Events

The powerful New York State Assembly Speaker surrendered to the FBI yesterday: Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver used his office to mask millions of dollars in “bribes and kickbacks” as legitimate outside income from two private law firms over more than a decade, according to a bombshell 35-page criminal complaint filed by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara today. The five-count complaint on charges of wire fraud, mail fraud, conspiracy, and extortion outlines two schemes Mr. Silver used to leverage his official...

On Tuesday of this week, Elan Lee, Matthew Inman ("The Oatmeal"), and Shane Small launched a Kickstarter for their new game "Exploding Kittens." As of last night, it's the 22nd-most funded campaign ever with over $3.3m in pledges from over 84,000 backers (including me). Well done, guys. I'm looking forward to getting my set (with the NSFW pack) sometime this summer. Inman previously used Kickstarter to fund the Tesla Museum on Long Island. Eat it, Charles Schultz.

The Economist has a new Big Mac Index out today, reflecting the gyrations in currency exchange rates that will (I hope) make my trip to Berlin next month a lot less expensive: The Economist whipped up the Big Mac index in 1986 as a bun-loving way of explaining currencies’ relative values. It is based on the theory of purchasing-power parity, which posits that over the long run, currencies should adjust so that a basket of identical goods costs the same everywhere. We fill our basket with just one item...

Today is the last day the CTA will run 1970s-era trains from the 2400 Series: With their traverse-style seating, return to sliding doors and bicentennial trim, Chicago Transit Authority’s 2400-series rail cars proved popular with riders when they first debuted in 1976. CTA also got more than their money’s worth from the 200 cars they ordered from Boeing-Vertol, as they were only phased out of use once CTA began adding the Bombardier 5000-series rail cars to its fleet. Over the next four decades the...

Yep. Pretty dreary today: At least it's above freezing.

Interesting things to read: Climate change deniers, take note: even though 2014 was really cold in part of the U.S., it was still the warmest year ever worldwide. Two posts on the Microsoft Azure blog: how to add auto-complete suggestions using Azure Search, and how to tune Azure DocumentDB performance. Could airlines start giving landing preference to their own high-value flights? Chicagoist has their best brunches list up. Yum. We might start using JetBrains TeamCity for continuous integration. More...

Via Chicagoist, a compilation of Super-8 movies showing Chicago more than 45 years ago:

If you're a frequent flier in the U.S., test your knowledge of terminal layouts. I got 10.

Tuesday: Friday: This morning: Home in just a couple of hours.

I'm taking a quick trip to New York this weekend so The Daily Parker may be a little quiet. Here's what I'll be reading about on the flights: Microsoft has added Application Insights to Azure websites. Krugman is smacking his forehead about Switzerland's abandonment of the euro peg. The Times' Joshua Davis thinks we're wasting our tech talent. Via Sullivan, a video map showing how Europeans took over the North American continent. One more bug to fix before I can do a test deployment...