Hacker News Reader

zzapplezzon 54% of San Francisco homes are in buildings that would be illegal to build today

Your argument boils down to righteous dignity. You presume that it's below another person's dignity to live in, gasp, 500sqft. This is obviously nonsense. I've lived in less. It is important to understand that scaling down square footage is the simplest path to creating market-rate, sustainable, affordable housing

zzapplezzon 54% of San Francisco homes are in buildings that would be illegal to build today

Seconded. Well researched goodie. He spoke with a wide variety of sources to get his data right. From essentially homeless to Eli Broad - the B in KB Homes.

zzapplezzon 54% of San Francisco homes are in buildings that would be illegal to build today

Straw man - generally the idea of YIMBYism is to be more inclusionary, so that 3+ stories is allowed not required.

In contrast, SFH-only zoning is exclusionary.

zzapplezzon YouTube Down

Perhaps context will help: Pacific Northwest (PNW) here.

Seattle.

EDITs: More specific in location.

zzapplezzon YouTube Down

IT'S BACK

zzapplezzon A Little Money Laundering Can Have a Big Impact on Real Estate Prices (2019)

With enough zoning it absolutely is, not to mention the lead time required to permit and actually build it. Once built depreciation kicks in - housing isn't permanent. It's a consumable.

zzapplezzon A Little Money Laundering Can Have a Big Impact on Real Estate Prices (2019)

The answer is because a resource is at play that is finite: land.

If all the productive land in an urban area is effectively owned by foreign investors and left to sit, then renters bid up the remaining dwellings until they're priced out of the area. It also becomes more expensive to build in that area so the housing stock can't keep up with demand. It's terrible to let a vital commodity lay to waste.

zzapplezzon Why American cities can’t keep up with infrastructure maintenance (2017)

They also tend to move less and stay in the same district for a large percentage of their lives. It's a lot easier to vote if you only need to sign up once and the same process applies. If you're young and mobile, you're changing cities/counties/states and therefore less likely to keep up with the different races.

zzapplezzon Los Angeles hid power plant methane leak for a year

For good actors. Brings to mind the Cobra Effect:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect

zzapplezzon California to Require All New Vehicles Be Zero-Emission by 2035

> What if there's a power outage or I forget to plug in my car overnight?

Is making a trip to a gas station just to fill your car up a good use of time? Or is it better to accept responsibility and make sure you've plugged it in at home? Have you ever forgotten to fill up your gas tank and been stuck on the road? C'mon.

zzapplezzon AT&T’s current 5G is slower than 4G in nearly every city tested by PCMag

Bingo. That explains it.

zzapplezzon This electrical transmission tower has a problem

> If California doesn't like PG&E making ... profit.. it should set lower profit target, and allow PG&E spend more money on maintenance

Who makes decisions at the CPUC? It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is circular logic.

zzapplezzon The majority of 18- to 29-year-olds in the US are now living with their parents

This is because small and micro sized units are literally outlawed by many local zoning laws country-wide.

zzapplezzon The majority of 18- to 29-year-olds in the US are now living with their parents

Sure, but post-WWII the federal government injected billions (in 2020 dollars) into the pockets of mostly white veterans to build millions of homes. The federal government also provided generous home loans and unemployment insurance. Today, these policies would be viewed as socialist by the very people who benefited from it the most.

zzapplezzon Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke

Buffett & Munger agree with you. (paraphrasing here) Munger cited Costco as an incredibly important, effective, and efficient institution that couldn't be replaced by a non-profit or government. It has lowered the costs of essential goods while treating its workers well.

zzapplezzon Chuck Feeney Is Now Officially Broke

On the face it's certainly selfless, but the causes and recipients of the massive sum are important. Certainly you'd think differently if the recipients were foreign militants, no?

zzapplezzon AT&T’s current 5G is slower than 4G in nearly every city tested by PCMag

Does your 7 have the intel or qualcomm sku?

zzapplezzon Why I Actively Discourage Online Tooling like jwt.io and Online JSON Validators

This topic is much broader than just online JSON tools. There are all kinds of converters, transformers, and linting tools available online for many languages and frameworks that you shouldn't be sending your private code to.

I disagree with the author on always running it locally for yourself. If a service is useful enough, you should set it up internally so your team has a sandbox to use it. Spread the knowledge instead of hoarding it. Compiler Explorer is an example here.

zzapplezzon Increasing wind turbine rotor blade visibility reduces avian fatalities

There's another big one in southern Spain which I saw from the air on a flight a while ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS10_solar_power_plant

Here's the famous SoCal one which is impressive to drive by: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility

Instead of using photovoltaic panels (PV), they're called CSP - concentrating solar power. Basically concentrate a bunch of heat on a tower and drive a steam turbine to generate power.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_solar_power

WSJ reporting on some controversy in the past: https://www.wsj.com/articles/ivanpah-solar-plant-may-be-forc...

zzapplezzon Yet another tool for making copy/paste/run experience better (Windows)

> Aside: Is there a similar tool for macOS?

For small strings, you can paste in Spotlight Search and re-copy to strip formatting.

zzapplezzon FCC approves Amazon’s internet-from-space constellation of 3,236 satellites

Doubtful they'd be able to compete with any terrestrial provider on price. Perhaps on performance.

zzapplezzon FCC approves Amazon’s internet-from-space constellation of 3,236 satellites

Yes. That use case would be enabled... at a commensurate price.

zzapplezzon Apple reports Q3 results

Thank you for pointing this out, I thought BRK.B had no voting rights. I looked it up and learned that BRK.A shares have 6.66 the voting power of the equivalent dollar amount of BRK.B shares. Specifically, each BRK.A share is 1,500x the economic value of BRK.B but 10,000x the voting power. [1]

It turns out that there are indeed share classes of these companies with no voting rights (GOOG, class C) but I haven't found an example of a company that doesn't have some voting shares in non-insider hands.

It's still shitty that the S&P indices barred SNAP while turning a blind eye to the existing inequities. I'm perfectly okay with them barring new split share listings but at least begin to apply it to others that benefit from the lack of corporate governance.

[1] https://berkshirehathaway.com/compab.pdf#:~:text=Berkshire%2....

zzapplezzon Apple reports Q3 results

Also consider the difference in voting rights. Voting rights at berkshire require one to literally be rich. Funny that SNAP got shunned by S&P and literally was the genesis for a new rule [1] for excluding new stocks with split share classes yet BRK, GOOG, FB, CMCS, NWS, etc. can still exist in the index. Heck, companies like F & BF have separate voting shares to give families voting rights.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/01/snapchat-excluded-from-sp-50...

zzapplezzon How Best Buy saved itself (2019)

Interesting perspective of a retailer that invested in its employees and found success. It's sad to see employee benefits and loyalty and an all-time low across society when just a generation ago it was so strong.

zzapplezzon Microsoft calls for a closer look at app stores

How could you forget the first? Brew!

Sept 2001 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_Runtime_Environment_for...

"an application development platform created by Qualcomm, originally for code division multiple access (CDMA) mobile phones, featuring third-party applications such as mobile games. It is offered in some feature phones (mostly with the similar specifications of a mid to high-end mobile phones) but not in smartphones. Developed in 1999, as a platform for wireless applications on CDMA-based mobile phones, it debuted in September 2001."

zzapplezzon Roman mosaic floor found under Italian vineyard

https://twitter.com/DapperHistorian/status/12654268574465146...

"Old maps showed that a villa was in the area, but of course they didn't use scale until much later, so the exact location had been lost. This was the result of a long search to finally pinpoint it."

zzapplezzon Cheapest iPhone has a more powerful processor than the most expensive Android

True, but there is a multi-core benchmark. Makes the claims in the headline and article presented here suspect.

zzapplezzon Cheapest iPhone has a more powerful processor than the most expensive Android

Clickbait headline.

Author conveniently forgets to mention that the 865 has hands down better AI performance which is considered a key benchmark for high end devices. Multi-core perf is neck and neck.

https://techyorker.com/qualcomm-snapdragon-865-vs-apple-a13-...