This (local political action) is something I've found interesting for a while, but never enough to actually get involved. Seeing this made me look up some data for the area around me, since I was curious and the OP didn't have enough data for my area.

Apparently the town council elections are coming up soon, with several slots available. If I'm reading through this data correctly, it would take about 2% of the town's residents to vote for a council member to knock out the incumbents, based on last year's election. Someone somewhat active in the community can probably arrange that.

And "becoming active" can be as simple as starting to call up local clubs, meetups, universities, whatever, and asking to speak about how you can help them in x or y if you're elected. It can be talking to your neighbors or getting in with local bars and bands (depending on the issues your position will preside over). The Los Altos city council had a seat that was won over and incumbent with a difference of like 7 votes last election, these local elections are very accessible.

Apparently they're looking for volunteers (http://getinvolved.runforoffice.org/volunteer). I'm not involved with the project (although seriously considering volunteering), and it looks like they mostly just have scraped state/federal senate/congress/governor information and plugged it in, but aim to add more.

We have all of the positions in the following counties, as well as all Federal, State, State legislative positions:

County State Population Los Angeles County CA 10,100,000 New York City NY 8,400,000 Cook County IL 5,200,000 Harris County TX 4,300,000 Maricopa County AZ 4,000,000 San Diego County CA 3,200,000 Orange County CA 3,100,000 Miami-Dade County FL 2,600,000 Dallas County TX 2,480,000 Riverside County CA 2,290,000 San Bernardino County CA 2,000,000 Clark County NV 2,000,000 King County WA 2,000,000 Tarrant County TX 1,900,000 Broward County FL 1,835,000 Bexar County TX 1,818,000 Santa Clara County CA 1,800,000 Wayne County MI 1,775,000 Alameda County CA 1,580,000 Philadelphia PA 1,500,000 Sacramento County CA 1,445,000 Palm Beach County FL 1,370,000 Nassau County NY 1,350,000 Cuyahoga County OH 1,270,294 Hillsborough County FL 1,267,775 Orange County FL 1,169,107 Fairfax County VA 1,130,000 Contra Costa County CA 1,066,000 St. Louis County MO 1,000,000 Honolulu County HI 980,000 Bergen County NJ 938,000 DuPage County IL 917,000 Duval County FL 886,000 Ventura County CA 839,000 Pierce County WA 819,700 Montgomery County PA 812,000 San Francisco County CA 800,000 Multnomah County OR 766,100 Washington DC 658,000 Denver CO 649,000 East Baton Rouge Parish LA 445,200 St. Louis City MO 318,400 Livingston Parish LA 134,000 Ascension Parish LA 114,000 Grand Forks County ND 69,000 Lee County IA 36,000

County populations covered: 85,127,576

I have no idea about the quality, but I saw this kit getting posted on Twitter this afternoon: http://www.boldport.club/. It looks a little simpler, but may scratch the itch you're looking for.

The important part of the parent comment was "just like everyone else". For people who are employees, not stakeholders, recognition for success is important and the parent clearly felt they were not being recognized relative to their peers for what they were doing.

Note what the actual source for that says:

> Microsoft Corp., the world's largest software company, provides intelligence agencies with information about bugs in its popular software before it publicly releases a fix, according to two people familiar with the process.

The implication being made in the gnu page is that Microsoft delays fixing bugs so that the NSA can exploit them. The source article says something slightly different though, that they inform "various" agencies prior to the patches going live. I suspect the linux kernel devs do too, or Firefox, or any number of open source projects. I'd be more surprised if none of the people on the security lists for those groups don't have a list of agencies (both US and otherwise) they send bugs to .

I would imagine it's at least somewhat rare. The indicators for espionage and insider trading are quite similar: most spies are caught because of sudden affluence. Making a ton of money off insider trading is going to set off a lot of red flags and likely trigger an investigation.

tell that to Aldrich Ames. His coworkers reported him in 1989 for living a life of affluence (if I recall right, he bought a brand new Jaguar and actually drove it to CIA headquarters, even though he wasn't making more than $65k a year or thereabouts). But he wasn't arrested until 1994.

So if he practiced stealth wealth like many wealthy americans do, he would be less likely to be caught?!

Its my understanding that Azure is slightly better for students. Their Dreamspark offering, at least when I looked at it, was better if you got started in the first couple years of school.

If it's shared in a corporate environment or anonymously, it shouldn't. I generally expect most of the people I work with the be in a +/- 10% band for my "peers", and +10-50% for my immediate management level, which my understanding is pretty accurate from the numbers I've seen.

On the US West Coast, variance is far more than that, unless you circularly define "peers" as people who negotiated the same level/pay as you.

I haven't read that book, but isn't increased negotiating power for CEOs a more likely explanation than social embarrassment? If I've been chosen as the lead candidate for a CEO, it's a lot easier to justify a large salary if I can point at our competitors and say that I should be paid competitively to their CEOs.

It is more of a creeping process. Since no boards think their CEO is below average (if they did they would fire him/her). If their CEO is above average then the compensation they feel their CEO is due should also be above average. If everyone starts doing this then the average CEO salary will keep rising and rising. We end up in a world where all the CEO’s are above average and their salaries are in the stratosphere.

The fact that board members are also themselves either executives in the same or other firms, or likely to be employed as such in the future, means that board members also have a self-interest in the trend of rising executive salaries.

Well there is this effect as well, but the "above average CEO, above average pay” is much easier to defend at the annual stockholders meeting.

We've seen the reverse of this now. Everything I've seen has shown that newer generations are moving more into the cities, back to closer to their employers.

Have to factor in population density and massive increases in the population overall. US pop in 1950 was less than half of what it is now. So I could see why it would work out back then.

I've heard that my entire life. "The city is coming back". "Its not like ten years ago when the cities were dead" I'm in my 40s. Same message for the last four decades. Think about that, four times in a row, the city has always been dead a decade ago but now its returned, no really, this time its true.

I'm told by elders that sloganeering about urban renewal and return began around 1955, about 5 years after the burbs started getting built out.

Since 2010, population growth has either restarted in many cities that lost inhabitants for decades, or has accelerated for cities that never stopped growing. New York, Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, D.C., Minneapolis, Miami, Philadelphia, Denver, and Chicago have all experienced this phenomenon, not to mention others, I'm sure. It's a huge trend.

Some cities are growing a bit, but far more people, proportionally, are heading to the suburbs, which is where all the fastest-growing places in the US are.

For example, between 2000 and 2014, SF added about 75,000 residents. In that same period, Irvine, CA added about 150,000 residents, and one quadrant of the Dallas suburbs, Collin County, TX (the northern suburbs) added about 400,000 residents. All of NYC put together in the same period added 500,000 residents, slightly beating out this one part of suburban Dallas.

I personally like living in dense urban areas, but for there to be a sea change in that direction on the scale of overall American trends, people need to be moving into cities in much larger numbers. Here's a modest goal that would represent an undeniable change, even if still only for a small minority of the population: over the next 10 years, 2-3% more Americans live in dense urban areas than currently. That's ~6-9 million more people in dense urban areas. As far as I can tell, we're nowhere near being on track for that to happen.

City populations can grow without an actual trend of increasing desire to live in the city. It's the percentage that matters, not the absolute number.

Yep. They used to say every generation thinks they're the first to discover sex, but as I get older it seems like that applies to many, many things.

I wonder if increased urban demand pushing up housing costs in metro areas will eventually cause a reverse migration back to the suburbs (facilitated by telecommuting).

Increase telecommuting would solve a lot of the transportation problems. I've been full-time remote for awhile now. I turned down an offer that was almost double my current salary because I don't want to commute.

Agree, I'm the same way. I insist on being paid the same as people who live in the city though. My value doesn't change just because I live in a cheaper place.

I believe I'm paid a similar rate to other people in my city but I also believe I'm still underpaid. The market for my specific skills is starting to open up though and there is much more demand than there is supply of workers right now. I don't like when companies think they can get away with 1/2 salary for an expert just because it's a remote position.

There's also increased demand for "walkable" neighborhoods in suburban areas. Higher density housing with grocery stores, doctor's offices, restaurants, and bars all in a single development.

I know they were building that in the early 60s because that's where I grew up and where I live today. Well, I grew up in a 1930 house in a suburb, but same zoning.

Also I know there were awful exurbs built during the peak of the bubble, say a decade ago. Sometime between 1960 and "now" suburb designs went badly downhill.

I have observed over my life that suburb street layout corresponds with this zoning trend. If you live in a subdivision/burb with straight lines and many connections to the arterial road, you probably have a grocery store, dentist, bars, and restaurants within short walking distance, but if you live in "bowl of spaghetti" subdivision/burb with exactly one connection to exactly one arterial road, then you probably need to drive at least five miles to buy a gallon of milk.

I think there's potential for all of that to come into the suburbs since it will eventually be so cheap to live there. Artists and squatters can turn these abandon office parks into co-ops and urban farms :)

They always have.

Then they have kids.