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buss

1,635 karma · joined September 30, 2007

Co-founder of GrowSF with a4agarwal (Posterous co-founder). https://growsf.org

Software engineer, San Francisco political operator. ex-{Google, Counsyl, Amazon}.

You can reach me at steven.buss@gmail.com

https://sbuss.substack.com https://sbuss.dev https://twitter.com/sbuss https://github.com/sbuss

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/sbuss; my proof: https://keybase.io/sbuss/sigs/vv9NPn_ZrB0GolQk7eLa92RhAdXBrPmb7YRYKM0MUuI ]

submissionscomments
buss··on Slouching towards San Francisco
I'm one of the co-founders of an organization mentioned in the article, GrowSF. We focus on common sense outcomes, not political posturing or national progressive rhetoric. The author makes the classic mistake of cynically dismissing the hard work required from regular people to make a difference. And to cast a centrist organization like GrowSF as part of some secret cabal is both lazy and irresponsible journalism.

If anyone has any questions about GrowSF, feel free to ask!

buss··on How San Francisco makes it insanely hard to build housing
The only way we'll fix this is by replacing the ideologues on the Board of Supervisors with forward-thinking leaders who want to grow the city, make it easier for businesses to open and operate. That's why we started GrowSF - we can fix San Francisco, but we have to act as a real voting bloc. Check us out at growsf.org
buss··on San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash
With universal vote by mail, expats now don't vote too much earlier than voters in the city. For the June 2022 election, voters in SF received their ballots on May 8. So I think you got yours one or two weeks before that?

The deadline for deciding who could appear on the ballot was yesterday, September 6th, for the November 8th election. So ballots should start getting printed today and mailed to expats some time in the next week. So I think you'll get your ballot mid-to-late September.

We're currently on track to publish the voter guide on October 1st, but I'll see if we can get it up any earlier!

buss··on San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash
Thank you! We can only win together :)
buss··on San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash
We can fix it, but only if we get organized. Sachin Agarwal (co-founder of Posterous) and I founded GrowSF to fix the city. We're less than two years in and already the #2 most influential voter guide in the city.

We must elect pro-growth and pro-tech people who can bring competence to government. There's no other way out of this mess.

We'd love your support! https://growsf.org/donate

buss··on San Francisco braces for commercial real estate crash
For everyone that lives in San Francisco: the only way we'll be able to fix our city is if we get involved. That means voting and donating to pro-growth and pro-competence political groups.

That's why a4agarwal (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=a4agarwal) and I started GrowSF — we can build a better city, but only if the tech industry supports pro-growth policies and elected officials.

We'd love your support! https://growsf.org/donate

buss··on Ask HN: What is something important I should start doing in my 20s?
Hire a trainer and learn how to weightlift. You may have been a nerd like me that thought weight lifters were wasting time on vanity, but as you age your body will betray you. You need to learn how to stay fit or you will end up with myriad health issues and end up unhappy.

A trainer is essential for a new lifter. It is easy to hurt yourself, and you need to work on good form for years before it becomes second nature. You will look good (you won't look like a meathead), feel good, and your bones and heart will stay strong into middle age as your peers get fat and unhealthy.

buss··on Simple test reveals if your mental images are more vivid than other people's
I know I'm aphantasic, but never heard of SDAM. Describes me so well! I remember nearly nothing of my life.
buss··on Simple test reveals if your mental images are more vivid than other people's
I'm nearly completely aphantasic. I can get very brief flashes of images but can't make them happen nor hold them in my mind.

I almost never dream. When I do dream it's fairly lifelike.

I can't visualize anything arousing. When I first learned (at 26!) that my friends can visualize any fantasy at will I was floored. I have zero internal imagery for anything sexual. Have no fantasies.

I can't picture anyone's face. Bodies are only experienced in person. If I can't see it with my eyes, it doesn't exist.

buss··on Simple test reveals if your mental images are more vivid than other people's
I am almost completely aphantasic and saw zero visuals
buss··on Hire-to-fire at Amazon India?
I worked at Amazon years ago (2010-2012) on the retail website search navigation. I didn't like it, but it was nowhere near as bad as this hyperbolic post.

Joining Amazon was the best thing I could have done with my career at that stage in my life. I learned a ton! But the culture does grind you down, especially when your alternatives are much more cushy.

buss··on Show HN: I hate adding updating to my apps, so I created Pakkly
Very cool idea, but my first thought is a worry that this will turn into Trojans-as-a-service. The last thing I want, as a developer, is to hand over binary build to an untrusted third party that's injecting unauditable code into my app. You need to provide transparency to hit the market you're after.
buss··on Archive Team: A Smattering of Tweets
Well I guess it's good that they're also going to be archiving Jason Scott's mean and abusive tweets. How archive.org doesn't reign in his behavior when he is such a publicly well known figure is beyond me.
buss··on RIP Google Reader
They don't miss Reader, they miss college
buss··on RIP Google Reader
I don't understand the hagiography. Any one of us can build a replacement instead of lamenting reader's demise. If you miss reader so much then rebuild it.
buss··on Donate Unrestricted
As a board member of two nonprofits, I STRONGLY agree with pg. Restricted donations are not only an administerial headache, they strain the donor/recipient relationship and lead to suboptimal spending.
buss··on Myopia treatment 'smart glasses' from Japan to be sold in Asia
I have hypermyopia (-12.5 left, -13 right) and my sister has 20/15 vision. Same childhood environment as her and I needed glasses before I could even read, let alone before I ever played a video game.

It's well beyond a genetic predisposition, it was a genetic guarantee for me.

buss··on Early humans may have survived the harsh winters by hibernating
This is a great answer, thank you for sharing!
buss··on Early humans may have survived the harsh winters by hibernating
What risks are you referring to?

I'm taking sertraline (zoloft) now, and the only negatives I'm experiencing are slightly reduced libido and jaw clenching/grinding. I've started occasionally wearing a night guard while sleeping, and not really minding the decreased libido since dating during a global pandemic is outside of my acceptable risk tolerance.

I've also taken Lexapro and had good results with that, too.

The benefits are I was able to actually feel pleasure and enjoy things again. At my worst I was suffering from severe anhedonia -- literally finding no pleasure in any activity. Nothing I previously enjoyed brought any modicum of happiness: not food, not sex, not exercise, not work or side projects. It's a dangerous state to be in because when literally nothing in life brings joy you can slip into destructive choices.

The benefits of feeling better vastly outweighed any minor side effects of antidepressants.

There are some people, especially teenagers, who can become suicidal when taking antidepressants. But it's very rare and your psychiatrist will help you find a drug that doesn't cause those feelings.

buss··on Early humans may have survived the harsh winters by hibernating
This sounds a lot like the symptoms of depression. I have depression, and the isolation of the pandemic has really worn me down. I went back on my antidepressants about six months ago and I'm still struggling. Totally up to you, but you might want to try talking to a therapist or psychiatrist. It's one of the best choices I've ever made. Making that first call was hard because I felt like I was admitting defeat, but looking back I was actually choosing to fight.
buss··on Apple M1 vs. Ryzen 3900X vs. Intel I9 in Software Development
Do we need to push legislation to ensure unlocked bootloaders? Or even a "click this box to void your warranty and unlock the bootloader".
buss··on Ask HN: As a person, what can I do to improve a city?
Get involved in local politics. Go to community meetings. Learn who has power and start building your own. These kinds of things take years.

If you don't want to do that, at least start donating to local politicians who you agree with, volunteer for them, tell your friends to vote for them. Local races are often won by dozens to hundreds of votes. You can easily swing that. And don't focus on "highest value" work. Door-to-door canvassing is more important than any code you can write.

buss··on California Property Taxes Mapped
Best way to change this is to vote with YIMBY. Check out https://yimbyaction.org/endorsements

Also, check out this organization I'm part of: https://techworkers.vote

buss··on How long since Google said a Google Drive Linux client is coming?
It won't ever come. I use InSync on ubuntu and it works exceptionally well. I actually upgraded to the paid 200GB Google drive plan because I started using Drive dramatically more once I installed InSync.
buss··on The Languages Which Almost Became CSS
This was just so wonderfully written. It brought back a lot of memories. Kudos to the authors!
buss··on To head off regulators, Google makes certain words taboo
This same guidance is at every very large company. What a nothingburger
buss··on A Typology of Dumplings (2019)
The unanswered question is: is a jelly donut a sweet dumpling?
buss··on People who can't see things in their mind could have memory trouble too: study
Incorrect. If you did actually dig in to the paper they found:

Aphantasic participants scored significantly lower than control group 2 on all outcomes of the imagery and episodic memory questionnaires (all p < 0.0002, all r > 0.52, all BF10 > 1.42e8) with the exception of the factual memory component of the SAM.

So aphantasics (like myself) do have poor episodic memory.

Paper here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-65705-7

buss··on Bootstrap 5 alpha
It really can't be said enough: bootstrap is phenomenal and the creators, maintainers, and contributors deserve immense praise. They've collectively saved our industry millions of hours of frustration and helped us achieve good-looking, accessible, and responsive websites.
buss··on Why skyscraper architects always return to Art Deco
Those overhead lines are for electric buses
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