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Show HN: govuptime.com

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Re: Show HN: govuptime.com

#91

Post by jaggederest »

patmcc wrote: post #78
jaggederest wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Downtime is downtime - if you're measuring service reliability the planned or unplanned nature of it being offline doesn't really come into play. When people say five 9s, they don't mean "except for when you decide to take it offline".

What? No, that's completely untrue. We guarantee 4 nines on some of our services, but they're measured with 2 hours of allowed downtime early Sunday mornings (we usually don't need this, but very occasionally we do).

Then I'm sorry to say, you're doing 4 nines wrong.

Re: Show HN: govuptime.com

#92

Post by gohrt »

thatrailsguy wrote: post #64
khawkins wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's downright deceitful, in my opinion. The entire page is trying to exaggerate the significance of the shutdown.

It's not attempting to be deceitful. The problem is the DOD has 8x as many employees as the next largest agency. If spaced without a logarithmic scale, the rest of the agencies are so insignificant it doesn't have any effect at all. To try to avoid the confusion, I'm working on another graph of percentages working for each agency, and a disclaimer about the scaling.

Make a 2nd chart, with little inset zoomy lines to connect the 2 charts (like you see on a paper map that shows a zoom of the downtown core)

Like this: http://xkcd.com/radiation/

Re: Show HN: govuptime.com

#93

Post by RailsResearch »

Hi everyone, @GSMcNamara here reporting from a car on the side of an interstate over 4G. Deployed an update just now. Once at my destination I'll respond to all the comments. Thanks for the support! 13,695 unique visitors so far, keep it up!

Re: Show HN: govuptime.com

#94

Post by dragonwriter »

bmelton wrote: post #90
dragonwriter wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, not to get into a partisan argument (because I'm not a Republican), but the Supreme Court battle for the individual mandate imposed by the ACA circumvented the House's budgetary authority here, and that's why we're log-jammed at the moment. This is simply false. > The Constitution prescribes that all spending bills must originate in the House. Presumably, you mean tax bills, as saying this of spending bills wou…

It was not originally presented as a tax, but as fees, Justice Roberts' categorization of the fee as a tax was the first time that had happened. Beyond that, yes, I did conflate spending and taxation, but both taxes are indeed at the discretion of the House, or we wouldn't have the impasse that we currently do. Regardless, my point remains that either the Democratically controlled Senate or the Republican controlled…

> It was not originally presented as a tax, but as fees.

How something is presented is tangential, and often outright irrelevant, to its Constitutional status. You statement that the Court struck down the mandate but offered a tax as an option is simply, directly, factually wrong. They upheld it, which is exactly the opposite of striking it down.

> but both taxes are indeed at the discretion of the House, or we wouldn't have the impasse that we currently do.

No, if anything relevant to the current situation (in which the critical thing which allows it to produce a shutdown is spending, not taxes) was at the discretion of the House, we would not have an impasse. The House would dictate their will, and it would be done -- no impasse.

We have an impasse because, like any law, appropriations (whether in the form of the budget or more limited appropriations bills) must be approved by both houses and the President (or by both houses with sufficient support to override a veto), and there is a lack of consensus between the three (two colletive and one individual) actors involved, not because the matters involved are at the discretion of any one of those actors.

Re: Show HN: govuptime.com

#95

Post by shrikant »

aaronblohowiak wrote: post #81
bithive123 wrote: post #67

Metrics are cool and all, but this glosses over the really important story here, which unfortunately seems to elude much of the general public: that a small minority of republicans are subverting the budget process because they don't like a law. They cannot be allowed to do this. I can only assume the rest of the RNC is going along with it because they are stupid or cowards.

>I can only assume the rest of the RNC is going along with it because they are stupid or cowards They are not stupid; they are self-interested. With gerrymandering making many seats stable in terms of which party will win, the competition then comes from within the party; moderate GOPs face competition from the far right. If they don't tow the line, they risk losing their power. This is the end-game of gerrymandering…

OT, but I've been seeing this around a lot lately.

It's "toe the line", and not "tow the line": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toe_the_line

Re: Show HN: govuptime.com

#96

Post by bmelton »

dragonwriter wrote: post #94
bmelton wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was not originally presented as a tax, but as fees, Justice Roberts' categorization of the fee as a tax was the first time that had happened. Beyond that, yes, I did conflate spending and taxation, but both taxes are indeed at the discretion of the House, or we wouldn't have the impasse that we currently do. Regardless, my point remains that either the Democratically controlled Senate or the Republican controlled…

> It was not originally presented as a tax, but as fees. How something is presented is tangential, and often outright irrelevant, to its Constitutional status. You statement that the Court struck down the mandate but offered a tax as an option is simply, directly, factually wrong . They upheld it, which is exactly the opposite of striking it down. > but both taxes are indeed at the discretion of the House, or we woul…

I feel like this argument is one of semantics, so I'll just attempt to clarify.

Justice Roberts, the swing vote, would have struck down the penalty but for his characterization of it as a tax, as well as having characterized that tax as a flat penalty against which modifiers were imposed. As a result of its tax characterization, it violates the Origination Clause of the Constitution, which has never been remedied.

Whether not the House approves of a new tax is at the discretion of the House. You are clearly correct in that both wings of Congress need to approve of it, but either party can reject and be simply done.

I appreciate the corrections, but much of them were, I feel, implicit in the tone of my original post, though yes, I did overstate the NFIB decision.

Re: Show HN: govuptime.com

#97

Post by lukifer »

nucleardog wrote: post #57
VladRussian2 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not until Bezos becomes President. How about Government-as-a-Service? (I mean for regular citizens :)

Read "Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson, if you haven't.

And "Diamond Age", for that matter. The concept of "phyles" is not unlike government as a service.

Re: Show HN: govuptime.com

#98

Post by [deleted] »

bithive123 wrote: post #67

Metrics are cool and all, but this glosses over the really important story here, which unfortunately seems to elude much of the general public: that a small minority of republicans are subverting the budget process because they don't like a law. They cannot be allowed to do this. I can only assume the rest of the RNC is going along with it because they are stupid or cowards.

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: govuptime.com

#99

Post by lukifer »

bcoates wrote: post #87
CodeMage wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why, no, I don't really need to get an SSN, but thank you for asking! I guess it's not really essential to me and my family... [1] Seriously, though, why are people popping up like mushrooms saying how it would be much better to get rid of stuff the government currently does, without proposing to actually replace it with something ? I recommend reading Yegge's "Have you ever legalized marijuana?" [2] [1]: http://www.…

I would greatly prefer not to have a SSN as long as I wasn't the only one. That essay's factual assertions were disproven by later events in Colorado where a chaotic and mostly unplanned transition (which neglected to come up with solid answers to any of stevey's questions) towards mostly-legalization went down without any serious consequences. As it turns out, it really is as easy as saying "whatever, just do it now…

Yegge wasn't trying to say such things are impossible, just that they are non-trivial. The legalization process here in CO is still underway, and is involving a lot of hard work from both lawmakers and the fledgling MMJ industry, not to mention all the years of leg-work by activists to pass the law in the first place.

While it's good that the sky isn't falling, and the situation represents a vast improvement over the Drug War, neither is it all sunshine and roses. Everyone involved has their laundry list of complaints and injustices as the exact laws and policies are being defined and implemented, whether it's the dispensaries, the authorities, or the consumers (not to mention all the counties that trying to opt out or pass their own laws). And of course, no one knows what will happen if/when the feds change their (mostly) hands-off approach.

Should we tackle hard problems? Absolutely. Voters in Colorado and Washington made the right choice, and in the end we'll have more freedom and fewer wasted tax dollars. But the worst way to start solving a hard problem is to pretend it's not hard.

Re: Show HN: govuptime.com

#100

Post by dragonwriter »

bmelton wrote: post #96
dragonwriter wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was not originally presented as a tax, but as fees. How something is presented is tangential, and often outright irrelevant, to its Constitutional status. You statement that the Court struck down the mandate but offered a tax as an option is simply, directly, factually wrong . They upheld it, which is exactly the opposite of striking it down. > but both taxes are indeed at the discretion of the House, or we woul…

I feel like this argument is one of semantics, so I'll just attempt to clarify. Justice Roberts, the swing vote, would have struck down the penalty but for his characterization of it as a tax, as well as having characterized that tax as a flat penalty against which modifiers were imposed. As a result of its tax characterization, it violates the Origination Clause of the Constitution, which has never been remedied. Wh…

> As a result of its tax characterization, it violates the Origination Clause of the Constitution

That's a fine assertion, but if it were true then it would not be a valid exercise of the taxing power, and since the Supreme Court ruled that it was a valid exercise of the taxing power, a majority of the Supreme Court clearly does not believe that it is true. And note that the issue of whether it was a proper exercise of that power was briefed in the case by both supporters and opponents of the bill.

The procedural history of PPACA is, to say the least, convoluted, but the actual bill in which it was contained was a bill originating in the House (as was the reconciliation measure immediately passed amending it which is generally viewed as part and parcel of PPACA) [1] -- so, strictly speaking, the bill did originate in the House (every single letter in the final bill was the result of an Amendment in the Senate, and the House then concurred in the Senate amendments, but the Origination clause explicitly permits the Senate to amend bills subject to it the same as any other legislation.) So, even ignoring the fact that NFIB v. Sebelius essentially forecloses the argument anyway, the facts seem pretty clearly contrary to your Origination Clause claim.

> Whether not the House approves of a new tax is at the discretion of the House.

The House did approve of the individual mandate in PPACA. Otherwise, there wouldn't be an Act of Congress to be the subject of NFIB v. Sebelius.

[1] for details, including an in-depth discussion of the procedural history, see http://www.aallnet.org/main-menu/Publications/llj/LLJ-Archiv...

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