Blog posts from 2004-2015. Newer posts are at https://medium.com/@joshuatauberer.
I get this question a lot so What led you to develop this tool? GovTrack.us (2001) I began working on GovTrack.us in early 2001 after taking a college class that introduced me to the realities of the political system: Policy isn t developed meritocratically, that is, on the merits, but instead is a result of a Continue reading "My goals"
A friend of a friend asked me what I thought of the different options for raising money for a for-profit startup. In case this is helpful to others, here s a quick rundown: An angel investor, meaning a rich person you can convince to give you money. This is usually the best route if you can Continue reading "Raising money a quick comparison of options"
TL;DR: Pew s numbers are probably way off, they re presented in a completely misleading context, and I don t know why anyone would want to survey the American public for familiarity with technical jargon. Yesterday Pew published a survey of how Americans feel about open government data. Don t believe their lies. (This is a Memento reference ) Pew Continue reading "Pew asked Americans what they…
Self-governance is hard and it is getting harder. When Congress first convened in 1789, the nation entrusted its lawmaking powers to just 79 people. Today Americans elect 541 federal lawmakers who then hire tens of thousands of staff members to help them write law and connect with constituents, lobbyists, and campaign supporters. The laws Continue reading "#Hack4Congress: An event where citizens…
Based on brief remarks I gave at Open Data Day DC 2015. Open data is a set of practices. It is a community around those practices. And it is a set of values that we bring to problems that we’re tasked to solve. Open data is a lot like voting. On election day, voting is Continue reading "Why the return-on-investment of open data is the wrong question"
Thomas Stratmann. 2005. Some talk: Money in politics. A (partial) review of the literature. In Public Choice, volume 124. Decades of academic research, and copious amounts of data, has failed to find any widespread influence of campaign contributions on the outcomes of roll call votes. Joshua L. Kalla and David E. Broockman. Forthcoming. Campaign Contributions Facilitate Access Continue reading…
Yesterday at a small meeting the Senate announced that it would be making its legislative data available to the public. This has been a long time coming. The what why No legislative branch agency makes available a spreadsheet that lists every bill introduced in Congress. This issue is that simple. We re finally going to get a list of Continue reading "My 13-year campaign for legislative data…
Over the last few months DC has worked with the open data community to revise its outdated terms of use agreement. Here s where we stand today, after DC s second revision posted earlier today. Background: Do I need a lawyer to hack? Back in September I asked Do I need a lawyer to hack in DC? on Continue reading "DC updates its open data terms of use: Round 2"
Today Eric Mill and I filed a notice of opposition (text pasted below) against Philip WeissLegal Hackers LLC s Legal Hackers trademark application. We wanted to take a moment to put our filing in context. PhilipThe folks behind Legal Hackers LLC helped to found the legal hackers community, and this is something Eric and I are both Continue reading "A notice of opposition to the Legal Hackers…
Over on Mail-in-a-Box issue #129, @llchen223 noted that I hadn t changed Dovecot s default setting of imap_idle_notify_interval. This setting controls the duration of IMAP IDLE pauses during which the mail client waits patiently for a new mail notification. Here s how it looks with K-9 mail (client) talking to Dovecot (server): CLIENT 9 IDLE SERVER + idling SERVER * OK Continue reading "How bad is…