ic0n0cl4st

It seems to quire naive to give unions all the credit while failing to America’s declining quality compared to Japan and failure to listen to loud market trends.

GM ignoring Deming’s TQM while Japan wholeheartedly embraced this philosophy should be mentioned.

The rapid increase in oil prices and the big 3 ignoring the data and sticking with the “Americans want big gas guzzling cars” philosophy would also be mentioned.

This last one combined with the oil crisis is how Honda killed Harley Davidson, as well as how Toyota and VW killed the big 3. When the oil crisis hit the 15-mile per gallon american behemoths just became irrelevant.

Containerized shipping and a lack of import taxes also had far more to do with the USA losing its doninance.

We wanted cheaper, smaller, more reliable cars. The big 3 wanted to pretend like it was still 1955.

Turkey is the same way. The government says 99.8% of the population are Muslim by default but it’s probably closer to 60%.

Until a few years ago religion was listed on government identification cards. When you’re born your parenrs must state a religion for your birth certificate or it is automatically listed as Muslim.

You had to go through a burdensome official process as an adult to change this, and once you did this you legally admitted to Apostasy, which opens you up to discrimination (and future consequences if the government were to fall to islamists or neo-ottomans).

Furthermore, it was very common to be discriminated against by HR departments / hiring managers if Islam was not present on your Kimlik (government ID).

This only went away with recent passport and national id standards changing in their futile attempts to join the EU.

(Consider that Turkey is by far the most liberal and secular Muslim nation.)

Or maybe we give more thought to the feasibility of space colonization and give people the ability to opt out of paying for this kind of adventurism?

I work really hard and would rather my taxes go to helping out those living today, not maybe those living in 1,000 years.

Seems like a potentially great way to transfer a lot of wealth from taxpayers to the aerospace industry for a very long time with little oversight or roi.

England is cold and grey, and the food sucks.

Every mediterranean country is littered with Brits, especially retirees / pensioners.

Even public prisons are primarily run and populates through the formiddable lobbying power of police and prison guard unions. Their influence is far more insidiuous than that of the comparably small for-profit prison industry.

Also an opportunity to question your union stance.

Madoff would have been less likely to go to jail had he made off with poor peoples’ money instead of that of rich people.

> They’re also not entitled to that. In a democracy the many decide.

We did decide, and continue to do so in supervisor meetings and in the ballot box. You might want to read up on federalism.

It’s quite rude for you to say my home is not remarkable or worth preserving. You’ve never even seen it. You know nothing of my tightknit, diverse community which cares about things of more importance than ipos and user engagement.

“Droid housing” is san francisco slang for the soulless eyesore boxes containing cramped, slapshodnfaux “lofts”, usually painted a bluish slate grey or salmon pink on the outside, entirely devoid of character or quality.

Thankfully San Francisco’s direct democracy works well to keep this city small. There are many soulless sprawling cities which are seismically stable, devoid of character, flat and inhabited by people who don’t care enough to resist.

> Well that's just inefficiency or graft. The rest of the world is able to achieve far more for far less cost.

Citation?

> Who's our? Generally voters tend to be older, wealthier and landowners. The large pile of younger, less wealthy, more transient renters isn't represented well. I don't think the outcome means the system works.

That’s how democracy works. If you don’t vote, you don’t have a voice.

3x as dense??????? We are already 17,000 per square mile. New York is 28,000 per m^2.

You seriously think San Francisco would be livable at 51,000 pe m^2? It would literally cost $500bn in infrastructure investment to make that possible just inside the city.

101 and 280 would need to be 15 lames wide each, bulldozing 1/8 of the peninsula. We would need a half a dozen new transbay bridges and tunnels.

SFO would probably need another couple of runways and terminals.

You’re talking trillions of dollars in investment because tech companies prefer open office spaces to Zoom.

Sure, but we don’t want that. There is an incredible amount of space in the bay area which could be turned into droid housing and office buildings. ALL of those places have cheaper real estate, fewer homeless people (the #2 complaint of everybody here) and warmer weather.

It’s 2021 and Covid-19 has shown that remote work is viable.

Back in the day large tech companies like Sun, Peoplesoft and Cisco built offices all over the bay so that people had the option to work at facilities close to their home.

SF wasn’t even a significant tech destination before 2007.

My wife and I are actually moving to Barcelona when Covid is over, under the Non-Lucrative residency permit. If you think San Franciscans have a Nimby attitude and hate outsiders then you should go visit Barcelona.

“Unremarkabe single family housing”. So what, you want to take peoples’ housing via eminent domain and build more of the hideously dugly condo boxes they’ve stuffed all over SOMA and the Missiom?

I happen to love my unremarkable home in the Sunset in which my family has lived for 55 years.

> The cost of upgrading infrastructure in a busy city is enormously expensive. San Francisco is on a peninsula with no room at all to expand outward. The only solution is to build up and that’s a real problem in an area prone to earthquakes.

People always ignore this fact. Infrastructure isn’t free. When all is said and done the Central Subway extension will likely have cost over $2bn for 1.7 miles of subway. [1] The new transit center cost $2.2bn [2]. Rebuilding 1/2 of the bay bridge cost $6.5bn. [3]

Consider that money for all of this is artificially restricted by Prop 13, and by California being a net-giver state, paying about $40bn per year more to the fed than we receive back, effectively being a piggy bank for poorer states.

> Plus there are a lot of people that like the character of their neighbourhood and don’t want to live in an apartment building.

Many commenters with a lot of hatred for San Francisco’s unique brand of dirext democracy are sadly OK with overruling the expressed will of the people not to turn our home into New York just so some tech billionaires can sell more banner ads.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Subway

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transbay_Transit_Center

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_span_replacement_of_th...

It should be noted that San Francisco is surrounded by bay and ocean on 3 sides and also contains a significant amount of land which is not really seismically sound, and 50% of which is protected parkland.

Those other 3 cities have significantly more capacity both to build up and out. Blame the electorate all you want but geography is geography.

San Francisco is a small city, only 49 square miles, 1/2 of which is parkland and a significant portion is landfill which liquifies in a serious earthquake. It’s also surrounded by water on 3 sides

I don’t understand why so many HN commenters seem to think it could magically become a dense metropolis like Manhattan or Chicago.

Even in the Gold Rush in the 1800s SF was unscalable the rent was unaffordable. It was always a high crime city. Just read about the history of the barbary coast.

Everybody who comes here purely for money wants this city to be something it just isn’t.

Seems like a great reason to invest in kinetic energy storage like this pumped hydroelectric reservoir in Wales.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ffestiniog_Power_Station?wprov...

> Out of curiosity, what can go badly? They offer a counter and then fire you a couple months later, after they've found a more "loyal" (or just cheaper) replacement?

Definitely they question loyalty. In general all companies have an expectation of loyalty from employees they will throw away at a moment’s notice without any remorse

I leave jobs for two reasons: abusive employers/coworkers ot money. Because of this I would never accept a counter-offer, obviously I wouldnt stay in an abusive alsituation, and if another company sees me as more valuable than my current employer then the fear of losing me won’t change my soon to be former employer’s view.

Quite simply an e-mail to my manager and HR stating my last day will be in two weeks and that we should start the knowledge transfer process.

This reminds me a lot of an immersive art installation I saw in Turkey 6 years ago of an imagined future where an oil tanker got stuck in the Bosphorous and permanently changed local society.

https://worldarchitecture.org/architecture-news/ccehp/strait...

Looking at pictures of highways from before caralytic converters and you notice that each lane had a pure black stripe from the exhaust.

For The last 7 years of working and traveling 50% of the time my setup has been two iPhones and a Macbook Air. I have about 30 sim cards now. In Europe I mostly use tmobile. Hotel lobbies usually have free wifi, as do cafes, hostels and bars.

The main difference is I kind of hate talking to people about work so I avoid video chat and try to keep all work communications on Slack/Signal.

America was actually the worst place to work and travel. Data there is too expensive and coverage sucks everywhere.

So basically Austin is experiencing today what we San Franciscans have been suffering through since the web 2.0 boom began in 2008. I remember when they built yuppy condos next to the DNA lounge and the new tenants immediately joined the “War on Fun” and began trying to get the DNA shut down.

Before you know it, everyone here on HN will be labeling austinites as “greedy nimby’s”, complaining about being made to feel uncomfortable by acknowledging the homeless problem, and complaining that Austin isn’t exactly like whatever place it is they moved away from to go to Austin while seeking their startup millions.

I always thought of America as the Harkonnens, but now that you said it I realize that we are the Imperium, OPEC is CHOAM and Saudi Arabia are the Harkonnens.

Judging from our failure to invade, embargoe or sanction saudi arabia or the bin laden family, it is clear that the USA and the west will aways back the terrorist regime of the kingdom of saudi arabia.

It isn’t even about their oil, it’s about the weapons they buy from us. We are literally being paid to fight, or rather, commit genocide in Yemen for KSA.

Iran has never attacked American soil and politicians treat them like our worst enemies. The house of saud killed 3,000 People on 9/11 and are implicated in almost every terror attack in the USA since, and they are our best friends.

You will know Tayipp has given up when he appoints Bilal to this position.

Oh hey I know you, didn’t know you stayed so long. I think of you every time I hear the phrase “fractured fricitive”.

I remember the Amazon thing .. differently. Also some pretty shady marketing tricks, and you know, failing to protect a female employee from a predatory creep at a conference.

I think every traveler has this idea, explores it, realizes it is illegal and moves on.

It’s been 10 years, but I would find it hard to say a good word about the founders.

My experiences there taught me that no good deed goes unpunished. I dropped out of the startup world and become a “fuck you, pay me” consultant.

Not too surprising. YC’s more successful companies do have a history of skirting (Uber, AirBNB).

When I worked at PagerDuty, some of the less ethical aspects of the company (like the product was initially developed while interns at Amazon) were explained to me with this phrase, verbatim:

“Paul told us to be naughty, but not too naughty.”

Cycling is almost one of those politically charged conversations which should be banned from HN. As a bicycle commuter and enthusiast (since somehow cyclist is a dirty word) I’ve long since learned that any online discussion inevitably devolves into a sociopathic blame game.

I will say, however, that cost is one of the primary issues which is rarely addressed. In the USA the dollar is king and it shows in all aspects of our lives.

Compared to automobiles, Bicycles are too cheap for their own good. America would have good cycling infrastructure If bicycles cost $20k to purchase, $5k per year to fuel, $500 to register, $1,500 year to insure and if the bicycling lobby spent hundreds of millions of dollars bribing politicians yearly.

Drivers (why isn’t driver a dirty word?), at least in the USA, have a clear sense of superiority and entitlement which drives (pun intended) their sociopathic behavior. “I spent $50,000 on my Tesla and thousands more on licensing and maintenance! That money gives me the right to get back to my bedroom community in San Mateo as quickly as possible, fuck you and your 2-wheels, i’ll run you over with zero legal consequences” is a common attitude.

The USA will never get dutch-quality cycling infrastructure until bicycle riders spend driver-level money.