat team who threw the flashbang into a crib. APD has changed a ton for the better after Turner became chief. Before that, Pennington from New Orleans PD was clearly a mistake for the city, and led to many of the largest APD scandals in recent history.

I'm not so sure. Atlanta made tons of changes after the Kathryn Johnson incident and the Atlanta Eagle raid. They totally disbanded the red dog unit, and have been much more sensitive to public perception after those events. I think more importantly this shows that these small county (Habersham, ~40k total county pop) police forces have no business having "SWAT" teams, much less doing no-knock drug raids.

They are probably using MSA instead of PSA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_primary_statistical_are... .

I think the key wording was "uber for bouncers" and "per guard". We're not talking executive protection or major event security. An average armed guard in my city would be lucky to make $15/hr. For $35/hr you can hire an off duty police officer. A quick google shows the mean security guard salary is ~32k in SF and 75% of $36k, so even with a 50/50 split a guard working 40hrs would be making normal wages and bringing home $35k a year.

There's a ton of small events (think a 100 attendee unconference) that may be required to hire security for legal/insurance/contract reasons. Many event spaces require you to hire security whenever alcohol is served. Small events like that where showing up an hour ahead of time is plenty to figure out where the exits are, who's in charge, etc. I could see this being useful for smaller restaurants/clubs/bars that don't have an established relationship with a security provider and could use this to call in security only on the busy nights.

Of course, I also see people using this for parties at their house/office just for the image of having a party so 'exclusive' there was a bouncer. People who need real actual security will look elsewhere and pay much more.

In Atlanta, critical mass got up to 300+ riders before the city/police finally got tired of the illegal blocking of intersections. (They call it "corking") Atlanta police had 10-20 motorcycle cops follow the ride and pull over anyone who broke the law (running red lights, etc.) for a couple of weeks and the popularity quickly dropped off when people realized they had to still follow traffic laws. It still goes on every month, but it's more like 50 riders now.

There are also of course plenty of legal rides/events that get permits, police escorts(sometimes free), etc. We have something called "Atlanta Streets Alive" that shuts down several miles of large streets every few months to only pedestrian and bike traffic, allowing people to walk and play in the streets with no cars. Permits are required, off-duty police have to be hired to direct traffic at intersections etc.

I know that android smartactions allows you to set the phone to ring for only certain white listed numbers.

I upvoted you, but I'm guessing people are objecting to your attempting to "be a spokesperson for the late twenties crowd", when I think your case is exceptional. I'm mid-almost-late twenties and I've never heard of "watching e-sports" or twitch.com until this thread. I've seen speedruns of half-life on youtube and such, but I had no idea people actually seemingly stream live video game competitions. I have a wide circle of friends in their twenties and thirties, and I've never heard of e-sports.

I agree though, that live sports are mostly watched at bars by friends in my age range. I only have DirecTV because it's "free" (included in hoa fees), but I still almost never watch "live" tv. I just watch DVRed shows instead of on Hulu now. Sports, especially NFL, are still huge as I can see by my facebook feed during big games or the draft.

Heck, I didn't know what a touch down was a few years ago, but sports are so popular among mainstream (ie: non techies) I had to learn enough to pretend to be interested to fit in socially, and eventually I started actually enjoying watching and following the local teams. I suspect there may be a bit of an echo chamber in some communities that don't care about sports, but I'd wager the among the majority they are still very popular.

This is interesting. My building has tv/phone/internet via DirecPath, a fiber based isp now owned by DirecTV. The only alternative is via the local telco, AT&T. Will be interesting to see how this plays out.

If you check the talk page of the student, you will see it's filled with 5+ "warnings" from the Wikipedian. I could see how that could be considered bullying.

I think what people are missing is it's the mindset of "willing to defend one's self, no matter the cost" that deters most people from messing with you. I was raised in the rural south and was brought up with the thought process "If they're bigger than you, get an equalizer." I was an openly nerdy loner, but I was not bullied, and only had to throw a couple of punches, generally to people outside my class who didn't know me and quickly backed off.

I find this mindset has served me well in adult life as well. Funny story, a few days ago I was at a dinner party and someone jokingly threatened me with a case knife. I immediately drew my knife and fork into "combat positions" without even thinking, which drew a "just kidding man" response and respect for the rest of the night.

Some people think they can act like we live in a totally "civil society" in some sort of "pretend you're in the world you dream of" practice, but it ignores the reality that there are bad actors in this world that will take advantage of that. Some times you just have to stand up for yourself, legally of course.

I believe almost all phones in the US now supply GPS info for 911 calls. I remember flip phones 10 years ago having the option in settings to only enable location transmitting for emergency numbers. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RRLP for an example and look up Wireless Enhanced 911 for more info.

It's extremely common in the US. Each state, county, city, different "special districts" can impose their own sales tax. For things like national chains it would be impossible to advertise prices, as one store may be under 10% sales tax and a mile away one is under 15%.

This is why the rest of the world hates us in the tech industry. We get to sit in $1,000 chairs, which we easily justify, and in offices where catered food, massages, game rooms, etc are common. Yet you want to complain about the tip jar for an extra $1 that you've already made in the time you waited in line, for the ice cream scooper who has to stand on their feet for 8+ hours and may be lucky to get a bathroom break during lunch rush, and is going to make less all day than you make in an hour, all while they are just trying to mentally study for their econ 101 exam tomorrow.

It's totally the people making minimum wage working the counters who are happy for an extra $20 per day that have all the gall, not the tech industry folks making six figures complaining about spending a couple extra bucks per day on tips.

The waste problem has been solved. We store it somewhere safe until we decide something better to do with it.

What hasn't been solved is the effects of of all our coal, gas, and oil usage that could be replaced by nuclear power. It makes all the sense in the world to be finding ways we can widely and safely deploy nuclear power worldwide to replace coal and gas power plants. Generating clean electricity is a requisite for wide spread electric or hydrogen cars to stop burning gasoline.

If you believe that coal and gas burning is bad for the environment, then we need nuclear power urgently and widely, energy needs are only going to go up and the only alternative to nuclear is burning more fossil fuels. I find it absolutely absurd that people worry more about nuclear waste than atmosphere pollution currently happening. I think we could store a few hundred years of nuclear waste on Antarctica til technology figures out what to do with it, even if that's just shooting it into the sun. I choose safely storing nuclear waste for the future to deal with over continuing to burn billions of tons of coal and gas each year which is actively killing about a million people per year. (WHO 2008)

The big problem is there is two interview/recruitment processes: A) the undiscovered talent, where you want to make someone jump through hoops to find that talent. And B) the established person who's resume and a 5 minute chat can establish their abilities.

It's only "simply asking" if you ignore context and subtext. When Jobs said he would be "greatly pleased if google stopped", it carries the implication that jobs would be greatly displeased if google did not. The email is a thinly veiled threat sent by Jobs ceo-to-ceo to carry the implied whole weight of Apple's resources, and the smiley is acknowledgment that google, did in fact, "get the message".

I don't think that's a fair comparison. Forcing hand writing instead of typing is an artificial limitation not related to the core skill set of presenting. I would consider that like telling a graphical artist, sorry no wacom, you can only use this 2 button mouse. Sure, they can likely improve their mousing skills over time, but what is the benefit?

I'm dysgraphic and have typed every school report in since 3rd grade, so perhaps my view is biased on this matter. I remember being unable to learn cursive and my teachers telling my parents "Don't worry, by the time he's an adult everyone will type everything.". Their prediction has held true. Cursive is dead, removed from common core. Handwriting is up next. In my adult life, the only thing I've had to hand write other than my signature has been a few checks.

Forcing hand writing is like forcing modern day car drivers to only take a horse and buggy to work. They could get better at it, but why?

I suck at auditory stuff in general, and if I have to take notes on something, I can't process any of what's being said and must basically try to frantically transcribe what's being said. The idea of expecting everyone to take notes has never made sense to me. Are they there to learn your subject or practice transcription skills?

I guess with this line of thought, the US has 50 different militaries.

An irc community is now a "posse". Awesome.

I know and have met the author of this blog as they used to own a business that organized developer conferences, published books, and a monthly magazine. If I had to hazard a guess, after many years of cat herding developers (many of whom do fit the profile you describe), Marco is enjoying a respite from humans and enjoying getting back to the relative simplicity of coding.

I use collectd and have found it to work rather well. The documentation could certainly use some work, but once you get figure things out it's pretty easy to configure. CPU usage is almost non-existent for the amount of data monitored. It's also pretty easy to write a custom plugin to collect whatever custom metrics you want. I use a script to expose the current values out as http/json for integration with Circonus for monitoring/alerts of key values. You can use whatever graphing tools you'd like, things are stored in rrd format.

Recently I've been implementing salt stack, and collectd is really easy to automate config of. I've got salt fully configuring collectd, and then using the circonus api to setup monitoring rules automatically per applied states. It's a beautiful thing.

PETA has a $10 million budget for "Research, Investigations and Rescue", out of their $30 million total budget. That's 100 $100k investigations per year they could fund.

You'd first need to show at least one state where off duty officers lack arrest authority.

NJ Statute Quote: "40A:14-152.1. Municipal police officer; power of arrest for crime committed in his presence anywhere within state. Notwithstanding the provisions of N.J.S. 40A:14-152 or any other law to the contrary, any full-time, permanently appointed municipal police officer shall have full power of arrest for any crime committed in said officer's presence and committed anywhere within the territorial limits of the State of New Jersey."

There is no mention of requiring the officer to be on duty, and plenty of cities in NJ off in-uniform off duty officers. For example, Jersey City municipal code, § 3-85.1 Off-duty employment, includes:

"Purpose. For the convenience of those persons which utilize the services of off-duty law enforcement officers of the Jersey City Police Department, and to authorize the outside employment of Police while off-duty, the City of Jersey City hereby establishes a policy regarding the use of off-duty officers in compliance with Attorney General Formal Opinion 1997-No. 23."

You can read about the 11k officers that participate in the NYPD paid detail unit here, http://www.nycpba.org/archive/nydn/03/nydn-030810-ot.html . In Atlanta, Midtown Blue is "Comprised of more than 40 off-duty Atlanta Police Department (APD) officers with full powers of arrest". ( http://midtownatl.com/about/programs-and-projects/public-saf... ) In Miami, you can hire a police Lt for $50.50/hr. ( https://was8exp.miamidade.gov/MDPDOffDutyWeb/home.do ) In Denver, off duty police may not work at pot shops, but "Officers may act to prevent a breach of the peace or to enforce the law, but officers shall not enforce rules made in the interest of the secondary employer." ( http://www.denvergov.org/Portals/720/documents/OperationsMan... ) In Durham, NC when you hire an off duty officer you get a " Law Enforcement (LE) Officer who is authorized to Enforce NC State Laws and Durham City Ordinances" ( http://durhamnc.gov/ich/op/DPD/Pages/Secondary-Info.aspx ). Shall I go on?

If you want to make some type of claim that any of the extensive off duty police employment (or even arrest powers) that happens is somehow theoretically unconstitutional at a federal or state level, I'd love to hear that argument and reasoning, but it's important to separate legal theory with the practiced and enforced laws. In most states, officers have their police authority on and off duty.