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> But I don't see how transit can take less time anywhere unless you literally live in a station and your destination is in another station.

Maybe its like this for because our infrastructure has been built around the assumption that you can park your car right in front of your destination AND doesn't have good transit oriented development/frequent enough service. If you had to walk 10 minutes to park your car and or circle the block for 10 minutes waiting for a spot to open up and the trains and busses ran every 3 minutes and didn't get stuck in traffic, the time would balance out differently

> quiet > cars > Pick one.

You can get all of those things in walkable cities. SF and NYC have single family homes with back yards in walkable neighborhoods, they are just really expensive.

Also all neighborhoods have truck access, including fully pedestrianized streets.

Sure people can still have cars in walkable places because not all trips are going to be better without a car. That doesn't mean that people owning cars in walkable areas are going to use them for all or most trips. They probably don't drive to the corner store 2 blocks away to pick up a six pack or drive across the city to the office to pay $30 when transit takes less time, costs 1/6th the price, and doesn't require them to sit in traffic with their hands on the wheel.

Perhaps americans prefer larger vehicle because of infrastructure design, public policy, and advertising campaigns, not because the desire is just innate?

It makes sense that you'd want a larger car when you live in a place that is designed for driving and everyone else is doing it too. Give people other viable options, like walking,cycling, and transit, and I guarantee that they will pick them instead because they are more pleasant and convenient.

I also don't buy that Americans don't want to live in walkable and bikable places either. The two most desirable and expensive cities in the United States (SF and NYC) are largely built this way.

There is def a vendetta but you see the same things in r/sanfrancisco and other places as well so it's not limited to HN

People absolutely report car break ins because they want insurance payouts, people just don't expect the police to do anything about it.

> Many people, who would otherwise have happier lives are now dealing with addiction & living on the streets.

I don't know about you but I don't know anyone who fell into drug use and homelessness who had happy lives. I think people who are homeless and or addicted to drugs are addicted to drugs because there lives are not good. If you improve economic and social conditions for people, drug abuse becomes less of a problem because people do not need to cope with difficulty in their life in the same way.

Human drivers do dangerous, stupid, and illegal things all the time. I was in an Uber today that drove around bollards to go down a blocked off street. Also today, my wife was driving and witnessed a road rage incident where two cars were over taking each other aggressively in the city and throwing bottles out their windows at each other. A few months ago I walked out of my house to find a drunk driver getting booked for driving over the curb and into a public park.

Self driving cars, on the other hand, are always courteous in my neighborhood, stop at stop signs, and never speed.

> Efficient public transportation (trams/subway) are no longer regulatory or financially feasible enough to build (how is the second avenue line in Manhattan going?).

Uh are you sure about that? I don't think self driving cars are that more efficient than just regular human drivers. Giving up and accepting mediocrity (but fully automated!) doesn't seem like a very compelling argument

> (I am anti-robocar because I am a professional software developer. I know what the sausage is made of.)

To be fair, I am a SWE and I have very little idea how these things work but I do know how driving and humans work and the results are not pretty

From my other comment:

desertification is the destruction of arable land, not the expansion of healthy desert ecosystems. Healthy desert ecosystems are disappearing, not expanding

So essentially you are saying we should destroy the environment because it appears to be cheaper in the short term? Sounds like a classic 20th century trapping that might not age so well when the externalities come back and demand repayment.

I wouldn't underestimate the power of distributed arrays either. There are estimates that if every house had rooftop solar, it would generate 30-40% of total power demand [0], and that is just residential.

Perhaps we cannot replace all power using brownfield PV but we shouldn't just disregard the desert or other pristine ecosystems without also utilizing other alternatives to minimize our impact.

[0] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.computerworld.com/article/3...

Not really sure how you went from not destroying the desert for PV to living in villages and forgetting modern civilization, seems like a big jump. There are other alternatives which I mentioned that we can utilize before we need to make the trade off that you're talking about.

I don't see what point you are making that contradict my original comment. Yes deserts are less important to the health of the planet than biodiversity hotspots, but why would we destroy them when we have other alternatives?

desertification is the destruction of arable land, not the expansion of healthy desert ecosystems. Healthy desert ecosystems are disappearing, not expanding

Pristine deserts are. Invasive species, drought, and human development are all damaging desert ecosystems, which take much longer to recover than less arid biomes.

Just because deserts appear barren doesn't mean there isn't an ecosystem there that isn't important.

> The first one isn't helpful in this context because we need to put PV somewhere, we might as well look for a place of less relative importance.

Yes, like the places I mentioned in my comment

Why would we destroy pristine desert, which is rapidly disappearing, when we could cover land that has already been disturbed, like parking lots, building roofs, and farmland? Deserts are important ecosystems regardless of their immediate utility to industrial society

You can train the algorithm by saying you are not interested in videos or channels. I have told the algorithm to not recommend garbage channels with top 10 videos and my feed is much better now

I think it is exciting actually. Google a bit of a mess internally so there are lots of problems to solve. Everyone knows that these problems exist but people either aren't brave enough to defy management spend to the time to solve the problems or don't know how to promote their proposals to whom

If you are happy being handed pre-scoped work, you can just stay at L4, which many people do.

> It's supposed to be management's responsibility to pick projects that will be successful

If you just do what management tells you at Google you will never be promoted past L4. You need to come up with new ideas and projects to sell to management. The key is to align your project ideas with what management says they want.

Uhh why? You are at FAANG, you made it, what else do you need to do? Why not relax instead?

Are you struggling to keep your head above water? If so, why not just focus on work? If not, then why don't you just spend less time working and more time doing what you want?

I believe people have limited capacity, trying to stretch yourself will result in burn out. If you can afford it, allocate some of the capacity you are dedicating to work to the non-work things you are interested in. If you can't, then just focus on work until you can

It's more of a cringe than outrage. And yeah, you are right, words do have meaning, which is exactly why we should be intentional with our words.

Saying retarded has been uncouth for a lot longer than five years, not sure where you have been. I've had plenty of time to think about it for myself.

> Perhaps a 2 week ban and a violence prevention course

Too tame, let's call their boss and get them fired.

/s obviously

"retarded monkeys"

Yikes

> Computer programmers and tech companies are not just robbing artists, but robbing all of humanity of the necessities that we need in order to have a fair chance at this world

A fair chance at what exactly? Creating corporate memphis for Big Co?

Besides, isn't AI just a tool that humans use? Unless I am missing something, people still prompt the AI, curate it's output, and edit the final results. Perhaps this will make art accessible to more people, thus giving everyone a fairer chance in this world.

I was just saying it is similar on the sense that it works right away and has a noticeable effect, unlike other depression meds that people take, like SSRIs which take months to kick in

Wellbutrin worked wonders for me. Works immediately, similar to amphetamines and is easy to obtain legitimately.

You can get a cargo bike with a rack on the back or a tub in the front. My ebike can hold over 150lbs on the back and I took it grocery shopping back before I lived in walking distance of grocery stores

> CA doesn’t prosecute major crimes like burglary, shoplifting or drug possession.

One of those is not like the others...